Gunnar Heinsohn
There’s this sociologist from Germany, Gunnar Heinsohn, who has an interesting slant on what it takes for a country to be warlike, and how to avert it. According to Heinsohn, bellicosity is a function of the number of unemployed young men in the population and his star exhibit is the island nation known to all Arthur Clarke lovers, Sri Lanka.
Twenty-odd years ago, the average Sri Lankan family had three point something sons; there was a lot of unemployment and the violent war between the government and the rebellious Tamil Tigers had been going on for decades and seemed to be getting worse all the time. Now the average Sri Lankan family has only one son, and the war ended this year.
Heinsohn points to such militant countries as Lebanon, with a declining birthrate, and Iran, now down to an average family size of 1.7, as less likely to get into wars than their historical records and warlike declarations would suggest. Be nice if he were right.
