The Russian-Georgia War of 2008 does not break the theory as it started as a domestic initiative to "reconquer" the separatists of South Ossetia's government in Georgia by Georgia. The only reason Russia got involved, was because Russia had placed peace keepers in the South Ossetia and Abkhazia regions of Georgia; where these governments were becoming separatist factions. During Georgia's attempt to recapture these regions, Russian peacekeepers were fired upon by Georgia's military, prompting Russia to take action.

It was not all out warfare, it was not "total war", it was a controlled military expedition to protect the Russian peacekeepers who were fired upon by the Georgian military who were attempting to better politically unify their nation. Non of that sounds like traditional warfare.

You might like to know that Russia and Georgia is NOT democratic countries.

War has a terrible effect on solving poverty, which cannot be avoid just by selling stuff like handmade jewelry, and the reduced scale of war today is a reason for tremendous public health improvements such as lower child mortality and maternal mortality, especially in Africa, in recent years.
I am anti-war and think the best way to reduce war is to start from realistic evidence of what is and isn't working, not despair that everything is getting worse when it isn't

Just as democratic as your beloved Israeli Theocracy - "the only Theocracy in the Middle East!". BTW, this country of US would be better defined as Corporative Oligarchy.

You know, The shining city on the hill dedicated to all-out support of our truest and best ally in the Middle East, with Small Govt only allowed to extract taxes from the poor to support military interests of Ruling Oligarchies Overseas (such as B*ing, HollyBurton, GD, GE ... you name it...) and cutting taxes to Oligarchic Rulers, and giving the populace the great option to carry concealed guns, and support Jesus by visiting Israel twice a year...

Whenever people have tried to support the theory that no two democracies have ever gone to war, it has always seemed that they needed to heavily rely on the "no true Scotsman" argument. Hitler came to power due to a democratic vote, not an armed coup d'etet or heredity.

The Russia - Georgia conflict was more of a war by proxy than a full blown war. But I think it's true to say that democracy itself is no guarantee of a peaceful foreign policy. I think far more important is economic integration between countries, which makes open war so obviously counter productive that it is avoided at all costs. During the 20th century, economic integration was usually closest between democracies, which I think causes the statistical correlation between democracies and the lack of war. As an example supporting this, you can imagine that a war between China and the US would be clearly catastrophic for both countries and so is extremely unlikely ever to happen.

First - Taking the "Olympic War" on Tskinvali (the front-line town occupied by Russian troops) standalone misses the overall context in the decades long war between Georgia and the Russian Federation. Georgia was the first province of the USSR to secede and did so on a platform of nationalism that became overweening Georgian ethnicism. The Russian Federation, very early created a "civil war" in Abkhazia by paying Chechen mercenaries to fight on the side of the roughly 12% ethnic Abkhazians in that province. It was roughly equivalent to Canada paying Iroquois indians to be troops fighting under the banner of Wampanoags against settlers in Massachussets today. In other words, it was ridiculous fabrication, but reported as if it were "true". When that civil war ended with Russia in control of Abkhazia and 250,000 refugees from Abkhazia in Tbilisi, the Capitol, the Chechens went home. Those Chechen mercenaries then formed the rebel movement in Chechnya that initially sliced the Russian garrisons to ribbons and remnants continue to fight today.
Some may remember the Beslan massacre incident. What nobody will remember because it was not reported by major media, is that during that time Russia rolled tanks south into South Ossetia, all the way down to Tskhinvali, then stopped. They stopped because the Georgian army, taken completely by surprise, met them there. There was a tank battle, complete with casualties and prisoners of war on both sides. That is the origin of the Russian "peacekeepers" there in South Ossetia. South Ossetians had experienced problems with ethnic Georgians who treated them as second-class citizens, that's true. But by the time of the Russian Federation's invasion of South Ossetia those problems were years in the past. Today, just as in Abkhazia, Russian passports are provided to all residents of South Ossetia in Georgia, and the provinces are administered as if they were part of Russia. For all practical purposes, they are part of the Russian Federation.

