The war against terrorism has left many Pakistanis disabled. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS

By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Jun 12 2013 (IPS)

The world – especially the Greater Middle East – has become less peaceful than it was five years ago, according to the 2013 edition of the annual Global Peace Index (GPI) released here Tuesday by the Institute for Economics & Peace (IEP).

Consistent with that trend, the Index also found that global peacefulness declined over the past year, chiefly due to the intensifying civil war in Syria; the rising number of homicides, especially in Mexico, Central America, and several sub-Saharan African countries; and increased military spending as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) in many nations.

Led by Iceland, Denmark and Austria, the Index found that Europe remained comfortably the world’s most peaceful region over the past year, while South Asia was the least peaceful, dragged down by Afghanistan, which ranked 162nd of the 162 countries covered by this year’s Index, and Pakistan, which claimed the 157th spot.

But the Middle East also fell close to the bottom, due to the raging conflict in Syria (160), the uptick in sectarian violence in Iraq (159), continuing conflict in Sudan (157) and Yemen (152). Israel (150) also brought down the region, due its short war with Hamas in November and the rise in its military spending that followed.

This year’s Index also estimated that the impact of violence – as assessed in major part by the costs, such as budgets for defence and internal security — on the global economy in 2012 came to at least 9.5 trillion dollars, or 11 percent of the gross world product — nearly double the value of the world’s total food production.

“Were the world to reduce its expenditure on violence by approximately 50 percent,” according to the Index, “it could repay the debt of the developing world (4.076 billion dollars), provide enough money for the European stability mechanism (900 billion dollars) and fund the additional amount required to achieve the annual cost of the Millennium Development Goals (60 billion dollars).”

And it found a correlation between those countries hardest hit by the 2008 global financial crisis and a decline in their peacefulness compared to those countries that were not as badly affected.

“Cuts to public services and social protection, alongside increasing unemployment, has led to increases in violent demonstrations, violent crime, and perceptions of criminality in many countries,” according to the 101-page report.

The Index, which is based on 22 indicators of the existence or absence of violence or fear of violence, is compiled from a number of universities and institutions that maintain relevant assessments and statistics, ranging from the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) and the World Bank, to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) and Amnesty International.

The indicators include those that are relevant to internal peace, such as the number of homicides and internal security officers and police per 100,000 people and the level of political instability and terrorist activity as assessed by the EIU; and to external peace, such as the size of a country’s military budget, the number of armed-services personnel per 100,000 people, its arms transfers, and the numbers of external conflicts in which it is engaged.

Each indicator is given numerical score which is then weighted on a one-to-five scale according to its relative importance in making an overall assessment of peacefulness.

In addition to Iceland, Denmark, and Austria, the 10 most peaceful countries this year included New Zealand, Switzerland, Japan, Finland, Canada, Sweden, and Belgium. The least peaceful, by contrast, included Afghanistan, Somalia, Syria, Iraq, Sudan, Pakistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Russia, North Korea, and the Central African Republic.

In contrast to Canada, the U.S. ranked 99th — and 31st out of the 34 members of the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) — just above China (100).

The disparity between the two North American neighbours, according to the report, is explained by its high incarceration rate; its large and active military and involvement in foreign conflicts; its high homicide rate; ease of access to small arms; and its military capabilities and budget, which, while currently declining modestly, remains greater than at least a dozen of the world’s next biggest military powers.

Aside from New Zealand (3) and Japan (6), both Australia and Singapore were found to be the most peaceful countries in the Asia-Pacific region. By contrast, the Philippines (129), Thailand (130), Myanmar (140), and North Korea (154) were the least peaceful.

Pyongyang, according to the report, has the world’s highest incarceration rate and by far the greatest proportion of military expenditures relative to GDP (20 percent).

In Latin America and the Caribbean, Uruguay (24), Chile (31), and Costa Rica (40) were rated most peaceful; Honduras (123), Venezuela (128), Mexico (133) and Colombia (147) were found to be the least. Plagued by the drug trade, Honduras has the world’s highest murder rate, while some 20,000 people are believed to have been killed last year in Mexico.

The most peaceful countries in sub-Saharan Africa included Mauritius (21), Botswana (32), and Namibia (46). The continent’s two economic giants, South Africa and Nigeria, ranked 121 and 148, respectively.

The biggest improvements in peacefulness scores over the past year, according to the report, came in Libya (145), Sudan (158), Chad (138), Kazakhstan (78), and India (141), while the most important setbacks included Ukraine (111), Peru (113), Burkina Faso (87), Cote d’Ivoire (151), and Syria (160).

Since 2008, the Index found that 48 countries have become more peaceful while 110 countries have moved in the opposite direction. Regionally, the greatest deterioration has taken place in the countries of the former Soviet Union and, even more so, in the Middle East and North Africa, particularly in the last three years with the onset of the so-called “Arab Spring”.

The greatest improvements over the five years have taken place in Chad, Georgia, and Haiti, according to the Index. At the same time, the greatest deterioration by far has taken place in Syria, followed by Libya (despite the past year’s improvements), Rwanda, Madagascar, Cote d’Ivoire, Yemen, Mexico, Tunisia, Oman and Bahrain.

Among other factors that contributed to the negative trend were the outbreaks of violence associated with the Arab Spring; a deterioration of security in both Afghanistan and Pakistan; the civil wars in Libya and Syria; the escalation of the drug war in Central America; violence in Somalia and the DRC, and unrest caused by recession in a number of European countries, the report said.

