When the weeds have grown over the war memorials, historians, looking back, will probably date the beginning of the long peace from 1989 and the end of the cold war. The years before were a kind of phoney peace. We had peace in practice but not in theory. The threat of war remained a determining factor in government policy and a determining influence in society. The phoney peace provided a preparation, but the psychology of peace has become properly rooted in western Europe only during the past ten years.
Some universities have departments of peace studies.
Strangely, these are preoccupied with war. Perhaps the time has come to start thinking seriously about how the long peace will affect us. Because our societies have been shaped over the centuries by war and the expectation of war, the changes will be far-reaching. It is possible only to guess at some of them. This is already happening.