Is the World really more dangerous and unstable? - UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace thinks so

On the February 24th, 05:00 Kyiv time, Russian tanks rolled onto the streets of Ukrainian cities, ending peace in Europe since the Cold War over two decades ago. Despite the earlier horrors of Bosnia and Kosovo, many on the continent believed they would not see military conflict again.

In a briefing last week, the UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said that the world has become a "much more dangerous and unstable" place. As as artillery shells continue firing one year later, it is hard not to immediately agree.

But Mr. Wallace fails to see the bigger picture. Whilst tragedies of Ukraine must not be ignored, we cannot speak of the war without also speaking of the Western powers’ response to it. For is it not these very weeks where NATO members have committed to sending fresh waves of armaments to Ukraine? Weapons like the British Challenger II and the German Leopard II, which Zelensky himself has said “will make the [sic] victory”? The Western response to the Ukraine War demonstrates a quiet reality of modern international relations: that the world today is the most peaceful and stable it has ever seen.

The defining features of this era are seen in: 1) the cooperation and integration between nations, and 2) the overstated role for new technologies in destabilising the world system.

First, it is no secret that globalisation — particularly in the EU — has grown rapidly. Nations no longer trade just consumer goods and electronics — they trade culture, ideas, and crucially, diplomatic relations. We have seen a rise in what Karl Deutsch (some 60 years prior) named ‘security communities’; as common values appear between trading states, so too institutions begin to mirror, and a shared ‘way of life’ emerges. This theory (dubbed ‘EU Peace Theory’) has been used to explain integration all across the world. One need looks no further than Germany, who went from belligerent of WWII to enthusiastic partner of economic and diplomatic cooperation across Western Europe, in just a few decades.

Some argue that a ‘long peace’ — the decline of both inter-state wars, and casualties in them — is mistaken, and instead is a result of the changing nature of warfare. Once again, we cannot only look at the event, but also the wider story. Here, the drop in casualties and inter-state war is indeed a result of the decline in traditional, all-out war — but this is mostly because states also engage less in warfare which results in industrial-levels of casualties. Whilst has been a rise in MIDs (militarised-interstate-disputes), terrorism, and small-scale civil conflict, this rise has not matched the fall in overall warfare and casualties and pose a much smaller threat to global stability. This change is due to greater integration, as well as the proliferation of nuclear weapons across major powers —implying a much greater cost to engaging in all-out war (pushing many states to rationally engage instead in small-scale proxy wars or MIDs). Thus, even if warfare has changed, it cannot explain the overarching decline in military conflict and instability.

Secondly, it has been a feature of news cycles and academics to stress the assurgency of cyber-attacks and digital warfare threatening international stability; attacks which could target financial information, government records, and even healthcare systems. Despite this, there is little evidence that this technology has, or ever will, pose a significant threat to global stability. Again, in the present war, it was feared — particularly after the 2015 Podesta email hack— that the Russian state possessed the digital capacity to take down the Ukrainian government. Yet, this was not the case; on the contrary, the Ukraine war has been a traditional war in every sense (even with its own tanks, trenches, and artillery bombardments). Though technologies like the Javelin missile system have played a role, there is no case that new technology has fundamentally changed warfare in the modern era, nor that it has made the world a more dangerous or unstable place.

With all that is going on in the world today, it is easy to witness the events themselves and draw conclusions about the state of global safety. Yet only by understanding how the international community deals with these threats, can we peel back the quiet reality of a secure and peaceful system, resilient to the global warfare and instability of the past.