Second - That brings us to the "Olympic War", which was not a war at all. It was another battle in the 20 year long semi-proxy war between Russia and Georgia over control of Georgian territory. During Schevardnadze's term in office, there was a quiet policy of allowing weapons to be transported into Chechnya and using Georgian banks to do arms deals. Money went from those deals into the coffers of various parties. It was, in the bankrupt nation of Georgia, reeling from now two fake "civil wars" one of the most reliable sources of revenue with which to administer the nation. And, it served an excellent foreign policy purpose. As long as Russian troops were busy fighting the Chechen rebels, they couldn't come south int Russian territory. It was a revenue positive war if you will, a payback to the Kremlin for the stunt that was pulled in Abkhazia.
I am overlapping timelines a bit here, since the South Ossetia Beslan invasion by Russia occurred only after the termination of Schevardnadze as president of Georgia. The Rose Revolution took place and Eduard Schevardnadze lost to Saakishvili. Saakishvili, who spent years as an ex-pat Georgian living in the USA, had lobbied none other than John McCain for support. And when he gained the presidency, one of his first acts was, at the request of Condoleeza Rice, to terminate the flow of armaments into Chechnya. It took only a few months for Russia to roll its tanks south into South Ossetia. Saakishvili took a big black eye from that and has become increasingly autocratic and paranoid since.
This brings us to the presidential campaign of 2008, featuring John McCain, the very person who had anointed Saakishvili as an approved successor to Schevardnadze. John McCain selected as his foreign policy man the very lobbyist that Saakishvili had been paying for several years to lobby Congress on Georgia's behalf. There were phone calls between Saakishvili and others in his administration to this lobbyist shortly before the attack was launched.
The facts are that the balloon went up in the Georgian Olympic War as Vladimir Putin was in the stands in Beijing. In fact, as the battle in Tskhinvali started, Putin was watching George Bush intently and conferred with men around him during the opening ceremonies. The Olympic War (really a skirmish) ended just before the end of the Summer games, just in time to prevent the eyes of the world from looking closely.
I will close with my opinion, my interpretation of the above facts. First among them is that the Kremlin has studied and learned well how to conduct war in the 21st century. In both the invasion of South Ossetia and the Olympic wars, the military action took place under cover of a media distraction. For South Ossetia, that distraction was Beslan. (I will not render an opinion as to whether Beslan was a black op.) For the Olympic war, that distraction was the Beijing summer Olympic games.
Second, it is my opinion that the Kremlin became alarmed when McCain chose the lobbyist Georgia had been paying to be his right hand man on foreign policy. I think that they believed that it was highly likely that McCain would arrange for an October surprise in Georgia to help the Republicans win the presidency. And if that occurred, they saw their designs on Georgia, and eventual control of the oil pipeline through Georgia evaporating. I believe that to prevent that, Russia made use of its agents within Saakishvili's circle of advisers to get him to launch the attack when it was convenient for the Kremlin to deal with it. I believe that they did this to defuse it, thinking that an Obama administration would be more friendly to them. (And, I think that it must have been pleasant for Putin to think that he gave some payback to the party that sent a woman, and a black woman at that, to Russia to shake her finger at him and lecture him. That played well in America, but it was a grievous error of international statecraft on the part of Ms. Rice.)
In McCain's camp, I rather think that they didn't imagine anybody would believe that the relative pittance Georgia was able to pay this lobbyist would be thought to wield much influence. I suspect that when Saakishvili and members of his staff phoned the USA, that the lobbyist made soothing noises of agreeability, knowing that he needed to preserve this client for an uncertain future should McCain lose. And I strongly suspect that this was misinterpreted by Saakishvili as approval for an attack, and that he believed the Bush administration would come to his aid with American troops. Of course, the last thing in the world that the Bush administration wanted in 2008 was a brand new conflagration in the Caucasus! Saakishvili, in my considered opinion is not the sharpest tool in the shed to say the least. He is very good at brown-nosing, but his grasp of strategy, etc. is rather pathetic. He was, I think, rather easy to manipulate by the Kremlin into attacking when he did.

