Tag: development

Global Military Expenditure at an All-Time High in 2022

With global military expenditure at an all time high, the prospects for peace and development are looking bleak!

World military expenditure stood at $2240 billion in 2022, an all time record high.

Global military expenditure fell in the years following the collapse of the Soviet Union, then rose from 1999 to 2010, fell slightly in the next few years and then saw a steady year on year increase from 2013 to 2022, increasing by a total of 19% during the decade to 2022.

2021 to 2022 saw the the sharpest rise, with an increase of 3.7%, fuelled largely by the War on Ukraine.

Ukraine’s military expenditure rose by 640% in 2022 to $44 billion, compared to a previous (approximate) $6 billion a year before the Russian invasion. That $44 billion does not include military aid from other countries, estimated to be around the $30 billion mark in 2022.

Russia’s military expenditure rose by almost 10% to nearly $90 billion in 2022, making it the world’s third largest spender on the military.

Military Expenditure as usual

While the war in Ukraine has obviously had a massive impact in Ukraine as military expenditure now accounts for a third of its GDP (compared to 2.5% in the United Kingdom for example), as well as in Russia and many other nations through their giving military aid to Ukraine, when we look at things globally the impact of the war on Ukraine on overall expenditure has been relatively small.

Granted, the increase for last year is greater than previous years, but it’s not a massive break with the trend of steadily increasing military expenditure over the last two decades.

The worrying thing is (at least it’s worrying if you are a fan of world peace) is that in terms of overall military expenditure, the increase in expenditure caused by the war in Ukraine is really just a drop in the ocean: around a $100 billion increase is not a lot compared to a total usual annual spend of $2200 billion.

The world’s biggest military spenders

The United States remains the largest military spender, having spent an astronomical $877 billion on it military in 2022, accounting for 39% of the total global spend in 2022.

China comes second on the list, but is a long way behind America with an annual expenditure of $292 billion, a third less than America’s expenditure.

Russia is third in the war league tables, but even with the war on Ukraine it spends three times less than China (1/10th that of America), at just under $100 billion annually, and slightly more than Saudi Arabia and India who come in fourth and fifth positions.

The United Kingdom has the highest military expenditure in Europe at almost $70 billion in 2022, and at 2.3% of its GDP, it spends twice as much on its military proportionately compared to most other European nations except for France.

The United States and China spend more on the militaries than all other nations combined.

Relevance to A-Level Sociology

The War in Ukraine has dominated the news throughout 2022 and the conflict has severely retarded development in the country both in the short term because of loss of life, injury, emigration and destruction of infrastructure, but also in the long term as tens of billions of dollars have been spent on the conflict, diverted from what could have been positive investment in social development in health, employment and education, for example.

But stepping back from the immediate shock of this particular conflict and just looking at it in terms of wider military expenditure we are reminded of the huge sums we spend globally on constant preparedness for war, and even Russia is something of a minor player in terms of its own expenditure, spending three times less than China and 10 times less than the United States.

The United States spends so much on its military that it has been able to provide billions in aid to Ukraine without it being a significant dent in its military budget.

If either one of those two countries decides to wage war against a lesser power in the future, they can dwarf the harm Russia has done in Ukraine, moreover, imagine how much good even a tenth of global military expenditure could do if it were devoted to positive development: $200 billion more on global health, education and employment initiatives could transform the lives of hundreds of millions of people.

Instead we choose to spend more than $2 trillion on being prepared to kill each other.

It’s a stark reminder of just how far off global peace and enlightenment we are, and how small global development agendas are compared to the military agendas of the world’s largest nation states.

Signposting

This material is mainly relevant to the Globalisation and Global Development module, which is sometimes taught as part of the second year in A-level sociology (AQA specification).

War and Conflict are the main things which prevent positive economic and social development, and this update is a depressing reminder that in terms of military expenditure the world seems to be getting less peaceful.

Sources

Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (2022) Trends in World Military Expenditure, 2022.

America’s Climate Change Bill

The United States recently introduced a huge climate change bill which promotes investment in green energy through indirect subsidies. This bill represents one the largest state-level investments in green energy in history and seems to suggest we are moving away neoliberal models of development.

The green-subsidies are included in the broader Inflation Reduction Act which came into force in August 2022 and is primarily designed to tackle climate change through boosting the country’s green energy sector, mostly through indirect subsidies in the form of tax credits.

