14 CHAPTER OnE ■ ApproAches to InternAtIonAl relAtIonsIs the World Becoming
More peaceful?
Headlines such as “The Decline in Global Vio
lence: Real ity or Myth?” or “Is the World Becom
ing More Peaceful?” pique our interest.a As we
saw at the beginning of the chapter, former chair
man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey
and psychologist Steven Pinker (and no doubt
many others) come to quite diff er ent answers to
these questions. What explains the differences in
their perspectives?
Pinker argues that the world was
much more violent in the past. Vio
lence in Pinker’s analy sis includes all
types of vio lence— murder, tribal war
fare, slavery, executions, rape. His
“past” is centuries. He cites statistics
showing that tribal warfare was nine
times as deadly as twentieth century
warfare and the murder rate in Medi
eval Eu rope was 30 times more than it
is today. Slavery, he points out, existed
for thousands of years, having declined
only in the last 50 years. And, in his
view, the numbers affected by the vio
lence needed to be compared to the
relative size of the population at the
time. So while the numbers of deaths
and violent acts today may be larger,
they are much smaller compared to
the size of the population: in the seven
teenth century, the “wars of religion”
killed about 2 percent of the popula
tion in the warring states, while in the
twentieth century, the deadliest
century in absolute numbers, just
0.7 percent of the people died in
battle. Comparing the past with more
con temporary data, Pinker sees a decline in wars
between great powers. World Wars I and II rep
resent spikes from what is generally a downward
trend. Post 1946, there has been a decline in deaths
on a per capita basis in all diff er ent kinds of wars:
colonial wars, civil wars, internationalized civil wars,
genocide, as well as interstate conflicts.People argue that our world is more peaceful than it was centuries
ago. Is that true? How do we know?Behind The headlines