journal of peace research 2013 gat 149 57

Review Essay

Is war declining and why?

Azar Gat

Department of Political Science, University of Tel Aviv

AbstractThe article reviews and assesses the recent literature that claims a sharp decrease in fighting and violent mortality ratesince prehistory and during recent times. It also inquires into the causes of this decrease. The article supports theview, firmly established over the past 15 years and unrecognized by only one of the books reviewed, that the firstmassive decline in violent mortality occurred with the emergence of the state-Leviathan. Hobbes was right, andRousseau was wrong, about the great violence of the human state of nature. The rise of the state-Leviathan greatlyreduced in-group violent mortality by establishing internal peace. Less recognized, it also decreased out-group warfatalities. Although state wars appear large in absolute terms, large states actually meant lower mobilization rates andreduced exposure of the civilian population to war. A second major step in the decline in the frequency and fatality ofwar has occurred over the last two centuries, including in recent decades. However, the exact periodization of, andthe reasons for, the decline are a matter of dispute among the authors reviewed. Further, the two World Wars con-stitute a sharp divergence from the trend, which must be accounted for. The article surveys possible factors behindthe decrease, such as industrialization and rocketing economic growth, commercial interdependence, the liberal-democratic peace, social attitude change, nuclear deterrence, and UN peacekeeping forces. It argues that contraryto the claim of some of the authors reviewed, war has not become more lethal and destructive over the past two cen-turies, and thus this factor cannot be the cause of wars decline. Rather, it is peace that has become more profitable. Atthe same time, the specter of war continues to haunt the parts of the world less affected by many of the above devel-opments, and the threat of unconventional terror is real and troubling.

Keywords

declining violence, declining war, evolutionary psychology, human history, human violence

When quite a number of scholars simultaneously andindependently of one another arrive at very similar con-clusions on an issue of cardinal theoretical and practicalsignificance, their thesis deserves, and has received, greatattention. The thesis is that war and violence in generalhave progressively decreased in recent times, during themodern era, and even throughout history. Of course,despite their unanimity, all these scholars could still bewrong. Indeed, each of them tells a similar story of peo-ples disbelief at their findings, most notably that we livein the most peaceful period in human history. Some ofthem even explain the general incredulity by the findingsof evolutionary psychology according to which we tendto be overly optimistic about ourselves but overly pessi-mistic about the world at large. Having myself writtenabout the marked decrease in deadly human violence

(Gat, 2006), I agree with the authors general thesis.However, their unanimity falters over, and they are lessclear about, the historical trajectory of and the reasons forthe decline in violence and war, questions that are asimportant as the general thesis itself.

Hobbes was right, and Rousseau wrong, aboutthe state of nature

Steven Pinkers The Better Angels of Our Nature (2011)towers above all the other books surveyed here in size,scope, boldness, and scholarly excellence. It has

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deservedly attracted great public attention and hasbecome a best-seller. Massively documented, this 800-page volume is lavishly furnished with statistics, charts,and diagrams, which are one of the books most effectivefeatures. The book, spanning the whole human past asfar back as our aboriginal condition, points to two majorsteps in the decline of violence. The first is the sharpdecline in violent mortality which resulted from the riseof the state-Leviathan from around 5,000 years ago. Thisconclusion is based on the most comprehensive studiesof the subject published over the past 15 years (Keeley,1996; LeBlanc, 2003; Gat, 2006), which demonstrateon the basis of anthropological and archaeological evi-dence that Hobbess picture of the anarchic state ofnature as a very violent one was fundamentally true. Pin-ker rightly summarizes that violent mortality with therise of states dropped from a staggering estimated 15%of the population, 25% of the men, in pre-state societies,to about 15%. The main reason for this drop is theenforcement of internal peace by the Leviathan, but also,less noted by Pinker, lower mobilization rates and asmaller exposure of the civilian population to war thanwith tribal groups, as will be explained shortly.

