For example, the Afghanistan war from 2001 to the present has killed somewhere between 25,000 and 40,000 people. This makes it very small by the standards of 20th century wars.
In the 1990s alone, there were at least eight wars an order of magnitude bigger than that (Congo, Sierra Leone, Chechnya, Yugoslavia, Algeria, Burundi, Rawanda).
And yes, we can add up Syria and Iraq too, and that is a much bigger number, but I can likewise keep adding up 1990s wars. It turns out that was a more violent decade in terms of actual battle deaths.
> though I could argue the actual starting point is Pakistan or maybe even Indonesia
You could argue that, but you would be hampered by the fact that casualty numbers in those countries are minuscule by the standards of actual wars.
> not to mention terror in Europe.
Terror is Europe is up a bit but still far from the highs it was hitting in the 1970s.
http://www.datagraver.com/case/people-killed-by-terrorism-pe...
The panicky "things are worse than ever and deteriorating" position is just not supported by hard evidence. It's stoked by an eager media ecosystem that profits from fear, and an aging generation that wants to externalize it's own perceptions of decline.
Many of the people saying "the west is declining" are in fact just baby boomers who are declining who can't accept that they are not equal to "the west".
