New study on the decline of wars

TAU researcher finds war is rarer now because peace has never been more profitable

16 October 2013

Daily headlines bring news of regional and civil wars, and tensions between superpowers seem to be more and more alarming. But surprisingly, most historians and scholars agree we are living in the most peaceful era of human history ever.

 

In a review of recent literature supporting the view that war has declined over history, Prof. Azar Gat of Tel Aviv University's Department of Political Science makes the case that it is not the costs of war but the profits of peace that have recently driven the trend. The article was published in Journal of Peace Research in March.

 

"The decline of war is intimately related to the process of industrialization that started in the beginning of the 19th century," says Prof. Gat, who holds the Ezer Weizman Chair in National Security Studies at TAU. He has spent much of his career studying war and is the author of many books, including the acclaimed War in Human Civilization (Oxford, 2006). "The patriot, as John Stewart Mill observed as early as the 1840s, now needs to think not only of his own country, but also of every other country that is his country's trade partner."

 

From chaos to commerce

Prof. Gat endorses the view that two major events have contributed to the decline of human fighting since pre-history: the rise of the state and the industrial revolution.

 

Until about 5,000 years ago, humans lived in anarchy and great violence. The development of nation-states allowed for both the enforcement of internal peace and a reduced exposure to war for the civilian population, says Prof. Gat.

 

War took its next major blow with the dawn of the industrial-commercial revolution in about 1815. The growth of industry and international trade made war less attractive by steadily increasing wealth, promoting economic interdependence, and allowing states to profit from foreign resources without the need to conquer territory, Prof. Gat says. He points out that in the past two centuries, humanity has seen the three by-far longest periods of peace between the great powers: 1815-1854, 1871-1914, and 1945 to the present. Only in the last of these have nuclear weapons been involved.

 

Prof. Gat rejects pacifist claims that war is futile, noting that humans evolved the impulse to use violence when it was beneficial to them and that war has historically been a winning strategy for some. Conflict, peaceful cooperation, and competition have always been interchangeable and complimentary strategies in the human behavioral toolkit, depending on the circumstances and prospects of success, he says. Historical data shows that, contrary to widespread belief, modern wars have not become more lethal and expensive than in the past, relative to population and wealth. Instead, in the past two centuries, it is peace that has become more profitable.

 

A dangerous peace

The World Wars, the two most significant exceptions to the downward trajectory of war in the past two centuries, occurred after the great powers resumed protectionist policies and expanded them to undeveloped parts of the world in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with colonialism, says Prof. Gat. At present, in less developed parts of the world, ethnic and nationalist tensions continue to override the logic of the new economic realities, as they did in Europe before 1945. In addition to economics, the threat of nuclear annihilation and the spread of democracy have helped keep the forces of violence in check.

 

Despite the decline of war — and the general improvement of human life — ours is a dangerous world, Prof. Gat cautions. States and non-state actors have unprecedented access to devastating biological and possibly nuclear weapons, and the rise of non-democratic and non-liberal giants, like China, threatens to reverse the more positive trends that have brought us to where we are today. Still, he notes, modern developments give much cause for hope.

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