A few days ago the International Institute for Strategic Studies released the 2023 edition of its Armed Conflict Survey:
The Armed Conflict Survey 2023 continues to capture a world dominated by increasingly intractable conflicts and armed violence amid a proliferation of actors, complex and overlapping motives, global influences and accelerating climate change.
This is not really accurate. Here's a modified version of their global map of military deployments:
I've done two things. First, I erased Africa and the Middle East. Second, I redrew the endless Kashmir standoff to represent its true size.
There's one major conflict left (Ukraine) and a few modest ones. That's it. Aside from Vladimir Putin's adventure in Ukraine, the world is basically pretty peaceful outside of Africa and the Middle East.
Needless to say, this doesn't mean that Africa and the Middle East are unimportant. It's only to state more accurately exactly where the world does and doesn't have serious conflict. The vast, vast majority of the world has very little at all.
The world is pretty peaceful. With notably rare exceptions.
Throughout its history, the United States has been free of political violence. With notably rare exceptions.
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TFG and the Rs want us liberals to promote the narrative that everything is terrible. We should stop doing Fox News' job for them, IMO.
Apart from that Mrs Lincoln, how was the play? …
Our African & Middle Eastern Cousin.
If you ignore all the place with violence, things look pretty peaceful. But I think that ignores the point.
He also ignores cartel violence in Mexico for example. Or Venezuela's military build up on the border with Guyana. Or the tensions the idiots Serbs are stoking with the less stupid but also bellicose Albanians that almost flared into shooting and not at all resolved.
+1
Relatively speaking?
This might be this blog's worst post yet.
....did the CAR-T procedure also reset your brain? WTF?
I don't understand why you've started removing data that is contrary to your point. Please explain.
setting aside robb elementary, uvalde has always been a very peaceful place
looks like kevin's decided there aren't enough trolls here so he's decided to troll his own site
I’ve been reading Kevin’s various blogs for something like 20 years. This made me unsubscribe from him in my RSS reader.
And this point he seems to have just become a contrarian shitposter.
And George W. Bush kept us free from terrorist attack, with one exception. Or maybe two.
"The vast, vast majority of the world has very little at all."
Africa plus the middle east is around 25% of the earth's land surface. Leaving aside completely what is the rationale for removing anything from this dataset, 75% is not a "vast, vast majority". Additionally, "very little at all" is rather subjective and unquantitfied and lacks any context for evaluating the use of the phrase "increasingly intractable conflicts".
I think you are largely among friends here, Kevin, so a quick retraction and mea culpa is a fine course of action.
75% is a super majority so overwhelming is an accurate comparrison but he's still wrong.
For example Ukraine isn't fighting itself and Russia is 100% clear despite numerous drone attacks and several large incursions into Russia by Ukrainian paramilitaries. At least label the border Oblasts as conflict areas!
75% is an overwhelming super majority in the context of a US political issue. But in other contexts? Not so much I think. (YMMV, irrelevant quibble, carry on...)
Kevin's silly removal of a third of the world aside, we continue to experience unprecedented peace on a global level, even with the recent upticks.
Geez people. Kevin’s just pointing out that a disproportionate amount of the world’s violence is confined to two geographic regions.
The size of the Myanmar conflict is rather unclear. It doesn't help that there's very little outside reporting, and reading most of that it's easy for your eyes to glaze over because all the names are so unfamiliar.
The disruption of pretty much all border trade seems significant, to the extent that it's becoming impossible to get gasoline in Yangon over the past week. (As a large port, you'd think tankers can still get in, but I assume there are various other issues in play, like maybe refineries can't get parts?) Even things like municipal transport is shutting down.
Diesel is still available, but who knows for how long?
Electricity shutdowns have changed from an hour or two every few weeks to 8 hour a day.
I assume conditions are similar in Mandalay. In Naypyidaw who knows? Presumably they will be first in line for whatever is available. But no trucks coming over the border is an on-going big deal.
All of which makes this a somewhat different sort of war from the others – more like a siege than a battle. Those opposing the military seem (by design? by luck?) to have hit on a strategy, deny every border, that may be slow, but may also actually work, without allowing the military's control of things like tanks and plans to be of much value. Fabius Cunctator 2.0!
A point regarding data visualization: if one wants to do something like this and wants to try to be visually honest, then one should probably use a map projection that does not make landmasses of the northern latitudes appear vastly larger than they actually are.
Next, we need to overlay that with a map showing when lead was phased out of gasoline for each country.