Peace is spreading: the troubling thing is, we don't really know why
This article was in yesterday's Telegraph. Here is an excerpt on speculations about the answer to the question the article raises:
President Bush has repeatedly said that he sees America's role as being to spread "freedom" – short-hand for free trade and free elections. Contrary to popular belief, armed intervention is probably the least effective (and least used) American device for achieving this. Trade agreements (in Central America) and financial support for democratic movements (in Eastern Europe) are achieving much more. So the American empire spreads peace by peaceful means. As more and more governments embrace a version of the American model of liberal democracy, so the number of wars declines.
That's the kind of argument US neo-conservatives love. The trouble is that American intervention has been responsible for ending dictatorships or wars in only a handful of cases. As much, if not more, credit should probably go to the much-maligned "international community" – not only the United Nations, but the World Bank, the World Trade Association and other agencies. There are currently more UN peacekeeping troops deployed round the world than ever before. Particularly in Africa, the international agencies, as well as some European governments, have done far more to end wars than the US, which could not even sort out strife-torn Liberia, a country originally founded by Americans.
Yet maybe there's a third explanation for the recent peace "wave". Maybe local people, regardless of foreign intervention, are simply opting for peace because they're sick to death of fighting each other. War, after all, is attractive only to a minority of people: bored young men and the cynical politicians who see violence as a route to power and its perquisites. That's why only a handful of the post-1989 civil wars lasted longer than seven years.
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