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Rob Thornton
05-30-2007, 05:25 PM
Heard a great piece on C-Span on the way back. The Economic Intelligence Unit had put together a Global Peace Index. (http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/05-30-2007/0004598231&EDATE=) They were briefing their methodology and fielding questions in D.C.. The discussion was pretty good, but I think a little suspect in the the designers of the index took awhile to admit there was any bias in their assignments of categories, weights and measures to detrmine ranking - when people are involved designing, collecting, analyzing there is always some bias - admitting it helps you guage the impact on the results and helps the audience more easily assimilate it. However, it sounds like they did a reasonable job on a tough issue.

For us, I think to understand the nature of war and its causes, understanding peace would be helpful. Since security is a component of civilization, this data may also be useful in considering our allocation of resources in terms of providing security and stability in relation to our policy.

Steve Blair
05-30-2007, 06:04 PM
There's a related story with some good outside links on BBC (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/6704767.stm) regarding this study. One highlight of the story:

The authors themselves acknowledge that there is a lack of data in many countries.

What impact the new survey will have is unclear. The authors also argue that some countries - like Japan - may benefit from sheltering under the US military umbrella.