The Obsolescence of Major War

In: Bulletin of peace proposals: to motivate research, to inspire future oriented thinking, to promote activities for peace, Band 21, Heft 3, S. 321-328

Abstract

The long peace in the developed world seems due mainly to changing attitudes toward war: where war was once often casually seen as beneficial, noble, & glorious, or at least as necessary or inevitable, the conviction has now become widespread that war would be intolerably costly, unwise, futile, & foolish. Nuclear weapons do not seem to have been necessary for this to come about. Like slavery & dueling, war can die out, & it can do so without notable changes in human nature, in the nation-state, or in the international system. Though war persists in the Third World, countries there may eventually be infected by the developed world's aversion to it. AA