Nice to note. Good to be optimistic. But there are some striking lacunae: nothing there, either, about the war/conflict in Zaire/Congo (again hundreds of thousands). If a list includes Uganda as a place of war in the past, then there are many, many, many other such wars taking place right now on the planet. The Philippines; Indonesia (still); Border regions with Colombia; what’s up with Chechnya? A glossy portrait that glosses over maybe?

Undoubtedly, democracies’ abound more and more helping prevent conflict or minimise/shorten it when it arises. But I am not so convinced that the democracies we have are strong enough, in most cases mature enough, to withstand the forces of more attractive, convenient ideologies (of which, there are many around, and many which are seemingly very attractive to the species). And it really only takes one. Only one such ideology to take hold for the inter-state conflict that indeed has been absent for so long, to arrive on us.