This conclusion regarding the dramatic drop in vio-lent mortality with the transition to the state is at oddswith the claim made by Jack Levy &William Thompsonin their book, The Arc of War (2011). As the books titleimplies, Levy & Thompson posit a great increase in war-fare during history, before a decrease during the past twocenturies. Thus, the book claims that mortality in fight-ing greatly increased, accelerated in the authors lan-guage, with the transition to the state. They reach thisconclusion by making several mistaken assumptions.First, although professing ignorance about the distantpast because of the lack of evidence on the behavior ofhunter-gatherer societies before the adoption of agricul-ture some 10,000 years ago, they cite and are heavilyinfluenced by the old Rousseauite anthropology of thegeneration after the 1960s, which recent studies haverefuted.

Obviously, one does not have to accept the abovefindings regarding the pervasiveness and great lethalityof prehistoric warfare. But Levy & Thompson simplydo not engage with them. They accept as true the Rous-seauite premise that sparse human population could notpossibly have had that much to fight about. However,recently extant hunter-gatherer societies prove the oppo-site. Australia is our best laboratory of hunter-gatherersocieties, because that vast continent was entirely popu-lated by them and unpolluted by agriculturalists,pastoralists or states until the arrival of the Europeans

in 1788. And the evidence shows that the Australiantribes fought incessantly with one another. Even in theCentral Australian Desert, whose population density wasas low as one person per 35 square miles, among the low-est there is, conflict and deadly fighting were the rule.Much of that fighting centered on the water-holes vitalfor survival in this area, with the violent death rate therereckoned to have been several times higher than in anystate society. In most other places, hunting territorieswere monopolized and fiercely defended by hunter-gatherers because they were quickly depleted. Evenamong the Inuit of Arctic Canada, who were so sparseas to experience no resource competition, fighting tokidnap women was pervasive, resulting in a violent deathrate 10 times higher than the USAs peak rate of 1990,itself the highest in the developed world. In more hospi-table and densely populated environments casualtiesaveraged, as already mentioned, 15% of the populationand 25% of the men, and the surviving men were cov-ered with scars (Gat, 2006: chs 2, 6).

We are not dealing here with a piece of exotic curios-ity. Ninety-five percent of the history of our speciesHomo sapiens sapiens people who are like us wasspent as hunter-gatherers. The transition to agricultureand the state is very recent, the tip of the iceberg, inhuman history. Furthermore, the human state of natureturns out to be no different than the state of nature ingeneral. Here too, science has made a complete turn-about. During the 1960s people believed that animalsdid not kill each other within the same species, whichmade humans appear like a murderous exception and fedspeculations that warfare emerged only with civilization.Since then, however, it has been found that animals killeach other extensively within species, a point pressed onevery viewer of television nature documentaries. There isnothing special about humans in this regard. Thus, lethalhuman fighting did not emerge at some point in his-tory, as Levy & Thompson posit.

Violent death sharply decreased with the rise ofthe Leviathan

As mentioned earlier and as Pinker well realizes, violentmortality actually dropped steeply with the emergence ofthe state-Leviathan. Here is where Levy & Thompsonmake a second mistake. For measuring the lethality ofwarfare they use evidence of battle mortality, but thisis highly misleading for various reasons. First, pre-statetribes main fighting modes were not the battle but theraid and the ambush capturing the enemy by surpriseand often annihilating entire sleeping camps: men,

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women, and children. Second, the size of battles merelyindicates the size of the states and their armies, which areobviously larger than tribal groups in absolute terms. Yetthe main question is relative casualties, what percentage ofthe population died violently. And here the fact is thatwhile states and their armies grew by a factor of tens,hundreds, and thousands, giving a spectacular impres-sion of large-scale fighting, relative casualties actuallydecreased under the state, and not only because of inter-nal peace. Indeed, casualties decreased precisely becausestates grew large.

