ABSTRACT
At the threshold of the twenty-fi rst century, Eric Hobsbawm (2002) called the twentieth century “the most murderous century of which we have record.” Two industrialized world wars, exacerbated by innovations in transportation, communication, and weaponry, numerous wars fueled by the Cold War and violent confl icts induced by colonization and decolonization, all resulted in millions of deaths. Yet the expectations Hobsbawm (2002) voiced for the twenty-fi rst century shortly after 9/11 were equally devastating: “armed violence, creating disproportionate suffering and loss, will remain omnipresent and endemic . . . in a large part of the world” and the “prospect of a century of peace is remote.” The map of the Confl ict Barometer of the Heidelberg Institute for International Confl ict Research confi rms Hobsbawm’s predictions. The map shows that violent confl icts are prevalent in many parts of the world and only the US, Canada, Western Europe, and Australia are represented as blank spots (Heidelberg Institute for International Confl ict Research 2013, 12). These blank spots are particularly telling. As Jacques Derrida (2005, 155) pointed out in his analysis of the post-Cold War world, globalization, or mondialization , is “more inegalitarian and violent than ever” and is much “less global or worldwide as it seems.” It “concentrates into a small part of the human world so many natural resources, capitalist riches, technoscientifi c and even teletechnological powers” and only reserves military security for this small part. The blank spots are also deceptive, as the regions represented are also entangled in violent confl icts. The US, for example, remains engaged in its “war on terror” (Fischer 2014, 1; see also Rogers 2013). In 2013, the United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations “administered fi fteen peacekeeping missions and one special political mission in Afghanistan.” With almost 17,000 civilian and almost 100,000 uniformed personnel, they try to bring about reconciliation in confl icts across all fi ve world regions (Heidelberg Institute for International Confl ict Research 2013, 23). But, at most, their success only ever seems to be temporary.
