"Long Peace" is a term for the unprecedented historical period of relative global stability following the end of World War II in 1945 to the present day.
[5] The Long Peace has been compared to the relatively-long stability of the Roman Empire, the Pax Romana,[7] or the Pax Britannica, a century of relative peace that existed between the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 and the outbreak of World War I in 1914, during which the British Empire held global hegemony.
[13] The world appeared pacified withno mighty Eurasian state or bloc targeting its strategic forces on the West and no great-power war looming in Eurasia.
The same year, US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Colin Powell, expressed his problem: “I’m running out of demons.
I’m down to Castro and Kim II Sung.”[17] Initially, it was thought that the Long Peace was a unique result of the Cold War.
The Cold War was certainly peaceful compared to the historically unparalleled half century of bloodletting that preceded it, but it was much more violent than anything that has followed.
[27][28][10][29] Taking a longer historical view, international war within the “central system” of states, which had been common since the late 15th century, declined fast after 1945 and reached unprecedented lows after 1990.
The period also has exhibited more than a quarter of a century of even greater stability and has shown continued improvements in related measurements such as the number of coups, the amount of repression, and the durability of peace settlements.
[50] The year Gaddis coined the term Long Peace (1986), the world nuclear stockpile was at its all time high of over 70,000 warheads.
[56] According to John Mueller, the “most significant number in the history of warfare: zero.”[57] What Pinker describes as the “most interesting statistic since 1945” does not lend itself well to being displayed in a chart.
[62] While there is general agreement among experts that we are in a Long Peace and that wars have declined since 1945,[2][28] Pinker's broader thesis has been contested.
[28] Critics have also said that a longer period of relative peace is needed to be certain,[63] or they have emphasized minor reversals in specific trends, such as the increase in battle deaths between 2011 and 2014 due to the Syrian Civil War.
[20] The prevailing popular view remains that the post-Cold War world is deadlier, less orderly, more dangerous and more turbulent.
"[67] Pinker's work has received wide publicity and the Decline-of-War thesis reached a worldwide audience, which mostly found it compelling.
[20][69] Major factors cited as reasons for the Long Peace have included the deterrence effect of nuclear weapons, the economic incentives towards cooperation caused by globalization and international trade, the worldwide increase in the number of democracies, the World Bank's efforts in reduction of poverty, and the effects of the empowerment of women and peacekeeping by the United Nations.
Other proposed explanations have included the proliferation of the recognition of human rights, increasing education and quality of life, changes in the way that people view conflicts (such as the presumption that wars of aggression are unjustified), the success of non-violent action, and demographic factors such as the reduction in birthrates.
"[71] Robert Kagan noted that Pinker traces the beginning of Long Peace to 1945, "which just happens to be the birthdate of the American world order.
But the US Primacists stress that the next global drop in war in 1991 is unrelated to any unconventional invention and coincides with the "unipolar moment" when the US loses its bipolar counterweight.
Vice versa, according to the approach, if the US primacy is challenged, war comes back and "all the best" about other causes of peace--UN peacekeeping, economic interdependence and the spread of democracy--"are right out of the window.
[74] Pinker, however, considers the Long Peace to be part of a macrohistoric trend that has continued since prehistory,[10][2][28] and other experts have made similar arguments.
[28][75] Undoubtedly the Second World War was the deadliest event in human history in terms of number of lives lost.