Take Egypt, for example, part of the acceleration ofwar with the emergence of states in Mesopotamia, Egypt,Greece, and China, according to Levy & Thompson.The size of the Egyptian army with which PharaohRamses II fought the Hittite empire at the Battle ofKadesh (commonly dated 1274 BCE) was 20,00025,000 soldiers. This was a very large army by the stan-dards of the time. Yet the total population of Egypt wasabout 23 million, so the army constituted 1% of thepopulation at most. This was very much the standardin large states and empires throughout history becauseof the great financial and logistical problems of maintain-ing large armies for long periods at great distances fromhome. Thus, in comparison to the high military partici-pation rates of small-scale tribal societies, participationrates, and hence war casualties, in large states armieswere much lower. Moreover, in contrast to the greatvulnerability of women and children in small-scale tribalwarfare, the civilian population of Egypt was sheltered bydistance from the theaters of military operations and notoften exposed to the horrors of war. Such relative secu-rity, interrupted only by large-scale invasions, is one ofthe main reasons why societies experienced great demo-graphic growth after the emergence of the state. It is alsothe reason why civil war, when the war rages within thecountry, tends to be the most lethal form of war, asHobbes very well realized.

Warfare and feuds in the pre- and early-modern eras

Levy & Thompson further posit that between the 14thand early 19th centuries, Europe was the scene of a sec-ond acceleration in the historical trajectory of violence.This is very much in line with the prevailing perceptionsregarding early modern European history, but these per-ceptions are most probably wrong, and for the same rea-son as before: Levy & Thompson count absolute battlecasualties, and obviously states became more centralizedduring this period and armies grew in number, so battles

also grew in size. Yet it was the anarchy and feudal frag-mentation in Europe between the fall of the RomanEmpire and 1200 that were responsible for the pervasiveinsecurity and endemic violence that characterized theDark Ages and resulted in, among other things, a sharpdemographic decline. Again, small-scale usually meantmore, not less, violent mortality. The focus on early mod-ern Europe is misleading also in another way: in the lateMiddle Ages the Mongol conquests inflicted on the soci-eties of China, Central Asia, and Eastern Europe casual-ties and destruction that were among the highest eversuffered during historical times. Estimates of the sharpdecline experienced by the populations of China andRussia, for example, vary widely. Still, even by the lowestestimates they were at least as great, and in China almostdefinitely much greater, than the Soviet Unions horrificrate in World War II of about 15%.

The receding of medieval anarchy in the face of thegrowing European state-Leviathans was the first steptowards a steep decline in the continents violent mortal-ity rate beginning in early modernity and continuing tothe present day. The studies and data cited by Pinkerwith respect to the domestic aspect of this trend arestrikingly paralleled by those of Robert MuchembledsHistory of Violence (2012). The work of a historian, thebook meticulously documents, on the basis of Frenchlegal records, a 20-fold decrease in homicide ratesbetween the 13th and 20th centuries. Earlier studies ofother parts of Europe, starting with Gurr (1981), havecome up with similar findings. Like Pinker,Muchembled attributes the steep decline to the statesgrowing authority, as its justice system effectivelyreplaced and deterred private justice, vendetta, and per-vasive violence, all of them endemic in unruly societies.Correspondingly, again like Pinker, Muchembledinvokes Norbert Eliass (2000) civilizing process,whereby the defense of honor by sword and knife, asocial norm and imperative in most traditional societies,is gradually given up among both the nobility and thegeneral populace.

The civilizing process is partly a function of the grow-ing authority of the states rule and justice system. Butthere were other factors involved, which Pinker excelsin identifying and weaving together. Although he is nota historian, his historical synthesis is exemplarily rich andnuanced. He specifies the growing humanitarian sensi-bilities in Europe of the Enlightenment, which he tracesto, among other things, the gradual improvement in liv-ing conditions, growing commercial spirit and, above all,the print revolution with the attendant values and habitsof reasoning, introspection, and empathy that it

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inculcated among the reading elites. As Pinker pointsout, not only did homicide rates decline but also otherpreviously common forms of violence, such as judicialdisembowelment and torture, were becoming unaccepta-ble by the 18th century. This was the beginning of a con-tinuous process which during the following centurieswould bring about, among other things, the abolitionof slavery and the decline of capital punishment, tyr-anny, and political violence in the developed world most notably in the areas where the values of Enlighten-ment humanitarianism triumphed.

