The Global Peace Index: Nordic countries on top, Middle East at the bottom - but a few suprises in the middle

Highlights: Iceland #1, Cuba # 62, China # 67, Egypt # 69 (??), USA #97, Iran # 105, North Korea #133, Israel #136 - and Iraq #140, out of 140.
Click here for the full ranking.

Love it or hate. But the most interesting thing with this aggregation exercise is that, for all but one indicator used to compose the Index, they are generally objective and come from respected research centres (of the type of the Economist Intelligence Unit (main source of data), Transparency International, etc.)

The ranking also goes beyond the basic military stats (size of the army, paramilitaries, access to small weapons...) and includes not only democracy and transparency data (the new craze, of course, no indicator is complete without a democracy component!) but also trade openness (imports and exports aa share of GDP), on the explicit assumption that more trade openness leads to more peaceful relationships. Debatable, but we’ll let it flow.

I’m also not sure what education has to do here - perhaps they are assuming, as they are doing with the inclusion of basic income data, that richer and more educated populations are more peaceful? Debatable as well.

Sure, the sleepy countries are at the top and the noisy ones at the bottom. The US’ ranking is barely above Iran (pfiou...:) and Israel only has Afghanistan, Sudan, Somalia, and Iraq to stick its tongue at.

Looking at the detail of the Egypt data, I'm not sure if I agree with some things and I doubt the accuracy of others (we have a 71.4% adult literacy rate? I always thought it was more in the range of 54%...) but overall it not very wrong.

Oh, and apparently we have a 'Willingness to fight' of 5 (out of 5!) , an average potential for terrorist attacks, and are mildly distrusted by other citizens. And we have a abysmal electoral process (2.9 out of 10, baby!) and a lousy Political Democracy Index (3.9 out of 10).

I strongly urge you to click on countries - your own, for one - as well as to compare it with the best, and the worst ranked. (and to your archenemy, hehehehehe.) You’ll surely learn a thing or two...