Deep dive
The World Rearms and Reroutes
How the wars of the 2020s left the battlefield: seven charts tracing conflict deaths, record displacement, the collapse of the Suez and Hormuz shipping lanes, repriced insurance and food, and the defense budgets rising to answer them.
For thirty years after the Cold War, organized violence looked like someone else's problem — distant, declining, and priced into nothing. The 2020s ended that. War deaths tripled, displacement hit levels never recorded, and the shortest sea routes on Earth emptied out. This story follows the shock outward, ring by ring: from the battlefield, to the people who flee it, to the ships that avoid it, to the supply chains, insurance premiums, and grocery bills that absorb it — and finally to the defense budgets that answer it. Every chart updates as its source publishes.
01
Deaths in Organized Violence
War deaths came back
The academic standard for counting war deaths, kept by Uppsala University since 1989. After the hopeful trough of the mid-2000s, the 2020s brought a resurgence that peaked near 317,000 deaths in 2022. The latest year counts about 245,000 — and violence against civilians reached its highest level since the Rwandan genocide of 1994.
What it adds
Uppsala's count of deaths in organized violence since 1989 holds the whole arc: Rwanda's 1994 spike, the post-Cold War decline, the Syria years, and a 2020s resurgence that peaked near 317 thousand deaths in 2022. The latest year recorded about 245 thousand.
Open chart, data, and methodology ↗Every death in this chart ripples outward, and the widest ripple is people running for their lives.
02
A World on the Move, Involuntarily
A hundred million out the door
People displaced under UNHCR's mandate: about 17 million in 1990, roughly 109 million now. The fastest-growing group never crosses a border at all — internally displaced people number about 64 million, outnumbering refugees and asylum seekers three to two.
What it adds
UNHCR's count of the forcibly displaced has climbed from about 17 million people in 1990 to 109 million — and the fastest-growing category is people displaced inside their own countries, who now outnumber cross-border refugees three to two.
Open chart, data, and methodology ↗People flee wars. So do ships — and the shipping map redrew itself in months.
03
Since October 7: Suez, Hormuz, and the Cape
The day the map changed
Ship transits indexed to the two weeks before October 7, 2023. The Suez Canal runs at barely half its pre-war traffic. The Strait of Hormuz collapsed to under 3 percent of baseline at the 2026 low and still moves less than a tenth of what it did. The Cape of Good Hope — the long way around Africa — carries two-thirds more traffic than before the war.
What it adds
Each route against its own pre-war traffic: Suez runs at 56% of its October 2023 level and the Cape of Good Hope at 164% as the detour endures — while Hormuz, steady for two years, collapsed in 2026 to 2% at the low, now at 5%.
Open chart, data, and methodology ↗Rerouting the world's cargo costs time, fuel, and money. There is a gauge for that.
04
The Supply Chain Pressure Gauge
The pressure gauge flips
The New York Fed's Global Supply Chain Pressure Index, in standard deviations from normal. The pandemic spike of late 2021 hit 4.4 sigma, then unwound completely by 2023. The gauge has since climbed back above +1 — elevated stress again, but this time driven by war and rerouting, not container shortages.
What it adds
The New York Fed compresses shipping rates, delivery times, and order backlogs worldwide into one gauge. It exploded past four standard deviations in the 2021 container crunch, normalized by 2023 — and has climbed back above one in the tariff era, at 0.8 in the latest month.
Open chart, data, and methodology ↗Stress in the world's plumbing eventually reaches household bills. Insurance gets there first.
05
The Insurance Shock
Risk, repriced
Car insurance became one of the fastest-rising prices in America, peaking at 22.6 percent a year in April 2024 as repair costs, storm losses, and repriced risk fed through premiums — before swinging into outright deflation by mid-2026. Household insurance is still climbing at three times the all-items inflation rate.
What it adds
Insurance became one of America's fastest-rising prices: car insurance inflation peaked at 23% a year — several times the overall rate — as repair costs, climate losses, and repriced risk fed through premiums. It has cooled to -4% in the latest month.
Open chart, data, and methodology ↗The other line on every household's ledger where global disorder shows up is the grocery bill.
06
The Global Food Price Rollercoaster
The grocery bill of war
The FAO Food Price Index reached its all-time high in March 2022, the month after Russia's invasion of Ukraine. It has retreated since — but remains 30 percent above its 2014–16 baseline, and each of the record's three great spikes (2008, 2011, 2022) was followed by unrest in food-importing countries.
What it adds
World food prices have spiked three times in a generation — 2008, 2011, and the 2022 shock after Russia invaded Ukraine, when the index hit 160. It now sits near 131, still well above the 2014-16 baseline of 100.
Open chart, data, and methodology ↗Governments read these same charts. Their answer appears as a line item in defense budgets.
07
NATO defense spending by country
The 3.5 percent world
NATO's 2026 spending estimates, country by country. Lithuania leads at 5.3 percent of GDP; most of the eastern flank has blown past the old 2 percent guideline; the alliance's new core target is 3.5 percent by 2035. The laggards, near 1.6 percent, are the countries farthest from the ripples this story traced.
What it adds
Estimated NATO defense burdens vary widely, and several members remain below the former 2% guideline.
Open chart, data, and methodology ↗Rearmament is the last ring of the shock — the point where the disorder becomes permanent budget.
The quick read
Disorder is a line item now
Read in order, the seven charts form one causal chain: wars kill more people, displace more people, and close more sea lanes than at any point in the post-Cold War era — and the costs no longer stay near the battlefield. They surface as supply-chain stress, insurance premiums, food prices, and defense budgets, in economies thousands of miles from any front line. None of these series has returned to its pre-2020 baseline. The open question is which of them turns first: traffic through Hormuz, the UCDP death count, or the defense share of GDP — and these charts will update as each answer arrives.
Each chart is linked to its own methodology, source list, latest observations, and downloadable chart image. Associations shown here are descriptive unless a chart explicitly states otherwise.