Both Pinker and Muchembled identify a change inthe trend towards increased violence and homicide ratesin the United States and Europe from the 1960s on.They attribute this change (Pinker is particularly elabora-tive here) to the erosion of public authority and somereversal of the civilizing process with the cults of youthculture, defiance of authority, radical ideologies ofviolence by the oppressed, and the fragmentation of thestable family structure. Pinker identifies a return to adownward trend in violence from about 1990 on, whichhe attributes to an ebbing of much of the above throughreasserted state action and changes in the public mood. Alast point worth mentioning in this context:Muchembled reveals that throughout the steep declinein homicide rates, from medieval times to the present,90% or more of all cases have been perpetrated by men,especially between the ages of 20 and 30 years old. AsDaly & Wilson (1988: 145149) have shown, this ratiois found in each and every society studied around theglobe, from hunter-gatherers to agricultural and indus-trial societies, irrespective of the vastly different homiciderates among them.

The decline of war and the three Long Peacesafter 1815

We now move to the decline of war, which is our mainconcern here. Most people are surprised to learn that theoccurrence of war and overall mortality in war sharplydecreased after 1815, most notably in the developedworld. The Long Peace among the great powers after1945 is more recognized and is widely attributed to thenuclear factor, a decisive factor to be sure, which concen-trated the minds of all the protagonists wonderfully. The(inter-)democratic peace has been equally recognized.But in actuality, the decrease in war had been verymarked before the nuclear era and encompassed bothdemocracies and non-democracies. In the century after1815, wars among economically advanced countriesdeclined in their frequency to about one-third of what

they had been in the previous centuries, an unprece-dented change. Indeed, the Long Peace after 1945 waspreceded by the second longest peace among the greatpowers, between 1871 and 1914, and by the third long-est peace, between 1815 and 1854 (Gat, 2006: 536537, 608). Thus, the three longest periods of peace byfar in the modern great powers system all occurred after1815. Clearly, one needs to explain the entire trend,while also accounting for the glaring divergence fromit: the two World Wars.

Is modern war more lethal and destructive thanbefore?

In his earlier works, Levy (1983) was among the first todocument the much-reduced frequency of war after1815. But what brought about this change? Levy &Thompson assume this is perhaps the most naturalhypothesis that wars declined in frequency becausethey became too lethal, destructive, and expensive. Sup-posedly, a trade-off of sorts was created between theintensity and frequency of warfare: fewer, larger warssupplanting many smaller ones. This hypothesis barelyholds, however, because, again, relative to population andwealth wars have not become more lethal and costly thanearlier in history. Furthermore, as Levy & Thompsonrightly document, the wars of the 19th century themost peaceful century in European history were partic-ularly light, in comparative terms, so there is no trade-offhere. True, the World Wars, especially World War II,were certainly on the upper scale of the range in termsof casualties. Yet, as already noted, they were far frombeing exceptional in history. Once more, we need tolook at relative casualties, general human mortality inany number of wars that happen to rage around theworld, rather than at the aggregate created by the factthat many states participated in the World Wars.

I have already mentioned the Mongol invasions, butother examples abound. In the first three years of theSecond Punic War, 21816 BCE, Rome lost some50,000 citizens of the ages of 1746, out of a total ofabout 200,000 in that age demographic (Brunt, 1971).This was roughly 25% of the military-age cohorts in onlythree years, the same range as the Russian and higherthan the German rates in World War II. This, and thedevastation of Romes free peasantry during the SecondPunic War, did not reduce Romes propensity for warthereafter. During the Thirty Years War (161848) pop-ulation loss in Germany is estimated at between one-fifthand one-third either way higher than the German casu-alties in World War I and World War II combined.




People often assume that more developed militarytechnology during modernity means greater lethality anddestruction, but in fact it also means greater protectivepower, as with mechanized armor, mechanized speedand agility, and defensive electronic measures. Offensiveand defensive advances generally rise in tandem. In addi-tion, it is all too often forgotten that the vast majority ofthe many millions of non-combatants killed by Germanyduring World War II Jews, Soviet prisoners of war,Soviet civilians fell victim to intentional starvation,exposure to the elements, and mass executions ratherthan to any sophisticated military technology. Instancesof genocide in general during the 20th century, much asearlier in history, were carried out with the simplest oftechnologies, as the Rwanda genocide horrificallyreminded us.

