Three times as many killed as once thought in 50 years of conflicts, new analysis suggests.

June 20, 2008 9:06 PM

Wars around the world have killed three times more people over the past half-century than previously estimated, a new study suggests... The researchers estimate that 5.4 million people died from 1955 to 2002 as a result of wars in 13 countries. These deaths range from 7,000 in the Democratic Republic of Congo to 3.8 million in Vietnam. According to Obermeyer, the estimates are three times higher than those of previous reports. Data from this new study also suggests that 378,000 people worldwide died a violent death in war each year between 1985 and 1994, compared with 137,000 estimated at the time.

ABC News: Study: War Deaths Grossly Underestimated
The study: Fifty years of violent war deaths from Vietnam to Bosnia: analysis of data from the world health survey programme
Related: Measuring deaths from conflict
posted by y2karl (47 comments total)

However, all deaths because of war are not being counted, Garfield said, since even Obermeyer's team left out the more indirect deaths from starvation, infectious disease and other illnesses, and forms of injury not directly linked to armed combat.

This part is really important. I would hope that we, as Americans, would be less inclined to invade other countries if we had a reliable civilian-death algorithm that reflected "incidental" deaths caused by things other than bullets.

If we all recognized that every country we invade will automatically loose a minimum of, say, 2-4% of it's population because of our actions, I think it would put our talk about "liberation" in a different light.
posted by Avenger at 9:31 PM on June 20, 2008

I would hope that we, as Americans, would be less inclined to invade other countries if we had a reliable civilian-death algorithm that reflected "incidental" deaths caused by things other than bullets.

Do you really think the Pentagon doesn't know these things? I think it's abundantly clear that they know, and either a) they don't care, or b) (more likely) they are ordered by their political masters not to care.

And, though it sickens me to say so.. b) is probably not only the correct answer, but is also the right answer. The military is a tool of the State, for good or ill. They must follow their marching orders (until those orders venture into illegality) no matter what. Yes, you and I and probably 50K other MeFites would say "Oh but they should have refused on Iraq". Yes, sure.. but that opens the door to the Pentagon refusing to intervene in the next equivalent to WWII. The military is a (blunt-force) tool, which means that it doesn't matter who is in charge; they obey the orders (again, unless illegal!), because to set the precedent of disobeying the orders is to transfer the (nominal, I guess) power from the electorate to the guys and gals that have codes for nuclear weapons.
posted by dirtynumbangelboy at 9:39 PM on June 20, 2008

If we all recognized that every country we invade will automatically loose a minimum of, say, 2-4% of it's population because of our actions, I think it would put our talk about "liberation" in a different light.

If I may quote Stalin from Command and Conquer "One death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic". Ultimately to me it doesn't matter if it's 4%, 1% or 0.1% of the population. What matters is that people die in war and it should be avoided at all reasonable costs. Unfortunately reasonable is far too subjective.
posted by Octoparrot at 10:07 PM on June 20, 2008

I was about to favorite your comment, Octoparrot, but then I realized you were quoting Stalin approvingly.
posted by grobstein at 10:10 PM on June 20, 2008

If I may quote Stalin from Command and Conquer

Ah, the Internet.
posted by dirigibleman at 10:18 PM on June 20, 2008 [9 favorites]

I really don't think so, grobstein. Or did you stop reading at the word 'statistic'?
posted by dirtynumbangelboy at 10:19 PM on June 20, 2008

I looked at their Table 2, which shows the specific wars they are including in their total. It has some interesting omissions.

Why isn't the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan listed there? Or the Russian operations in Chechnya? Where are the India/Pakistani wars? Where is the Hutu/Tutsi conflict in Rwanda? The Cuban revolution?

Where is the Six Day War? Or the Yom Kippur War? Or the Intifada? Why isn't Cambodia listed? (You know, "the killing fields"? and the Viet Namese invasion?) Where is the Tanzanian invasion of Uganda?

How about Somalia? Or Lebanon? Eritrea? Liberia? The failed Biafran revolution? East Timor?

