Is the World Becoming More Peaceful?

It might come up as a strange question for some people, who see a conflictual world on television, newspapers, websites and especially social media, which exposes different types of conflicts worldwide. How could we speak about a peaceful world while the hashtag #WorldWarThree is trending on social media, after the tension between Washington and Tehran following the US airstrike which killed General Qassem Soleimani, an Iranian major general, who had been the architect of Iranian military interventions in the Middle East.

According to statistics and some analysis, there is a significant military advantage of the United States over Iran, thus being difficult to compare. Aware of that, the Iranian regime would not prefer to engage in a direct war with the US army. This fact was confirmed by the mild Iranian reaction to the US killing Soleimani, furthermore the American troops were informed hours before the attack.

But the people, who are afraid of a next world war, don’t rely on Iranian power and its capability to face USA, they have fear of whoever stands behind Iran, mainly Russia, and China on a second level. 

Insecure Region in the Safest World

There is a common theory that the world is becoming safer and more peaceful than ever, which is not a daydream. Data shows that it is indeed a fact. Since the World War II there are fewer conflicts and less people die in war than before (refer to figure 1 and figure 2 below). 

Figure 1: Deaths caused by war, annual statistics by UCDP/PRIO since 1946

Meanwhile war is getting away from different regions, such as Europe, America, Asia, Oceania, and even Africa. There is one specific region where war conflicts and violence are increasing; the Middle East North Africa (MENA) region, which remained the world’s least peaceful region. 

Beside the Arab-Israeli conflict, one of the oldest conflicts, which causes disputes among the Arab countries in 1956, 1967, 1973 and 2006 and many tensions since Israel’s existence. The region knew many other conflicts: Iraq against Iran in 1980, Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990, followed by the coalition operation in to expel the occupying Iraqi forces from Kuwait, the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and a series of continuous civil wars in Syria, Libya and Yemen, following to the Arab spring started in Tunisia in 2010.

Figure 2: Deaths caused by war, annually and divided by world region (UCDP/PRIO)

Why is this Region so Insecure?

Unlike many other regions in the world, which are getting more and more peaceful, the MENA region is still suffering from wars, conflicts and insecurity. This trend leads us to ask the question “Why?”…

War for oil, foreign intervention, ethnic and religious differences are indeed all root causes, leading to instability and insecurity of this region. But there is also another important factor, which can explain all other ones - non-democracy.

There is enough evidence to conclude that democracy does cause peace at least between democracies, that the observed correlation between democracy and peace is not invalid.

Global democracy could provide a solid foundation for global peace. The basic principles of this concept had been argued as early as the 1700s in the works of philosopher Immanuel Kant and political theorist Thomas Paine.

Figure 3: Democracies vs. autocracies chart (Varieties of Democracy Project, 2019)

While the number of democracies is increasing and autocracies are decreasing (figure 3), the MENA region is still having a  majority of authoritarian regimes, or sometimes hybrid ones, but only a few of them are democracies (refer to figure 4),  

Figure 4: World map presenting democracies (The Economist Intelligence Unit)

Conclusion

To sum up, we can say that the world is getting more peaceful because it is getting more democratic. There is a connection between democracy and peace. 

To end years of wars and conflicts, the MENA region needs a real democracy, but not the democracy brought up by tanks, like that one promised at the Iraqi invasion in 2003, which caused chaos not only in Iraq but also in other countries like Syria. A democracy that comes from people’s mentality of the region.

While Western countries must support democratization process in Arab countries, as they did after the "Fall of the Berlin Wall", they must neither support dictatorships nor intervene militarily in this region.

Edited by Nataliya Napetova