Nor have wars during the past two centuries been eco-nomically more costly than they were earlier in history,again relative to overall wealth. War has always involvedmassive economic exertion and has been the single mostexpensive item of state spending (e.g. massively docu-mented, Bonney, 1999). Examples are countless, and itwill suffice to mention that both 16th- and 17th-century Spain and 18th-century France were economi-cally ruined by war and staggering war debts, which inthe French case brought about the Revolution. Further-more, death by starvation in premodern wars waswidespread.

Is it peace that has become more profitable?

So if wars have not become more costly and destructiveduring the past two centuries then why have theyreceded, particularly in the developed world? Theanswer is the advent of the industrialcommercial rev-olution after 1815, the most profound transformationof human society since the Neolithic adoption of agri-culture. The correlation between the decline of war inthe developed world and the process of modernization,both unfolding since 1815, is surely not accidental, andthe causation is not difficult to locate. In the first place,given explosive growth in per capita wealth, about 30-to 50-fold thus far, the Malthusian trap has been bro-ken. Wealth no longer constitutes a fundamentallyfinite quantity, and wealth acquisition progressivelyshifted away from a zero-sum game. Secondly, econo-mies are no longer overwhelmingly autarkic, insteadhaving become increasingly interconnected by speciali-zation, scale, and exchange. Consequently, foreigndevastation potentially depressed the entire system andwas thus detrimental to a states own wellbeing. This

reality, already noted by Mill (1848/1961: 582), starklymanifested itself after World War I, as Keynes (1920)had anticipated in his criticism of the reparationsimposed on Germany. Thirdly, greater economic open-ness has decreased the likelihood of war by disassociat-ing economic access from the confines of politicalborders and sovereignty. It is no longer necessary topolitically possess a territory in order benefit from it.Of the above three factors, the second one commer-cial interdependence has attracted most of the atten-tion in the literature. But the other two factors havebeen no less significant.

Thus, the greater the yield of competitive economiccooperation, the more counterproductive and less attrac-tive conflict becomes. Rather than war becoming morecostly, as is widely believed, it is in fact peace that hasbeen growing more profitable. Referring to my argumentin this regard, Levy & Thompson (2011: 7275)excused themselves from deciding on the issue on thegrounds of insufficient information regarding the costof premodern war. But as already noted, the informationon the subject is quite clear.

In this limited framework I can only briefly mentionthe main reasons for the continued outbreak of war dur-ing the past two centuries. In the first place, ethnic andnationalist tensions often overrode the logic of the neweconomic realities, accounting for most wars in Europeuntil 1945. They continue to do so today, especially inthe less developed parts of the globe, the worlds remain-ing zone of war. Additionally, the logic of the new eco-nomic realities receded during the late 19th and early20th centuries, as the great powers resumed protectionistpolicies and expanded them to the undeveloped parts ofthe world with the New Imperialism. This developmentsignaled that the emergent global economy mightbecome partitioned rather than open, with each imperialdomain becoming closed to everybody else, as, indeed,they eventually did in the 1930s. A snowball effectensued, generating a runaway grab for imperial terri-tories, Lebensraum, and co-prosperity spheres. Here laythe seeds of the two World Wars. Furthermore, theretreat from economic liberalism in the first decades ofthe 20th century spurred, and was in turn spurred by,the rise to power of anti-liberal and anti-democraticpolitical ideologies and regimes incorporating a creedof violence: communism and fascism.

Indeed, although non-liberal and non-democraticstates also became much less belligerent during the indus-trial age, it is the liberal democracies that have been themost attuned to its pacifying aspects. This applies moststrikingly to the democracies relations among themselves,

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but, as scholars have become increasingly aware, also totheir conduct in general. Pinker examines in great detailand nuance the various aspects in the unfolding processover the past centuries, which he labels the humanitarianrevolution, the rights revolution, and the democratic, lib-eral and capitalist peace. Some of the other books surveyedhere are more problematic in this respect.