The main aims of the bill are to reduce carbon emissions and create millions of new jobs in the green energy sector, in industries such as manufacturing solar panels, wind turbines, heat pumps and carbon capture technologies.

The bill is also designed to help the U.S. reduce its reliance on imports from China, in a process it calls ‘onshoring’, and there is hope that it will encourage trillions of dollars in private investment into manufacturing green technologies.

To give a specific example, the U.S. now offers a tax credit of $7500 for buyers of most electric and hydrogen powered cards. However, this is conditional on final assembly taking place in the U.S. or other countries which have free-trade treaties with the U.S. such as Canada and Mexico.

There are also a ‘domestic-content’ rules: the more components and raw materials sourced in America, the higher the tax-credit, but there are no credits available if if critical minerals have been sourced from ‘foreign entities of concern’ such as China, Russia or Iran.

It is estimated that the IRA will help reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 10% more than if it hadn’t been passed.

In the six months since the bill was passed there has already been $89 billion of investment into the green energy sector, and 100 000 new jobs created. Companies such as BMW, Honda, and Tesla have either moved manufacturing of batteries to the U.S. or are considering a move.

The end of Neoliberalism?

This policy shift feels like we are moving away from the neoliberal development model in which nation states do less. Here we have the United States government actively supporting, selectively, green technology.

Maybe climate change is such an important global issue that we need co-ordination at the level of the nation state.

Limitations of the Climate Change Bill

Indirect subsidies are protectionist and they distort the free market.

Even after only six months green tech companies are already pulling out of Europe and seeking to relocate the the United States, meaning that this policy is hurting U.S. allies as well as its perceived ‘enemies’ such as China.

When nation states provide subsidies it can promote something of a ‘race to the bottom’ among competitors, with the EU already considering its own Green Deal Industrial Plan, simplifying regulation for green companies.

The bill potentially violates World Trade Organisation free trade rules, and the EU is challenging it on these grounds.

And let’s not forget, where manufacturing is concerned, green energy isn’t necessarily than green: there is a lot of metal and plastic in wind turbines and batteries, and a lot of toxic-chemical processes that go into their manufacture, and we haven’t exactly figured out a pollution free strategy for storing used-batteries when they are past their use-by date.

In other words, light regulation now might not be an effective way of promoting green development in the greener sense of the world.

While lowering emissions will benefit developing countries more (because they are more exposed to the extreme consequences of global warming) this kind of development is all about developed countries in economic terms.

The bill only passed the senate by one single vote and it had to be ‘disguised’ in a larger ‘Inflation Reduction Act’ which included a range of other measures on healthcare and tax.

There is still plenty of political resistance to state-subsidies for green technology, meaning the bill could be watered down or countered by subsidies for petrochemical industries in future years.

Signposting

This material is mainly relevant to the global development and globalisation module, sometimes taught during the second year of A-level sociology.

Wiki Entry: America’s Climate Reduction Act

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Two billion people still without clean drinking water

Progress towards universal access to clean water has stalled because of climate change and the inability of governments to provide infrastructure.

2 Billion people in the world still do not have access to clean drinking water, with most of these living in Sub-Sharan Africa and Central and Southern Asia, according to a recent State of the World’s Water Report issued by the World Health Organisation (1)

The proportions of people with access to contamination free drinking water varies considerably by region: in Europe and North America 98% of the population have access, but in Sub-Saharan Africa only 36% of people have access to clean drinking water.

Access to safe water supplies is Millennium Development Goal number 6, and we have made progress in the last 2 decades, with the proportion of the global population with access to safely managed water rising from 62% in the year 2000 to 74% by 2020.

However, progress is stalling, and the United Nations realises that we probably NOT going to reach the goal of achieving safe and affordable access to clean drinking water for EVERYBODY by 2030, in fact by 2030 they predict that 1.6 billion people will lack access to clean water, and higher numbers will lack access to decent hygiene facilities.

Why this matters for development

Drinking dirty water is one of the main reasons people get ill, which directly reduces life expectancy, but also the capacity for children to school and get an education or adults to go to work.

There is also a dimension to this. In situations, usually rural areas, where there is no clean, piped water to towns or villages and people have to walk miles to fetch water, it is usually women who do the fetching, in up to 90% of cases in some parts of rural India.

