The twenty-first century will probably be the most peaceful hundred years in human history, according to Christopher Fettweis, Tulane University political scientist and author of Dangerous Times?: The International Politics of Great Power Peace. He considers ongoing conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other global hotspots exceptions to—rather than rules of—modern geopolitics. Rick Docksai, a staff editor for THE FUTURIST, recently spoke with Dr. Fettweis on why he is hopeful that war is becoming a thing of the past.
CHRISTOPHER FETTWEIS: Sometimes hope and good news doesn’t sell. It’s easier to say everything is going to hell. The fact is that we’re better off than we’ve ever been. The last decade of the twentieth century was the most peaceful decade we’ve ever had.
THE FUTURIST: And this past year ended with Russia and the United States ratifying a new START treaty to mandate reductions in their stockpiles of nuclear weapons. It’s safe to say that a more peaceful world would be a world that has no use for nuclear weapons. What hope can we take that the 2010 START agreement signals a new trend of global disarmament?
CHRISTOPHER FETTWEIS: I’m not sure that START really hails the beginning of a new era. The disarmament that the new START treaty calls for is going to be happening in Russia already. And in the United States, it doesn’t have much meat. Realistically, nuclear weapons are much more likely to be gathering dust no matter where they are. Whether it’s going to be decisive in ushering in a new more peaceful world, I'm skeptical.
Nuclear weapons are just not as relevant to state behavior as people think. They don’t affect how countries behave too much. Once you have the nuclear weapons, what do you do with them?
We hear a lot about Iran one day using nukes. Iran wouldn’t give them to Hezbollah. With nuclear forensics people could tell right away where they came from. People say they could use them to bully their neighbors like the United Arab Emirates, but the United Arab Emirates could easily call their bluff: They know that Iran is not actually going to use the nuclear weapons on them. But overall it’s nice to see the number of nuclear weapons coming down.
THE FUTURIST: Some skeptics of disarmament would argue that nuclear weapons make the world more peaceful, since nations are much more leery of going to war on account of them. But you’re overall not too concerned about them, or worried that if they disappeared, nations would fight each other more often?
CHRISTOPHER FETTWEIS: I don’t think they cause problems. I think they're more a symptom of problems.
Some people give nuclear weapons entire credit for the recent great power peace. In my mind, nuclear weapons are just a part of it. It’s the ideas that have evolved. Nuclear weapons had a role in changing the ideas. But to the extent that they play a pacifying role, we may cut back and have other countries cut back and not fear major repercussions.
There is not a big momentum for proliferation, Iran and North Korea notwithstanding. There are a lot of countries that could develop nuclear weapons but don’t seem to want them. In my mind, it's one piece of an overall puzzle.
THE FUTURIST: So if we gave up nukes we wouldn’t suddenly have more wars?
CHRISTOPHER FETTWEIS: I don’t think so at all. Generally arms are a symptom of insecurity. Nations cut their arms based on assessments of their security. Europe has had multilateral disarmament for decades. They don’t even plan to go to war anymore, and they have virtually no offensive capability. That's a symptom of increased security and better relations. One way to know that relations were deteriorating would be that they started arming again. I think in the course of the next few decades, we'll see more countries disarming more often.
THE FUTURIST: Especially in hard economic times like these, when governments want to cut back on expenditures, it seems to me that nuclear stockpiles would be a pretty sensible thing to cut. If you’re not going to use them any time soon, and they’re just going to sit in missile silos, then why keep spending billions of dollars a year on them?
CHRISTOPHER FETTWEIS: It’s cheaper to keep them in mothballs, and if something happens you can roll them back out. It’s an insurance.
The United States is one of the few countries that acts like a new war is on the horizon. Hardly anybody else acts that way. Even China, whom a lot of people think is the United States’ next big rival, we don’t see them rushing to build up their military capability. They don’t seem to feel the need for it. They don’t feel like the United States is going to push them around or invade them.
And that’s new. We don’t seem to take any solace from the fact that we don’t see big wars anymore. Earlier in history, people were fighting wars all the time.
THE FUTURIST: Not too long ago, people in the United States feared that China would invade Taiwan, and that maybe the United States would get dragged into a war over the island’s future.
CHRISTOPHER FETTWEIS: As times have gone by, relations between China and Taiwan have strengthened. Investments across the strait have increased. Tensions flare up every once in a while. If Taiwan pushed for independence, people in China might want to react. But it’s hard for me to imagine a big war over it.
I think we can be looking at a much more peaceful century—definitely a more peaceful than the twentieth century, which was a disaster. That includes Africa. People’s perception is it’s spiraling into chaos But Africa is more peaceful than we’ve known it to be in all African history.
THE FUTURIST: Corporations have become much more international in scope. Most of the large ones have their offices and factories distributed throughout many corners of the globe. This means that a new war somewhere could be more likely to put their assets or properties in the line of fire. Hence major corporations might be expected to press public officials to not resort to armed combat unless absolutely necessary. This is good for peace, but it makes me wonder about the influence of business on the political process. How have businesses’ political influence evolved in the last few decades? And what is it evolving toward?
CHRISTOPHER FETTWEIS: Investment flees from any sign of instability. It’s sort of a popular perception that big business wants to fuel wars. Some businesses benefit, but the vast majority don’t. Investors flee from the slightest hint of instability. As soon as something starts happening, people pull their investments out. That’s another major reason why governments will want to settle their differences peacefully. In an era of fast-moving money, they’ve stacked the deck for peace.
