Greatest Threat To World Peace

Which countries are seen as the greatest threat to world peace? And with countries I mean of course their governments; the people are never a threat, it's their leaders who, by whatever means, lead them into a war in far away places.

This is important to always remember: people don't wage war against people. We fight, yes, we disagree and we even occasionally murder each other, but that's always on an individual basis or, if it's a really big fight, it becomes a family feud or a local gang-war. But never in human history have the young men and women of an entire country had such a feud with the men and women of another country. Never have they spontaneously grabbed their pitchforks an guns, traveled many miles, left their loved ones and family, to kill strangers in a far away country; it's their leaders who incite fear and or hatred against the people of another leader. This just to make sure you know what I'm talking about when I use the words "country" and "nation."

So, which country is the biggest threat to world peace? If I were to take a guess, I'd say that if asked the question most people would answer one of the so called "terrorist breeding grounds" in the Middle East, like Iran or Pakistan, or, alternatively, Russia or China, maybe even North Korea, because of their nuclear aspirations or arsenal, and their dominant ideologies being so far removed from what we know here in the west. These countries would be in the top 10 for sure and one of them would be on top. But it's none of them on top; it's the United States of America. The land of the free and the home of the brave received the questionable honor of being the world's biggest threat to peace in a 2013 (pre-Trump) global survey among more than 60 nations. The cover image of this post is the world-map that goes with the results of this survey.

"The US was the overwhelming choice (24% of respondents) for the country that represents the greatest threat to peace in the world today. This was followed by Pakistan (8%), China (6%), North Korea, Israel and Iran (5%). Respondents in Russia (54%), China (49%) and Bosnia (49%) were the most fearful of the US as a threat."
_{source: The Intellectualist}

Unfortunately this survey was never repeated, and the sampling sizes used in each country is rather small, so I can understand criticisms on the sampling sizes and questioning this outcome on those grounds. This exact survey has never been repeated since, at least as far as I know, and you know we should be careful with statistics in general, let alone when sampling sizes are small. I would classify this as a smoking gun, if there were no other indicators to support the outcome of the survey; I mean sampling sizes are small, but the difference between 24% for first place and only 8% for second place, Pakistan, is overwhelming and calls for more research. Also unfortunate is the fact that links to that original survey are dead; we're in luck then that it's results are included in a 2017 PEW survey we'll cover in a bit.

So there's a PEW research paper from 2006 that's mentioned in New York Post's reporting on the 2013 survey, which they published on January 4th 2014:

As we were reading the results, we couldn't help thinking we had seen it all before. And when we looked, we found a 2006 Pew Research Center poll of 17,000 people from 15 different countries that found something very similar: More people thought the US intervention in Iraq a threat to world peace than Iran.
_{source: New York Post}

Not the same question, and just two countries to choose between, the U.S. and Iran, but the U.S. wins again (as opposed to some of the many wars they're involved in). Interestingly, in the 2013 survey Iran was seen as the biggest threat to world peace by the Americans, Canadians and British, but according to this 2006 PEW survey many other nations disagreed even back then.

The only other survey I could find on this specific subject, on what country is perceived to be the greatest threat to world-peace, is the PEW survey published in 2017, which I mentioned earlier, with the title "Globally, People Point to ISIS and Climate Change as Leading Security Threats." Isis and Global Warming? That's not relevant for this post, I hear you think, and you're right. But if we dive into the research, we find that PEW polled 38 countries on 8 possible security risks, and among those are "China's power and influence," "Russia's power and influence" and "U.S. power and influence"; and again, from these three world-powers, the U.S. wins again by 35% against 31% for Russia and China. On pages 21 through 24 we find the answers to the question: "I'd like your opinion about some possible international concerns for (survey country). Do you think that ____ is a major threat, a minor threat or not a threat to (survey country)? a. China's power and influence." This is repeated two times for the United States' power and influence and Russia's power and influence, with the possible answers being "Major threat," "Minor threat," "Not a threat" and "DK/Refused." The nice thing here is that many countries were also surveyed in 2013, and for each of those nations the 2013 score is included for comparison, as well as the 2006 results for any of the countries that participated in PEW's own 2006 survey. Follow the link and look for yourself, but the trend is there to see: fear for the United States is going up. Something noteworthy for this 2017 paper is that almost all of the 38 countries surveyed are U.S. allies; the only glaring exception I could see is Venezuela.

These are all the numbers I could find on this interesting question, or interesting in my mind at least. These surveys are not conclusive and won't hold up in a court of law as evidence, but they should be of concern to us. And honesty compels us to admit that the United States have the world's biggest military power and have taken on the role of the world's defender of freedom, or so they say. And with "they" I do not for a second mean American citizens; they are victims too and most of them don't agree with the way their tax dollars are being spend, with much of that criticism aimed against the large military spending. Don't forget that was a large part of Trump's campaign; he knew exactly what the people wanted, and promised them just that, he just forgot about it the minute he stepped into office , like most that went before him.

In closing, a quick word on how ISIS, the overall winner in the 2017 PEW survey, was a response to the 2003 invasion of Iraq:

Most historians of the Islamic State agree that the group emerged out of al-Qaeda in Iraq as a response to the U.S. invasion in 2003. They also agree that it was shaped primarily by a Jordanian jihadist and the eventual head of al-Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The Jordanian had a dark vision: He wished to fuel a civil war between Sunnis and Shiites and establish a caliphate. Although he was killed in 2006, his vision was realized in 2014—the year isis overran northern Iraq and eastern Syria.
_{source: The Atlantic}

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