War Facts
By John M. Miller
The State of War and Peace Atlas. By Dan Smith, Penguin Reference, 1997, 128 pages, $29.95 hardcover.

THE FIRST HALF of the 1990s has been as bloody a five years as they come. Five and a half million people—three-fourths of them civilians, one million of them children—have been killed in 93 wars involving 70 states. Despite the promise of the end of the Cold War, peace has not come to our troubled planet.

"The Cold War continues to cast a long shadow," writes Dan Smith in the State of War and Peace Atlas, in conflicts like Angola’s that linger on, in the environmental legacy of nuclear weapons production and in the instability unleashed by the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Most modern wars are civil, often with ethnic conflict at their base, although disputes over land and raw political power play a role in most. And in spite of the proliferation of high-tech weapons so prominently on display during the Gulf War, most recent wars have been fought with low-tech weapons; "most of the killing is at close quarters," notes Smith.

The latest edition of the brief but ambitious State of War and Peace Atlas uses colorful maps accompanied by brief texts to illustrate the location, costs and consequences of war in the post-Cold War years. And unlike most books about war, this one doesn’t neglect the causes of war in a world where "power is concentrated in few hands." Elites defend their hold on resources, leaving millions in poverty and denying basic freedoms, "forc[ing] people to choose between accepting gross injustice and securing a fairer share by violent means."

One of the first maps in the book illustrates how war is concentrated among the world’s poorer nations. Another shows the number of armed conflicts in countries that violate human rights.

The atlas contains two kinds of maps. Many chart particular conflicts—some in detail, others only superficially. Others are comparative, illustrating on a global basis issues such as each nation’s share of the global arms trade and which countries face the greatest risk from land mines. Surprisingly, several western European nations maintain active mine-clearing programs to deal with the legacy of the two world wars, although the worst land-mine problems are in such Cold War battlegrounds as Afghanistan, Indochina and Southern Africa.

Another surprise is that the United States has cut its military spending more deeply than any other nation, though an endnote reports that determining such cuts involves estimating unknowable trends. (The book does not detail current military budgets.) While U.S. military spending is lower than Cold War trends might have predicted, it continues to represent the largest proportion of the $800 million squandered globally every year. The expenditures map also shows that several Latin American and Asian countries have increased their spending in the 1990s.

Two sets of maps are especially interesting. The maps of Central and South America, while illustrating the familiar conflicts over land distribution and the drug trade, also shows that numerous countries have experienced urban riots against austerity programs. A trio of maps of Africa relate to colonialism. One shows the 19th century colonial conquest; the map is color-coded to show the colonizing nation and the total number of years of war. Another illustrates the colonizer’s main motives. The last map illustrates post-colonial Africa since 1955, showing when nations achieved independence (with or without war) and giving the total years a nation was at war—often post-colonial civil wars. An inset global map reveals that the continent has the most nations with low life expectancy.

A book that attempts to cover so much so concisely is bound to have errors. It contains several when it comes to East Timor. The map shows the whole island as East Timor rather than just the eastern half. It also calls the war civil. In fact, Indonesia invaded a foreign land, killing at least 200,000 (the book uses the more conservative estimate of 100,000) to gain and maintain control of a territory to which it never had a claim.

"War will end only if, and when, and where its causes are removed," the atlas’s introduction concludes. The book ends with a map which illustrates the focus of independent peacemaking efforts by groups using conflict resolution skills both to end hostilities and "to ensure that hostilities, once ended, do not break out again."

[War Resisters League Website] [Nonviolent Activist Index]
March-April 1997: [Gulf Coverup Radicalizes Vets] [A Simple, Basic Right] [What is a Good Enough Life?] [Postcards from Belgrade] [Activist News] [War Facts]

The Nonviolent Activist is published bi-monthly by:
WAR RESISTERS LEAGUE
339 Lafayette Street, New York, NY 10012. (212) 228-0450, fax (212) 228-6193, e-mail:wrl@warresisters.org.

EDITOR: Judith Mahoney Pasternak. PUBLICATIONS COMMITTEE: Virginia Baron, David McReynolds, John M. Miller (production), Lisa Miller, Judith Mahoney Pasternak (editor), Mary Jane Sullivan. NVA ADVISORY BOARD: Robert Cooney, Kate Donnelly, Larry Gara, Carol Jahnkow, Andy Mager, Matt Meyer, Craig Simpson. SUBSCRIPTIONS: Free to members, individual non-members of WRL $15 per year; institutions $25 per year; overseas airmail add $15 per year. Send check or money order to WRL. MANUSCRIPTS: Inquiries welcome via postal or e-mail. Paper manuscripts will not be returned unless accompanied by a SASE; poetry by assignment only. Letters to the editor, inquiries, advertising rates, etc. to the address above.