I don’t know where the relationship of businesses to the political process is heading. There are places where business interests and government interests are synonymous, but I don’t know about the future relationship. But I do think that it’s hard to imagine too many times that business interests will push states to fight. It’s not a situation of the arms manufacturers today pushing for war. You don’t have Lockheed Martin or Boeing making belligerent pressures. Or Halliburton. The United States didn’t go to Iraq to make Halliburton rich. Overall business people want to make money. They’re not out to conquer land. They want to get rich. It's harder to do that if people are fighting.
THE FUTURIST: As your data shows, China and Russia are not potential rivals to the United States now. Neither Eurasian giant has the military capacity for it. But a lot of observers expect the Chinese and Russian economies to gain a lot more clout this century; they are among the “BRIC” countries, after all. China may even eclipse the United States in GDP. If China or Russia amassed that much economic or political capital, presumably they would be less intimidated by the United States and feel less dependent on U.S. goodwill. In such a case, perhaps they might see less to lose from going to war with their neighbors. What do you think? If you judge it unlikely, why so?
CHRISTOPHER FETTWEIS: A lot of people think that that is the future. Wars are caused when you have uneven growth rates. If Athens is growing and gaining, and Sparta isn't, it makes the Spartans nervous. The Chinese are growing, and people worry about it. Just like people worried when the Russians invaded Georgia, but nothing much came of it since then.
For the United States to go to war with Russia or China, you would need for there to be conflicting national interests. And there isn’t a lot you can point to where the United States and Russia or China have clashing interests. It’s difficult to imagine a lot of fighting over offshore oil, for instance, because there’s too much to sabotage. It's hard to figure what the interests would be. We don’t want to conquer China, and they don’t want to conquer us. We don’t have too many flashpoints.
And it’s hard to see the Chinese expecting to gain economically from a war. They rely on exports, and that would come to a screeching halt if there were any serious problems with the United States. If there is a war, they can't export. It would be the end of their economic miracle.
THE FUTURIST: Maybe they wouldn’t want to invade the United States. But would South Korea or another one of their neighbors be fair game?
If they saw it in their interests to invade South Korea. But it's hard to see now how their ruling South Korea would be better for them than carrying on economic activity with South Korea like they do now. It's hard to see how destroying Seoul would put them ahead.
How would they possibly benefit from doing that? Unless the South Koreans were provoking them, and how would they? We could come up with scenarios, but how likely would they be? For the first time in human history, it seems unlikely that there will be major war.
THE FUTURIST: In the next few years, the United States will end its military oversight of Afghanistan and Iraq. We can hope that the two fledgling democracies’ civil governments will prove strong enough to withstand their armed insurgent enemies, but it’s obvious that they might possibly not. In that case, Afghanistan and/or Iraq could fall back into chaos. What can we do in that situation to make sure that a new regional war does not come to pass as a result?
CHRISTOPHER FETTWEIS: We can’t determine for sure if Iraq will implode. But the odds of it drawing everybody else in seem low to me. People worry about the Iranians coming into Iraq. But the Iranians are more hated in Iraq than the Americans are.
In the nineteenth century, power vacuums used to draw powers in. Nowadays they don't. Countries tend to stay away from them. They don’t want to even send troops into peacekeeping missions. I don’t think invading Iraq has made us safer or less safe. It's just been a mess.
Afghanistan is the same thing. I don’t think it matters much to U.S. security either way. They may well end up having their own civil war. But will it spill over into other countries? Probably not.
We hear that Iran is a threat to the region. But the Iranians have never shown any sign of wanting to attack any of their neighbors. They don’t want to rule Iraq. They don’t want to extend into Pakistan. They're not going to “wipe Israel off the map,” because they know it would be the last thing their government ever does. It's not a good outcome if the Iranians get nuclear weapons, but it won't be the worst thing in the world.
THE FUTURIST: Somalia bears some similarities to Afghanistan—an organized Islamist militia threatens to seize control of the government. How concerned should we be that a Taliban-like coup might take place in Somalia, as in 1990s Afghanistan, and bring on a new regional war or series of wars?
CHRISTOPHER FETTWEIS: I think the concern of an Islamist takeover is less of a concern in Somalia than in Yemen. Somalia is more or less ungovernable right now. It would be hard for Islamists to take over and launch any kind of effective attack on their neighbors. There is no functional central government or armed forces right now.
In Somalia, it's been anarchy and then tribalized governments. Over time, regions of Somalia put together governments. Somalia was largely put together as a post colonial state made of several states hobbled together. The northern part would like to break off and have its own country. The rest is either under the thumb of warlords or it’s under tribal governments. That's a problem for its people because government does supply a lot of goods and services. But Somalia's weakness has not exported a large amount of international terrorism just yet. If I were their neighbors, I wouldn’t be worrying too much about it.
Yemen may implode faster than we think, and it could become a problem. They’re running out of water, for example. But the latest numbers I've heard on Al Qaida in the country is about 100 fighters, and maybe another thousand that are sympathetic. A hundred fighters, no matter how hard-core they are, are not going to be able to take over a country of 20 million. They’re not going to engender any major force that’s going to worry their neighbors, though they may continue to export lone nuts.
The worst thing we could do would be to send troops into Yemen. Sending in any military force would exacerbate the problems it already has. We have to let the local people work it out, and if they want help it will be available.
THE FUTURIST: So we’ll keep seeing civil conflicts in parts of the globe, but wars crossing national borders will largely be a thing of the past?
CHRISTOPHER FETTWEIS: It’s becoming very rare. And even those ethnic conflicts and civil wars are becoming rarer. Incidents of human rights violations are on the decline, and this is at a time when we're adding more people than ever before. We have three times the people on the planet that we had before World War I, and there are fewer people dying, and human rights violations are down.
Life is better politically for the majority of people on the planet. A higher percentage live in peace than ever before, and that’s likely to continue.