Is the world worse today? Part Two

This is a commentary. It is not an official position of the 2001 Translation. We are not a religion and we do not take doctrinal positions.

Last month in part one, we considered whether hunger, famine, and starvation are worse today than in times past. We found that they are much improved today, with famine and starvation being rarer than ever before in all of history.

Today, we will consider whether war and conflict are worse. All the data comes from Our World in Data.

Revelation 6:4 and 8 says:

Some Christians feel these words are being fulfilled today because of the great wars of the 20th century and the recent Russian invasion of Ukraine.

As we discussed last time, the claim that the world is worse today, and is getting worse, is not a theological question or a question of faith. It is a simple factual claim. While we are each entitled to our own beliefs, we are not entitled to our own facts. This claim can be tested with evidence.

So, let’s examine whether, in the long term, war and conflict are getting better or worse.

Let’s begin with the chart below. The data starts 500 years ago, in the year 1500 AD. It splits up history into 25-year intervals and shows how much percentage of that time the “great powers” of this world were in a direct all-out war with one another. This does not include proxy wars.

These powers include countries such as The United Kingdom, the USA, Russia, China, Germany, Japan, Italy, and historic powers such as the Netherlands, Spain, and the Ottoman Empire.

What do you see? Have their conflicts increased or decreased?

The chart shows that at one time, the Great Powers were in open direct war with each other 100% of the time. Yes, they were always at war. Yet, over time, it started to drop, and drop, and drop, until it stands where it is today – at 0%. This is an incredible, unprecedented change.

The major powers are now less likely to go into direct armed conflict with each other than ever before in history. This planet has never seen such a thing. That’s quite amazing. If war and conflict were getting worse, the numbers should be going up, not down.

However, we need to consider all wars – including civil wars and proxy wars – not just wars between the Great Powers. We will do so in a moment. However, if the largest, most powerful nations on earth are no longer in open conflict, how can wars possibly be worse today?

Before we continue, let’s remind ourselves that many great wars before the 20th century are frequently forgotten.

For example:

• The Thirty Years' War killed between 5-8 million.

• The Napoleonic Wars killed between 4-7 million.

• Qing conquest of the Ming dynasty killed at least 25 million.

• The Taiping Rebellion in China killed approximately 20-30 million people. Some estimates go as high as 70 million.

These wars occurred when the global population was much smaller than in the 20th century. So the effect of these wars was much worse than the numbers suggest. Therefore, although the 20th century suffered two World Wars, previous conflicts were just as devastating by the standards of the day.

Therefore, to get a proper perspective, we must look at every conflict's severity. Let’s look at how many people are killed in wars proportionately – per 100,000 people. This shows how likely someone is to be killed, on average, by war.

Counting deaths proportionally is, after all, the same one used in Revelation:

The following chart attempts to show this all the way back from 1400 AD to the year 2000.

The red line is the rate of death from war, per 100,000 persons (the red circles show the size of individual conflicts). What do you notice about the red line?

It went up and down quite a lot but also had a long-term, gradual, upward trend. Then, suddenly, we reached one history-changing point – World War II.

In World War II, about 2,000 out of every 100,000 people died due to the war (the 15-year running average shown in the red line was lower, at 200 per 100,000). Then, from 1946, the chances of dying in wars started to drop, and drop, until today, when the chance of dying in war is about 0.5 per 100,000 people.

If we use the 15-year running average from the chart, then it’s a drop of 99.75%.

Yes, our modern period is marked, not by being more likely to die in war, but by having your chance of it drop to a record low.

That’s incredible.

Okay, but what if you’re a professional soldier? Are you more likely to die if waging war is your job? Well, let’s look at how many people were killed, on average, in each conflict. If war and conflict were getting worse, then more soldiers should be getting killed.

This chart shows the average number of battle deaths per conflict since 1946:

Yes – another drop!

In the last 77 years, the average number of soldiers dying per conflict has dropped massively. Back in the 1950s, your average war would see 80,000 soldiers die. By the 2010s, your average conflict would kill less than 5,000 soldiers – and these were mostly in internal conflicts, not wars between nations.

The majority of wars today are small, and most are entirely within a single country. Large wars with mass casualties on two separate national sides are now rare and unusual.

What about all deaths, though, including civilians? After all, the main victims of war are not soldiers – but everyone else. Have those numbers become worse?

Well, the earlier chart starting in 1400 AD includes both, but this next chart is more recent and more detailed. It shows the war deaths of both soldiers and ordinary civilians since 1946:

As you can see, today, everyone is less likely to die in a war than at any time in the last 77 years.

