Two thoughts:
1) It is (another) example of how "reality" is affected by what the MSM decides to report. Deciding what to report and what to ignore makes all the difference.
It is good that the number of conflicts is down, but the pessimist in me remembers that it only take one conflict in the right place to start a world war.
It may be more "peaceful" but there is a hell of a lot more tension.
You will run across people here who really claim to think that Al Quaeda is more dangerous than the old USSR. As if a theoretical nuke is more dangerous than 10,000 real ones.
Al Quaeda will use its nuke when, not if, it gets one. But it cannot destroy the US, and the USSR dang sure could have!
In other words, the UN is saving the world, while the US is involved in a costly war in Iraq. Not very different from the MSM message, at all.
For some reason this makes me think of the movie Miss Congeniality - Sandra Bullock bump!
In the wake of last month's global summit at the United Nations, many critics wrote the United Nations off as an institution so deeply flawed that it was beyond salvation. Sharper analysis and the carefully collated data in the Human Security Report reveal something very different: an organization that, despite its failures and creaking bureaucracy, has played a critical role in enhancing global security.
I think a much more likely candidate is increasing global economic connection, and the current hegemony of consensually governed (and hence less bellicose) societies. Maybe it will last, maybe not. The last time someone got a lot of attention for arguing that war was obsolete, he was named Norman Angell, the book was called The Great Illusion, and the year was 1910.
And yet the article gives credit to UN programs that began in the 1980's. No mention of the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
The left still can't give President Reagan the credit he deserves. They want to give it to the UN.