aggregate data proves econ decline doesn’t cause war

The final significant outcome addresses a dog that hasn't barked: the effect of the Great Recession on cross-border conflict and violence. During the initial stages of the crisis, multiple analysts asserted that the financial crisis would lead states to increase their use of force as a tool for staying in power.42 They voiced genuine concern that the global economic downturn would lead to an increase in conflict—whether through greater internal repression, diversionary wars, arms races, or a ratcheting up of great power conflict. Violence in the Middle East, border disputes in the South China Sea, and even the disruptions of the Occupy movement fueled impressions of a surge in global public disorder. The aggregate data suggest otherwise, however. The Institute for Economics and Peace has concluded that "the average level of peace fulness in 2012 is approximately the same as it was in 2007."43 Inter state violence in particular has declined since the start of the financial crisis, as have military expenditures in most sampled countries. Other studies confirm that the Great Recession has not triggered any increase in violent conflict, as Lotta Themnér and Peter Wallensteen conclude: "[T]he pattern is one of relative stability when we consider the trend for the past five years."44 The secular decline in violence that started with the end of the Cold War has not been reversed. Rogers Brubaker ob serves that "the crisis has not to date generated the surge in protection ist nationalism or ethnic exclusion that might have been expected.