Writing for the New York Times John Tierney draws attention to a worldwide trend toward a reduction in wars.

You would never guess it from the news, but we're living in a peculiarly tranquil world. The new edition of "Peace and Conflict," a biennial global survey being published next week by the University of Maryland, shows that the number and intensity of wars and armed conflicts have fallen once again, continuing a steady 15-year decline that has halved the amount of organized violence around the world.

Before his death Julian Simon predicted to Tierney that the incidence of war would decline.

"I predict that the incidence of war will decline," he told me in 1996, two years before his death. He based his prediction on the principle that there is less and less to be gained economically from war. As people get richer and smarter, their lives and their knowledge become far more valuable than the land, minerals and natural resources they used to fight over.

The Iraq war is sometimes described, by both foes and supporters, as a pragmatic venture to keep oil flowing, but not even the most ruthless accountant can justify the expense. Even before the war, America's military costs in the Persian Gulf were much greater than the value of all the oil it was getting from the region, and now it's spending at least four times what the oil's worth.

Knowledge about how to create new resouces avoids the need to come to blows over existing useful resources. Technological societies can reduce their need to get entangled relationships with more backward but resource-rich societies by making technological advances which eliminate the need for the natural resources.

Tierney's argument about costs illustrates why an increase in government energy research funding makes so much sense. Even before the war were US military costs in the Persian Gulf high enough to justify much more government funding of research aimed at obsolescing oil.

The cost of the Iraq war is growing with no end in sight. Even official cost estimates understate the total cost of the Iraq war because the soldiers who die will make no future economic contributions to the US economy (or to the raising of their children) and survivor benefits will cost the public purse. Plus, the maimed will need care for decades to come with some requiring institutionalizatoin. Some of the injured survivors will be unable to work again while others will be able to work only at diminished levels. Due to advances in medical treatments the permanently damaged outnumber the killed.

But the invincibly ignorant Bush Administration wants to cut energy research.

In February, President George W. Bush’s Administration requested approximately $3.5 billion for fiscal 2006 for the Science Office—a 3.8% cut from 2005.

More than two thirds of the US Senate members want energy research to go up, not down.

More than two-thirds of U.S. senators have signed a letter recommending an increase of 3.2% in the FY 2006 DOE Office of Science budget. Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) were joined by 66 of their colleagues in signing a letter to Energy and Water Development Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Pete Domenici (R-NM) and the subcommittee's Ranking Member Harry Reid (D-NV) advocating a $3.715 billion budget for the Office of Science.

This strong demonstration of bipartisan support for the Office of Science comes at a key time. Appropriators will wrap up their hearings in the next few weeks and will then start drafting their FY 2006 budget bills. Setting the stage for this year's budget cycle was a Bush Administration request of a 3.8% reduction in the Office of Science's budget to $3.463 billion for the fiscal year that begins on October 1. This amount is less than the FY 2004 budget (see http://www.aip.org/fyi/2005/016.html.)

The $421 billion US Defense Department baseline budget plus at least $85 billion in supplementary appropriations - mostly for Iraq but also for Afghanistan - include only part of the total cost of defense. Once other security related items are added in US defense costs add up to over $667 billion.

If other security items are added in - homeland security ($40.4 billion), foreign policy and international stability ($31.7 billion), and Veterans Affairs ($68.3 billion) - the grand total reaches $667.2 billion. That exceeds any annual sum the US has ever paid for security in any war at any time, Mr. Wheeler notes. It even exceeds annual security spending today by all other nations on Earth.

US federal energy research spending therefore equals about a half of a percentage point of US defense costs. Yet technological advances could obsolesce oil, reduce money available for terrorism, reduce money available to spread Wahhabi Islam, and greatly decrease US interests in the Persian Gulf and in the Middle East as a whole.

When faced with arguments for war or projections of future conflicts over resources we should always stop and ask ourselves whether armed conflict could be avoided by accelerated advances in science and technology.

Will the trend toward less armed conflict continue indefinitely? Here are some reasons why that may not be the case:

• The current trend might just be a calm before the storm while new powers rise up to become strong enough to eventually challenge the existing world order. China comes to mind on this score.
• The number of people and governments which want to engage in conflict might continue to decline. But those few who do want to engage in conflict might find technological advances allow them to engage in asymmetrical warfare using biological or nuclear weapons that kill large numbers of people.
• Genetic engineering might eventually split the human race into subspecies whose interests and motvations are deeply incompatible.
• Artificially intelligent robots might make a bid for supremacy.
• Highly xenophobic aliens will receive the radio signals we started sending out in the early 20th century and they will send spacecraft to attack us.
• Religious and cultural differences will supplant economic competition as drivers of human conflict. Samuel Huntington's Clash Of Civilizations will lead to war. Certainly such differences helped cause wars in the past.

We can not avoid all violent conflict. But scientific and technological advances could eliminate the motives and means behind some conflicts.

Update: Some factors weigh in favor of reduced conflict in the future. Most obviously, the populations of the Western countries, Japan, and China are all rapidly aging. War is a young man's game. As young men become proportionally smaller portions of various populations the mainstream of each population will oppose war. Also, small family sizes make mothers especially more reluctant to risk losing a single son at war.

The effects of future rejuvenation therapies will cut in both directions. By making populations physically younger and boosting testosterone levels rejuvenation will make populations more physically able to engage in war. But the knowledge that one's own death in war would cost one thousands of years of foregone life might make people very risk averse. Some rejuvenation enthusiasts make that argument. But I'm not totally sold on it because human minds are flawed and humans do not always properly calculate risks and benefits. Look at gambling addicts or people who engage in dangerous sports for the thrill of it. Rejuvenation by itself will not make people perfectly rational calculators. For a substantial fraction of the world's population urges for immediate gratification of desires for revenge, pleasure, and dominance might override fears of death or desire for longer term satisfaction.