【中文标题】让我们深思战争－世界和平或许并不遥远
【原文标题】Think Again: War World peace could be closer than you think.
【登载媒体】外交政策
【原文作者】JOSHUA S. GOLDSTEIN
【原文链接】http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/08/15/think_again_war?page=0,0
“当今的世界比从前有更多的暴力。”
绝非如此。21世纪初的确充满了战争：阿富汗和伊拉克的冲突、索马里的巷战、巴基斯坦的伊斯兰教起义、刚果的大屠杀、苏丹的种族灭绝行动。所有这一切加起来，如今全球正在进行中的战争有18起。公众认为这种现象说明世界变得更加危险了：几年前的一次调查结果显示，60％的美国人认为有可能发生第三次世界大战。即使在2001年9月11日袭击事件和后续血腥的报复行动发生之前，人们对新世纪的期望也充满了阴郁的色调。政治科学家James G. Blight和美国前国防部长Robert McNamara在2001年初曾经说，在21世纪，全球每年因战争死亡的人数将达到300万人。
到目前为止，我们还远远没有达到这个数字。实际上，根据奥斯陆世界和平研究所研究员Bethany Lacina和Nils Petter Gleditsch收集的数据，刚刚过去的十年是近100年历史中战争死亡人数最少的十年。新世纪中，与战争暴力直接相关的死亡人数平均每年5.5万人，仅比90年代（每年10万人）的一半数字多一点，相当于冷战时期（从1950年到1989年，每年死亡18万人）的三分之一、二战期间的一百分之一。如果再与过去一个世纪中增长了四倍的世界人口数字平均，下降的趋势就更加明显了。冷战结束后的20年绝非一个混乱杀戮的时代，而是一个向和平迅速迈进的年代。
世界各地的武装冲突数量大规模减少，因为冲突的形式已经彻底改变。大国军队之间的战争随着冷战结束几乎完全消失，因为这留给他们的是恐怖的死伤数字和大范围的破坏。当今世界上零星的游击战争或许既难清除又容易造成损失，但绝不会演化成类似包围列宁格勒的战争场面。最近一次两个超级大国间的战争——朝鲜战争——在60年前已经彻底结束。两只正规军——埃塞俄比亚和厄立特里亚——之间持久性的领土战争也已经在10年前结束。内战尽管此起彼伏，但比以前少了很多，2007年比1990年的内战数量减少了四分之一。
如果说人们觉得世界比以前变得更加暴力了，那是因为我们可以获得更多有关战争的消息，并不是战争本身的变化。曾经远在天边的战争罪行，现在被电视机和电脑拉到了眼前，而且几乎在实时播报。手机摄像头把每一个战区的人都变成了记者。如何理解这些信息的社会道德标准也发生了变化，就像哈佛大学心理学家Steven Pinker曾经指出：“暴力行为是与我们容忍或者美化暴力行为的态度呈同比例下降的。”所以我们把当今世界上的暴行看作是“我们行为低劣的迹象，而不是我们道德标准高尚的迹象”，尽管用历史标准来衡量这已经温和了许多。
“美国卷入了更多的战争。”
对也不对。很明显，美国自从9/11事件之后就一直处于战备状态，目前依然持续的阿富汗战争已经超过了越南战争，成为美国历史上持续时间最长的武装冲突。先发制人的伊拉克战争比任何人预期的时间都更长、开销更大、程度更血腥。再加上北约对利比亚的干涉、无人轰炸机在巴基斯坦、索马里和也门的行动，难怪美国军费开支在过去十年中增长了80％。今年的军费预算是6750亿美元，比冷战结束时的军费开支高出30％。
但是，尽管后9/11时代的战争比以往延续的时间更长，但它们的规模却更小，程度更加轻微。美国在2001年之后十年所卷入的战争中，共有6000名美国士兵死亡，越南战争的死亡人数是5.8万人，二战美国死亡人数是30万。当然，每个逝去的生命都是无价的，但是我们要把问题放在特定的背景中看待：去年，从床上掉下来死去的美国人数量比美国在全球各个战场中死去的人还要多。
在伊拉克和阿富汗的战争背景是美国在世界各地关闭军事基地和撤军。美国在南亚和中东的军事力量虽然暂时增加——从2000年的1.8万人增加到目前的21.2万人，但它已经从欧洲永久性撤出将近4万人；从日本和韩国撤军3.4万；从拉丁美洲撤军1万。我们预计未来将有大批军事力量回到国内，首当其冲的是2012年撤回伊拉克的4万人和阿富汗的3.3万人。在此之后，美国海外军队的数量将达到自20世纪30年代到现在为止的最低点。巴拉克奥巴马总统在6月份的讲话道出了实情：“战争大潮已经退却。”
