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  • Violence

  • and war.

  • The insane brutality of ISIS continues,

  • the Russians are invading Ukraine,

  • and the Palestinians and Israelis

  • continue to slug it out.

  • Does that make you feel gloomy?

  • Well

  • don't.

  • Because if you look at the numbers

  • war actually seems

  • to be going out of fashion,

  • while the global population

  • is at an all time high.

  • It seems that we live

  • in the most peaceful period

  • in human history.

  • How is this possible?

  • (music)

  • As of September 2014,

  • there were 4 conflicts going on

  • in the world that'd caused at least

  • 10,000 people to die since January 2013.

  • 9 conflicts that killed

  • more than 1,000 people

  • and 13 that killed

  • more than 100 since January 2013.

  • Not really peaceful,

  • but consider this:

  • of all the conflicts going on

  • none is an active war between countries.

  • They are either civil wars

  • or local conflicts.

  • Although civil wars are terrible

  • and cause huge suffering,

  • their impact is usually way smaller

  • than a war between nations or empires.

  • When two nations engage in war,

  • they can mobilise much bigger forces,

  • have access to all of the state's

  • resources and logistics and

  • almost all of the population.

  • So why have we transitioned from

  • wars between nation states

  • wars between nation states

  • A lot of it is to do with

  • colonialism and the cold war.

  • When the cold war ended, a major driver of

  • armed conflicts vanished too.

  • But the break up of the

  • communist dictatorships

  • revealed new or old tensions

  • and brought new conflicts

  • in the now freed states

  • which often resulted in civil war.

  • Much more importantly,

  • in 1945,

  • nearly all of Africa, much of Asia,

  • and parts of Latin America

  • were under colonial rule.

  • By 1990,

  • all but a few islands were independent.

  • But wait.

  • Couldn't you argue that what today's

  • multinational corporations

  • are doing in the third world

  • is just as bad as colonialism?

  • Let's look at Congo.

  • It was established as a colony in 1885

  • by the Belgium king.

  • An area 80 times the size of Belgium.

  • Violence committed against

  • the indigenous Congolese

  • and the ruthless system of

  • economic exploitation

  • had killed about half of the population

  • by 1908.

  • About 10 million Congolese were executed

  • or starved to death.

  • Millions were mutilated and traumatised.

  • The economic exploitation of the Congo

  • remained the top priority

  • and forced labor never really ceased

  • completely until the end of Belgium rule

  • in 1960.

  • Which is not really that long ago.

  • So, no.

  • Colonialism was much worse than

  • vulture capitalism is today

  • and it ended just two generations ago.

  • Most of the conflicts

  • that are going on right now

  • are in areas that 60 years ago

  • were under foreign control.

  • But things are getting better.

  • Until 1989,

  • victory for one side in a civil war

  • was common

  • while nowadays victories are much rarer.

  • At the same time,

  • negotiated endings have jumped from 10%

  • to almost 40%.

  • What about the rest of the world?

  • Why have nation states

  • stopped attacking each other?

  • There are 4 major reasons:

  • One.

  • Democratisation.

  • The steady development

  • from autocracy to democracy.

  • Democracies hardly ever fight each other.

  • Of all the state against state wars

  • fought since 1900, only a minority

  • were fought between democracies.

  • Two.

  • Globalisation.

  • War is just not as effective at achieving

  • economic goals as it used to be.

  • Today it's almost always cheaper

  • to buy resources on the global market

  • than to cease them by force.

  • People from other nations are

  • more valuable to us alive than dead.

  • Which, overall, is a pretty new concept.

  • Three.

  • War is so 20th century.

  • Until World War I, warfare was seen as an

  • inevitable part of the human experience

  • and as a valuable tool which you could use

  • to achieve goals when diplomacy

  • hit a brick wall.

  • Today we have rules that declare acts of

  • aggression illegal and stipulate that

  • armed forces is only justified in

  • self-defence or with the authority of the

  • UN Security Council.

  • These rules are still broken but today

  • it's harder to do so without sparking

  • oppositions and disapproval.

  • Also, we have an international court for

  • war crimes in The Hague.

  • And that's a very recent innovation.

  • Four.

  • Borders are mostly fixed now.

  • After World War II,

  • territorial wars generally stopped

  • when most countries pledged to accept

  • international borders

  • and respect other nations autonomy.

  • But is all of this just an anomaly

  • or are we on the road to lasting peace?

  • Truth is

  • we don't know yet.

  • We need a big enough sample to rule out

  • the historical average, which is about

  • one or two big wars per century.

  • We just haven't had enough time since

  • World War II to rule out the possibility

  • that war is not going away.

  • If we don't have one major war

  • in the next 75 years,

  • we can be really confident

  • that humanity is changing.

  • So you see, war might be over.

  • Yes there are nasty conflicts

  • going on in many places but overall,

  • things are getting better.

  • And we can make them even better

  • by speaking up for peace and democracy.

  • Subtitles by the Amara.org community

Violence

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