Why there won't be a World War this century
War is a young person's game, and the world is ageing.
Next year is the anniversary of the end of World War I, with it's chemical warfare and millions of dead. In death toll, it was worse than World War II.
We've been haunted ever since by the thought of another world war.
It won't happen because the world is ageing
Three profound things happened after WW2 - the world economy started to strengthen and more people came out of poverty than ever before, women started to get educated worldwide and they started to earn good money, and modern contraception became widely available.
People used to have a lot of children because their children were the ones who looked after them in old age. If you had eight kids, maybe five would survive to adulthood, and they'd take turns looking after you. Once the world economy improved though, people were able to save for their own retirement. So they didn't need to have so many children, one or maybe two would suffice, and they were now having children out of love, rather than as a form of pension.
These children then became the most cherished in history. There are only 24 hours in a day and parents can lavish a lot of time on just two children, that they can't when they have six kids. Grandparents too these days have a close relationship with their few grandkids. They can communicate with them via phone, email and skype the way they couldn't a century ago. And they can develop one-to-one relationships with them the way grandparents a century ago with twenty or more grandchildren couldn't.
The result is that parents and grandparents frown upon their children being sent to war and will force any govt that is war-mongering to back down. We saw the first taste of this at the end of the 1970's when voters forced politicians to abandon the idea of conscripting the young to go to war the way they had done with the Vietnam and Korean wars.
Here is the change in the population pyramid for Switzerland between 1900 and 2000
Most of western Europe and the United States and Canada have similar changes.
In 1900, there were a lot of testosterone-charged young men, eager to test themselves in war, their heads filled with visions of glory and derring-do. The cohort that would have been their parents and grandparents were small, too small to shout convincingly at the govt and prevent their precious off-spring being sent off to war.
By 2000, things had changed, the old now outnumbered the young. They simply refuse to vote to allow their precious young to be sacrificed in big wars, no matter how much the hot-headed youngsters want to fight. "I've spent decades raising them, you'll send them to war over my dead body!"
It is not just Europe and North America that has this population pattern - in the Far East, Japan, South Korea, China, the pattern of old out-numbering the young is even more pronounced. It is the same in places like Mexico and Argentina.
The only part of the world with a demographic profile similar to Europe on the eve of WW1 is the Middle East
Here is the population pyramid for Afghanistan:
It looks a lot like Europe prior to 1914. Lots of hot-headed young men who are violent and eager to wage war. Very few old people to outvote and thwart them.
It shouldn't be a surprise that this part of the world is plagued by war and warlords.
However, if the rest of the world doesn't get drawn into Middle East wars, there will be no World War
The only way the strife in the Middle East will turn into a World War, is if the rest of the world gets sucked in, to take sides. The smartest action should be to stay neutral and leave them to exhaust themselves.
Already some Arab countries have falling birth-rates - Iran's is now similar to the west's in the 1970's, it is at below replacement rate. As countries in Africa and the Middle East get more prosperous, and birthrates fall, the propensity for war should decrease naturally too.
All we have to do is wait for the demographics to play out and for them to become aging societies too.