Horgan, John.

"Steven Pinkers The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Should You
Believe in World Peace?" Slate. The Slate Group, n.d. Web. 14 Mar. 2015.
John Horgan briefly opens this article with a battle between environment and
heredity. This means whether people are born with hatred or whether people learn
it. He then goes on to explain that so many government officials went on to
unanimously say no to whether or not nations will ever stop settling disputes with
war or threats of war. Horgan then goes on to describe Steven Pinkers book, The
better Angels of our Nature. He explains that this time period may be the one with
the most peace in our species existence. He also explains that in another book,
Pinker said that genetic heritage will always trump over the need for peace.
However, he goes on to say that genetic heritage will not completely control a
person as that person has the ability to fight impulses and understand things.
The problem with war is that it can be sparked with nothing but one party attacking
another. This will elicit a fight or flight response and all it takes is the former to start
a war. Throughout history, this ease of starting war has caused many to arise, and
every war advances the technological development in participating parties in some
way. Through this, the entire world began to become armed and ready for war. War
is slowly declining because of how much there is to lose now. The title of this page is
Will War Ever End? The target audience is everyone at risk of being a part of a
war. That is everyone, period.
Other Quotes:
Annual war deaths have fallen over the past 60 years by more than an order of
magnitude, from about 500,000 to 30,000 per year, according to one estimate. As
for terrorism, you are more likely to be killed by lightning than by a terrorist.

War, Mead proposed, is not a biological adaptation but a cultural "invention"like

music, art, cooking, and religionthat emerged relatively recently in human
prehistory.
War is an especially infectious meme, because if one society starts attacking its
neighbors, their only options are to surrender, flee, or fight.
Analysis:
I often think that the only way there can be peace on this earth is if everyone
has nuclear weapons. This is loosely speaking, of course. This article clearly
explained the causes and impacts of war and is extremely relevant to my topic Will
there ever be the absence of war. It is a well written article and is objective in the
sense that it takes in many points of view.

Lukin, Artyom. "Imagining World War III -- In 2034." The Huffington Post.
TheHuffingtonPost.com, 04 Aug. 2014. Web. 02 Apr. 2015.
Artyom Lukin begins the article explaining that China must participate in an
upcoming war if not be in the center of it, then goes on to explain why that means a
major war will not be happening any time soon. The first reason is that Chinas
military, as well as the rest of the worlds, significantly lags behind the U.S. The
second reason is mutual dependence. China would have no place to export their
pool of produced goods without the United States and its allies. For the foreseeable
future, China is going to stay dependent on these countries. The third reason is that
America is not alone. If anyone attacked America, all hell would break lose on them
because the United States has allies that benefit from it not being destroyed.
Lukin goes on to explain that this next war will not be fought with guns and
grenades. Just as sticks graduated to knives and knives graduated to guns, guns
have graduated to nuclear weapons. The good thing about this, however, is that
nuclear weapons assure mutually assured destruction, meaning that while one
countrys missile is on its way to another country, that country has time to fire back.
At the end of the day, all war breaks down to economic dependency and political
relationships. This war, if it happens as all predictions point to, will change the
world.
If the next world war is to happen, it will most likely be in Asia and feature a clash
between the incumbent hegemon, the United States, and the principal challenger,
China.
China would have to confront not the U.S. alone but also America's Asian allies,
including Japan, Australia and perhaps India.

China depends on America much more than the other way round. China is still
critically reliant on the U.S and its allies, the EU and Japan, as its principal export
markets and sources of advanced technologies and know-how.
Analysis: This article provides a lot of insight into the next war, along with many
reasons it wont happen soon and many predictions of what will happen when it
does. I think this article is relevant in the fact that it also explains that history
repeats itself and there are set rules and reasons when it comes to going to war.

