Critical Summary of Does Peace Have a Chance by John Horgan

This critical summary evaluates the book Does Peace Have a Chance by John Horgan and discusses the decline of war and violence. The author challenges the conventions about the inevitability of war and argues that war was just a 12,000-year trend. The paper offers facts based on figures and statistics to support the argument.

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Critical Summary
Author's Name
Institutional Affiliation
Introduction

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The paper makes a critical evaluation of “Does Peace Have a Chance” by John Horgan
(Horgan 2009). John Horgan is an American scientific writer, and in his writing, he challenges
the conventions about the inevitability of war. He argues that war was just a 12,000-year trend
and looking at the drop in the deaths due to war in the past fifty years, the possibility of another
war might just be dying down.
Horgan draws attention to the recent decline in war casualties when compared to the
prehistorical eras and makes one wonder if the epoch of international war may be nearing its end.
He offers facts based on figures and statistics. For example, the 2009 Yearbook of SIPRI states
death of 25,600 combatants and civilians due to armed conflicts and the majority of these deaths
occurred in Afghanistan, Iraq and Sri Lanka. When one compress the data to people getting
killed every year for other reasons, like automobile accidents and violent crimes there is a much
higher number and almost 500,000. 2008 report on the Global Burden of Armed Violence shows
remarkably low numbers when one compared to historical figures. State-sponsored genocide
during the 20th century shows an average of 3.8 million killings per year and the number are
certainly much higher. The Independent's calculations assert that there are more than 20 s going
on in the world and ceasefires, and peace accords keep many warring parties separated. The
active terrorist campaigns are on a steady rise (Independent, 2002).
However, when one compares these figures to the prehistoric ones, they get even higher.
Horgan takes the examples of “War Before Civilization,” an influential book by the
anthropologist Lawrence Keeley that holds violence and crime to be responsible for 25 percent
of all deaths. There is little evidence for violence among the societies before 12,000 years ago.
The coming centuries saw war emerge and spread rapidly, especially in those regions where
people lived a sedentary lifestyle and with the rise in population. The wars developed because of

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the changing cultural conditions and not because of human nature. Horgan asserts that people
tend to believe that humans are aggressive and will always remain on war. He questions the
sudden rise of war around 10,000 BCE and the recent decline. Thru, he points out that it is not
human nature but the cultural phenomenon underneath. No significant wars have taken place
ever since World War II and the conflicts are seen are limited to terrorism and guerrilla wars.
Steven Pinker, a Harvard psychologist, acknowledges several cultural factors that have
led to the decline of violence. The established states with efficient legal systems, increased life
expectancies and recent globalization and advanced communications have made the humans
increasingly interdependent. Despite the rise in threats to security and peace and increased arms
spending, there is still a decline in war-related deaths. Thus war is not an internal to human
nature but develops because of cultural and environmental conditions.
Horgan cites figures, statistics, reporting by credible authors, reports, and psychologists
to put across his views. On the other hand, it would not be incorrect to say that the battlefields
have shifted and it is not the soldiers but the civilians who get killed. Yet, Horgan is correct in
saying that the number of war deaths has declined unquestionably. Other reports reaffirm what
he thinks. The geography of war is shrinking, and major wars have died down. What one finds
today are skirmishes between countries like the flare-ups between North and South Korea or
between Armenia and Azerbaijan (Goldstein & Pinker, 2016). Ever since 1946, the number of
people killed in wars is the lowest. There was a slight rise seen because of the Syria and Iraq
wars but nothing substantial to compare with the earlier wars like the Chinese Civil War, USSR-
Afghanistan War, India/Pakistan/Bangladesh war or the Vietnam war (Tsang, 2014). Horgan
does persuasive writing to show that the horrors of war are on the decline. He is indeed
successful in making his viewpoint across. The above discussion and analysis offer hope that that

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the war fever of the yesteryears is likely to go away and is already declining. It could be due to
the recent efforts on cease-fires and peace talks made by the international community. As there
are fewer wars, violence around the world is plummeting. People are still dying but not due to
wars but other reasons like crime, violence, and health-related ailments. It is true that there are
fewer wars and lesser deaths due to wars.
References

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Goldstein, J..S.& Pinker, S. (2016). The decline of war and violence, bostonglobe Retrieved
from https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2016/04/15/the-decline-war-and-violence/
lxhtEplvppt0Bz9kPphzkL/story.html
Horgan, J. (2009). Does Peace Have a Chance? Slate Retrieved from https://slate.com/news-and-
politics/2009/08/wars-are-not-inevitable.html
Independent. (2002). The world at war: does peace have a chance?, independent Retrieved from
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/the-world-at-war-does-peace-have-a-
chance-177269.html
Tsang, D. (2014). Fewer wars, fewer people dying in wars now than in quite some time, Glenn
Beck writer claims, politifact Retrieved from
https://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/jul/21/stu-burguiere/fewer-wars-
fewer-people-dying-wars-now-quite-some/