They seem to have a peculiarly narrow definition of "war". If you say, "But they're not listing insurgencies and revolutions", then why is Sri Lanka on their list? What they're listing there is the results of the insurgency by the Tamil Tigers. They also listed Zimbabwe That's Mugabe's revolution against the white government of Rhodesia.

So why not other similar insurgencies elsewhere which have been at least as bloody, such as the Shining Path in Peru? They list Namibia, but don't list two comparable events in Burundi.

And where in hell is the Iran/Iraq war?

Compare their table to this one, and see some of the other big ones they left out. For instance, their estimate of deaths from the Second Congo War is way, way, way low.
posted by Class Goat at 10:48 PM on June 20, 2008 [2 favorites]

The researchers estimate that 5.4 million people died from 1955 to 2002 as a result of wars in 13 countries.

So?
posted by telstar at 11:10 PM on June 20, 2008 [2 favorites]

I don't understand this study. The omissions of so many armed conflicts is baffling. That of course, brings up the question, what is a war? Battles between drug gangs in the America has claimed tens of thousands of people's lives-- is it not running battles between organized, armed sides trying to gain territory?
posted by cell divide at 12:01 AM on June 21, 2008

I just spend an interesting couple of hours coming up with a longer list of wars, revolutions, and insurgencies they didn't think were worth including:

Chinese occupation of Tibet (1951-present)
First Sudanese Civil War (1955-1972)
Second Sudanese Civil War (1983-2005)
Burmese insurgency (1948-present)
Angolan War of Independence (from Portugal, 1961-1974)
Angolan Civil War (with lots of outside interference, 1975-2002)
Chad Civil War (including an invasion by Libya, 1965-present)
Libyan-Egyptian War (1977)
Ogaden War (Somalia and Ethiopia, 1977-1978)
Lebanese Civil War (1975-1990)
Soviet involvement in Afghanistan (about 1978 to about 1991)
Iranian Revolution (1978-1979)
Nicaraguan Revolution (1979-1980)
Nicaraguan Contras (1979-1988)
Eritrean War of Independence (1961-1991)
Eritrean-Ethiopian War (1998-2000)
Tanzanian occupation of Uganda (to topple Idi Amin, 1978-1979)
Kashmir (ongoing since partition)
Kargil War (in Kashmir, 1999)
Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988)
Falklands War (1982)
Guatamalan Civil War (1960-1996)
Shining Path (Peru, 1980-present, but small since 1992)
Salvadoran Civil War (1979-1992)
Georgian Civil War (1988-1993)
Nagorno-Karabakh (1988-1994)
Croation War of Independence (1991-1995)
Tajikistan Civil War (1992-1997)
Somali Civil War (1988-present)
First Congo War (1996-1997)
Second Congo War (1998-2003)
FIrst Chechen War (1994-1996)
Second Chechen War (1999-present)

...not to mention all the people who died in China as a result of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. Estimates on those together range from 28 million to 72 million.
posted by Class Goat at 1:55 AM on June 21, 2008 [5 favorites]

Chinese occupation of Tibet (1951-present)
First Sudanese Civil War (1955-1972)
Second Sudanese Civil War (1983-2005)
Burmese insurgency (1948-present)
Angolan War of Independence (from Portugal, 1961-1974)
Angolan Civil War (with lots of outside interference, 1975-2002)
Chad Civil War (including an invasion by Libya, 1965-present)
Libyan-Egyptian War (1977)
Ogaden War (Somalia and Ethiopia, 1977-1978)
Lebanese Civil War (1975-1990)
Soviet involvement in Afghanistan (about 1978 to about 1991)
Iranian Revolution (1978-1979)
Nicaraguan Revolution (1979-1980)
Nicaraguan Contras (1979-1988)
Eritrean War of Independence (1961-1991)
Eritrean-Ethiopian War (1998-2000)
Tanzanian occupation of Uganda (to topple Idi Amin, 1978-1979)
Kashmir (ongoing since partition)
Kargil War (in Kashmir, 1999)
Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988)
Falklands War (1982)
Guatemalan Civil War (1960-1996)
Shining Path (Peru, 1980-present, but small since 1992)
Salvadoran Civil War (1979-1992)
Georgian Civil War (1988-1993)
Nagorno-Karabakh (1988-1994)
Croation War of Independence (1991-1995)
Tajikistan Civil War (1992-1997)
Somali Civil War (1988-present)
First Congo War (1996-1997)
Second Congo War (1998-2003)
First Chechen War (1994-1996)
Second Chechen War (1999-present)

posted by ryanrs at 2:30 AM on June 21, 2008 [5 favorites]