Taking all that into account, we can then examine whether or not these two democracies represent a theory-breaker for Mr. Goldstein. I think they are a special case for a couple of reasons, although I'm not nearly as sanguine as Mr. Goldstein. The Kremlin has a grudge against Georgia, and has far more claim to its territory than China does to Taiwan based on history. (Although Georgians will discuss ancient history as if David the Builder, who died 1,000 years ago, just stepped out for lunch.) In addition, the Kremlin has a very practical design on Georgia. That pipeline from Baku represents the only exit for Central Asian oil that does not pay toll to Russia. Look at a map of the pipeline route and the provinces now held by Russia, and remember that Armenia is a friend of Russia. And last, Georgia is Russia's gateway by land into Iran and Iraq should there be cause some time in the coming century to want to militarily dominate the price of oil.

FP Reader - So man has made stupendous advances in technology, weaponry and methods of engaging in war, but they have not advanced in their thinking about war and how to prevent it?

There will always be one person who covets something another has.

This article had a section about nuclear weapons that was cut during editing for space reasons. It pointed out that the arsenal of tens of thousands of nukes held by the two superpowers (nobody else has more than a few hundred) has been cut since the 1980s by about three-quarters, with more cuts to come under the New Start treaty just approved. My book Winning the War on War ( www.winningthewaronwar.com ), on which the article is based, talks more about nuclear weapons over the past decades and today.
War has a terrible effect on solving poverty, and the reduced scale of war today is a reason for tremendous public health improvements such as lower child mortality and maternal mortality, especially in Africa, in recent years.
I am anti-war and think the best way to reduce war is to start from realistic evidence of what is and isn't working, not despair that everything is getting worse when it isn't.

Joshua,

When Saddam was killing Kurds he was said to be a dictator waging war against seperatist Kurds.

When Bush went to war against Sadam he was said to be waging war against a dictator.

I have not found a single person who still wishes Sadam was still in power. They all complain about the way he was removed....."I am anti-war and think the best way to reduce war is to start from realistic evidence of what is and isn't working,"

The sanctions were in place for 10 years. Put into place by people far smarter than you on this issue. And yet sections of the Europen union were still doing business with saddam/iraq. Even the UN oil for food program was compromised.. . .So when you sit on the outside and realistically see what is not working, you find that those sanctions were not working. . . ..Regardless of how you spin it, there was no way to remove Saddam from power unless the US did it forcefully.. . . .The only question you have to ask yourself is whether you think Saddam should still be in power. . . .I say no. . .. . . . .It's nice to be able to have intellectual debate about what works and what does not work, but at the end of the day if diplomacy fails you have to make hard choices about what you would rather have. . . Saddam in power. . Or... Sadam out of power. .. You sunday morning quarterback stuff is for sunday mornings. . . Don't wring them to work on monday morning.. . You'll never get anything done.

A couple of responses to those points... The book will be available sept. 15 (see www.winningthewaronwar.com ) and addresses all these questions in much more depth. Regarding battle deaths, they are of course only part of all war deaths (caused indirectly by disease etc.) which in turn are only part of all the bad things wars cause. But there is no evidence they move in a different direction from those other bad things. Big wars cause both a lot of battle deaths and a lot of indirect deaths. I look into all the evidence about changes through time in civilian-military death ratios and such, and they are actually pretty stable over recent centuries, although varying a lot from one war to another (e.g. Democratic Congo, many civilian deaths; Eritrea-Ethiopia, many military deaths).
Steven Pinker's book about changes in norms about violence through history will be out in early October and is compelling about the changes in attitudes toward violence. Chants for slaughter, disregard for slaughters, and violent video games do not compare with historical acceptance of violence. In World War II, the allies deliberately burned to death hundreds of thousands of civilians in bombing raids, and of course the Germans did far worse. In earlier centuries slaughter was simply the norm in war and did not attract the disapproval that this comment demonstrates. Massacre was a given in most of history and most of the world.
Regarding the future, I do not predict greater peace or a reversion to more war. Either is possible. I say greater peace is not impossible, and that if we like that future we should base our actions on what has worked and hasn't. Some of what we're doing -- and I especially think the UN gets a lot of credit -- is working. If we agree on the situation and the past, then we can think better about the future.