This year’s report also featured a Positive Peace Index (PPI) which assessed the strength of attitudes, institutions, and structures of 126 nations – based on 24 indicators divided into eight interdependent categories — to determine their capacity to create and sustain a peaceful environment.

These categories, or “Pillars of Peace”, include equitable distribution of resources, levels of human capital, transparency, levels of corruption and other factors in good governance.

Europe and North America, including the U.S. (19) dominated the top ranks, while Chile (25), Uruguay (32), and Costa Rica (36) placed highest among developing nations. At the opposite end, the DRC was rated lowest, preceded by Chad, Yemen, Central African Republic, Nigeria, Cote d’Ivoire, Uzbekistan, and Pakistan.

The study found a strong correlation between countries that score well on both indices.

*Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.

Countering a two-year trend, the world overall became slightly more peaceful over the past year, according to an annual report released here on Tuesday.

The United States, however, moved down seven places to 88 out of 158, a “fairly low rank (that) largely reflects much higher levels of militarisation and involvement in external conflicts”, according to the Global Peace Index (GPI) 2012.

In Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States has proven itself largely incapable of engaging in a way that leads to peaceful societies. Credit: U.S. Defence Department

The report notes that although U.S. military expenditure “declined sharply” between 1991 and 2000, it “has now returned to Cold War levels”. Worryingly, the GPI finds that higher military expenditure (as a percentage of overall gross domestic product) correlates with lower levels of peace.

The U.S. also continues to score among the highest in the world on the proportion of its population in jail. (A U.S.-specific Peace Index was released in April.)

The report, now in its sixth year, is put out by the Institute for Economics & Peace, a nonpartisan research organisation based here in Washington, in collaboration with the Economist Intelligence Unit. It offers one of the few global looks at overall peacefulness – and even attempts to put a dollar amount on that issue.

This year’s GPI suggests that an entirely peaceful world would have had a positive net impact of some nine trillion dollars.

Looking at 23 indicators across 158 countries, the GPI found “improvements in the overall scores across all regions” except for the Middle East and North Africa. Due to unrest surrounding the Arab Spring – scored negatively according to GPI metrics – for the first time sub-Saharan Africa is not ranked as the world’s least peaceful region.

Indeed, all five of the countries that experienced the greatest falls in rankings were affected by the Arab Spring. Syria experienced the largest deterioration, dropping by 31 places to 147th.

Somalia was once again the least peaceful country, while Iceland was once again the most peaceful, both continuing two-year trends.

At the U.S. unveiling of the report on Tuesday, former State Department official Anne-Marie Slaughter said the objective structure of the GPI helps in figuring out how exactly to define peace.

“The index goes beyond tracking the absence of conflict, beyond the absence of instability,” she said. “Instead, the definition used here is the absence of fear of violence.”

In so doing, Slaughter says, the rankings are able to collapse state and overall security into one category, contrary to traditional policy thinking.

For the first time this year, the GPI includes a new ranking, the Positive Peace Index. Based on the GPI’s first six years of experience, the Positive Peace Index focuses on factors that contribute to a country’s resilience – how countries can maintain a peaceful society.

“This includes the positive work of making life better,” Slaughter says, “not just avoiding what is bad.”

The eight factors that make up the Positive Peace Index – including high levels of education, low levels of corruption, well-functioning government and equitable distribution of resources – are described by Institute for Economics & Peace U.S. policy director Michael Shank as a roadmap for making peace.

According to the report’s researchers, “The imperative of deepening understanding of how to create peace has been highlighted by the recent state-building experiences such as in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

No Nation-builder

Unfortunately, the key player in both of those state-building exercises – the United States – has proven itself largely incapable of engaging in a way that leads to peaceful societies. After nearly a decade of U.S.-led nation-building, the report notes, both Afghanistan and Iraq “are still rooted at the bottom of the GPI”.

According to Emily Cadei, a reporter covering the U.S. Congress who spoke at the report’s presentation, past U.S. engagement overseas bodes particularly poorly for two GPI findings.

First, over the past six years GPI researchers have recorded a fall in external, state-to-state conflicts and a rise in internal violence. Second, as noted earlier, the GPI reports that increased militarisation – for instance, the amount of money a state spends on its military – correlates with lower levels of peace.

“The fact that internal conflicts are rising is bad news because the U.S. is not equipped to deal with such forms of violence – the government continues to lack a consensus on how to do so,” Cadei said on Tuesday.

“Further, the fact that militarisation is negatively correlated with peace has not sunk in yet in the U.S. The overwhelming view in the government is still that peace comes through strength; in Congress, aid is always associated with security.”

Echoing the GPI’s warnings on current U.S. military spending levels, Lawrence Wilkerson, a former U.S. Army colonel and professor of government and public policy, says this mindset goes back to a Cold War paradigm that hasn’t been able to find new footing following the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union.

“The new index shows that the United States needs to be more circumspect on what we try to do in other countries,” Wilkerson said on Tuesday. “For 50 years we’ve proven that we’re damn poor at peace-building.”

Although the GPI reports an overall decrease in military spending around the world as a result of austerity measures over the past year, Wilkerson reports that U.S. military spending may now constitute more than 10 percent of GDP – far higher, he says, than the three percent often cited by the Defence Department.

This does not include the massive and increasing outlay given to private military contractors.

“I’d be lying if I said the military-industrial complex doesn’t have significant impact on U.S. foreign policy,” Wilkerson says.

“If you want to completely reduce a country by force, the U.S. can do that. But anything after that, the U.S. has shown that it simply cannot do.”