A successful UN?

Joshua Goldstein,Winning the War on War (2011), is inmany ways two books under one cover the first is veryambitious, the other more limited. Both are very good,yet they do not always sit quite comfortably together.The beginning of the book (specifically chapter 2) is sim-ilar to Pinkers in boldly and effectively advancing thewide-ranging thesis that war has decreased in stagesthroughout human history and in recent times. Gold-stein, relying on pretty much the same studies and dataas Pinker, albeit in lesser detail, arrives in his openingexpose at more or less the same conclusions regarding thelong-term historical trend. As he suggests, the more wetravel back into the past the more warlike it becomes(as predominantly measured by mortality rates): the pastten years compared with the previous ten; the post-ColdWar era compared with the Cold War; the Cold War eracompared with that of the World Wars; the past centurycompared with previous centuries (the peaceful 19thcentury is silently smoothed over here); the modern era(past 500 years) compared with premodern history; his-torical times compared with prehistory.

The remaining 90% of the book is a different breedaltogether. It is a history of UN and other peacekeepingoperations from 1947 to the present, analyzing theireffect in decreasing warfare in various regions of thedeveloping world. In this portion of the book Goldsteinhas many achievements as well. The historical study andanalysis are learned and sensible. More importantly,Goldstein succeeds in making a case for a claim that isgenerally met with much skepticism: that peacekeepingforces have actually had a not insignificant effect in quel-ling open violence, shortening wars and thereby reducingwar mortality and, in some instances, even in contribut-ing to a peaceful conflict resolution. It falls beyond thescope of this article to offer a critical review of the exactpolitical conditions and specific circumstances in termsof the local and international players and interests underwhich lesser or greater success has been achieved in somecases. Side by side with the discerning political scientist,there appears to be in Goldstein a true believer and cru-sader in the cause of peace for whom peacekeeping

missions and the activity of peace movements are a pana-cea and the main reason behind the writing of the book.Indeed, it is the connection between the two parts of thebook, between the long-term and more recent decreasein war, on the one hand, and the role of peacekeepingin reducing warfare, on the other, that constitutes thebooks weakest link.

The question of causality is where Goldstein stands onshaky ground. Had he been content with the modestargument that peacekeeping operations have contributedsomething to the decrease of warfare over the past 65,especially the last 20 years, and made an effort to weavethis factor together with other factors so as to clarify theirmutual connections and interactions and make sense ofthe overall picture, this would have been a very reason-able approach. Indeed, Goldstein cites (p. 15) with seem-ing approval the list of factors generally regarded ascontributing to the decrease of war: from US hegemony,to the effect of liberalism, democracy, and global capital-ism, to female participation in politics (all of them, inci-dentally, not mutually unrelated). Yet later (pp. 4245)he summarily plays down any other explanation for therecent decrease of war as if it were competing with ratherthan complementary to peacekeeping. This is curious,unnecessary and, indeed, self-contradictory. After all,temporally, it is Goldstein himself who claims that thedecrease in warfare had begun long before the UN andits peacekeeping operations. Moreover, spatially, theworlds remarkable zone of peace the scene of the mostdramatic change is not the developing world but theaffluent, developed world, especially its liberal demo-cratic parts, where no peacekeeping forces and opera-tions, by the UN or anybody else, have played a role.In response to the claim that he had little by way of the-ory, Goldstein replied in a 2012 International StudiesAssociation panel1 that his was international liberalism.But is international liberalism unrelated to the growthof liberalism in general both political and economic with its broader, well-documented pacifying effectsprojected from the hegemonic liberal core to the lessliberal periphery?

Simply kicking a senseless habit?