Ain't got but one friend, and that's the undertaker ...
posted by bwg at 4:09 AM on June 21, 2008

You forgot War Of The Superbikes
posted by peewinkle at 4:33 AM on June 21, 2008

Okay, we've established that way lots of people have died in wars over the past 50 years. But it's the death of even one person that makes war immoral. A person who dies in a war that kills 500,000 people is not 490,000 times more dead than a person who dies in a war that kills only 10,000 people. Think of how often the media and historians of war and conflict use the comparative construction, "only six people were killed..." (or however many). If you're one of those six people who died, there's no "only" about it. So what I'm saying is that there is no such thing as comparative death. There is only one death: The same death that you or I will experience either in war, or in bed, or misadventure... And neither number nor context intensifies it or diminishes it. And the sacredness and awesomeness of this extinction to the individual, means that the state should be wildly, obsessively, insanely, and possibly even self-destructively careful about using its power to kill. Your collectivity does not trump my individuality. No war is justified.
posted by Faze at 6:06 AM on June 21, 2008

I don't understand this study. The omissions of so many armed conflicts is baffling...

An estimate of all deaths in all wars in the last 50 years it is not. It is a comparison of a new survey method to estimate violent deaths due to armed conflict using thirteen specific examples of armed conflicts where previous estimates had been made.

The point of survey, as I understand it, was not to establish an estimate of all the deaths in all the wars in the last fifty years but rather to show that previously accepted methods of statistically determining deaths to war in any given war were severely deficient and that the true costs of war in the sense of human lives lost are far higher than previously supposed. Which may seem like well, duh to some. So be it. Exhaustive lists of all the wars in the last 50 years are like, well, duh to me. Talk about missing the point.
posted by y2karl at 6:39 AM on June 21, 2008 [2 favorites]

I don't see the big deal about "omitting" many wars. They didn't claim it was a complete or exhaustive list. They were examples.
posted by rokusan at 9:34 AM on June 21, 2008

So many mefites are anti-war, but pro-population control. Don't they see the solution right in front of their noses?
posted by The Castle at 10:28 AM on June 21, 2008

If I were a suspicious man, I'd see a subtext in their selection process. What they did was to pick Viet Nam and a bunch of small things, and if I were suspicious I'd wonder if that was deliberate, to make Viet Nam loom large, so that casual readers would look at the list and mutter, "Boy, those Americans are the world's worst butchers, aren't they?"
posted by Class Goat at 10:59 AM on June 21, 2008

The rate seems more interesting to me than the raw number of dead. I'd like to see the rate of war deaths broken down by 50 year periods over the last 3000 years.
posted by Mr. President Dr. Steve Elvis America at 11:44 AM on June 21, 2008

No war is justified.

Really? What about intervening to prevent genocide? Does the moral bankruptcy of a person who sets out to eliminate as many other people as possible not render them less worthy of continuing to live than their prospective victims?
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 1:04 PM on June 21, 2008

When was the last time a war was fought to prevent genocide? Never, as far as I can tell. In fact, wars generate genocide. You're much more likely to prevent genocide by following a pacifist policy than to by giving yourself the moral loophole of fighting a war to prevent genocide. In any case, you can't commit a real murder today to prevent a hypothetical murder tomorrow.
posted by Faze at 2:10 PM on June 21, 2008

You're much more likely to prevent genocide by following a pacifist policy than to by giving yourself the moral loophole of fighting a war to prevent genocide.

This seems to me to be blind speculation. How exactly would a person sitting on his hands prevent a murder?

In any case, you can't commit a real murder today to prevent a hypothetical murder tomorrow.