“战争对平民造成了更大的伤害。”
并非如此。2010年2月，北约对阿富汗的一次空袭击中了马拉雅地区的一座民房，造成至少9人丧生。这一悲剧引起了广泛的谴责，迅速登上新闻头条。最终，北约最高指挥官向阿富汗总统哈米德卡尔扎伊道歉。这件事情说明战争已经发生了明显的变化。在二战期间，同盟国轰炸机在德累斯顿和东京杀死了数十万平民，均非误伤，而是刻意所为。德国也杀害了数百万平民。当今天的平民遭遇到战争的伤害时，有更多的人给予关注。因战争而流离失所的人均人道主义援助从90年代初的150美元增长到2006年的300美元。国际人道主义援助总额在1990年为20亿美元，2000年增长到60亿美元，2008年（据捐赠国宣称）增长到180亿美元。对那些遭遇战争不幸的人来说，战争本身已经变得更加仁慈了。
然而很多人认为现实并没有这么乐观。例如，一些颇有影响力的有关内战的文学作品（Roland Paris的获奖作品《At War's End》和Michael Doyle、Nicholas Sambanis的《Making War》和《Building Peace》）和来自世界银行和卡耐基预防致命冲突委员会含金量颇高的报告，都告诉我们，当今世界战争中的死亡者90％是平民，只有10％是军人——与一个世纪前的比例完全相反。就像政治科学家Kalevi Holsti所说：“这是20世纪晚期武装冲突的无情转变。”
的确很无情，但幸运的是，事实并非如此。误会起源于1994年联合国人类发展报告，它误读了瑞典学者Christer Ahlström在1991年的研究数字，其中错误地把20世纪早期的战争伤亡人数与20世纪晚期巨额的战争死亡、受伤、流离失所人数搞混了。一项更加可靠的研究是和平学者William Eckhardt在1989年发布的数字，就像过去数个世纪一样，战争中军人与平民伤亡的比例一直维持在1比1（当然，不同战争中的数字存在此消彼长的现象）。如果你的确很不幸，沦落为一个战区的平民，那么这组统计数据或许稍有安慰。但是从全球角度来看，我们给因战争遭遇不幸的平民在提供越来越多的帮助。
“未来的战争会更加丑陋。”
或许不会。当然，任何可能性都是存在的：比如，印度与巴基斯坦如果全面开战，或许会有数百万人丧生。但是一块陨石，或者最保险的猜测——气候变化引起的一场大规模风暴，也可能造成同样的后果。毕竟，彻底摧毁现代文明的力量已经越来越微弱了。
技术的发展让战争不再是那么残酷。我们今天用无人机摧毁目标，在以前，则需要数千名全面武装的军队入侵，大量的平民被迫迁徙、沿途无数宝贵的财产被毁。战地医疗技术的进步让战争对参与者来说并非像以前那样致命。在美军里，战争受伤者的死亡比例从二战期间的30％下降到伊拉克和阿富汗战争期间的10％——尽管这同时意味着美国要照料更多的受伤退伍人士。
全球力量重心的转移也并未让我们面临一个战争频发的未来。尽管有些政治科学家认为，多极领导的世界会导致更明显的暴力倾向，而单一的霸权统治——它的名字最好是美国——是确保和平的最好途经，但是人类的地缘政治历史证明事实绝非如此。美国的相对势力和全球冲突数量在过去十年中同时有所下降。这其中的一个例外现象是伊拉克和阿富汗，他们之间战争的一边倒形势是国际势力影响下的产物，与新兴势力的出现无关。当今世界国际秩序最好的先例是19世纪的“欧洲协调机制”，这个超级势力的联合体在一个世纪的时间里维持了世界的和平，直到其在一战的洗礼下解体。
那么中国这个当今世界被吹嘘成潜在威胁最大的军事力量又如何呢？北京的确在加紧其武装力量的现代化步伐，军费开支呈两位数增长，目前已经达到每年1000亿美元。其军费开支仅次于美国，位列第二，但却是被远远抛在后面的老二——五角大楼每年的军费开支是7000亿美元。中国不但要面临漫长的道路才能与美国并驾齐驱，而且它似乎没有明确的理由要这样做。军事冲突（尤其是和自己最大的客户和债务人之间的冲突）将阻碍中国的国际贸易进程，威胁其繁荣富强的目标。毛主席去世之后，中国舒适地享受着这个国家最和平、最伟大的发展时期。即使最近中国海军贸然在公海山的巡逻，其实也并不值得担忧，中国军队在过去25年里从未在战争中开过一枪。
“一个更加民主的世界将会是一个更加和平的世界。”
