Counting wars and conflicts seems like a pretty naive way to go about this. You only thought that world peace was inches away when the cold war ended because yo

Counting wars and conflicts seems like a pretty naive way to go about this. You only thought that world peace was inches away when the cold war ended because you weren't actually paying attention to what the cold war was suppressing/controlling. With hindsight, it was fairly obvious that we encounter the apparent 'uptick' in wars. Which really wasn't an uptick in total conflicts, but rather ones which the United States were directly involved in. If you go to the wiki article on anything related to the cold war and look at the cold war section at the bottom where events are broken down by decade, just count the number of 'invasions' and 'civil wars' are listed. It's possible things are getting worse. But this line -really- bugs me: "I’d rather have the cold war back, because in retrospect people who fight over ideology seem a lot less likely to blow the whole place to smithereens than the ones who fight over religion. " That -might- be true if you happen to live in the developed world. But just look at all the shit both sides instigated in the developing world during the cold war. A necessary part of the cold war was constantly keeping a hand in the runnings of nearly every developing country to attempt to maintain a status quo. All those toppling of government by the united states since the 50s? Nearly every single of them were motivated at least partly by the containment policy. I'm not trying to argue that those actions were wrong. That's besides the point. The point is that many people (including the author) has the wrong view of the cold war period. Honestly, since I wasn't around then, I can't claim to have 'the correct' view. But I believe the facts speak for themselves. The Cold War period wasn't exactly a happy time for -world-.