What's hypothetical about the thousands of people liberated from concentration camps in Europe at the fall of Nazi Germany? This abstraction you're dealing in doesn't exist. Horrible dictators and governments do exist. If you're opposed to intervening in such situations, it doesn't make sense to categorically deny their existence by suggesting that their actions are hypothetical. Blind pacificism is a form of pigheaded and willfully ignorant moral equivalence.
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 3:14 PM on June 21, 2008

When was the last time a war was fought to prevent genocide? Never, as far as I can tell.

Tanzanian invasion of Uganda (to depose Idi Amin)
Viet Namese invasion of Cambodia (to depose the Khmer Rouge)
posted by Class Goat at 4:06 PM on June 21, 2008

By the way, I think there's about a 50% chance that one of Zimbabwe's neighbors (most likely South Africa) will eventually get fed up with Mugabe and invade to depose him. Their reason will be to clean things up so as to stop a flow of refugees.
posted by Class Goat at 4:20 PM on June 21, 2008

There is a weird disconnect between absolute numbers and % numbers. Yeah the 20th century was the bloodiest in terms of sheer number of people killed, but overall it was average to low in percentage of humanity killed in war, and the number of cultures actually lost forever was pretty low. All said however the 20th century was pretty brutal.


As to the wider question of the necessity of war... much of war is fought because of the political institutions that where set up prior to those wars. So, we fought WWII and all that horribleness, perhaps out of necessity, but that necessity was propagated because of numerous pre-war decisions, including the sheer level of ruination laid to Germany in and after WWI. We set up Saddam Hussien because we felt he was the best tyrant of the time, then a few decades later our past policies made it politically viable to propagate the current war.
War does not happen in a vacuum, it is a difficult, expensive endeavor and one that comes about because of political decisions.
posted by edgeways at 4:29 PM on June 21, 2008

edgeways -- We think of wars as being fought over life-and-death issues, but most wars are fought over lifestyle issues. The U.S. didn't go to war in Vietnam to save lives. In fact, we were resposible for killing about a million people who might be alive today, if it weren't for the US intervention. We killed them because we thought that the freedom of the Vietnamese to live a certain lifestyle was more important than a million people having a life at all. This is what war is all about. Anyone who thinks WWII was fought to avert the Holocaust needs to study a little history.
posted by Faze at 5:00 PM on June 21, 2008

Anyone who thinks WWII was fought to avert the Holocaust needs to study a little history.

Well, by definition it couldn't have been because the Holocaust had already begun. But it was certainly fought in large part to end the Holocaust. Inaction was not then an option. Chamberlain should have been imprisoned.
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 5:43 PM on June 21, 2008

Anyone who thinks WWII was fought to avert the Holocaust needs to study a little history.

Yes, that's true. Anyone who thinks it was fought over "lifestyles" has assigned such a broad meaning to the word that it means everything, and nothing. Freedom from fascism is not a lifestyle.
posted by me & my monkey at 5:46 PM on June 21, 2008

Inaction then was not an option.

Any one of the 40 million or so people who died in WWII might disagree with you. As a matter of fact, I've got one of them with me right now. It's a nine year old girl. She was incinerated in a basement in Dresden. Here's what she has to say: "Listen you bastards! I wanted to LIVE! I wanted to grow up and have children and enjoy spring. I don't give a damn who rules Europe. I just wanted to live my life. There are ten thousand solutions to every problem. Why did you have to choose the one that killed me? And how did killing me solve your problems? Enjoy your lifestyles, assholes!"
posted by Faze at 7:02 PM on June 21, 2008

But it was certainly fought in large part to end the Holocaust

In large part? Not even close.
posted by Wolof at 8:20 PM on June 21, 2008

Inspector.Gadget writes "Well, by definition it couldn't have been because the Holocaust had already begun. But it was certainly fought in large part to end the Holocaust."

No, I don't think so. I mean, I guess that was a nice side effect, but it's not accurate to say we fought WWII in large or small part to end the Holocaust, even with a generous reading of history.
posted by krinklyfig at 9:01 PM on June 21, 2008

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.

The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway. We pay for a single fighter with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.

This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron."

Dwight D. Eisenhower -- 1953
posted by netbros at 9:08 PM on June 21, 2008

Which is all well and good, and it would indeed be a wonderful world if everyone disarmed and we didn't ever fight any more wars.

