After theorists around 1960 proclaimed the 'death of ideology', ideological divides and clashes have reemerged with renewed intensity throughout the world. In the United States they have become particularly venomous. Combining insights from evolutionary psychology with a broad sweep through history, down to the ideological civil war ripping the United States apart, the book explores the deeper roots of people's inability to accept claims about reality which come from the opposite ideological camp, no matter how valid they might be.
"This volume brings together some of Professor Azar Gat's most significant articles on the evolution of strategic doctrines and the transformation of war during the 20th and early 21st centuries.It sheds new light on the rise of the German Panzer arm and the doctrine of Blitzkrieg between the two world wars; explores the factors behind the formation of strategic policy and military doctrine in the world war era and during the cold war; and explains why counterinsurgency has become such a problem. The book concludes with the spread of peace in the developed world, challenged as it is by the rise of the authoritarian-capitalist great powers--China and Russia--and by the chilling prospect of unconventional terrorism. This last essay summarizes the author's latest research and has not previously been published in article form.This collection will be of much interest to students of strategic studies, military history, and international relations."--Provided by publisher.
Azar Gat provides a politically and strategically vital understanding of the peculiar strengths and vulnerabilities that liberal democracy brings to the formidable challenges ahead. Arguing that the democratic peace is merely one manifestation of much more sweeping and less recognized pacifist tendencies typical of liberal democracies, Gat offers a panoramic view of their distinctive way in conflict and war
Access options:
The following links lead to the full text from the respective local libraries:
In this truly global study, Azar Gat sets out to unravel the 'riddle of war' throughout human history, from the early hunter-gatherers right through to the unconventional terrorism of the twenty-first century. - ;Why do people go to war? Is it rooted in human nature or is it a late cultural invention? How does war relate to the other fundamental developments in the history of human civilization? And what of war today - is it a declining phenomenon or simply changing its shape?. In this truly global study of war and civilization, Azar Gat sets out to find definitive answers to these questions i
Access options:
The following links lead to the full text from the respective local libraries:
La guerre n'est plus l'avenir de l'homme, mais elle existe encore et traduit les antagonismes entre des systèmes politiques et économiques de nature différente. La Chine et la Russie, par une vision biaisée de l'ordre international, vont à l'encontre d'une perspective d'ouverture et de progrès.
The article reviews and assesses the recent literature that claims a sharp decrease in fighting and violent mortality rate since prehistory and during recent times. It also inquires into the causes of this decrease. The article supports the view, firmly established over the past 15 years and unrecognized by only one of the books reviewed, that the first massive decline in violent mortality occurred with the emergence of the state-Leviathan. Hobbes was right, and Rousseau was wrong, about the great violence of the human state of nature. The rise of the state-Leviathan greatly reduced in-group violent mortality by establishing internal peace. Less recognized, it also decreased out-group war fatalities. Although state wars appear large in absolute terms, large states actually meant lower mobilization rates and reduced exposure of the civilian population to war. A second major step in the decline in the frequency and fatality of war has occurred over the last two centuries, including in recent decades. However, the exact periodization of, and the reasons for, the decline are a matter of dispute among the authors reviewed. Further, the two World Wars constitute a sharp divergence from the trend, which must be accounted for. The article surveys possible factors behind the decrease, such as industrialization and rocketing economic growth, commercial interdependence, the liberal-democratic peace, social attitude change, nuclear deterrence, and UN peacekeeping forces. It argues that contrary to the claim of some of the authors reviewed, war has not become more lethal and destructive over the past two centuries, and thus this factor cannot be the cause of war's decline. Rather, it is peace that has become more profitable. At the same time, the specter of war continues to haunt the parts of the world less affected by many of the above developments, and the threat of unconventional terror is real and troubling. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Ltd., copyright holder.]
The article reviews and assesses the recent literature that claims a sharp decrease in fighting and violent mortality rate since prehistory and during recent times. It also inquires into the causes of this decrease. The article supports the view, firmly established over the past 15 years and unrecognized by only one of the books reviewed, that the first massive decline in violent mortality occurred with the emergence of the state-Leviathan. Hobbes was right, and Rousseau was wrong, about the great violence of the human state of nature. The rise of the state-Leviathan greatly reduced in-group violent mortality by establishing internal peace. Less recognized, it also decreased out-group war fatalities. Although state wars appear large in absolute terms, large states actually meant lower mobilization rates and reduced exposure of the civilian population to war. A second major step in the decline in the frequency and fatality of war has occurred over the last two centuries, including in recent decades. However, the exact periodization of, and the reasons for, the decline are a matter of dispute among the authors reviewed. Further, the two World Wars constitute a sharp divergence from the trend, which must be accounted for. The article surveys possible factors behind the decrease, such as industrialization and rocketing economic growth, commercial interdependence, the liberal-democratic peace, social attitude change, nuclear deterrence, and UN peacekeeping forces. It argues that contrary to the claim of some of the authors reviewed, war has not become more lethal and destructive over the past two centuries, and thus this factor cannot be the cause of war's decline. Rather, it is peace that has become more profitable. At the same time, the specter of war continues to haunt the parts of the world less affected by many of the above developments, and the threat of unconventional terror is real and troubling.
The causes of war remain a strangely obscure subject in the discipline of International Relations. Although the subject is of cardinal significance, theories of International Relations address it only obliquely, and most scholars in the field recognize the lacuna only when their attention is drawn to it. While people have a good idea of the aims that may motivate states to go to war, an attempt at a strict definition of them is widely regarded as futile. This article seeks to show how the various causes of violence and war all come together and are explained within an integrated human motivational complex, shaped by evolution and natural selection. These interconnected causes of fighting — some of them confusedly singled out by various schools in IR theory, most notably within realism — include competition over resources and reproduction, the ensuing quest for dominance, the security dilemma and other prisoner's dilemmas that emanate from the competition, kinship, identity, and ideas.
