48. “mankind has become less warlike”: Richardson, 1960, p. 167.
49. Other datasets point to same conclusion: Sorokin, 1957, p. 564: “As in the data presented here is nothing to support the claim of disappearance of war in the past, so is there nothing to support the claim, in spite of the exceptionally high figures for the twentieth century, that there has been (or will be) any steady trend toward increase of war. No, the curve fluctuates, and that is all.” Singer & Small, 1972, p. 201: “Is war on the increase, as many scholars and laymen of our generation have been inclined to believe? The answer would seem to be a very unambiguous negative.” Luard, 1986, p. 67: “The overall frequency of war [from 1917 to 1986] was not very different from that in the previous age [1789 to 1917]. . . . The average amount of war per state, the more significant measure, is now lower if the comparison is made with the entire period 1789–1914. But if the comparison is made with 1815–1914 alone there is little decline.”
50. Fewer but more lethal wars: Richardson, 1960, p. 142.
51. Technically they are not “proportional,” since there is usually a nonzero intercept, but are “linearly related.”
52. Power-law distribution in the Correlates of War Dataset: Cederman, 2003.
53. Plotting power-law distributions: Newman, 2005.
54. Power-law distributions, theory and data: Mitzenmacher, 2004, 2006; Newman, 2005.
55. Zipf’s laws: Zipf, 1935.
56. Word type and token frequencies: Francis & Kucera, 1982.
57. Things with power-law distributions: Hayes, 2002; Newman, 2005.
58. Examples of normal and power-law distributions: Newman, 2005.
59. Newman presented the percentages of cities with an exact population size, rather than in a range of population sizes, to keep the units commensurable in the linear and logarithmic graphs (personal communication, February 1, 2011).
60. Causes of war: Levy & Thompson, 2010; Vasquez, 2009.
61. Mechanisms that generate power-law distributions: Mitzenmacher, 2004; Newman, 2005.
62. Power laws for deadly quarrels versus cities: Richardson, 1960, pp. 154–56.
63. Self-organized criticality and war sizes: Cederman, 2003; Roberts & Turcotte, 1998.
64. War of Attrition game: Maynard Smith, 1982, 1988; see also Dawkins, 1976/1989.
65. Loss aversion: Kahneman & Renshon, 2007; Kahneman & Tversky, 1979, 1984; Tversky & Kahneman, 1981. Sunk costs in nature: Dawkins & Brockmann, 1980.
66. More lethal wars last longer: Richardson, 1960, p. 130; Wilkinson, 1980, pp. 20–30.
67. Nonlinear increase in the costliness of longer wars: The death tolls of the 79 wars in the Correlates of War Inter-State War Dataset (Sarkees, 2000) are better predicted by an exponential function of duration (which accounts for 48 percent of the variance) than by the durations themselves (which account for 18 percent of the variance).
68. Weber’s Law for perceived deaths: Richardson, 1960, p. 11.
69. Rediscovery of Weber’s Law for perceived deaths: Slovic, 2007.
70. Attrition with sunk costs generates a power-law distribution: Wilkinson, 1980, pp. 23–26; Weiss, 1963; Jean-Baptiste Michel, personal communication.
71. 80:20 rules: Newman, 2005.
72. Interpolation of small quarrels: Richardson, 1960, pp. 148–50.
73. Homicides in the United States: Fox & Zawitz, 2007; with data for the years 2006–2009 extrapolated as 17,000 per year, the estimated total is 955,603.
74. Homicides outnumber war-related deaths: Krug et al., 2002, p. 10; see also note 76.
75. Wars less deadly than disease: Richardson, 1960, p. 153.
76. Wars still less deadly than disease: In 2000, according to the WHO
World report on violence and health
, there were 520,000 homicides and 310,000 “war-related deaths.” With approximately 56 million deaths from all causes, this works out to an overall violent death rate of around 1.5 percent. The figure cannot be compared directly to Richardson’s since his estimates for the 1820–1952 period were radically less complete.
77. 80:2 rule: Based on the 94 wars of magnitude 4–7 for which Richardson had plottable death data.