But if you disarm and your enemy doesn't, what happens? If you refuse to fight, but he has no problem with the idea?

Unilateral disarmament is suicide.
posted by Class Goat at 10:08 PM on June 21, 2008

Gosh, it really was a good thing we managed to stop the Holocaust when the Nazis had only managed to destroy the entirety of European Jewry.
posted by Astro Zombie at 11:05 PM on June 21, 2008

Of course, Class Goat, you could probably admit that your entire military system is broken and useless (nobody will stand and fight it honorably on flat, treeless ground!), and stop spending more than everyone else put together.

Maybe also calm down a little.
posted by sonic meat machine at 11:27 PM on June 21, 2008

Unilateral disarmament is suicide.

Once again, you're confusing lifestyle with life. A United States that was conquered by, say, Mexican drug lords, would have a very different quality of life. But it would be life. And we would be alive to pursue some kind of non-violent way of dealing the our drug lord rulers. Or we wouldn't. But we would still be alive. And time would pass, and the drug lord culture would morph into something else, maybe better, maybe worse. Or we could be conquered by radical Islamicists. That again would be a very different lifestyle. But the experience of ruling America would no-doubt change the radical Islamic lifestyle much more than the American lifestyle. But whatever happened, we would have to deal with it. There may be death, executions, etc. But not on the scale of an all out war. And our souls would not bear the guilt, in any case.

War is a pagan ritual. It's the sacrifice of human life for a "better harvest" in the form of the preservation of the status quo. War is a whole religious belief system based on murder and magical thinking.
posted by Faze at 5:51 AM on June 22, 2008

Unilateral disarmament is suicide.

Once again, you're confusing lifestyle with life. A United States that was conquered by, say, Mexican drug lords, would have a very different quality of life. But it would be life. And we would be alive to pursue some kind of non-violent way of dealing the our drug lord rulers. Or we wouldn't. But we would still be alive. And time would pass, and the drug lord culture would morph into something else, maybe better, maybe worse. Or we could be conquered by radical Islamicists. That again would be a very different lifestyle. But the experience of ruling America would no-doubt change the radical Islamic lifestyle much more than the American lifestyle. But whatever happened, we would have to deal with it. There may be death, executions, etc. But not on the scale of an all out war. And our souls would not bear the guilt, in any case.

War is a pagan ritual. It's the sacrifice of human life for a "better harvest" in the form of the preservation of the status quo. War is a whole religious belief system based on murder and magical thinking.
posted by Faze at 5:51 AM on June 22, 2008

Falling exam passes blamed on Wikipedia 'littered with inaccuracies'
posted by unpoppy at 7:58 AM on June 22, 2008

Once again, you're confusing lifestyle with life.

Your standards for "life" are rather low. "Life" to the majority of the world's population means more than merely eating, sleeping, pissing, shitting, and cowering in fear when they see people with machetes and AK-47s. Your conjecture about total lives lost is wholly unsupported and does nothing to decided the ultimate question. You've effectively extended "lifestyle" to cover any behavior not absolutely essential to continued biological existence, which betrays the worthlessness and self-serving duplicity of your argument. To be indecisive about your own ability to thrive is one thing, but to pass that moral judgment onto other people defending themselves from assorted malefactors is disgusting.
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 8:10 AM on June 22, 2008

But it would be life.

It's cute that you think that conquerors never kill the conquered unless some sort of armed resistance is offered. Cowardly and naive, of course, but cute. Wasn't your previous post putting words in the mouth of a victim of World War II, of all examples? You do know what Hitler was doing to millions of his unarmed conquests during that one, right?
posted by roystgnr at 8:16 AM on June 22, 2008

unpoppy, I did some looking around for non-wiki sources on military spending.

Nationmaster does have a different number.

The CIA World Factbook lists it as a percentage of GDP, unfortunately. This is a method of obfuscating the numbers, I believe--they don't offer an alternative list in raw dollars. However, they do list the GDP, so their number for military spending (using both these charts) is about $636,640,000,000. By the CIA's numbers, China spends about half that, $300,613,000,000.

