Major world conflicts and interventions, 1945 to 1975

Abstract

A list of 641 major conflict events was used to generate a list of 265 major conflicts. Using conflict‐years as a measure of conflict, most of our findings were generally consistent with those of other authors, such as major conflicts were increasing from 1945 to 1970, as were external interventions, and most major conflicts were happening in the Third World. However, we found a significant decrease in both conflicts and interventions from 1971 to 1975, suggesting that something new was happening in the world since 1970. This new happening was associated with relatively more conflicts in the Middle East and far fewer conflicts in Asia, fewer internationalized civil conflicts, more self‐management of major conflicts in the Middle East, and much less Western intervention in world conflicts generally. The era of Western imperialism in terms of military intervention would seem to have come to an end. Western powers, Third World governments, and Third World revolutionaries seem to have decided that they will try to resolve their remaining conflicts by means other than violence.