Calculating the risk annually, the chance of seeing 0 major wars between 19 was. If the rate of conflict hasn’t changed and wars are independent, we can use a binomial distribution to roughly estimate the probability of seeing a certain number of major wars in a given time period. Over the last few centuries, the world has experienced about two Great Power wars each century. Great Power conflict has probably become somewhat less likely The constant risk hypothesis I then discuss their implications for the risk of war we face before 2100. In what follows, I discuss two competing hypotheses about whether the risk of war has changed after WWII. This is despite the fact that I put more credence in the hypothesis that war has become less likely in the post-WWII period than I do in the hypothesis that the risk of war has not changed. Third, I think the chance of an extinction-level war is about 1%.Second, I think the chance of a huge war as bad or worse than WWII is on the order of 10%.First, I estimate that the chance of direct Great Power conflict this century is around 45%.These are difficult questions and my estimates have a lot of uncertainty. I then discuss the likelihood that such a conflict, should it occur, would escalate massively. I first consider how likely any Great Power war is considering the base rate of international conflict. In this post I discuss the likelihood that the Long Peace continues throughout the 21st century. It has been contrasted with the earlier 20th century and the 19th century. This period is sometimes referred to as the Long Peace. In the seven decades since, there have been proxy wars, near-misses, arms races, threats, and harsh rhetoric, but no direct conflict. The last war in which soldiers from competing Great Powers fought against each other was the Korean War, which ended in 1953. ĭuring this time, though, the Great Powers managed to avoid coming into direct conflict. The Middle East was rocked by a series of deadly clashes: measured by intensity (deaths divided by the population of the countries involved), the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s was the third bloodiest war of the last 200 years. Civil wars and wars of independence were fought across Africa, South America, and Asia. The second half of the 20th century was hardly a peaceful era. Thanks to Founders Pledge for support during the research phase of this work, and John Halstead and Max Daniel for feedback on earlier drafts. Part 1 presented my model of Great Power conflict and existential risk. This is part 2 in a planned three-part series on Great Power conflict.
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