Robert Vokac is a retired lieutenant-colonel in the United States Army. He has served as a joint and combined warfare co-ordinator for the Joint Reserve Command and Staff Course at the Canadian Forces College since 2004 and is a senior research fellow for the Canadian Institute of Strategic Studies in Toronto.

Twenty-five years ago, former U.S. president Jimmy Carter noted that there were 35 "major wars" raging in the world. Critics accused him of exaggerating, but it's all a matter of definition.

What is a war? Carter defined it using data from the Department of Peace and Conflict Research at Uppsala University, which defines a war as follows:

"A 'major armed conflict' is the use of armed force between the military forces of two or more governments, or of one government and at least one organized armed group, resulting in the battle-related deaths of at least 1,000 people in any single calendar year and in which the incompatibility concerns control of government and/or territory."

The world has changed considerably since 1982. According to the Uppsala Conflict Data Project, the number of major armed conflicts dropped every year, spiked in 1997, and declined again from there.

After Sept. 11, 2001, security became a major concern. How safe are we? How safe is the world in general?

When the U.S. entered Afghanistan in 2001, then Iraq two years later, the stated reason was simple: the Taliban, al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein were all considered threats to global security.

Six years after Sept. 11, Hussein is dead, the Taliban is no longer in power and al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden have transformed themselves into a different kind of force entirely.

What has this done for international security in 2007? CBC.ca asked Robert Vokac, a senior research fellow at the Canadian Institute for Strategic Studies.

Is the world a safer place now than 25 years ago?

Yes, if one looks at something like the threat of nuclear war. Certainly the threat of that has greatly diminished. From that aspect, one could say that the world is more secure, but the number of conflicts that have exploded throughout the world and the security issues as they are felt by individual people and individual nations certainly has worsened in the last 25 years.

Aside from the obvious, Iraq and Afghanistan, what current conflicts pose the greatest threat to global security?

I think almost anything occurring on the African continent is significant. The reason it's significant is that what we have is a continent that is in almost a state of anarchy. There are governments that are not legitimate or are not strong enough to provide necessary services for the citizens, continuation of ethnic tensions, bankrupt economies, diseases such as AIDS and, sooner or later, I think this has the potential to ultimately explode. It simply is going to have to be addressed by the world community because it is probably the one single area that the world has tended to ignore and we are going to have to pay greater attention to Africa in the future.

I think in a general sense, most of Asia is probably OK. North Korea, of course, is a unique wild card, (but) are they an actual destabilizing threat? I don't think so. We've probably spent an inordinate amount of time talking about North Korea and I don't really think it's worth our effort all of the time.

The other thing I would point out, in terms of hemispheric stability, is that, for a variety of reasons, as I think we've most recently witnessed in Venezuela, there is certainly an anti-U.S. bent by many of the governments in south and Central America and that has found its way into some populist notions as well. Unfortunately, what ends up being painted is a fairly anti-Western outlook which is tacked on to the anti-U.S. political issues. What happens over time is that it's not going to be in the best interests of Canada or the United States to have a whole series of nations aligned north to south whose fundamental outlook is significantly different from our own.

Are there any common threads that unite these conflicts?

One common thread was the demise of the old world order [the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union], and what that created. The old world order maintained a degree of what I would call false stability, in that underlying ethnic tensions and underlying religious tensions in many parts of the world were just kept under the rug and frankly were not allowed to emerge to the surface. With the loss of that bipolar world order, it's basically like the genie has been set loose and people now have the ability to begin to address the age-old grudges such as what we saw in eastern Europe.

In other parts of the world, I think there are political implications. Certainly central and South America are primary examples where you have a superpower such as the United States intimately involved in perhaps less than favourable governments, working for the best security interest of the United States but, at the end of the day, this certainly doesn't work in the best interests of the nations and the people involved and that is a source of tension as well.

The common thread really is what I'd call the ethnic issues and the human propensity for violence in not liking people different than ourselves. It's a sad thing to say because we're so [not accustomed] to that in a place like Canada, but the rest of the world thrives on creating differences as opposed to looking for similarities.

Does the different nature of these conflicts affect Canada in a greater or lesser way?

I think the nature of the conflict affects Canada in a greater way and the reason is, No. 1, the world has become more globally connected virtually every day, every minute, every second. No. 2, the population of Canada, with the changing demographic, means we have many people who live in our country who have families who have roots in countries all over the world, so I think things that happen in the world are felt personally here at home by many Canadians and I think by default the government has to take that into consideration when it develops its foreign policy.

Can Canada take on a greater role in promoting global security, and should it?

I think Canada, like any other nation, certainly can do more in promoting global security. The question, of course, becomes what are the things Canada should do.

Certainly there's the traditional role of exerting moral leadership and working through multilateral institutions such as the United Nations and that has certainly been a preferred way of doing business for Canada for many years. No. 2 would be targeting very limited aid dollars into the right places in the world.

The answer is, yes, there's certainly more that Canada can do and most of it falls in the financial realm in terms of most of these things simply cost money. Money, in and of itself, doesn't solve a problem, but money certainly can assist in solving some of these problems.

Is Canada doing a good job with its current efforts?

I think Canada is doing a reasonable job when you compare Canada against other G-8 nations or other Western democracies, but I do believe that Canada is a wealthy enough country that it certainly could do more should it choose to do so.

Does Canadian involvement in places like Afghanistan make us a target?

Not necessarily. I think there are times when the nation is going to have to pick and choose its fights, when we actually put people in harm's way in the name of the government of Canada. Certainly it will increase in the short-term the risk to those people deployed in theatre [and] potentially will cast Canada into a somewhat less favourable light with certain parties around the world, but at the end of the day, the government, the nation and the people have to sit back and ask themselves, "Are we committed in the right places for the right reasons, doing the right things and are we willing to accept the risk that comes with being a leader in attempting to establish global security?"

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