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The chilling sights and sounds of war fill newspapers and television screens worldwide, but war itself is in decline, peace researchers report.

In fact, the number killed in battle has fallen to its lowest point in the post-World War II period, dipping below 20,000 a year by one measure. Peacemaking missions, meantime, are growing in number.

"International engagement is blossoming," said American scholar Monty G. Marshall. "There's been an enormous amount of activity to try to end these conflicts."

For months the battle reports and casualty tolls from Iraq (news - web sites) and Afghanistan (news - web sites) have put war in the headlines, but Swedish and Canadian non-governmental groups tracking armed conflict globally find a general decline in numbers from peaks in the 1990s.

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Yes,as peacetime missions are growing in numbers,so has local wars in countries we only ever seen in pictures or on Tv docs. The US cannot police the world,much as many of us would want them to do. But what I do hate to see is,this new EU telling the US where to get off. Europe has lost its memory re WW11 when the United States helped rid Europe of that other madman Hitler. Its only a matter of time,and I can see it coming when our kids are drafted into a new superstate EU Army to police europe or the mid east.