Here's the great news, and thank you for asking a question that allows me to say this. We've been tracking armed conflicts, wars, since 1987. In the last 15 years there's been a 40% decrease in the number of wars. Why did that happen? Here's the short story. The cold war ended, obviously, so that east-west confrontation wasn't being played out in proxy wars, but also there was a substantial increase in UN missions throughout the world, a substantial increase in UN diplomacy through special representatives of the Secretary-General, and development and humanitarian assistance investments, particularly in Africa.
The number of wars has decreased dramatically in Africa. Each one, if you're in it or your family's there, is a tragedy of untold proportions.
I'd also like to go back to the Soviet Union and the cold war. How did it end? It ended by people rising up. I know that internationally the churches, and other religious organizations were involved through the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe in the Helsinki process to keep pressing on the human rights, the human basket dimension, to look at economic incentives for ending those sorts of oppressive regimes.
My parents were refugees as four-year-olds in the 1920s from the former Soviet Union. I grew up with those stories. I'm privileged. I didn't live in a war zone when I grew up. But I think we shouldn't give up hope.
We have as a motto, part of our mission is to end war. You can chuckle a bit at the naïveté, but here's my Doctor Phil moment: how are these options working for ya?
Afghanistan has not responded to the types of initiatives that Mr. Fowler suggested here. Neither did Libya. We have a very unstable situation and we're not sure if a long-term sustainable peace in those places would happen. There are actually implications where the approach I'm advocating, which is a longer term peace-building approach, is much more dangerous for intervening troops. It's more likely that casualties will be taken, but you have to be there, you have to stay there, and you have to spread the security.
Sorry to take your time.