This improving water supplies would improve health, education, work prospects and gender equality.

Why do people lack access to clean drinking water?

Climate change seems to be the main culprit, and there are different reasons for lack of access in different parts of the world. In Subsaharan African the main reason is persistent drought: there simply isn’t enough clean water year-round for the populations in some areas.

in other parts of Africa and places like Bangladesh, water supplies have been ruined and polluted by widespread flooding, which mixes various waste products with what used to be clean water.

The report also points to lack of basic national and regional level organisation in failing to provide widespread access to clean water.

in the worst affected countries such as Malawi there is neither government nor private ownership of water supplies. In such countries local communities are left to fend for themselves to sort out their own water, which may mean digging down into river beds and relying on muddy, contaminated water for drinking, unless they are lucky enough to work with NGOs which may help them sort out a bore hole.

Solutions

The report is keen to stress that IF we want to sort out clean water for 2 billion people by anytime near 2030 it is up to governments to work with the private sector to set up large scale infrastructure development and regulation to ensure that all people have access.

To my mind, this seems like a sensible priority: for a relatively small investment you are giving people access to what really is the most basic of human needs which can have knock on benefits for health, education, employment and gender equality.

Sources

(1) The World Health Organisation and UNICEF (2022) State of the World’s Drinking Water.

The Conversation (April 2023) Billions Still Lack Access to Safe Drinking Water.

UK government to cut aid

The UK Parliament voted on Tuesday to cut Overseas Aid from 0.7% of GDP to 0.5% of GDP, a cut which The Guardian refers to as a ‘hammer blow’ for some of the world’s poorest peoples facing persecution in countries such as Yemen and Syria.

This is an important update for any student studying the Global Development Module as part of A-level sociology.

Previous to the cuts the UK had the second highest aid budge relative to its GDP compared to any other country besides Germany and was among one of very few large developed countries to have met this Millennium Development Goal target. (NB that’s not a typo, the 0.7 of GPD target was set as part of the MDGs 1.0 back in the year 2000, even though they ended in 2015 to be replaced by the Sustainable Development Goals, still only a few countries met that pledge even in all those years).

Now we’re back in mid-league obscurity for aid donors by proportion of GDP.

The stated reason for the cuts to foreign aid are that the UK has spent over $400 billion on combatting Coronavirus and that next year our debt will exceed the total value of our economic output.

Boris Johnson says the cut from 0.7% to 0.5% is temporary and will return to 0.7% when economic circumstances allow

Arguments against cutting aid

It’s worth noting that every living prime minister besides Boris Johnson is against cutting aid

There’s been quite an active response outlining the impact of the cuts from various activists such as this tweet from Malala Yousafzai:

Some further arguments against cutting aid include…

  1. UK is already spending LESS on UK aid anyway, it’s down from $14 to to $10 Billion this year compared to the previous year already, because our GNP has already shrunk due to the pandemic. Thus the link between the economy doing worse and aid spending being cut is ALREADY in place!
  2. It’s a relatively small amount money that will do very little to help the UK get back on its feet, whereas the difference this money might make abroad is huge.
  3. Related to point 2, this could well be false economy – that money could prevent further strain on the UK economy, OR help the UK economy, especially since UK aid is now organised through the FCO rather than DFID, and the former is more cynical in the way it spends UK aid money anyway – more likely to use it to benefit the UK economy.
  4. Contrary to the news reporting about Philanthropists ‘stepping in’ to plug the UK aid cuts, this isn’t true – the aid cut is worth around $3 Billion the ‘pledge’ is currently at around $100 Million – 30 times less. This is a good example of media bias, the mainstream media REALLY should be more critical of these global elites!

Japan to Release Fukushima Nuclear Waste into the Sea

Japan announced today that it’s going to release one million tonnes of contaminated water from the old Fukushima nuclear power plant into the sea – which will no doubt have negative consequences for fishing around Japan and maybe in neighbouring countries.

It was 10 years ago when an earth quake ruined the nuclear plant, putting it out of action, and 10 years on the Japanese government is still dealing with its legacy – a toxic radioactive legacy that is going to linger for many years into the future.

Relevance to A-level sociology

This is a great example of how large scale modernist projects can go very wrong and cause enormous high level environmental damage. When we way up the huge costs of nuclear disasters such as this, it makes smaller scale renewable energy systems look much more appealing.

