Australia’s little known other “intervention” of 2003 wasn’t in the Middle East with the world’s eyes watching, but an effort to prevent a state collapse closer to home.

The basis to gauge an appropriate defense budget should be a rational defense strategy but not a randomly chosen economic criteria.

Gauging global arms production is not easy. When the most reliable source of data reports by company, rather than country, it’s difficult to determine globality.

The number of ISIS foreign fighters is positively correlated with a country’s GDP per capita and its Human Development Index.

Nonviolence has long been the hopeful narrative. We can develop a bold strategic paradigm for the future for holistic societal change.

One of the Positive Peace pillars is critically predicated upon the efficacy of a modern education system in the production and distribution of human capital in a society.

The nature of intentional attacks against civilians in the world is mutating. Specifically, mass atrocity is transitioning from ‘state-centric and rebel-involved perpetration toward a murkier world of subterranean atrocity.

The logic follows that more employment reduces conflict risk, which in turn fosters the economic environment for investment and more jobs, which further increases stability that leads to more jobs and so on. However, the potential to realise this virtuous cycle is a lot more complicated.

The economic priorities of Sudan are distorted by the conflict. Sudan is a relatively poor country that spends far more lavishly on guns than on butter. The costs of the Darfur war are a serious public policy issue and an unaffordable drain on Sudan’s resources.

“Increasingly, the U.S. regards military service as a personal and professional career choice and not a civic or national duty or as essential to the debate on American citizenship,” writes Jomana Amara.

“The state has not only lost its dominant position in economic terms but its pre-eminence as an actor in the use of force has diminished too”, writes Herbert Wulf for Economists on Peace.