An untempered idealistic, almost salvationist, streak isthe cause of considerable problems and confusion inJohn Horgan, The End of War (2012). The author is very

1 In a panel on The decline of violence: Current trends, 53rdAnnual Convention of the International Studies Association, SanDiego, CA, 2 April.




familiar with the literature relating to the subject and hasmany correct things to say: like the others, he documentsthe great decline in warfare around the world; and reject-ing the crude biological determinism often cited as thecause of war and of wars inevitability, he points out thatboth war and peace are in our genes. And yet he fails tograsp the full significance of this point. In pursuit of theiraims people may employ any of the following strategies:cooperation, peaceful competition, and violent conflict.We are very adept in using each of them because we areevolutionarily well-equipped with the heavy biologicalmachinery necessary for carrying them out. The reasonwhy we are so well equipped is that each of these strate-gies has been widely employed by humans throughoutour long evolutionary history. Each of them is a well-designed tool interchangeably resorted to, dependingon the particular circumstances and prospects of success.Violence is not a blind biological instinct, but nor does itlack a deep-rooted, evolution-shaped biological function.It is the hammer in our behavioral toolkit, which hasalways been readily disposable and handy; indeed, itoften proved necessary and advantageous. The above-cited huge disparity between men and women amongkillers, which remains constant despite huge differencesin killing rates among different societies, is a strikingdemonstration of both the innate element and greatcontext-sensitivity of violent behavior.

A failure to grasp this crucial point (which Pinkerwell emphasizes) is the cause of many fatuous ideas inHorgans book. He has been convinced by the recentliterature on the subject that extensive warfare hadexisted before the state and agriculture. Yet despite theevidence to the contrary (e.g. Australia, Tasmania, theArctic), he clings to the view that warfare had begunonly with the denser human populations formingshortly before the agricultural revolution. He repeatsMargaret Meads idea (1940) that war was an addictiveinvention, somehow it is not clear why picked up byhuman populations throughout the world (one won-ders if the same applies also to homicide). Apparently,Horgan believes that the alleged invention of war atsome point in history strengthens the case that it is notpre-ordained and gives credence to the proposition thatthis arbitrary and senseless habit is, and should be, nowkicked, uninvented, as suddenly and inexplicably as itwas invented, by an act of sheer moral will. He statesthat he has always believed war to be crazy and absurd,devoid of any rationale. This is a growing sentiment intodays modern and affluent world. But try this thesison Chinggis Khan, whose descendants constitute,according to genetic studies (Zerjal et al., 2003), 8%

of all males in Eastern and Central Asia, evidence ofstaggering sexual opportunities enjoyed by his sons andgrandsons whose houses ruled over the area for centu-ries. Lest it be thought that only autocrats and otherrotten apples profited from war, it ought to be remem-bered that the two most successful war-making city-states of classical antiquity were democratic Athens andrepublican Rome. And they were so successful preciselybecause the populace in these polities benefited fromwar and imperial expansion, championed them, andenlisted in their cause.

To account for the perceived decrease in warfare,Horgan resorts to a purely voluntary explanation. Headheres to John Muellers thesis (1989) that the declineof war is the product of a social attitude change. Whythis attitude change occurred at this point in historyrather than any time earlier remains a mystery with bothMueller and Horgan. Horgan posits peoples free will asmoral agents, yet powerful moral doctrines such asBuddhism and Christianity decried war for millenniawithout this having any noticeable effect. To understandthe gravitation of human choices, and norms, fromviolent conflict towards the nonviolent options ofcooperation and peaceful competition, one needs tounderstand the changing circumstances and calculus ofcost-effectiveness during the past two centuries and inrecent decades, as mentioned above.

Pinker well understands this logic, but some of the fewmajor reservations I have about his book concern thecauses of violence. Surprisingly, the evolutionary parts ofthe book are, in my opinion, inferior to the historicalparts. Angels versus Demons in the human behavioralsystem is an allusion to Lincolns first inaugural addressand is surely invoked metaphorically. And yet, notentirely, because to reduce central aspects of human beha-vior, including those Pinker labels predation, dominance,and ideology, to demons is to flatten the major subject ofhuman aims and motivations as well as the means forachieving them. Pinker cites studies showing that separateparts of the brain may trigger violent behavior, and this isof course true of nearly all behaviors. But this does notmean that all violent behaviors are not subject to, regu-lated, and shaped by a unified evolutionary calculus of sur-vival and reproduction, the very definition of theevolutionary rationale, which Pinker as an evolutionistwould surely be the first to accept. The wide categoryhe calls predation violence and describes as a means toachieve an end in fact also covers most of the othermotives for violence he cites. Thus, the quest for domi-nance among all social animals is an evolutionary meansto achieve preferential access to resources and superior

