US Politics |OT|

[Bofferbrauer2]

haxxiy said:

Bofferbrauer2 said:

I wouldn't really call it more peaceful, just that the conflicts at the time were either over very quickly or lower intensity in general, so they couldn't "compete" with conflicts like the Chinese civil war (first spike, late 1940's), Vietnam (second spike, mid-60's to mid-70's), the Irak-Iran war (third spike, 80's) or the Arab Winter (fourth spike, 2010's) in terms of people killed directly by those wars.

It is factually more peaceful (= fewer lives lost, less material damage), you just helped explain why. Just like the Cold War period was more peaceful than WW2, yes (hence the name).

That doesn't mean it was *absolutely* peaceful by any stretch of the imagination.

Is it really more peaceful if the number of conflicts is still about the same?

While the number of armed conflicts went down a bit from the peak around 1990, there were still more conflicts than anytime before the 1980's.

Hence why I don't think it was more peaceful - it was just less intensive and an increasing amount of the death didn't come from weapons anymore, but due to hunger, disease, and the displacement itself (as in, things like exhaustion or refugee boats sinking) as those conflicts still displaced tons of people many of whom died before the conflicts in their regions ended. But those deaths are not counted into the statistic of deaths in armed conflicts, as the chart you posted also clearly states. If you'd add those to your chart, it's quite possible that the conflicts of the 1990's and 2000's would be more deadly than anytime during the Vietnam war.