不一定。传统的见解认为民主国家之间从不互相开战，从历史经验来看这是正确的。但与此同时，几乎所有的民主国家都非常喜欢对非民主国家开战。实际上，民主制度通过放大种族和民族矛盾，容易促成武装冲突，其领导人倾向于压制战争意愿，以获得继续当权的支持。潘恩和康德都认为，自私的独裁者发动战争，遭受伤害的民众不愿参与战争。但是，要不要试试把这个道理讲给专制的中国听？对于国内民众对日本和美国这些历史上的敌人暗涌的民族主义情绪，它采取的是遏制、而不是激化的措施。在目前临时采取民主制度的埃及，公众对以色列的敌意明显比穆巴拉克专制政府时代强烈很多（当然，怀有敌意与开战是两回事）。
为什么民主国家只对非民主国家开战，而他们内部之间却能和平相处？没人知道原因。就像芝加哥大学的Charles Lipson曾经戏谑地谈论民主和平：“我们知道这在实践中是正确的，现在我们需要在理论上证实它。”或许最好的解释来自政治科学家Bruce Russett和John Oneal，他们认为三个因素——民主、经济相互依赖（尤其是贸易）和国际组织的成长——共同的作用让民主国家之间得以相互依存，维持和平。民主国家领导人因此认为，与专制国家开战似乎不会有很大的损失。
“维和部队不起作用。”
现在看来，维和部队是有作用的。90年代早期是蓝盔部队的活跃期，从1991年到1993年，联合国维和部队共启动了15项新任务，相当于联合国自成立起所接受的全部任务数量。那段时间也是维和部队行动集中失败的时期。在索马里，联合国身负救济饥荒的任务，最终却卷入内战。在1993年的一次突袭造成18名美国士兵丧生之后，他们迅速撤出该国。1994年在卢旺达，一支力量薄弱的联合国部队由于没有得到安理会的支持，未能阻止一场种族灭绝大屠杀，有50万人丧生。联合国宣称在波斯尼亚建立了几个平民的“安全区”，但随即被塞尔维亚武装力量攻陷了其中的一个——斯雷布雷尼察，并处死了7000人，包括孩子。（当然，维和部队也有成功的经历，比如在纳米比亚和莫桑比克，但是人们似乎不愿意记住这些事情。）
有鉴于此，在退伍的外交家Lakhdar Brahimi主导下，联合国在2000年发布了一份报告，全面检视从前错误的举措。从那时开始，联合国把全球维和人员的数量削减了80％。当其再一次扩张的时候，联合国吸取了以前的教训。它加强了计划和后勤保障能力，配备重型武力，在必要时可迅速参与战争。所以，今天联合国在全球采取的15项行动和10万维和人员比他们的前辈取得了更大的成功。
总体来看，维和部队的出现显著降低了停火协议之后战争复燃的可能性。在90年代，大约一半的停火协议会被其中一方撕毁，但在后来的十年里，这个数字降为12％。尽管美国政客总是把联合国当作出气用的沙袋，但这些努力的成果是显著的。在2007年的一项调查中，79％的美国人希望加强联合国的力量。当然这并不是说联合国没有改善的空间，当然是有的，而且还不少，但是联合国在全球范围内的确做了很多遏制战争的好事。
“部分地区冲突永远不会结束。”
永远不要说“永远”。2005年，美国和平研究所的研究人员把当时全球的14场战争（从北爱尔兰到克什米尔）定义为“不可调和”，因为他们“拒绝任何形式的停战协定和解决方案”。然而在6年之后，发生了一件有趣的事情：除了极少一部分（以色列－巴基斯坦、索马里和苏丹）之外，其它战争要么已经结束，要么在结束战争的方向上取得了显著进展。在斯里兰卡，战争以军方胜利而告终，尽管在结束前的激战时双方都犯下不可宽恕的罪行。克什米尔达成了相当稳定的停战协定。在哥伦比亚，靠贩毒利润资助的战争虽未完全结束，但几乎没有直接交火的冲突了。在巴尔干半岛和北爱尔兰，曾经被认为一纸空文的和平协议变得越来越坚实了，目前很难想象任何一方还会摆出全面敌意的姿态。在非洲大部分国家——布隆迪、卢旺达、塞拉利昂、乌干达、刚果民主主义共和国和象牙海岸（2010年底的选举之后曾引发一些暴力冲突，现在已经解决）——联合国维和部队带来了相对持久的和平，战争火焰已经基本熄灭。（对于刚果和乌干达，至少开战区域已经被限定。）
我们还可以做得更好吗？已故的和平研究人士Randall Forsberg在1997年预测了“一个没有大规模战争的世界”，在那里，“发生强国战争的可能性已经消失，开启的门通往我们从未想象过的未来——未来的战争是偶发的、简短的、小规模的、不被任何社会所认可的。”很明显，这样的未来还没有实现。但是在过去十年中，实际上，自从Forsberg写下这些文字之后，有关战争的道德观，尤其是对遭受战争迫害的人们的保护观念，已经有了飞速的进化，即使50年前的人也想象不到这样的进化速度。与此相同，在我们曾经认为是人类文明永久特征的奴隶制度和殖民主义消失之前，道德观也已经发生了转化。所以，不要吃惊，战争的消亡是指日可待的。
