harvard's steven pinker, who will be on the show later, points out in a recent essay that after a 600-year stretch in which western european countries started two new wars a year they have not started one since 1945, nor have the 40 or so richest nations anywhere in the world engaged each other in armed conflict. colonial wars, a routine feature of international life for thousands of years, are extinct. wars between countries, not just major powers, not just in europe, have also dropped dramatically by more than 50% over the last three decades. scholars at the university of maryland have been tabulating the number of new conflicts that have arisen across the world. they find that the past decade has seen the lowest number since world war ii. this is not an academic debate. the best way to deal with russia's aggression in crimea is not to present it as routine national interest-based foreign policy that would be countered by washington in a contest between two great powers. it is to point out, as obama did eloquently this week in brussels, that russia is grossly endangering a global or

the steven pinker example, one of my favorite books of all time, is if you ask people, is it is one ofhose violent eras in history, they will say yes. overwhelmingly, americans say yes. it's overwhelmingly the least of violent era in history. and so what it means is you're discussed with violence actually increases, and that's partly why we take steps and why within our own society and the world at large it's come down so dramatically. >> i love your optimism. and so based on your optimism, given the fact that the world will have only a few poor countries in the year 2035, what's the gates foundation going to be doing in 2036? >> well, there are a lot of diseases. over 80% of the difference of why a poor child is 20 times more likely to die in a child in a middle income country, it's these infectious diseases. it's diarrhea, pneumonia, larry, and then there's a few adult diseases which are way more prevalent in poor countries, tb, hiv. and we take it on as a central mission, it's a little bit over half of what we do, do get rid of those diseases. and so that wil within our prioy in til