Kant, Immanuel, and Lewis White Beck. Perpetual peace. New York: Liberal Arts
Press, 1795.
The battles of war can be defined as individuals who injure one another
through their close proximity while living in the state of nature. However, just
because this is a way to look at it, does not mean it is the way it is practiced. There
are rules to war. One nation cannot break a civil contract for their own security.
Without order in war, humans would be seen as no different from animals. These
rules are known and practiced internationally. In order for this to happen, however,
participating nations, to an extent, must be independent.
Every nation wants peace, contingent on them being at the top. This is what
causes war to persist, because nature wills otherwise (11). Peace does not exist
without the concept of war. It is a concept which alone means nothing, just as the
dark means nothing without the light.
The spirit of trade cannot coexist with war, and sooner or later this spirit dominates
every people.
Just as nature wisely separates peoples that the will of every nation, based on
principles of international right, would gladly unite through cunning or force, so also
by virtue of their mutual interest does nature unite peoples against violence and
war, for the concept of cosmopolitan right does not protect them from it.
Analysis
This is a short excerpt. It does contain many points, but they are thrown
around and not organized well. However, the points it contains, as summarized
above, are very relevant and make sense. I think at a certain point, one can be too

objective. This article is one of those. It gives off the vibe of a list more than it does
an article.

Borenstein, Seth. "World Becoming Less Violent: Despite Global Conflict, Statistics
Show Violence In Steady Decline." The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 22
Oct. 2011. Web. 17 Mar. 2015.
Seth Borenstein begins his article with statistics about the many deaths
today, somewhat satirically. Violence still exists, but its been decreasing over the
course of time. He says it is not the is not painted in bloody anecdotes, but
demonstrated in the black and white of spreadsheets and historical documents.
This means that there has been a trend in the decline of violence and it can only be
clearly seen objectively.
Borenstein refers a writer named Steven Pinker who theorizes the decline in
violence is due to the general IQ of people rising through generations. He is saying
that people get smarter over time. He says even when you add in terrorism, the
violence rate is still lighter.
Borenstein also talks about how violence is not exclusive to murder. In the
past, before humans became smart enough to understand what was and was not
morally wrong, there existed the concepts of court mandated torture and painful
executions, which made an example for others, spreading violence.
He also explains what Pinker thinks of the cause of violence. He said likeminded thinkers, who call themselves "realists" believe "that power matters
because the best way to survive is to be really powerful." Power distorts people.
People think the only way to guarantee survival is to have more power than others,
so they engage in war to get it, driving the risk of death higher than it would have
been, had they never began the conflict.

Murder in European countries has steadily fallen from near 100 per 100,000 people
in the 14th and 15th centuries to about 1 per 100,000 people now.
Murder within families. The U.S. rate of husbands being killed by their wives has
dropped from 1.2 per 100,000 in 1976 to just 0.2. For wives killed by their
husbands, the rate has slipped from 1.4 to 0.8 over the same time period.
Rape in the United States is down 80 percent since 1973. Lynchings, which used to
occur at a rate of 150 a year, have disappeared.
Discrimination against blacks and gays is down, as is capital punishment, the
spanking of children, and child abuse.
Analysis
This article does not completely relate to my topic. My topic is about whether
or not war will end in the future. The article is extremely objective with a lot of
statistics, but also separately subjective because it has the opinions of a
psychologist named Steven Pinker.

Kelly, R. E. "A 'Confucian Long Peace' in Pre-Western East Asia?" European Journal of
International Relations 18.3 (2012): 407-30. Print.
Summary.
It is theorized that international relations theory says that Eastern Asia was peaceful
without any westerly attacks. This would develop and support the hypothesis that
Chinas military dominance was existent. This would then contradict the theory that
peace was natural. The notion of cultural peace suggests that a shared collection
of lifestyles and habits shared logics of appropriateness (March and Olson,
1989) or Oren and Hays normative benchmark ethically or emotionally bond
the peoples of independent states together into a security community.
Cultural peace is not common when there are international systems. Kelly explains
that it is impossible because there will always be differences to disagree about and
always be battles to fight in a war. Though there may be some differences in
cultures, this common link always applies, because of the fact that there are
differences in culture.
First, are the cultures ethics inherently anti-war? Does it define war as a sin,
immoral, unethical, a betrayal of principle, and so on?
Cultural peace periods do not appear common in international relations, and
skepticism of a Confucian Peace is justified. Hence, I first examine three other
systems divided by space and time with a strong similar claim to a common cultural
base.
Analysis

