Some may simply have gone underground to rise again. After the rise of the telephone, intelligentsia mourned the death of writing as a general skill, but e-mail seems to have brought it back. The demise of a common religion, not to mention a classical education, has challenged the ability to create a common public ethic, but tolerance has emerged as a dominant public ethics standard. Despite the standard of tolerance and the global communication to enforce it, regional conflicts continue to plague us, usually based on nasty, ancient memories. President George Bush may have been right when he called the Gulf War an example of the emerging New World Order.
Trouble occurs hundreds or thousands of miles away.
An international military force is put together under U.N auspices. The troops go in to separate the warring parties and impose peace or at least, non-violence. The situation cools off and the troops go home. In time, that new word for the military peacekeepers may become more than just a hopeful fiction. More promising still, for every regional conflict that boils over into violence, we seem to see ones that melt before human good will.