原文：
"The World Is a More Violent Place Than It Used to Be."
No way. The early 21st century seems awash in wars: the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, street battles in Somalia, Islamist insurgencies in Pakistan, massacres in the Congo, genocidal campaigns in Sudan. All in all, regular fighting is taking place in 18 wars around the globe today. Public opinion reflects this sense of an ever more dangerous world: One survey a few years ago found that 60 percent of Americans considered a third world war likely. Expectations for the new century were bleak even before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and their bloody aftermath: Political scientist James G. Blight and former U.S. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara suggested earlier that year that we could look forward to an average of 3 million war deaths per year worldwide in the 21st century.
So far they haven't even been close. In fact, the last decade has seen fewer war deaths than any decade in the past 100 years, based on data compiled by researchers Bethany Lacina and Nils Petter Gleditsch of the Peace Research Institute Oslo. Worldwide, deaths caused directly by war-related violence in the new century have averaged about 55,000 per year, just over half of what they were in the 1990s (100,000 a year), a third of what they were during the Cold War (180,000 a year from 1950 to 1989), and a hundredth of what they were in World War II. If you factor in the growing global population, which has nearly quadrupled in the last century, the decrease is even sharper. Far from being an age of killer anarchy, the 20 years since the Cold War ended have been an era of rapid progress toward peace.
