Thursday, 20 Sep 2012 - PRIO, Hausmanns gate 7
The historian Azar Gat will give this year's Peace Address at PRIO, speaking over the following:
Peace for Our Time?
Contrary to popular assumptions, human fighting and fatalities have been sharply decreasing. There are two major steps in this decline.
The first was the emergence of the state-leviathan thousands of years ago, which greatly reduced in-group violent mortality but also, less recognized, out-group war fatalities. The second is the process of modernization since 1815, which sharply reduced the occurrence and fatalities of war through a combination of rocketing economic growth and commercial interdependence, a parallel explosion in affluence and comfort, the liberal-democratic peace, nuclear deterrence and the sexual revolution.
Contrary to widespread belief, it is not that war has become more lethal and destructive; rather it is primarily peace that has become more profitable. At the same time, the specter of war continues to haunt the parts of the world less affected by the above developments, and the threat of unconventional terror is real and troubling.
This is a preliminary announcement: More information will follow.