A More Dangerous World? Think Again

One possible explanation is that no one hears the good news because no one benefits from telling it. The media, driven by a profit-centric climate and the 24-hour news cycle, has cut airtime for international news and fed us gripping visual snippets of
conflicts with no explanation of their causes.

Our leaders also have few incentives to present a positive picture. Politicians on both sides of the political spectrum have found the myth of a more dangerous world useful: Conservative politicians were drumming up dangers to justify higher military spending even before September 11, while liberals have warned of neglected dangers to take aim at Bush administration failures in Iraq and North Korea, homeland security, and non-capture of Osama bin Laden.

Non-governmental organizations also contribute to these distortions: the very advocacy efforts intended to raise money and awareness can contribute to a climate of perpetual crisis that numbs the public to real and remarkable progress.

A second explanation is that Americans have not appreciated international trends because their national trends have been more negative. September 11 created a sense of vulnerability within a nation that had heretofore been spared an attack on its soil. The war in Iraq has since inundated us with a steady stream of violent and gloomy news, the likes of which we have not seen since Vietnam. Yet even in the face of Iraq, Afghanistan, and the war on terror, aren’t we demonstrably more safe than when we faced nuclear annihilation at the hands of the Soviet Union?

Assuming we accept the report’s premise that deadly conflict has declined in the past decades, what observations and policy prescriptions do these findings suggest?

A vindication for the foreign policy of the 1990s. The foreign policies of George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton—often derided as adrift and without vision—contributed to a period of unprecedented global prosperity, democratic enlargement, nuclear détente, and the resolution of conflicts.

Multilateral activism has been key:
The Human Security Report notes that the end of the cold war allowed the United Nations, the World Bank, and various ad hoc coalitions to engage in the “post–Cold War activism on the global security front” that “provides the single best explanation for the extraordinary decrease in civil wars around the world since the 1990s”.

Peacekeeping works—and no one does peacekeeping better than the United Nations. The weaknesses of United Nations peacekeeping operations in a few intractable conflicts are much publicized, but its many successes (as in Namibia, El Salvador, Mozambique, Eastern Slavonia, East Timor, Sierra Leone, and Cambodia) are rarely heralded. The research of
James Dobbins, a RAND analyst and former U.S. special envoy, suggests that U.N.-led interventions tend to have greater legitimacy, far lower costs, and a higher rate of success than U.S.-led interventions.

Iraq is the exception, not the rule. America’s failures in Iraq have been seized upon by politicians and analysts from both parties to make the case that we need a larger military (and complementary post-conflict capabilities) to prepare for the next crisis. These recommendations only make sense if future conflicts resemble Iraq. If Iraq is a unique case, as the vast majority of Americans now hope it will be, then it makes little sense to reorient our military to fight wars of this type. The United Nations is better equipped for many post-conflict challenges.

Nostalgia for the cold war is misguided. During the “small wars” of the 1990s and today’s “struggle against global extremism,” scores of writers and politicians pined for the “stability” and “grand vision” of the cold war. The data suggest they should be careful what they wish for—especially those who seem anxious to re-create an adversarial relationship with China and Russia. The so-called long peace of the cold war had millions of victims, the bulk of them in poor countries.

Africa remains the last frontier. Africa largely has been spared by the broad wave of peace and prosperity that has swept the rest of the globe. According to the report, more people are “killed in this region than in the rest of the world combined.” If the last decade’s peace is to continue to expand, the United States and the international community must devote more attention and resources to the forgotten continent.

Terrorism has not been central. Terrorism has generated – as terrorists intend – anxiety, preventive expense, and a sense of insecurity out of all proportion to the damage it inflicts: “although the focus of enormous attention, international terrorism has killed fewer than 1,000 people a year, on average, over the past 30 years.” The threat of catastrophic terrorism (with nuclear or biological weapons) must be a top national priority. But this threat is best addressed through specific and tailored responses—not a weapons system spending spree.

More time has elapsed from September 11 to today than from Pearl Harbor to Japan’s surrender. We are entering a new phase in our national history, and the decisions we make about the future of American foreign policy will depend on how we remember the recent past. That memory is too important to leave to the dictates of conventional wisdom.