A new report from the University of Maryland’s Center for International Development and Conflict Management finds warfare on the decline across the globe, but warns that this is a fragile trend.

There’s war in Iraq, preceded by a war in Afghanistan, prompted by terrorist attacks in America. North Korea has restarted its nuclear program and threatened a “sea of fire” across the Korean peninsula. A bomb attack on Westerners in Bali kills hundreds. Many more have died in conflicts between Russia and ethnic Chechens. Violence continues to flare across Africa and parts of Europe, and the death toll in the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians exceeds 2,000 in the last few years alone.

A casual observer would not be faulted for thinking the world was witness to more conflict and strife today than in the past half century. However, despite a rash of high-profile international crises, the number of regional and civil wars around the world has declined to unprecedented levels over the past two years, according to a new report from the University of Maryland’s Center for International Development and Conflict Management (CIDCM; www.cidcm.umd.edu).

Written by: Barry Rosenberg. Rosenberg is new products editor of Aviation Week & Space Technology, and has produced reports on WMD proliferation, ethnic self-determination and related subjects for Carnegie Corporation of New York. In 2002, he was short-listed as “Journalist of the Year” by the Royal Aeronautical Society and l’Aero-Club de France. His book on the founding of the U.S. air mail service will be published by William Morrow in the fall of 2004.

Editor’s Note: Andrew Carnegie created Carnegie Corporation of New York in 1911 to “promote the advancement and diffusion of knowledge and understanding,” a mission that has often led the foundation to support in-depth research and analysis of issues that affect the life of our nation and our interactions with other countries in an increasingly globalizing world. But we are also concerned with funding projects that can help us understand, in a more immediate way, trends and changes that may influence both domestic policy and international relationships. This issue of Carnegie Results highlights three current Corporation grantees whose efforts illustrate how scholarship and dialogue can add breadth to our perspective on current events while also contributing to our ongoing struggle to understand the roots of conflict and explore solutions that may lead to peace. Work is ongoing at all three organizations, but as these profiles suggest, the results are already having an impact on those at the frontlines of policymaking.

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