America Is at a Terrifying Turning Point—and There’s No Going Back
Ten countries occupy the “extreme” category. Twenty are in the “high” group, and another 20 are marked as “turbulent.” These 50 countries, ACLED says, account for 97 percent of all political violence in the world.
The United States is 50th—right behind Libya at 49. Now, for some context, I should note that some countries that rank well below the United States are hardly paradises on Earth. China, for example, ranks 69th—not, presumably, because everyone is tickled to live there, but because even theoretical attempts at violence against the state are suppressed by the regime in so many ways, like the infamous requirement that Uyghurs register with the local authorities the existence in their homes of kitchen knives.
Still—50 ain’t where we wanna be, folks.
If this isn’t persuasive to you, then let’s look at the matter from the other direction—that is, from the degree of peacefulness that exists in a given country. A group called Vision of Humanity produces a yearly report called the Global Peace Index, which, according to their website, takes into account “23 quantitative and qualitative indicators” and gives the nations of the world a score from one to five, lower being more peaceful.
The top ones on the 2024 index are roughly what you’d expect. Iceland at 1.112, Austria at 1.313, New Zealand at 1.323, and so on (Singapore is up there, indicating, again, that nation-states have different ways of maintaining the peace).
The United States? We rank 132nd, just behind Brazil and ahead of Iran and Lebanon. We did fare better on the group’s 2022 Positive Peace Index, which measures societal resilience; we tied with Spain for 26th. That’s not embarrassing, although one could easily argue that, for the country that is by far the world’s richest nation, which should have many billions to invest in such resiliency in the form of various social supports, 26 isn’t so hot.