78. Great powers: Levy, 1983; Levy et al., 2001.
79. A few great powers fight a lot of wars: Levy, 1983, p. 3.
81. Great power wars kill the most people: Levy, 1983, p. 107.
82. Data from last quarter of the 20th century: Correlates of War Inter-State War Dataset, 1816–1997 (v3.0),
http://www.correlatesofwar.org/
, Sarkees, 2000.
83. Recall that Levy excluded colonial wars, unless a great power was fighting with an insurgent movement against the colonial government.
84. Short wars in the late 20th century: Correlates of War Inter-State War Dataset, 1816–1997 (v3.0),
http://www.correlatesofwar.org/
, Sarkees, 2000; and for the Kosovo war, PRIO Battle Deaths Dataset, 1946–2008, Version 3.0,
http://www.prio.no/CSCW/Datasets/Armed-Conflict/Battle-Deaths/
, Gleditsch et al., 2002; Lacina & Gleditsch, 2005.
85. Conflict Catalog: Brecke, 1999, 2002; Long & Brecke, 2003.
86. Definition of “Europe”: Though I have stuck with the coding scheme of the Conflict Catalog, other datasets code these countries as Asian (see, for example, Human Security Report Project, 2008).
87. The same data plotted on a logarithmic scale look something like figure 5–15, reflecting the power-law distribution in which the largest wars (those involving the great powers, most of which are European) account for the majority of the deaths. But because of the massive decline in deaths in European wars after 1950, the logarithmic scale magnifies the small bounce in the last quarter of the century.
88. Conflict Catalog and pre-1400 European Conflict Catalog: Long & Brecke, 2003; Brecke, 1999, 2002.
89. Obscure wars: None of these were mentioned in the thousand or so responses to a survey in which I asked one hundred Internet users to name as many wars as they could think of.
90. War as part of the natural order of things: Howard, 2001, pp. 12, 13.
91. Casualties didn’t weigh heavily: Luard, 1986, p. 240.
92. Sex life of European kings: Betzig, 1986, 1996a, 2002.
93. Overlordship: Luard, 1986, p. 85.
94. Royal pissing contests: Luard, 1986, pp. 85–86, 97–98, 105–6.
95. Habsburgs:
Black lamb and grey falcon
(1941), quoted in Mueller, 1995, p. 177.
96. Biology and dynasties: Betzig, 1996a, 1996b, 2002.
97. Killing people who worshipped the wrong God: Luard, 1986, pp. 42–43.
98. Religion preempts diplomacy: Mattingly, 1958, p. 154, quoted in Luard, 1986, p. 287.
99. Declining number of political units in Europe: Wright, 1942, p. 215; Gat, 2006, p. 456.
100. Military revolution: Gat, 2006; Levy & Thompson, 2010; Levy et al., 2001; Mueller, 2004a.
101. Soldiers and outlaws: Tilly, 1985, p. 173.
102. Take the money and run: Mueller, 2004a, p. 17.
103. Military evolution: Gat, 2006, pp. 456–80.
104. Napoleon and total war: Bell, 2007a.
105. Relatively pacific 18th century: Brecke, 1999; Luard, 1986, p. 52; Bell, 2007a, p. 5. Bell’s “performing poodles” quote is from Michael Howard.
106. Ideology, nationalism, and Enlightenment: Howard, 2001.
107. Fervid Napoleonic France: Bell, 2007a.
108. Disfigurement of Enlightenment: Bell, 2007a, p. 77.
109. Dialectic between Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment: Howard, 2001, p. 38.
110. Concert of Europe as product of Enlightenment: Howard, 2001, p. 41; see also Schroeder, 1994.
111. Nations must fight their way into existence: Howard, 2001, p. 45.
112. Conservatives and nationalists merged: Howard, 2001, p. 54.
113. Hegelian nationalism: Luard, 1986, p. 355.
114. Marxism and nationalism: Glover, 1999.
115. Self-determination as dynamite: Quoted in Moynihan, 1993, p. 83.
116. War is good: Quotes are from Mueller, 1989, pp. 38–51.
117. Wallowing in materialism: Quoted in Mueller, 1995, p. 187.
118. Peace is bad: Quotes are from Mueller, 1989, pp. 38–51.
119. Moral equivalent of war: James, 1906/1971.
120. Belloc wanted war: Mueller, 1989, p. 43.
121. Valéry wanted war: Bell, 2007a, p. 311.
122. Sherlock Holmes wanted war: Gopnik, 2004.
123. Why the Great War happened: Ferguson, 1998; Gopnik, 2004; Lebow, 2007; Stevenson, 2004.
124. 8.5 million: Correlates of War Inter-State War Dataset, Sarkees, 2000; 15 million: White, in press.
