全球智库信息集成服务系统

Armed Conflict Has Declined

• In broad terms, the incidence of armed conflict has declined in both number and intensity since the end of the Cold War, with particularly sharp declines in higher-intensity conflicts.
• There has been an uptick in some forms of intrastate conflict in 2013–2015, but the current spike in armed conflict is likely to prove relatively short-lived. It could easily last for several more years, but it is unlikely to represent a "new normal" — that is, a decades-long increase in the incidence of war.

The Trend of Declining Conflict Is Likely to Continue

• Approximately a dozen key factors together explain much of the historical variation in levels of war and conflict, and the long-term trends in nearly all of these factors have been conducive to peace.
• Unless the wars of the future have different causes than those of the past, for the conflicts of the past few years to represent the beginnings of a long-term rise in conflict, the decades-long trends toward higher levels of development, more open economies, more democratic governance, and stronger international institutions and norms of peaceful conflict resolution (among others) would have to suffer large and sustained reversals — reversals that have occurred only in crises such as the Great Depression or the early years of the Cold War.