Armed conflict has declined in large part because armed conflict has fundamentally changed. Wars between big national armies all but disappeared along with the Cold War, taking with them the most horrific kinds of mass destruction. Today's asymmetrical guerrilla wars may be intractable and nasty, but they will never produce anything like the siege of Leningrad. The last conflict between two great powers, the Korean War, effectively ended nearly 60 years ago. The last sustained territorial war between two regular armies, Ethiopia and Eritrea, ended a decade ago. Even civil wars, though a persistent evil, are less common than in the past; there were about a quarter fewer in 2007 than in 1990.
If the world feels like a more violent place than it actually is, that's because there's more information about wars -- not more wars themselves. Once-remote battles and war crimes now regularly make it onto our TV and computer screens, and in more or less real time. Cell-phone cameras have turned citizens into reporters in many war zones. Societal norms about what to make of this information have also changed. As Harvard University psychologist Steven Pinker has noted, "The decline of violent behavior has been paralleled by a decline in attitudes that tolerate or glorify violence," so that we see today's atrocities -- though mild by historical standards -- as "signs of how low our behavior can sink, not of how high our standards have risen."
"America Is Fighting More Wars Than Ever."
Yes and no. Clearly, the United States has been on a war footing ever since 9/11, with a still-ongoing war in Afghanistan that has surpassed the Vietnam War as the longest conflict in American history and a pre-emptive war in Iraq that proved to be longer, bloodier, and more expensive than anyone expected. Add the current NATO intervention in Libya and drone campaigns in Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen, and it's no wonder that U.S. military spending has grown more than 80 percent in real terms over the last decade. At $675 billion this year, it's now 30 percent higher than what it was at the end of the Cold War.
But though the conflicts of the post-9/11 era may be longer than those of past generations, they are also far smaller and less lethal. America's decade of war since 2001 has killed about 6,000 U.S. service members, compared with 58,000 in Vietnam and 300,000 in World War II. Every life lost to war is one too many, but these deaths have to be seen in context: Last year more Americans died from falling out of bed than in all U.S. wars combined.
And the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan has taken place against a backdrop of base closures and personnel drawdowns elsewhere in the world. The temporary rise in U.S. troop numbers in South Asia and the Middle East, from 18,000 to 212,000 since 2000, contrasts with the permanent withdrawal of almost 40,000 troops from Europe, 34,000 from Japan and South Korea, and 10,000 from Latin America in that period. When U.S. forces come home from the current wars -- and they will in large numbers in the near future, starting with 40,000 troops from Iraq and 33,000 from Afghanistan by 2012 -- there will be fewer U.S. troops deployed around the world than at any time since the 1930s. President BarackObama was telling the truth in June when he said, "The tide of war is receding."
"War Has Gotten More Brutal for Civilians."
Hardly. In February 2010, a NATO airstrike hit a house in Afghanistan's Marja district, killing at least nine civilians inside. The tragedy drew condemnation and made the news, leading the top NATO commander in the country to apologize to Afghan President Hamid Karzai. The response underscored just how much has changed in war. During World War II, Allied bombers killed hundreds of thousands of civilians in Dresden and Tokyo not by accident, but as a matter of tactics; Germany, of course, murdered civilians by the millions. And when today's civilians do end up in harm's way, more people are looking out for them. The humanitarian dollars spent per displaced person rose in real terms from $150 in the early 1990s to $300 in 2006. Total international humanitarian assistance has grown from $2 billion in 1990 to $6 billion in 2000 and (according to donor countries' claims) $18 billion in 2008. For those caught in the crossfire, war has actually gotten more humane.