It’s also a reminder not to trust BIG tech or governments – the two together are required to build and back huge high tech projects like nuclear power – and when they go wrong, it’s the government that has to deal with the problems, and in this case we can see that they don’t have any decent answers – other than holding onto the waste and then finally releasing it.

All in all, it’s a great argument for people centred development, small scale solutions to meeting our energy needs!

How Pollution and Toxic Waste harm development

Western models of development are built around high levels of production and consumption to increase economic growth, and all other things being equal, the more we produce and consume, the more pollution and waste we produce.

According to the World Health Organisation, Air Pollution kills 7 million people a year, most of whom live in developing countries.

This recent report outlines the 15 most polluted cities in the world, 10 of which are in India, which reflects the extent to which India’s recent development has been dependent on the largely unregulated use of fossil fuels (coal and oil) in recent decades.

There are some regions of earth where pollution is particularly intense, and these tend to be areas of resource extraction or industrial manufacture in countries with lax environmental legislation.

One well-known historical example of this is Shell’s oil extraction operations in the Niger Delta – where huge amounts of oil have leaked into local water ways, destroying local economies and ‘gas flaring’ is used to burn off excess gas generated during the oil extracting process. You can explore this more in this video: Poison Fire.

There are also certain regions of China which are very polluted, and this is something Anna Lora-Wainwright (2018) explored in her recent ethnographic study – Resigned Activism – Living with Pollution in Rural China.

NB – this isn’t ‘ordinary pollution’ she’s looking at – she studied three villages in total, all of which are coping with the effects of large-scale industrial pollution because of the heavy manufacturing or waste disposal that occurs in those areas. All of these villages have well over the national average of cancer deaths reported, and it’s obvious the pollution is the problem

One village was dealing with phosphorus pollution, another Zinc and Lead pollution and the third the pollution from electronic waste. The later village has global notoriety – Guiyu is well known as the world’s largest e waste site.

Lora-Wainwright focused on how people responded when they knew they were being subjected to a significant cancer risk from pollution – how they organised and protested, but also how they just coped on a day to day basis -living with things such as polluted water that’s going to give you cancer if you drink it.

She also focused on how this all ties in with the wider Chinese government’s industrialization agenda and the fact that the government would rather keep reports about such pollution quiet.

The book is currently under revision, but you can listen to a podcast which summarises the findings here.

It is not just industrial production processes that cause environmental problems, it’s also people’s increasing levels of consumption and the amount of domestic waste generated….

One country which faces a real challenge with pollution from domestic waste is Indonesia, a densely populated country where residents have developed the habit of throwing their rubbish in the river, resulting in one of Indonesia’s river’s: The Citarum being dubbed ‘the dirtiest river in the world’, explored in this 2020 DW Documentary.

Discussion Question: do you think industrial capitalist models of development can ever be sustainable? 

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Global Warming and the threat to Human Development

This post explores the extent to which Global Warming poses a threat to continued social and economic development.

According to the latest data from Climate.gov global warming is currently causing sea levels to rise by 0.3 centimetres a year, which means that sea levels may have risen by up to 2.5 metres by 2100.  

A recent report by Climate Central (2019) suggests that 300 million people live in areas that will be subject to severe flooding due to climate change, China and Bangladesh have the most people living in at-risk areas.

The Polynesian Island of Tuvalu, population 11 000, is on the frontline of Sea Level Rise – located in the Pacific Ocean this is a thin slip of an Island where the residents are now struggling to survive because of rising sea levels. This Guardian article (2019) takes an in-depth look the problems the residents face. There is a very real chance all of these people could end up being climate change refugees within the next decade. NB the United Nations is aware of their plight, but it’s difficult to see what we can do that is practical.  

This documentary from 60 Minutes Australia (2019) explores the rapid disappearance of parts of the Solomon Islands, where sea levels have increased by up to 15 centimetres in the last 20 years:

From a research methods perspective this is interesting as one researcher used old photos to compare where some of the islands used to be compared to their reduced sizes today; and there are also interviews with people who grew up on the islands – some of the places they used to picnic as kids are now gone forever, completely under water!

The Global Climate Risk Index is a useful broader source than the above – it focuses more on all extreme weather events, so not just flooding (also droughts and extreme weather events).

NB – just to reiterate that the latest modelling suggests that if anything sea levels are rising FASTER than previously projected, so these problems are set to get worse!

