[newhaus1994]

IR theorists sometimes try to get around this by narrowing the focus to direct great-power wars, which always felt like a cop-out to me (I'm a political scientist)

EDIT: although to be clear, the last time I checked, I believe the stats still back up that overall fatalities from military conflict have been at historic lows. I generally prefer what little Hegemonic Stability there may be to the multipolar shitshows of the early 20th and mid-to-late 19th centuries.

[OkayPhysicist]

It's not a cop-out: there are fundamental qualitative differences between a near-pear conflict, which demands restructuring of a nation's economic activity around supporting the fight, versus the kinds of conflicts the US was involved in post-WWII, where the costs aren't that much different than the steady-state maintenance of our armed forces.

[avgcorrection]

It’s certainly a cop-out if you use such a segmentation to argue that things are peaceful.

[l33t233372]

Peaceful just has to be a continuum in order for us to make any sense of a theory of peace.

Certainly wars between great powers and much smaller countries are more peaceful than near-peer wars.

[avgcorrection]

> Peaceful just has to be a continuum in order for us to make any sense of a theory of peace.

Nope. Any reasonable person will accept an argument about how things are peaceful in relative terms. Factoring in everything and not cherry-picking.

Demanding perfect peace would be way too idealistic.

[l33t233372]

I think we’re saying the same thing. Are we not?

[avgcorrection]

Sure.

[mcguire]

Is it really a cop-out if most people are not involved in a conflict? https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/deaths-in-state-based-con...

[avgcorrection]

I can’t… I can’t respond to a completely different claim, can I? Or at least I don’t care to. It’s a cop-out if you cherry-pick what is a “war”. That has nothing to do with your interjection.

[anonymouskimmer]

> I believe the stats still back up that overall fatalities from military conflict have been at historic lows.

The argument can't be about overall fatalities, but about overall conflicts (and the numbers/proportion of people involved in such). Medical and sanitation technology alone has dramatically decreased the human-life cost of war, at least in proportion to total population.