Stephen, I remember that many people thought the outcome would be bad and the invasion of Iraq was a bad idea. I don't think anyone predicted it would be most of a decade and several trillion dollars bad. Also, one politician who did thrive by pointing to his having opposed the war was Barack Obama. He used it to good effect first against Clinton and then against McCain.

All the lost life... Over 1 million people died as a result of that war. I just don't know how Bush and Blair sleep at night knowing they are responsible for this.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War

Isabel De Los Rios

Interesting article, but isn’t it the fact that deaths because of wars have been reduced historically. If we compare one century with the previous, war related deaths should have been dropped after every century. If we look at the history of mankind, there are of uncounted massacre. So what is so new about this century?

I forsee a global conflict between 2050-2060.

Hi, this article does not try to predict the future and does not attribute the decline of armed conflict to an inexorable historical trend. Many terrible things could happen in the future. They haven't happened yet though, and many people seem not to notice that the two things are not the same.

The Chinese leadership does not agree with you. They say flat-out they are no match for America militarily and it's hard to question that. Serious worriers about China are worrying about twenty or thirty years in the future.

This was a short article and edited down shorter by Foreign Policy, but all the fatality data from all sides are comprehensively reviewed in my book, Winning the War on War, which will be available Sept. 15 from Dutton/Penguin. See www.winningthewaronwar.com

For the foreseeable future UK and USA will rule, with USA taking the lions share of the credit for that. There are many people that will suffer because of it, including people of the US and the UK. But then, we have always known that things will get worse before they get better.

fibromyalgia

It is a good point that wars increase in decrease over the long term of history. Still the past few decades are quite striking compared with most of the past, and deserve note. Maybe it won't hold up or maybe it will. My point is that people act as though this "lull" (even if that's all it is) doesn't exist and that war will inevitably get worse and worse. On human nature's unchanging nature, I tend to agree with Steven Pinker that we have potentials for both war and cooperation that run deep in our human nature, but we draw on those potentials differently over time and in different contexts. The same human nature that once treated slavery, cannibalism, dueling, and colonialism as "givens" if not actually positive, now usually sees them as abhorrent.

"...we draw on those potentials differently over time and in different contexts. The same human nature that once treated slavery, cannibalism, dueling, and colonialism as "givens" if not actually positive, now usually sees them as abhorrent."

I think you see humanity on some sort of up-slope trajectory: we stand on the shoulders of our forebears, onward to a better tomorrow, we're getting better at this business of being social cooperators, etc.

I say, humans are never more than 3 meals from revising their playbook for social interactions. And if our civilization doesn't crash and burn, it'll be the first.

Arguably, our up-slope has about played itself out. There are simply too many people. Too many of anything results in devaluation of that thing. Our valuation of human life, and our empathy, appear to me to be in decline. Actual slavery is on the rise again, brokered by the same unsavory sorts that have always brokered it - officially not tolerated, but existing regardless as markets will when there are buyers and sellers. Institutions not very different from slavery are on the rise, too, such as prisons where uncompensated work is forced out of the incarcerated. Gradually, step by step, we are criminalizing and stigmatizing poverty. Once in the prison system, poor people can be made to do anything our authoritarian little minds can think up.