However, that chart only goes up to 2020. It does not include, for example, the recent Russian invasion of Ukraine. How would things change once that is included?

As of August 2023, the number of civilian deaths in Ukraine is estimated to be 9,444. The number of military deaths (on both sides) is estimated to be between 35,000 and 45,000.

Those numbers contrast starkly with other recent wars. In the Bosnian war between 1992 and 1995, over 100,000 people died. Yes, three times as many as in Ukraine. In the Rwandan civil war of 1990 to 1994, the death toll was anywhere between 500,000 and 1 million, up to 22 times more than in Ukraine.

While the Russian invasion is horrific, the number of dead in Ukraine has mercifully not reached Bosnian or Rwandan levels (and let’s hope it never does).

Indeed, one thing that makes the invasion so newsworthy is its rarity. Countries seldom invade their neighbors in the modern era. We can see this in the following chart; it shows the overall number of armed conflicts and their types since 1946.

• The green and red conflicts are civil conflicts inside a country.

• The blue and orange ones are wars between countries or with a colony

What do you see? Wars between countries (in blue) have roughly halved since 1946. Colonial or imperial conflicts (in orange) have disappeared completely.

However, civil conflicts have increased quite a lot! These are things like civil wars, riots, armed rebellions, breakaway regions, terrorist attacks, and coups.

Have these civil conflicts simply replaced or compensated for the drop in international war? Does one cancel the other out?

Thankfully not!

This large number of smaller civil conflicts and terrorist attacks don’t kill or harm anywhere near as many people as the old traditional wars. For example, this chart shows the number of terrorist-related deaths:

At first glance, it looks terrible; but look at the numbers – the top of the chart peaks at 10,000 deaths. Yes, the number of people killed in terrorist attacks peaked at 10,000, and only in one country – Afghanistan.

Why is that important?

Because, compared to our 8,000,000,000+ worldwide population, death caused by terrorism are incredibly rare.

Do you know how many people die in road traffic accidents each year?

That puts things in perspective.

Even if we add up all the deaths from wars and terrorism, it pales into nothing compared to deaths from car accidents. In fact, war is so rare today that more people die from asthma.

Earlier, we looked at the deaths per 100,000 from war. Now let’s look at the raw numbers between 1946 and 2020:

By 2019, about 50,000 were dying per year from wars and terrorism. Compared to our global population, that’s very small. Indeed, the death toll from all wars and conflicts worldwide in 2023 is smaller than the deaths in some individual historical battles.

In 2019, the World Health Organization estimated that 455,000 died from asthma. Yes, in 2019, you were nine times more likely to die from asthma than from war.

Even the threat of war has dropped. For example, the number of nuclear weapons has dropped dramatically since the 1980s:

Sure, there are still too many – and people are rightly worried about countries such as Iran or North Korea getting their hands on them. But over the past 40 years, the global stockpile has dropped by over 85%. Not increased – dropped.

The reduction of war is no mystery. It is easily explained. You see, democracies do not go to war. After all, when was the last war between two democratic states? Ask a historian, they will tell you that there have been none. Yes, really: none. In the modern era, there has not been a single active war between two democratic nations.

Therefore, if democracies multiply, then the number of wars should drop. Well, what’s been happening so far?

Please look at the chart below. It shows how many countries are autocracies and how many are democracies. The red and orange are autocratic countries. The blue shades are democracies:

Back in 1789, there were no true democracies (not even France or the USA would count by modern standards). By 1900, about 5% of nations were democratic. Today, it’s about 50%. So in the past, 100% of countries would and could happily go to war with each other. Today, however, half of the world’s countries never go to war with each other. A war between two countries only happens when at least one is autocratic.

So let’s go back to our original question:

Is the red horse of the “apocalypse” riding today? Well, let’s summarize our recent history:

• The Great Powers were in open war as much as 100% of the time in the 16th century, now it’s 0% of the time.

• Proportionately, more people died in wars in the 15th to 19th centuries.

• Today, the number of wars between nations is at a record low.

• Today, the chance of an average person dying in war is at a record low.

• Today, the number of democratic nations is unusually high.

• Today, you are much more likely to die from an asthma attack or a car accident than from war, conflict, or terrorism.

So are we experiencing the events of Revelation 6:4-8? Or, despite the current conflicts making the news, are we really in an unusually peaceful period in history? What do the facts bear out?

Next month, in this series's final installment, we’ll consider whether we are more or less likely to die from diseases than in the past.

Thank you for reading.

Alfred Larsen

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