I dont think this article is completely relevant but its still worth using. It has
a lot of aspects that pertain to war, peace, and evolution. It also brings a lot about
history which is good, so that I can reference past war and see facts about peace in
context.
Morris, Ian. "War, What Is It Good for For? These Four Things, Actually." Defense
One. The Atlantic, 14 Apr. 2014. Web. 01 Apr. 2015.
Ian Morris explains that war does do good in both moderation and the long run. He
states four reasons that war has helped progress the human race, after telling a
story about the 80s. He explains he was in the US, and in Russia, a computer
scientist had written an algorithm for telling when a missile was launched for Russia.
His algorithm was faulted, and said that a missile had been launched from Montana.
This could have caused Russia to fire back on nothing, causing the US to fire back
on Russias strikes; but, Stanislav Petrovs instincts told him it was an error in the
algorithm, so he stopped the message from going up the chain of command, and all
was well.
Morris goes on to say that war has been good for something: over the long run, it
has made humanity safer and richer, and states the reasons why. The first reason
is that war has caused people to organize, and that means less chance of taking
people out one by one. My second claim is that while war is the worst imaginable
way to create larger, more peaceful societies, it is pretty much the only way
humans have found. This, as bad as it sounds, makes sense. War brings people
together in times of hardship through mutual hatred of a third party. This causes
peace between two parties. My third conclusion is that as well as making people
safer, the larger societies created by war have alsoagain, over the long run
made us richer. Again, this makes sense. One partys gain must always equate to

anothers loss. We, as human beings have built ourselves from discovering fire to
creating the most organized and comfortable ways to live. But, this does come at
the expense of other species who have died so we could, not survive, but thrive. His
fourth argument is that war is slowly starting to end war. It is a paradox in the fact
that war always leads to a temporary peace.
Analysis: This article creates steps to explain why war can end. It is extremely
relevant and explains that not only is war good for things, but the biggest thing it is
good for is ending itself, which aligns perfectly with my topic. I can go through a lot
with this article.
Handley, Andrew. "10 Signs We Are Headed Into World War III - Listverse." Listverse.
Listverse, 05 Mar. 2014. Web. 02 Apr. 2015.
In this article, Andrew Handley explains reasons we are headed toward
another world war, one thats probably nuclear. Handley has a reason for believing
this will happen: the state of the world is showing some eerie similarities to the
preWorld War II global picture. And history is a creature of habit. This quote was
clever because History does, more often than not, repeat itself. Of the listed reasons
such as recent invasions, alliances, and North Korea, there are main points to pick
up, and there is real history embedded in them.
Starting with invasions, Russia recently invaded Crimea. This has been an
issue for a while; the United States said there would be consequences to Russia
doing anything extreme like this, but they still completely took it over. The problem
with this is the only way to back up the consequences claim would be to start a
nuclear war with Russia, and no one wants to do that because no one wants to die.
Referencing Borenstein, people have been getting smarter over generations, so all
of the world understands that what Russia is doing is wrong, but as stated, the

United States and Russia either go all out or dont go at all, and people dont
generally like to die.
Aside from just Russia, there is an alliance between China and Ukraine that
assures Ukraines security if any other country were to attack it. Behind strange
alliances and invasions, however, there is political turmoil. Everything boils down to
political turmoil no matter what it is. That is the premise of all war: to use
technology to gain power rather than progress everything.
The last major reason is debt. The countries that fought in world wars in the
past have often been in economic trouble, and right now, the world is in a recession.
The US is now 18 trillion in debt, and about 7% of that belongs to China. All the
signs are here.
This is an invasion that has been a long time in the making, and its certainly not
the first time Russia has made power plays in the Ukraine.
World War I and World War II were very different from each other, but they had one
striking similarity. Prior to each war, economic recessions hit several of the countries
involved.

Analysis: This article was thorough and concise about the future of war. I believe
world war three must be coming because history does repeat itself. It has always
happened like this and Handley explains it well. But also, nuclear war could reverse
societys progression a lot faster than any other type of war. Just as Ian Morris
pointed out, war is good in moderation.