An interesting repor…

An interesting report on peace breaking out around the world:

The chilling sights and sounds of war fill newspapers and television screens worldwide, but war itself is in decline, peace researchers report.

In fact, the number killed in battle has fallen to its lowest point in the post-World War II period, dipping below 20,000 a year by one measure. Peacemaking missions, meantime, are growing in number.

“International engagement is blossoming,” said American scholar Monty G. Marshall. “There’s been an enormous amount of activity to try to end these conflicts.”

For months the battle reports and casualty tolls from Iraq (news – web sites) and Afghanistan (news – web sites) have put war in the headlines, but Swedish and Canadian non-governmental groups tracking armed conflict globally find a general decline in numbers from peaks in the 1990s.

The authoritative Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, in a 2004 Yearbook report obtained by The Associated Press in advance of publication, says 19 major armed conflicts were under way worldwide in 2003, a sharp drop from 33 wars counted in 1991.

The Canadian organization Project Ploughshares, using broader criteria to define armed conflict, says in its new annual report that the number of conflicts declined to 36 in 2003, from a peak of 44 in 1995.

What’s the main cause of this?

Why the declines? Peace scholars point to crosscurrents of global events.

For one thing, the Cold War’s end and breakup of the Soviet Union in 1989-91 ignited civil and separatist wars in the old East bloc and elsewhere, as the superpowers’ hands were lifted in places where they’d long held allies in check. Those wars surged in the early 1990s.

“The decline over the past decade measures the move away from that unusual period,” said Ernie Regehr, director of Project Ploughshares.

At the same time, however, the U.S.-Russian thaw worked against war as well, scholars said, by removing superpower support in “proxy wars,” as in Ethiopia, Mozambique and Cambodia. With dwindling money and arms, warmakers had to seek peace.

The Reagan “peace dividend” continues to pay off. Thanks, Gipper.

And now, what will we do with this new-found peace?

“The end of the Cold War liberated the U.N.” — historically paralyzed by U.S.-Soviet antagonism — “to do what its founders had originally intended and more,” Mack said.

Oh great. This may give them more opportunity for graft and corruption. One might pine for the days of UN paralysis. Their peacekeeping missions are laudable (although many Rwandans might disagree), but when they try to overextend their power, billions are lost. If it wants to remain relevant, the United Nations needs to stick to its original mission.

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