The relationship between industrial development and the environment

Does industrial development lead to environment decline?

This is one of the key questions in the Global Development for A-level sociology.

The historical relationship between industrialisation and harm to the environment

Historically, both Capitalist and Socialist models of development have largely ignored the environmental impact of development for most of the last 200 years, with the environment only appearing  on the International Development Agenda until the late 1980s (see later).

The industrial capitalist model of development favoured by Modernisation Theorists is based on achieving economic growth through industrialisation and exporting goods to other countries in order to increase income. Both of these processes have been historically dependent on consuming large amounts of natural resources and have tended to create large amounts of pollution. This is because the efficiencies of industrial production are achieved through mechanisation, which has historically been fuelled by polluting fossil fuels, mostly coal (which aren’t needed when people grow their own food and make their own clothes in subsistence systems), and the exporting of goods around the world also requires more energy for transportation compared to subsistence systems, which has increased the demand for oil.

The Modernisation Approach also aims to achieve the ‘high age of mass consumption’, implying that the ultimate aim of development is for everyone in the world to consume at the level of people in the western, developed world. Today this would mean the average person eating a lot more meat, owning a car, taking holidays abroad and having a higher turnover of material goods (mobile phones and clothes for example), and the more people who move towards this, then the greater the demand on the earth’s natural resources (land, water, fossil fuels, minerals) and the greater the pollution that is created in the manufacturing and distribution of these goods.

While it remains easy for people in the West today to ignore the environmental impacts of the industrial-capitalist mode of development there is a growing body of evidence that suggests that this path to development has resulted in significant harm to the environment. We have already seen this in case studies such as the coal mining fuelling industrialisation in Northern India, Deforestation in Haiti, and the toxic waste resulting from ship-breaking in Bangladesh.

A clear relationships between industrial development and increasing CO2 emissions…

CO2 emissions are effectively a measurement of how much oil and coal a country uses, the burning of which lead to global warming which is widely regarded as the major environmental problem of our time.

Based on the table to the chart above (taken from Our World in Data) ,there seems to be a clear relationship between Industrial Capitalist Development and environmental decline.

Increasing Awareness of Environmental Decline in Recent Decades…

Increasing awareness of the damage we are doing to the environment has led to the emergence of numerous conservation groups, such as the World Wide Fund for Nature who have successfully campaigned for the establishment of various nature reserves around the world, and also to well-known international environmental pressure groups such as Greenpeace and the Friends of The Earth who campaign more broadly to get governments to introduce measures to slow the pace of environmental decline. These groups today have wide ranging support from the general public to the extent that Green Parties around Europe have gained steady support in the last three decades (not that you’d know this because the media under-reports it).

There are numerous ways of categorising the harms we are doing to the planet, and one way of doing so is to break down environmental challenges into the following categories…Global warming and sea level rise

  • Global Warming and Sea Levels Rising
  • Deforestation
  • Desertification
  • Pollution and toxic waste
  • Resource Depletion
  • Species Extinction
  • New ‘Risky’ Technologies

We will explore these challenges further in future posts!

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The Role of Developed Countries in War and Conflict

A summary of Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein and David Harvey’s views on mainly American militarism

Developed countries spend a lot more on their armed forces than developing countries, and the USA spends more than the next nine biggest spenders combined.

Many developed countries have full time standing armies, navies and air forces and some have nuclear arsenals, all of which need paying and equipping, which in turn means research and development budgets into the latest military technologies.

This high level of military expenditure is typically justified on the basis that it is necessary to ensure ‘Peace and Security’ both at home and abroad, and since the end of World War II developed countries have frequently intervened in poorer countries abroad by arguing that force is sometimes necessary to bring about a more orderly or stable society.

The recent full-scale wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were justified as necessary to root out the terrorist forces responsible for the 11 September 2001 ‘terrorist’ attacks on the United States, and today the ‘War On Terror’ continues, having largely shifted to now take the form of a ‘Drone War’ against suspected terrorists, which is occurring in numerous developing countries, but most notably Pakistan. 

The USA and its allies continue to justify a high level of military expenditure and the continued use of force on the basis that it is necessary to ensure peace and security both at home and abroad. 

