Most Peaceful Countries in the World - 2008 Index

[cottmann]

According to the Global Peace Index, released Tuesday by Britain's Economist Intelligence Unit and based on 24 indicators of external and internal measures of peace (including UN deployments overseas, levels of violent crime nationally, respect for human rights, and percentage of the country's gross domestic product allocated for military spending), and covering 140 countries, the Top 10 most peaceful countries are:

1. Iceland
2. Denmark
3. Norway
4. New Zealand
5. Japan.
6. Ireland
7. Portugal
8. Finland
9. Luxembourg
10. Austria

118. Thailand

Canada is at No. 11, Switzerland at 12th and Sweden 13th. This compares with Britain at 49th spot, China 67th, and the United States at 97, one place lower than last year. See http://www.visionofhumanity.org/gpi/res ... ings/2008/ (http://www.visionofhumanity.org/gpi/results/rankings/2008/)

Peaceful = Boring

It just goes to show quite how statistics can be manipulated - Japan, for example, has the fourth highest total military expenditure in the world, behind the USA (which spends more than the remainder of the top 20 put together!), Russia and China; in terms of percentage of GDP, however, neither Japan nor the USA are even in the top 10 where North Korea, Oman, Eritrea and Burma lead the way.

[Lunchtime O'Booze]

Iceland ..now I bet that's a really fun place to live !!

actually I picked up the most stunningly beautiful 19 year old blond boy hitch-hiking in the UK once and he was from Iceland. He was so handsome and it was the middle of summer and he wore shorts..brown legs with little blond hairs , beautiful blue eyes and white blond hair to his shoulders..5'9". He feel asleep on the way back to London-it took all my self control not to stop in a byway and ravish him -he was that gorgeous.

I asked him to accompany me 2 days later to an Elton John concert at Earls Court..someone had given me 2 tickets for the best seats.

He came and loved the show and after ..as Elton went through every hit.."Candle In the Wind.."Crocodile Rock" etc..my Icelander said...."he is very talented..he should make some records with that nice music"..oh so naive..I was infatuated with him and then I took him to the Boltons for a drink at which point he took one look around the bar and said.."oh God the place is full of homos "..and ran out and I never saw him again !!!

It just goes to show quite how statistics can be manipulated - Japan, for example, has the fourth highest total military expenditure in the world, behind the USA (which spends more than the remainder of the top 20 put together!), Russia and China; in terms of percentage of GDP, however, neither Japan nor the USA are even in the top 10 where North Korea, Oman, Eritrea and Burma lead the way.

What does military spending have to do with peacefulness? Japan's force is purely peace-keeping and self-defense. They're not out there killing people like the US and UK military.

[cottmann]

It just goes to show quite how statistics can be manipulated - Japan, for example, has the fourth highest total military expenditure in the world, behind the USA (which spends more than the remainder of the top 20 put together!), Russia and China; in terms of percentage of GDP, however, neither Japan nor the USA are even in the top 10 where North Korea, Oman, Eritrea and Burma lead the way.

Japan has the sixth (not fourth) highest military expenditure in the world, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, BUT that includes most of the costs of the approximately 90 US bases in Japan including the salaries of the tens of thousands of Japanese workers on those bases. At present, this figures also includes the approximately $US7.5 billion share of the cost of relocating US forces from Japan to Guam.

Japan, moreover, has no aircraft carriers or long-range bombers (to say nothing of nuclear arms) so as not to arouse international suspicion of its ambitions.

The American-written Japanese Constitution renounces the use of war, and the Nagoya High Court recently ruled that using the Japanese Naval Self-Defense Force to refuel US ships in the Indian Ocean was unconstitutional.

The study, however, uses 24 indicators in total (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Peace_Index) of which military expenditure is only one. Why single this one out - and not the number of people in US prisons or some other indicator?


PS It is not true that the US "spends more than the remainder of the top 20 put together!" The US spends an amount equal to or more than all the rest of the world put together see http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ ... ending.htm (http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/spending.htm).

The best way to achieve peace is to carry a big stick & be well prepared for war.
Then when some dictator crops up in a neighbouring country, he is less likely to attack.

If Poland had 10,000 tanks & Nuclear weapons in 1939, I very much doubt Hitler would have invaded.

Japan is located next door to China and North Korea. Therefore they need to spend money on defence.

Japan has the sixth (not fourth) highest military expenditure in the world, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute,

Different Institutes, different statistics - mine are from the Royal Geographical Society, based in the UK. Fourth or sixth, it is largely academic - it is considerably more than that reasonably required for "peace-keeping and self-defence".


The study, however, uses 24 indicators in total (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Peace_Index) of which military expenditure is only one. Why single this one out - and not the number of people in US prisons or some other indicator?

I singled it out because it was the only indicator of the four you mentioned which I knew about without having to look it up. The US, as you are probably already aware, has the highest overall number in prison followed by China and Russia with Thailand in eighth place - this could, however, indicate a safe country just as it could a dangerous one, depending on how it was interpreted.


PS It is not true that the US "spends more than the remainder of the top 20 put together!" The US spends an amount equal to or more than all the rest of the world put together see http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ ... ending.htm (http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/spending.htm).

Again, it depends on the source of the statistic, what they define as "military spending", and their sources - again, largely academic and impossible to verify.

They're (Japan) not out there killing people like the US and UK military.

Well not recently anyway. My friends in Nanjing seem unhappy with the way history is written in Japanese schoolbooks. Perhaps it's written by remote control.

[cottmann]

- it is considerably more than that reasonably required for "peace-keeping and self-defence".

Of course, one reason for Japan's high self-defense and peace-keeping expenditure might be its exclusive defense ties with the USA.

[Wesley]

Statistics like governments tend to be deceptive, I am fairly sure you only get the numbers they want you to have, what any country actually spends is likely known only to a select few on the Intelligence oversight committees of various governments

Wesley