And what are our adventures in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya if not a modern expression of colonialism? We're in those places killing natives, building palaces, and where we can, carting off spoils (oil). There are differences. But I'm not sure of the moral superiority of our sort of colonialism, nor am I certain it's taking us on an upward moral trajectory.

Polite folks in your social circle do not eat humans or keep slaves. That is not to say that we've permanently put such things behind us, or that there are no longer human impulses towards depravity and selfishness, or that those impulses might not gain more expression, not less, in years to come.

By the failing measure that I think counts for the most - empathy - it's hard for me to drum up much enthusiasm for the "forever upward slope" moral frame. Not because it isn't appealing, but because I don't see the evidence that it's more than wishful thinking.

Urgelt: "Arguably, our up-slope has about played itself out. There are simply too many people. Too many of anything results in devaluation of that thing. Our valuation of human life, and our empathy, appear to me to be in decline."

You seem to be suggesting with this that in the past, we had _more_ empathy. Was violence (measured by, e.g., violent deaths per year as a percentage of the population or something like that) correspondingly lower back then? If so, can you show your evidence/sources?

I'll make a feeble attempt to respond to Mike's request that I support my assertion that empathy is in decline.

My response will be feeble because empathy isn't something that anyone is measuring scientifically across the population. There are no statistics.

Hence my perception may be wrong.

Still. I've lived in the United States all of my life (59 years), and here, at least, it sure seems as if things are changing on the empathy front, and not for the better. There's a class war raging, for one thing, prosecuted mostly by the wealthiest of us, but stay tuned. The lower classes will absorb only so much punishment before social unrest appears. Reverse socialism won't have a good outcome.

At the conclusion of World War II, Americans recoiled at the evidence of torture and mass extermination they uncovered in Europe. We literally could never imagine our own country involving itself in anything like the assault on human rights which had occurred. Today? Things have changed. We know the CIA has delivered those accused of collaboration with Islamists, not to the courts, but to nations like Libya where torture is business as usual, along with observers and a handy list of questions to put to the tortured. What is the American public's response? Outrage? Hardly. Say, what time is "America's Got Talent" coming on?

We once condemned wars of aggression and believed our nation was a better world citizen than that. Today? Bring it on!

It is now common for politicians on the right wing to refer to the impoverished as "lucky duckies" and urge that we impose new taxation on them, even as they urge less taxation for the wealthy. When these statements are uttered in public, the mainstream media barely touches on them. There are no repercussions. There is no revulsion. Forty years ago, that would have been unthinkable in the America I knew.

We are now arresting people for what once was considered protected speech: speech critical of, and urging defiance of, the state. Our mood has shifted: if your opinions run counter to those of the ruling class, you had better keep your mouth shut.

Where once, in America, it would be unthinkable to throw people in prison merely for owing money, it is now becoming common. We also throw people in prison for popping unapproved substances into their mouths, and the list of substances that are unapproved is growing by leaps and bounds every year. Horrors about prison treatment, rapes and mortality keep leaking out of those institutions of incarceration, but the public doesn't mind. There wasn't even an outpouring of concern over the execution of an innocent man in Texas not long ago.

We care less about our fellow humans. And our politics reflect it.

My hypothesis is that empathy is easier when there are fewer humans and when times are good. When times are bad, when population pressures produce a generalized feeling of worry and threat, empathy takes a dive and we're all out for ourselves, screw the other guy. Right now most of us are worried as hell and looking after our own security first, more with every passing day. We're now convinced, for the first time in American history, that the future will be worse for our children than it was for us. And that fear is probably justified.

Since population can only go up, and (if I'm right) empathy as a consequence can only go down, the 21st Century is likely to spawn horrors on a scale never before seen.

But that's a forecast. Predictions are easy. Making accurate predictions is hard... and you won't know who's accurate until much later.

Maybe I'm wrong. If you think so, you're entitled to your viewpoint. Time will tell if your optimism was warranted.