There are, however, a number of radical theorists that argue this is a lie. Below we look at three academics associated with Dependency Theory tradition who argue that the West actually uses military force abroad in order to get rid of peaceful put anti-American governments, to secure oil resources (Americans do like their cars!) and to make money: there’s nothing like a war to generate a profit!

Noam Chomsky: The USA as Rogue State

According to Noam Chomsky (2004) the USA has used military force or funded the use of military force in over 50 countries since the end of World War Two.   The USA has over 1000 military bases worldwide, and is far the biggest aggressor of the last half a century.

Sometimes it has even used its military power to overthrow democratically elected governments that do not support American Interests.   Chomsky points out that if America really wanted to support freedom and democracy around the globe, then it would, by now, have tackled the oppressive communist regime in North Korea, and it probably wouldn’t do business with countries such as Saudi Arabia and China which have dubious records where human rights are concerned.  

Noam Chomsky’s view is backed up by John Pilger’s documentary ‘The War Against Democracy’ in which he points out that the use of military force against foreign governments that do not support American interests has formed the backbone of America’s foreign policy since the end of world war two.   Afghanistan and Iraq are just the last two in a very long list of countries that the United States has used organised state violence against.  

List of Countries Bombed by the USA since WW II  

  • China 1945-46
  • Korea 1950-53
  • China 1950-53
  • Guatemala 1954
  • Indonesia 1958
  • Cuba 1959-60
  • Guatemala 1960
  • Belgian Congo 1964
  • Guatemala 1964
  • Dominican Republic 1965
  • Peru 1965
  • Laos 1964-73
  • Vietnam 1961-73
  • Cambodia 1969-70
  • Guatemala 1967-69
  • Lebanon 1982-84
  • Grenada 1983-84
  • Libya 1986
  • El Salvador 1981-92
  • Nicaragua 1981-90
  • Iran 1987-88
  • Libya 1989
  • Panama 1989-90
  • Iraq 1991
  • Kuwait 1991
  • Somalia 1992-94
  • Bosnia 1995
  • Iran 1998
  • Sudan 1998
  • Afghanistan 1998
  • Yugoslavia – Serbia 1999
  • Afghanistan 2001
  • Libya 2011

Video – Noam Chomsky : The United States is the World’s Biggest Terrorist

David Harvey: The War on Iraq was ‘All about Oil’

The contemporary Marxist Geographer David Harvey (2005) has taken the above even further. Harvey argues that the Iraq War was really ‘all about oil’. He points out that the continued global economic and military superiority of the USA is dependent on securing for the future a reliable supply of oil, most of which lies in the Middle East. According to Harvey, there is documented evidence that members of George Bushes’ cabinet expressed a desire to increase US influence in the Middle East for precisely this reason. In this context, 9/11 and the linking of Iraq with the threat of terrorism provided a legitimate reason for the USA to secure its interests in that region.

Naomi Klein: The Shock Doctrine

Naomi Klein goes even further arguing in‘The Shock Doctrine’ (2008) that the American government uses war to destroy infrastructure in developing nations so that American companies can make a profit out of rebuilding that infrastructure. To support this Klein points out that Dick Cheney, vice president of the United States when the US went to war with Iraq, was also CEO of a Corporation called Halliburton, a company which won $2 billion in contracts to rebuild Iraq after the war.

Sources/ Find out more…

Just so you’ve got the proper academic links to the books:

Noam Chomsky: Hegemony or Survival

Naomi Klein: The Shock Doctrine

David Harvey: The New Imperialism

Signposting and Related Posts

War and Conflict is taught as part of the second year sociology optional Global Development Module and related posts include:

Ongoing Wars and Conflicts in the World Today

The worst ongoing wars in 2021 are in Afghanistan, Yemen and Mexico….

It is sad to say, but there are currently ongoing wars or minor conflicts in around three dozen countries, most of them in the Middle East, North West Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.

Wikipedia lists around 40 ongoing wars and conflicts with over 100 combat deaths in 2021 or 2022. NB Wikipedia is a useful starting point for this topic as it provides us with a statistical and historical overview which is relatively easy to understand, but keep in mind that you’ll need to verify sources and check up on how valid the data is!.

