OK, so someone somewhere commented that “Sorting countries into order of badness is very easy, just count deaths resulting from sanctions and war operations, add foreign central banks looted of their gold reserves. USA is the clear #1 here, on any post-Soviet timescale... (25 years and counting)” I think the proposed method of is absurd, and wrote a reply, but now I noticed I can’t post it into the original thread, because of course not. But since I wrote it already, I’m sharing it with you instead. So here you are: First of all, I strongly disagree with the statement. The proposed method is absurd, and would make the WW2-time UK more “bad” than, say, the Croatian Ustaše regime who were even more vigorous in the persecution of Jews and Romani people than the Germans. Moral is not mathematics. But since such a claim was made, let’s see how the numbers add up. These are the death tolls from violent deaths in conflicts where each government was strongly involved, taken from Wikipedia: Sudan Second Sudanese civil war 1,000,000–2,000,000 Darfur conflict 178,000–462,000 Total: 1,178,000–2,462,000 (NB. These are “excess deaths” numbers. They include a large number of civilian deaths from starvation, and are much higher than the number of direct violent deaths from the conflict, for which no reliable estimates exist.) Rwanda Rwandan civil war 10,000 Rwandan genocide 500,000–1,000,000 Second Congo war 350,000 Total: 860,000–1,360,000 (it should be noted that the genocide was perpetrated by the enemies of the current Rwandan government, who support the anti-government militias in the Congo war) The Taleban (not a government in any internationally recognized country at the moment, but has been de facto government at least in parts of Afghanistan for most of the period covered) Afghanistan civil war pre-2001 400,000 War in Afghanistan 51,600–68,900 War in Waziristan 52,100–82,400 Total: 503,700–551,300 Uganda Lords Resistance Army insurgency 65,000 Second Congo war 350,000 Total: 415,000 Burundi Second Burundian civil war 300,000 Russia War of Transnistria 643–1,237 East Prigorodny conflict 542 First Chechen war 70,000–120,000 Second Chechen war 113,000–153,000 War of Dagestan 2,000 North Caucasus post-2009 3,200 Russo-Georgian war 661–864 East Ukraine 1,800–2,100 Total: 192,000–283,000 (One could also add Tajikistan civil war with 50,000–100,000 deaths to the toll.) United States Gulf war 25,500–40,600 Operation Uphold Democracy in Haiti “several hundred” War in Afghanistan 51,600–68,900 Iraq War 110,600–151,000 Libyan air campaign “unknown number”, including 40 civilians Total: 188,000–260,500 Serbia Croatian war of independence 20,000–22,900 Bosnian war 97,000 Kosovo War 8,600–16,300 (including 1,520–1,728 deaths caused by NATO, if one wants to add that to the U.S. toll) Total: 125,600–136,200 Syria Syrian civil war 115,000–251,500 Pakistan Kashmir conflict post-1989 56,000–74,000 War in Waziristan 52,100–82,400 Total: 108,000–157,000 India Kashmir conflict post-1989 56,000–74,000 Naxalite insurgency 9,100 Total: 66,000–83,000 Algeria Algerian civil war 44,000–150,000 I don’t know how you are supposed to “add foreign central banks looted of their gold reserves”, but based on the average of low and high estimates for the conflict dead we are left with the following list of countries “in order of badness”: 1. Sudan (although the actual number of violent deaths, if known, would probably put Sudan lower on the list) 2. Rwanda 3. The Taleban 4. Uganda 5. Burundi 6. Russia 7. United States 8. Syria 9. Pakistan 10. Serbia 11. Algeria 12. India I left out some African countries involved in the Second Congo war, as well as Somalia, which could maybe also have been included and would have ”scored” above the United States. The numbers above are the total number of violent deaths from the conflicts, not taking into account the perpetrator. This makes the numbers look even worse for the U.S., since both in Afghanistan and Iraq only a fraction of total casualties have been caused by Western military operations. The point? Even if the statement wasn’t absurd to begin with, adding up the numbers doesn’t make USA “the clear #1”. There is a lot that is wrong with the American foreign policy that so often leads to violence, but trying to say that the U.S. was the worst of the worst is plain wrong and counter-productive.
Posted on: Mon, 28 Jul 2014 11:21:50 +0000
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