Actually, apart from the particularly brutal wars (like WW2 or the Mongol Invasions), human population growth tends to be quite independent of warfare. The population of the Congo for example, has grown consistently in spite of its endless wars..

My friend, you seems to misunderstand the idea of this article. Author is talking about war (not terrorism, homicides, or etc.). And that's a fact, that since ww2 no really big conflicts has taking place. Sure there is and always be sum regional conflicts, but it's virtually nothing, compered to ww2 or ww1.

- kreditai paskolos.

Agreed. And the nature of war is changing. Conventional war is down, but consider for example the War on Drugs in Mexico, which is a proper intra-state war fueled by the lack of an effectual state apparatus in Mexico, but also the domestic politics of the United States and processes of globalization that connects Mexico to the United States (and the world) both by product (coke/dope) and in terms of finance: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/03/us-bank-mexico-drug-gangs

The thing about the Mexican Drug War is that it has created a huge area where law enforcement does not work. It has effectively trapped millions of people in a geographic entity that cannot support civil society. Wars may have become more elusive, but the inequality that these 'new wars'* produce should be the principle concern.

* Mary Kaldor (1998): http://www.amazon.com/New-Old-Wars-Organized-Violence/dp/0804756465/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1313701966&sr=8-1

I have not read all the posts, so I don't know if I am repeating anything.

I agree with, what about war that does not fall in the conventional statist form of the concept, such as the war on drugs in which the US is involved (as mentioned), gang wars, rebel wars or terror regimes as well as just general crime. Does the Rawandan genocide count as lives lost within a war? Protracted conflicts and crime tend to not yield vast numbers in one blow as was the case with battles in WWI, but it keeps the counter ticking over at a steady pace, suddenly accumulating a lot of heads. If one talks about "the world getting more dangerous", then this must be taken into account. Civilians might not be getting bombed by NATO, but when a women gets raped by 20 rebel soldiers, or rebels in military garb with military rankings enslave children to mine, or different governments fight over resources in one country such as in the Congo, well then they are not finding the world becoming safer.

I dont believe war is vanishing, it is just changing its face and the numbers, concepts and categories are not moving with the times. I agree that it is difficult to conceptualize another major conflict such as WWII, yet as water resources dwindle one may want to start looking at where the water lies and the boundary states that keep it to their advantage. Land, especially agricultural land is another resource that could also fuel conflict along with global warming as countries buy up African, Latin American and East Asian soil. These resources could redraw the conflict lines, away from class, religion, culture, race or ethnicity, and place them once again within the confines of state centered disputes. Power is the ally of war and as long as there are power struggles, there will be conflict.

I agree with "strap on your boots and let's get busy." Improvements are no reason to slack on and actually a good reason to build on past successes and do more. As for overall violence, it's not my focus but in fact things like murder, rape, etc. are lower in the past decade than the past century and way lower than previous centuries. You might like Steven Pinker's forthcoming book "Better Angels of Our Nature" or James Payne's history of violence.
It's terrible today but it used to be much worse. Not cause for celebration but for understanding the way forward.

The issues of war and poverty are discussed extensively in my book -- can't cover everything in the article. See www.winningthewaronwar.com
Economist Paul Collier also explores this in some depth.

- or at least the next sentence.

"Six years later, however, a funny thing has happened: All but a few of these wars (Israel-Palestine, Somalia, and Sudan) have either ended or made substantial progress toward doing so.?

The US war dead in 2010 was 559 people: http://icasualties.org/ . As for falls from bed, look up the mortality statistics from the CDC, accessible in detail here:
wonder.cdc.gov/cmf-icd10.html . Select external causes, subcategory Fall, sub-subcategory "Fall involving bed" and you get the number 690 for the latest available year which is 2007. It's been rising steadily since 1999 (from 400), perhaps from the population aging, so there's no reason to think it's shrunk since 2007 -- presumably the opposite. I'm not saying 559 deaths is OK, but put it in perspective in a country of 300 million people.