The New York Times.
THE departure of the last American troops from Iraq brings relief to a
nation that has endured its most painful war since Vietnam. But the
event is momentous for another reason. The invasion of Iraq was the most
recent example of an all-out war between two national armies. And it
could very well be the last one. The idea that war is obsolescent
may seem preposterously utopian. Aren’t we facing an endless war on
terror, a clash of civilizations, the menace of nuclear rogue states?
Isn’t war in our genes, something that will always be with us?
The theory that war is becoming passé gained traction in the late 1980s,
when scholars noticed some curious nonevents. World War III, a nuclear
Armageddon, was once considered inevitable, but didn’t happen. Nor had
any wars between great powers occurred since the Korean War. European
nations, which for centuries had fought each other at the drop of a hat,
had not done so for four decades.
How has the world fared since then? Armed conflict hasn’t vanished, and
today anyone with a mobile phone can broadcast the bloodshed. But our
impressions of the prevalence of war, stoked by these images, can be
misleading. Only objective numbers can identify the trends.