Here's one from CDI, dated 2001, that's even less flattering.
posted by sonic meat machine at 8:34 AM on June 22, 2008

"Life" to the majority of the world's population means more than merely eating, sleeping, pissing, shitting, and cowering in fear when they see people with machetes and AK-47s.

Cowering with fear when you see people with machetes and AK-47s is only a temporary condition. Like wanting to kill a guy because he cut you off in traffic. All things pass. But death is permanent.

You do know what Hitler was doing to millions of his unarmed conquests during that one, right?

Therefore... what? Some random Englishman should incinerate some random German far from where "Hitler was doing" whatever he was doing? That's magical thinking in a nutshell. It's voodoo. If I stick a pin in this doll, it will hurt my enemy. If I torture this prisoner, it will hurt his commanding officer. If I destroy this city, it will stop my enemy from doing what I don't like.
posted by Faze at 10:48 AM on June 22, 2008

Faze, I would rather die on my feet than live on my knees.
posted by Class Goat at 11:06 AM on June 22, 2008

you're confusing lifestyle with life.

No, you are. Life is more than existence. To describe freedom from fear and persecution as "lifestyle" is the kind of word use you'd expect from Humpty Dumpty.

Some random Englishman should incinerate some random German far from where "Hitler was doing" whatever he was doing?

I don't think Hitler was doing all the dirty work by himself. Pretty much wherever Germans were during WWII, that's where people were being oppressed and killed.
posted by me & my monkey at 11:19 AM on June 22, 2008

Cowering with fear when you see people with machetes and AK-47s is only a temporary condition. [...] All things pass. But death is permanent.

What, do you think the guys with AK-47s and machetes never actually use them? Death is permanent, so we should all just roll over and be butchered without raising a hand in opposition?

Death comes to everyone, Faze. It comes to the soldier and the pacifist, to the killer and the killed, and it still comes even if your society places an absurdly high value on "life". Power, on the other hand, comes only to those who take it. The power to live one's life on one's own terms, to any extent greater than subservient subsistence, springs directly from struggle, either our own or that of our ancestors.

Personally, I ascribe a lot more meaning to living than I do to life, and I am just as willing to defend the former as the latter. Life means nothing without pride, without struggle, without strength -- if you disagree, let's see if you still feel that way when you're 90 and locked alone in the nursing home, our glorious symbol of "life" above living.

Not that it really matters; your argument is moot, anyway. What are you going to do, make me be a pacifist?
posted by vorfeed at 3:33 PM on June 22, 2008 [1 favorite]

War is a pagan ritual. It's the sacrifice of human life for a "better harvest" in the form of the preservation of the status quo. War is a whole religious belief system based on murder and magical thinking.

I mostly agree. But I tend to think of War (and militarism actually) as we've known it, being innately immoral; besides being almost never justified, the result is always (when you're talking about nations, at least) that someone innocent or that never agreed to the war is inevitably going to be killed or harmed in some way due to decisions that are beyond that person's control. I think genocide/enslavement should be considered a crime against humanity because it is, but it should really be up to the world as a whole (UN probably), not just a single nation, to prevent or stop it. If the world truly disapproves of genocide/enslavement, stopping it should not have to include the possibility of "going to war" between one county or another but should really be about severely disciplining a temporarily insane population or government.

I've heard it said that War is stupid and unnecessary because if countries were ordinary people, everyday society would never permit two people to use violence and death to solve any problem, especially violence that calls the murder of innocent bystanders"collateral damage." And if two people did try it, they'd find themselves arrested and in court facing murder charges. I agree. I wish I knew who said it originally.
posted by peppito at 5:25 PM on June 22, 2008

Inaction was not then an option. Chamberlain should have been imprisoned.

Chamberlain wasn't guilty of inaction during WWII, he was guilty of bad diplomacy--of giving up too much, not of doing nothing. Of all parties involved, the leadership of the US was most guilty of inaction during WWII. And that's become some of society's most prominent and successful men, like Henry Ford, were supporters of the Nazi cause.
posted by saulgoodman at 8:32 AM on June 23, 2008