Yet many people insist that the situation is otherwise. For example, authoritative works on peacekeeping in civil wars (Roland Paris's award-winning At War's End and Michael Doyle and Nicholas Sambanis's Making War and Building Peace), as well as gold-standard reports on conflict from the World Bank and the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict, tell us that 90 percent of today's war deaths are civilian while just 10 percent are military -- the reverse of a century ago and "a grim indicator of the transformation of armed conflict" in the late 20th century, as political scientist Kalevi Holsti put it.
Grim indeed -- but, fortunately, untrue. The myth originates with the 1994 U.N. Human Development Report, which misread work that Swedish researcher Christer Ahlström had done in 1991 and accidentally conflated war fatalities in the early 20th century with the much larger number of dead, wounded, and displaced people in the late 20th century. A more careful analysis done in 1989 by peace researcher William Eckhardt shows that the ratio of military to civilian war deaths remains about 50-50, as it has for centuries (though it varies considerably from one war to the next). If you are unlucky enough to be a civilian in a war zone, of course, these statistics are little comfort. But on a worldwide scale, we are making progress in helping civilians afflicted by war.
"Wars Will Get Worse in the Future."
Probably not. Anything is possible, of course: A full-blown war between India and Pakistan, for instance, could potentially kill millions of people. But so could an asteroid or -- perhaps the safest bet -- massive storms triggered by climate change. The big forces that push civilization in the direction of cataclysmic conflict, however, are mostly ebbing.
Recent technological changes are making war less brutal, not more so. Armed drones now attack targets that in the past would have required an invasion with thousands of heavily armed troops, displacing huge numbers of civilians and destroying valuable property along the way. And improvements in battlefield medicine have made combat less lethal for participants. In the U.S. Army, the chances of dying from a combat injury fell from 30 percent in World War II to 10 percent in Iraq and Afghanistan -- though this also means the United States is now seeing a higher proportion of injured veterans who need continuing support and care.
Nor do shifts in the global balance of power doom us to a future of perpetual war. While some political scientists argue that an increasingly multipolar world is an increasingly volatile one -- that peace is best assured by the predominance of a single hegemonic power, namely the United States -- recent geopolitical history suggests otherwise. Relative U.S. power and worldwide conflict have waned in tandem over the past decade. The exceptions to the trend, Iraq and Afghanistan, have been lopsided wars waged by the hegemon, not challenges by up-and-coming new powers. The best precedent for today's emerging world order may be the 19th-century Concert of Europe, a collaboration of great powers that largely maintained the peace for a century until its breakdown and the bloodbath of World War I.
What about China, the most ballyhooed rising military threat of the current era? Beijing is indeed modernizing its armed forces, racking up double-digit rates of growth in military spending, now about $100 billion a year. That is second only to the United States, but it is a distant second: The Pentagon spends nearly $700 billion. Not only is China a very long way from being able to go toe-to-toe with the United States; it's not clear why it would want to. A military conflict (particularly with its biggest customer and debtor) would impede China's global trading posture and endanger its prosperity. Since Chairman Mao's death, China has been hands down the most peaceful great power of its time. For all the recent concern about a newly assertive Chinese navy in disputed international waters, China's military hasn't fired a single shot in battle in 25 years.
"A More Democratic World Will Be a More Peaceful One."
Not necessarily. The well-worn observation that real democracies almost never fight each other is historically correct, but it's also true that democracies have always been perfectly willing to fight non-democracies. In fact, democracy can heighten conflict by amplifying ethnic and nationalist forces, pushing leaders to appease belligerent sentiment in order to stay in power. Thomas Paine and Immanuel Kant both believed that selfish autocrats caused wars, whereas the common people, who bear the costs, would be loath to fight. But try telling that to the leaders of authoritarian China, who are struggling to hold in check, not inflame, a popular undercurrent of nationalism against Japanese and American historical enemies. Public opinion in tentatively democratic Egypt is far more hostile toward Israel than the authoritarian government of Hosni Mubarak ever was (though being hostile and actually going to war are quite different things).
