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Global State of Peacefulness

Global State of Peacefulness

Debates


The most peaceful countries in the world, as of June 2025:

1. Iceland
2. Ireland
3. NZ
4. Austria
5. Switzerland
6. Singapore
7. Portugal
8. Denmark
9. Slovenia
10. Finland

7 out of 10 are in western or central Europe. What are they doing right, I wonder? Ensuring their people's pensions and health care, for starters.

Wanna know where the USA scores? Below Kenya, Uganda, Belarus, Lesotho, Zimbabwe, Congo, Turkmenistan, Rwanda, and a host of other "shot-hole" countries. How is it that the world's soon-to-be-second most powerful and 9th richest country/capita can't get this right, huh? Could it be because Americans are squandering their immense wealth on all the wrong things?


https://www.visionofhumanity.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Global-Peace-Index-2025-web.pdf

https://www.worldometers.info/gdp/gdp-per-capita/


@moonbus said
The most peaceful countries in the world, as of June 2025:

1. Iceland
2. Ireland
3. NZ
4. Austria
5. Switzerland
6. Singapore
7. Portugal
8. Denmark
9. Slovenia
10. Finland

7 out of 10 are in western or central Europe. What are they doing right, I wonder? Ensuring their people's pensions and health care, for starters.

Wanna know where the USA scores? Below ...[text shortened]... uploads/2025/06/Global-Peace-Index-2025-web.pdf

https://www.worldometers.info/gdp/gdp-per-capita/
Peace is not necessarily a goal of a powerful country. Whoever it was that made those lists are missing a few criteria. People still flock to the USA. Maybe they dont understand why.


@Rajk999 said
Peace is not necessarily a goal of a powerful country. Whoever it was that made those lists are missing a few criteria. People still flock to the USA. Maybe they dont understand why.
People flock to America to seek prosperity, often from countries wracked by civil war or civil-war-like conditions (in the grip of drug cartel violence or tyrannical governments).

What strikes me about the countries at the top of the list is that they are characterized by good governance, high levels of public trust in government, and low corruption (I don't know about Slovenia though, how well it transitioned from Communism).

Whereas, there is a sector of the American public which has a visceral distrust of government. It tends to be strongest in the Deep South (for obvious historical reasons--they defected, started a war, and lost) and in rural areas of the Mid-West. Trump plays well to this disaffected part of America, but the disaffection was there long before Trump.