125. Anti-Enlightenment ideologies in Germany, Italy, and Japan: Chirot, 1995; Chirot & McCauley, 2006.
126. Cold War as containment of communist expansionism: Mueller, 1989, 2004a.
127. 19th-century peace movements: Howard, 2001; Kurlansky, 2006; Mueller, 1989, 2004a; Payne, 2004.
128. Ridiculing pacifists: Mueller, 1989, p. 30.
129. Shavian accompaniment: Quoted in Wearing, 2010, p. viii.
130. What Angell really wrote: Ferguson, 1998; Gardner, 2010; Mueller, 1989.
131. War no longer justified: Luard, 1986, p. 365.
132.
All Quiet on the Western Front
: Remarque, 1929/1987, pp. 222–25.
133. A mountain . . . cannot offend a mountain: Remarque, 1929/1987, p. 204.
134. War aversion among most Germans in the 1930s: Mueller, 1989, 2004a.
135. Alternatives to Hitler would not have started World War II: Turner, 1996.
136. Hitler’s demonic genius: Mueller, 1989, p. 65. Hitler manipulating the world: Mueller, 1989, p 64.
137. We’re doomed: See Mueller, 1989, p. 271, notes 2 and 4, and p. 98.
138. Morgenthau on World War III: Quoted in Mueller, 1995, p. 192.
139. Cold War superpowers stayed out of each other’s way: This included Korea, where the Soviet Union provided only limited air support to its North Korean ally, and never closer than sixty miles from the battlefront.
140. Longest great power peace since the Roman Empire: Mueller, 1989, pp. 3–4; Gaddis, 1989.
142. No interstate wars in Western Europe: Correlates of War Inter-State War Dataset (v3.0), Sarkees, 2000.
143. No interstate wars in Eastern Europe: Correlates of War Inter-State War Dataset (v3.0), Sarkees, 2000. This follows the CoW definition of
interstate war
as a conflict with one thousand casualties in a year and members of the interstate system on each side. The NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 is not included in the current CoW databases, which end in 1997; the PRIO Dataset counts it as an internationalized intrastate (civil) war, because NATO entered in support of the Kosovo Liberation Army. Note that Levy’s criteria would include it as a war involving a great power.
144. No interstate wars between developed countries: Mueller, 1989, pp. 4 and 271, note 5.
145. The decline of conquest since 1948: An exhaustive review by the political scientist Mark Zacher (Zacher, 2001) lists seven: India-Goa (1961), Indonesia–West Irian (1961–62), China–Northeast Frontier (1962), Israel-Jerusalem/West Bank/Gaza/Golan (1967), North Vietnam–South Vietnam (1975), Iran–Strait of Hormuz Islands (1971), and China–Paracel Islands (1974). A few other successful aggressions resulted in minor changes or in the establishment of new political entities.
146. Greatest transfer of power in history: Sheehan, 2008, pp. 167–71.
147. No more colonial or imperial wars: Human Security Centre, 2005; Human Security Report Project, 2008.
148. No states eliminated: Zacher, 2001.
149. Twenty-two states occupied in first half of 20th century, none in second half: Russett & Oneal, 2001, p. 180.
150. Danes roaring for a fight: Mueller, 1989, p. 21.
151. Longest period of great power peace: Levy et al., 2001, p. 18.
152. Chance of one great power war in sixty-five years: In 1991 Levy had to exclude the Korean War to calculate that the probability of the number of observed great power wars since the end of World War II was just 0.005 (see Levy et al., 2001, note 11). Two decades later we don’t have to make that judgment call to get massive statistical significance.