And the winner is: “Report: China, Cuba more peaceful than US.”
The Associated Press ran the story of the release of the 2010 Global Peace Index this way with a true journalist’s flair: the headline itself would pique the interest of a broad base of browsers—irritated conservatives and eager self-validating liberals alike, the in-betweens and the simply curious.
And the intro: China and Cuba are more peaceful than the United States, according to a report published Thursday.
The index, which is put out by the Australia-based Institute for Economics and Peace with data compiled by the Economist Intelligence Unit, uses as criteria 23 different indicators, which include statistics on violence but also social unrest, military spending, and others. Overall then, Cuba (ranked at 72 out of 149 nations) beats out China (at 80), and both can boast victories over the United States, whose rank of 85 on the list makes it a member of the “less peaceful” half of the world’s nations. Frankly, it’s in embarrassment in the face of the moral superiority complex that has long colored the U.S. global posture. And it will almost certainly serve as someone’s “I told you so” fodder for reviving a critique of President Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize.
I wondered the factors that put Cuba ahead of the United States, and the Vision of Humanity website, which posts the results of the study, gave me the goods. The rankings on which Cuba was considerably ahead of the United States are below.
- Number of external and internal conflicts fought
- Potential for terrorist acts
- Number of jailed populations per 100,000 people
- Exports of major conventional weapons per 100,000 people
- Military capability/sophistication
Interesting, too, are those on which the United States came out ahead of Cuba:
- Level of organized conflict (internal)
- Relations with neighboring countries
- Political instability
- Number of internal security officers and police per 100,000 people
And lastly, the most striking measure on which the United States and Cuba were ranked equally: level of respect for human rights.