Displaced people ride a an animal-drawn cart, following Rapid Support Forces (RSF) attacks on Zamzam displacement camp, in the town of Tawila, North Darfur, Sudan April 15, 2025.
People look up to the heavens and see the almost impossible multitude of galaxies, stars and other bodies and ask in confused wonder: are we really alone? But they only need look at the 2025 Global Peace Index, published by the Global Institute of Economics and Peace, to see why aliens, if they have any sense, might choose to remain hidden than reveal themselves to us.
We are an impossibly violent and destructive species, pitiless, greedy and selfish. We not only rob the weak, even when we already have too much, we also have no qualms slaughtering children and the defenceless for ego and/or money.
Globally, conflict is at its highest level since World War Two—there are 59 active conflicts today, according to the index—while successful conflict resolution is at its lowest in 50 years. Wars are becoming increasingly intractable, if not unwinnable. The conflicts that were ended by a decisive victory have fallen from 49 per cent in the 1970s to only 9 per cent in the 2010s; conflicts that ended in a peace agreement have declined from 23 per cent to 4 per cent over the same period. So we have more wars, which are becoming less winnable and preparedness to make peace is decreasing.
Wars are sucking in more countries. The flames of conflict once lit, are licking more shores: 78 countries are involved in conflicts outside of their own borders. Look at the Sudan conflict, one half of Middle Eastern oil powers are backing one side, the other half is backing the other. In a conflict system such as the Great Lakes, nearly the entire world is there, all looking to go home with diamonds.
Neighbours turning against neighbours
Man, many times, thinks there is more profit in war than in peace, never mind the casualties. As a result, this world invests a lot in war and very little in peace. Expenditure on peacebuilding and peacemaking was $47.2 billion in 2024, just 0.52 per cent of total military spending and representing a decline in real terms of 26 per cent from $64 billion in 2008, according to the Peace Index.
Economic stagnation, debt and trade wars are creating the conditions for war. On average, least developed countries spend 42 per cent of their revenue on debt. This creates poverty, anger and frustration, sometimes resulting in migration which, also, could lead to conflict. The internal population movements in West Africa are a case in point.
Newly rich countries are joining the big league, not of helping others, but interfering in the affairs of their neighbours and being assertive about their newly discovered rights and interests, which sometimes culminates in conflict. Since it became rich, China has discovered many boundaries it is not happy with and many islands in far flung oceans which belong to it, allegedly, but are occupied by others.
Neighbours are turning against neighbours and countries are cooperating less. Global powers are competing with each other over the domination and exploitation of weaker nations: West Africa, East Asia and Kenya are glowing red in terms of being the theatre of global power competition. The big powers do not gain advantage by making their allies in those countries rich and reasonable, they do so by fomenting conflict and making compromise impossible. In that powder keg is poured technologies of war and discontent fuelled by the inequality and hardship created by debt.
Highest risk of armed conflict
Being African is one of heaviest burdens on earth. On top of living with the dislike of the rest of the world, you are also the poorest and daftest, with poor access to education and led by goats who would rather rob you than buy medicine for you. Added to that, the Global Peace Index says that Africa faces the highest risk of armed conflict. South Sudan, described as the world’s top conflict flashpoint, Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea and DRC are described as being on a knife edge. The Middle East and North Africa is the most violent region on the globe, and that was before the outbreak of war between Israel and Iran. It is in that region, in Libya, where they still sell us, black people, like animals.
International conflicts have increased 175 per cent since 2010, nuclear powers have either maintained their stock or increased them. There is what the peace institute calls geopolitical fragmentation, that is relations between neighbours have deteriorated, there is reduced integration, the index says, for economics, trade, diplomacy and military cooperation. Restrictive trade practices have increased to more than 3,000, worsening the condition of the poorest.
Russia, a superpower, with great natural wealth, a powerful military and grand cities and culture, is now ranked the least peaceful nation on earth, more so than Ukraine, Sudan and Yemen. If you have been to Russian, you must have been struck by the cold and bleak countryside but also by the grandeur of Moscow and St Petersburg; a truly great nation being eaten from the inside by violence—its own appetite for war and desire to dominate—but also by the brutal competitiveness of its rivals who seek its subjugation. No wonder, with the new war being waged in the Middle East, many believe that the first shot of Third World War has been fired.
If you were an advanced alien civilization seeking to indulge your curiosity about other species and spread enlightenment, would you come here?