Why then do democracies limit their wars to non-democracies rather than fight each other? Nobody really knows. As the University of Chicago's Charles Lipson once quipped about the notion of a democratic peace, "We know it works in practice. Now we have to see if it works in theory!" The best explanation is that of political scientists Bruce Russett and John Oneal, who argue that three elements -- democracy, economic interdependence (especially trade), and the growth of international organizations -- are mutually supportive of each other and of peace within the community of democratic countries. Democratic leaders, then, see themselves as having less to lose in going to war with autocracies.
"Peacekeeping Doesn't Work."
It does now. The early 1990s were boom years for the blue helmets, with 15 new U.N. peacekeeping missions launched from 1991 to 1993 -- as many as in the U.N.'s entire history up to that point. The period was also host to peacekeeping's most spectacular failures. In Somalia, the U.N. arrived on a mission to alleviate starvation only to become embroiled in a civil war, and it quickly pulled out after 18 American soldiers died in a 1993 raid. In Rwanda in 1994, a weak U.N. force with no support from the Security Council completely failed to stop a genocide that killed more than half a million people. In Bosnia, the U.N. declared "safe areas" for civilians, but then stood by when Serbian forces overran one such area, Srebrenica, and executed more than 7,000 men and boys. (There were peacekeeping successes, too, such as in Namibia and Mozambique, but people tend to forget about them.)
In response, the United Nations commissioned a report in 2000, overseen by veteran diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi, examining how the organization's efforts had gone wrong. By then the U.N. had scaled back peacekeeping personnel by 80 percent worldwide, but as it expanded again the U.N. adapted to lessons learned. It strengthened planning and logistics capabilities and began deploying more heavily armed forces able to wade into battle if necessary. As a result, the 15 missions and 100,000 U.N. peacekeepers deployed worldwide today are meeting with far greater success than their predecessors.
Overall, the presence of peacekeepers has been shown to significantly reduce the likelihood of a war's reigniting after a cease-fire agreement. In the 1990s, about half of all cease-fires broke down, but in the past decade the figure has dropped to 12 percent. And though the U.N.'s status as a perennial punching bag in American politics suggests otherwise, these efforts are quite popular: In a 2007 survey, 79 percent of Americans favored strengthening the U.N. That's not to say there isn't room for improvement -- there's plenty. But the U.N. has done a lot of good around the world in containing war.
"Some Conflicts Will Never End."
Never say never. In 2005, researchers at the U.S. Institute of Peace characterized 14 wars, from Northern Ireland to Kashmir, as "intractable," in that they "resist any kind of settlement or resolution." 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. In Sri Lanka, military victory ended the war, though only after a brutal endgame in which both sides are widely believed to have committed war crimes. Kashmir has a fairly stable cease-fire. In Colombia, the war sputters on, financed by drug revenue, but with little fighting left. In the Balkans and Northern Ireland, shaky peace arrangements have become less shaky; it's hard to imagine either sliding back into full-scale hostilities. In most of the African cases -- Burundi, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Ivory Coast (notwithstanding the violent flare-up after elections there in late 2010, now resolved) -- U.N. missions have brought stability and made a return to war less likely (or, in the case of Congo and Uganda, have at least limited the area of fighting).
Could we do even better? The late peace researcher Randall Forsberg in 1997 foresaw "a world largely without war," one in which "the vanishing risk of great-power war has opened the door to a previously unimaginable future -- a future in which war is no longer socially-sanctioned and is rare, brief, and small in scale." Clearly, we are not there yet. But over the decades -- and indeed, even since Forsberg wrote those words -- norms about wars, and especially about the protection of civilians caught up in them, have evolved rapidly, far more so than anyone would have guessed even half a century ago. Similarly rapid shifts in norms preceded the ends of slavery and colonialism, two other scourges that were once also considered permanent features of civilization. So don't be surprised if the end of war, too, becomes downright thinkable.
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发表于 2011-9-15 15:58
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发表于 2011-9-15 16:18
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