Most state pairs in world history have no realistic opportunity for war.

Evidence

Before examining a number of different approaches for defining politically relevant dyads based on willingness, we offer some criteria for evaluating the different indicators. One basic criterion for evaluating indicators for choosing politically relevant dyads is how many dyads they include. The basic intuition behind the politically relevant approach is that many dyads are irrelevant. For example, an all-dyad design generates about 650,000 dyads (1816–2000) while approximately 90,000 qualify for relevance based solely on opportunity, an indication of the vast number of dyads that are seemingly irrelevant due to the absence of opportunity for conflict. — Gary Goertz, Social Science Concepts, 1446

Categorization

• SHARE: The 650,000-to-90,000 ratio is the kind of number that lands only with someone who works on dyadic data.
• CANDY: Almost all conceivable country pairs are non-events: roughly 14 percent of dyad-years could plausibly go to war.