ABSTRACT
The Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP), the leading provider of statistics on political violence, has identified 259 distinct armed conflicts since 1946. The liberation of Angola and Mozambique from Portuguese rule in 1975 marked the end of the colonial era, and military confrontations between states have become increasingly rare, too. Despite the low number of conflicts, 1946-2014 periods contained some of the most deadly wars in the post-World War II era, notably the Chinese Civil War and the Korean War. The imminent collapse of the Soviet Union and the seeming global victory of liberal democracy and free markets around 1990 were accompanied by extensive and largely unforeseen eruption of violence. A more benign consequence of the demise of major power rivalry was that it allowed the United Nations Security Council to emerge as a potent force for peace. Several countries with heterogeneous populations are sites of insurgencies involving Islamist groups.
