Is the decline of war a delusion? The long peace phenomenon and the modernization peace–the explanation that refutes or subsumes all others

The wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, and the China challenge, revive the question of whether the world is becoming more peaceful. Realists’ claim that we told you so compares oranges with cabbage. Today’s world is divided into a “zone of peace”, encompassing all the developed countries, and a “zone of war”, comprising less developed countries. Within the former, interstate wars, civil wars, and the “security dilemma” itself have all disappeared. The Long Peace since 1945 is widely attributed to nuclear deterrence. However, the sharp decrease in war had begun during the 19th century. The effect of industrialization is the greatest lacuna in IR theory. The Malthusian Trap that plagued premodern societies has been broken. Wealth is no longer finite and a zero-sum game. This transformation has made democracies as well as nondemocracies fight much less, and has sharply increased international trade. It underlies both the democratic/liberal and capitalist/trade interdependence peace.