Map of Conflicts in the world today

map showing wars and conflict in the world in 2022, colour coded by number of deaths.
See (1) below for source

Categorising Wars and Conflicts…

Wikipedia categorises ongoing conflicts as follows:

  • Major wars (dark red) with over 10 000 direct conflict deaths in the current or previous year – there are currently SIX of these (double the amount from a year ago) which are: the Afghanistan conflict, the Yemeni civil war, the Mexican drug war, the Myanmar internal struggle, the Ethiopian civil war and the Ukraine-Russian war.
  • Minor wars (red) with 1000 to 9999 deaths in the current or past year – there are around 12 of these.
  • Minor Conflicts (orange) with 100 to 999 deaths in the current or past year – around a further two dozen fall into this category.
  • They also list ‘minor skirmishes’ (yellow) which have resulted in 1 to 99 deaths.

A point of note is that the Mexican Drug War actually had the highest death toll in 2020 – with over 50 000 deaths, but it’s not classified as a ‘major war’ because most of those deaths are murders rather than as a result of direct armed conflict between the drugs gangs and the Mexican armed forces.

Examples of recent and ongoing conflicts (list taken from Wiki)

ConflictDeath TollYearsCombatantsCountries
Rwandan genocide800,000April–July 1994Hutu people vs. Tutsi RebelsRwanda
First Congo War250,000–800,0001996–1997Zaire and allies vs. AFDL and alliesCongo
Second Congo War2,500,000–5,400,0001998–2003See Second Congo WarCentral Africa
War on Terror272,000–1,260,0002001–presentAnti-Terrorist Forces vs. Terrorist groupsWorldwide
War in Afghanistan47,000–62,0002001–presentsee War in Afghanistan (2001–present)Afghanistan
Iraq War405,000–654,9652003–2011See Iraq WarIraq
War in Darfur300,000+2003–presentSRF and allies vs. Sudan and allies vs. UNAMIDSudan
Kivu Conflict100,000+2004–presentsee Kivu ConflictCongo
War in North-West Pakistan45,900–79,0002004–2017Pakistan, USA, and UK vs. Terrorist groupsPakistan
Mexican Drug War150,000–250,0002006–presentMexico vs. Drug cartelsMexico
Boko Haram insurgency51,567+2009–presentMultinational Joint Task Force vs. Boko HaramNigeria
Syrian Civil War387,000–593,000+2011–presentSyrian Arab Republic vs. Republic of Syria vs. ISIL vs. Syrian Democratic ForcesSyria
Iraqi Civil War (2014–2017)195,000–200,000+2014–2017Iraq and allies vs. ISILIraq
Yemeni Civil War233,000+2014–presentYemen’s Supreme Political Council vs. Hadi Government and Saudi-led CoalitionYemen
Russo-Ukrainian War40 000 – 100 0002014 – PresentUkraine (and allied support) and RussiaEurope
Ethiopian civil conflict300 000 – 500 0002018 – PresentEthiopia, Eritrea, SudanEast Africa

It would be worth spending some time exploring some of these conflicts to get a feel for their differences and similarities.

But even if you don’t do any ‘deeper digging’ just a quick skim through Wiki’s list of ongoing conflicts can be informative – it shows you that MOST contemporary high death toll conflicts occur in developing countries, mostly in the middle east and Sub-Saharan Africa, and it also shows you just you that some countries have suffered ongoing or successive conflicts for several years – we see this in the Congo, and in Iraq and Syria.

Wikipedia also looks at conflict deaths by country from 2016 to 2020 – Mexico tops the list in 2020, and this along with Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan and Nigeria have had particularly high levels of conflict deaths over the past 5 years.

The Russian-Ukraine Conflict in Perspective

So far in 2022 the Russia-Ukraine conflict has the most cumulative fatalities, just for 2022, but in the grand scheme of things the total death toll is relatively small compared to some of the other ongoing conflicts (sad to say).

Of course we hear a lot about this particular conflict because it is closer to home and because, geopolitically it involves Russia invading Europe, so the rest of us in Europe will feel the impact of it more (the effect on increasing energy prices for example, although IMO that’s got more to do with the failures of neoliberalism rather than the war).

There are many other global conflicts with higher death tolls overall, but we just don’t hear about these because they are further away and they have less impact.

Signposting and related posts

This post has been written mainly for students studying A-level sociology (AQA focus).

War and Conflict is a topic within the optional second year Global Development Module.

Other related posts you should read alongside this one include:

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Sources/ find out more

(1) Nice info map graphic – By Futuretrillionaire, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=22118731

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