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Is War Over?
In 2014, a video raised the question: is war over? The prevailing sentiment at the time, backed by long-term trends, suggested that violent conflict was in decline and the world was becoming more peaceful than ever. With events like the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the conflict between Hamas and Israel dominating the news today, it’s worth revisiting this question to assess how the past decade has shaped our understanding of global violence.
The 2014 video made seven key claims about the state of the world’s conflicts: fewer conflict deaths than ever, almost no wars between countries, democracies don’t fight each other, borders are mostly fixed, most conflicts are in areas formerly under foreign control, more civil wars are ending via diplomacy, and we are in the most peaceful period of history. Let’s see how these claims hold up today.
Looking back at the conflicts of the last decade, many of the deadliest wars from 2014 have ended or cooled significantly. The war in Afghanistan concluded with the Taliban’s victory, while the civil wars in Yemen and Libya have mostly stalemated. ISIS, once a proto-state in Iraq and Syria, has been eradicated, and the brutal civil war in South Sudan, which led to hundreds of thousands of deaths, ended in a fragile peace agreement. Yet, the past decade has also seen the rise of new, brutal conflicts.