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sexual opportunities. Furthermore, dominance can bepursued peacefully as well as violently (as it generally isin modern and liberal societies), which makes the demoncategory all the more awkward. The same, of course,applies to ideology, which is another of Pinkers demons.Revenge, yet another demon, is also, as Pinker recog-nizes, a means to an end: it is intended to foster deterrenceby demonstrating that one is not a pushover. It is the mainmeans for establishing fragile security in all unruly societ-ies. Finally, Pinker on occasion gives the impression thatthe decline of war is a matter of escaping a PrisonersDilemma. While there are all sorts of Prisoners Dilemmasin conflict situations, not all conflicts fall under this cate-gory. Throughout human history there have been manywinners and losers in war.

Future prospects and threats

One more point: Pinker wisely argues that he is not pro-phesying the future but simply describing past trendsand their historical explanations. He agrees that suchtrends, however deep-rooted and they are mayreverse, as with the potential changes in the global bal-ance of power with the weakening of US and Westernhegemony, the rise of a non-democratic, non-liberalChina (if it so remains) and the like. In discussing theprospect of unconventional terror, Pinker claims, likesome others, that the threat is much overrated, empha-sizing the difficulties surrounding the acquisition andsuccessful use of nuclear weapons by terrorists. However,he ignores the more relevant threat, that of biologicalweapons, magnified and widely disseminated thanks totodays biotechnological revolution. Biological weaponsare potentially as lethal as nuclear weapons, and far easierto acquire and use even by non-state individuals or smallgroups. Not only might a successful attack result in casu-alties on a par with the USAs greatest wars; it is likely totarget its main centers of population and the economy. Iwould not underestimate this threat. More generally, weare clearly experiencing the most peaceful times in his-tory by far, a strikingly blissful and deeply groundedtrend. Yet the observation that at least since 1945 thisis also the most dangerous world ever, with mankind forthe first time possessing the ability to destroy itselfcompletely, civilian populations held hostage to MAD(mutually assured destruction) deterrence, and even indi-viduals and small groups gaining the ability to cause massdeath, is far from a cliche.

Towards the end of this survey one should also men-tion Jesse Richards, The Secret Peace (2010). The subtitleof this excellent book, Exposing the Positive Trend of World

Events, is more reflective of its content, because the book isnot concerned with the decline of war alone but docu-ments the massive improvement in major aspects ofhuman life during modernity. Sweeping and effectivelywritten, and as well illustrated as Pinkers book with data,charts, and diagrams, it negates widespread sentiments,reinforced by the current economic crisis. There are manychallenges on the horizon, in the security as well as inother fields. But given the past record and acceleratingsuccess during modernity, we should hope that, despiteups and downs, the general trends will endure.

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Zerjal, Tatiana; Yali Xue, Giorgio Bertorelle, R Spencer Wells,Weidong Bao, Suling Zhu, Raheel Qamar, Qasim Ayub,Aisha Mohyuddin, Songbin Fu, Pu Li, Nadira Yuldasheva,Ruslan Ruzibakiev, Jiujin Xu, Qunfang Shu, Ruofu Du,Huanming Yang, Matthew E Hurles, Elizabeth Robinson,Tudevdagva Gerelsaikhan, Bumbein Dashnyam, S QasimMehdi & Chris Tyler-Smith (2003) The genetic legacy

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AZAR GAT, b. 1959, DPhil in History (University ofOxford, 1986); Ezer Weitzman Professor of NationalSecurity, Political Science Department, Tel Aviv University;recent books: War in Human Civilization (OxfordUniversity Press, 2006); Victorious and Vulnerable: WhyDemocracy Won in the 20th Century and How It Is StillImperiled (Hoover Institution, Rowman & Littlefield,2010); Nations: The Long History and Deep Roots of PoliticalEthnicity and Nationalism (Cambridge University Press,2013).

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