AUTHOR SEES A BASIC LACK OF UNDERSTANDING ON THE PART OF THE U.S. - AS WELL AS THE USSR - WHERE MOVEMENTS OF NATIONAL LIBERATION ARE CONCERNED. HE EXAMINES U.S. POLICY TOWARD VARIOUS SOUTHERN AFRICAN LIBERATION MOVEMENTS AND ARGUES THAT THE U.S. IS ATTEMPTING TO PREVENT LIBERATION FROM DESTROYING THE ECONOMIC INFRASTRUCTURE OF SOUTHERN AFRICA.
What are humanity's biological origins? What are the mechanisms, including culture, that continue to drive it? What is the history that has allowed it to evolve over time? And what are its functions - how does it survive and thrive by exploiting the features that define it as a species? These are the four questions of the Tinbergen Method for explaining animal behaviour, developed by the Nobel Prizewinning Dutch ethologist Niko Tinbergen. This book contends that applying this method to war - which is unique to humans - can help us better understand why conflict is so resilient. Christopher Coker explores these four questions of our past and present, and looks at our post-human future, assessing how far scientific advances in gene-editing, robotics and AI systems will de-centre human agency. He concludes that we won't witness war's end until it has exhausted its evolutionary possibilities - meaning that, well into the future, war is likely to remain what Thucydides first called it: 'the human thing'. From the Ancients to Artificial Intelligence, Why War? is an exhilarating tour d'horizon of humankind's propensity to warfare and its behavioural underpinnings, offering new ways of thinking about our species' unique and deadly preoccupation.
In recent years culture has become the primary currency of politics – from the identity politics that characterised the American 2016 election to the push back against Western universalism in much of the non-Western world. Much less noticed is the rise of a new political entity, the civilizational state. In this pioneering book renowned political philosopher Christopher Coker looks in-depth at two countries that now claim this title: Xi Jinping's China and Vladimir Putin's Russia. He also discusses the Islamic caliphate, a virtual and aspirational civilizational state that is unlikely to fade despite the recent setbacks suffered by Isis. The civilizational state, he contends, is an idea whose time has come. For whilst civilizations themselves may not clash, civilizational states appear to be set on challenging the rules of the international order that the West takes for granted. China seems anxious to revise them, Russia to break them while Islamists would like to throw away the rule book altogether. When seen in the round, Coker argues these challenges could be enough to give birth to a new post-liberal international order.
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The Improbable War explains why conflict between the USA and China cannot be ruled out. In 1914 war between the Great Powers was considered unlikely, yet it happened. We learn only from history, and popular though the First World War analogy is, the lessons we draw from its outbreak are usually mistaken. Among these errors is the tendency to over-estimate human rationality. All major conflicts of the past 300 years have been about the norms and rules of the international system. In China and the US the world confronts two 'exceptional' powers whose values differ markedly, with China bidding to.
Coker examines how technology is transforming the way we think about and fight war, taking three major changes that are driving this process: cybernetic technologies that are folding soldiers into a cybernetic system that will allow the military to read their thoughts and emotions, and mould them accordingly; the coexistence of men and robots in the battle-spaces of tomorrow; and the extent to which we may be able to re-engineer warriors through pharmacological manipulation.
The Improbable War explains why conflict between the USA and China cannot be ruled out. In 1914 war between the Great Powers was considered unlikely, yet it happened. We learn only from history, and popular though the First World War analogy is, the lessons we draw from its outbreak are usually mistaken. Among these errors is the tendency to over-estimate human rationality. All major conflicts of the past 300 years have been about the norms and rules of the international system. In China and the US the world confronts two 'exceptional' powers whose values differ markedly, with China bidding to
Access options:
The following links lead to the full text from the respective local libraries:
Throughout history, war seems to have had an iron grip on humanity. In this short book, internationally renowned philosopher of war, Christopher Coker, challenges the view that war is an idea that we can cash in for an even better one - peace. War, he argues, is central to the human condition; it is part of the evolutionary inheritance which has allowed us to survive and thrive. New technologies and new geopolitical battles may transform the face and purpose of war in the 21st century, but our capacity for war remains undiminished. The inconvenient truth is that we will not see the end of war.
Wars throughout history have been fought in the name of ideology, religion and the pursuit of peace. Our thinking about war - when it is justified, how it should be fought and how it is perceived - has changed dramatically over time. Whereas in the past war has been seen as a battle of wills, this provocative and illuminating new book shows how war has evolved into an exercise in risk management. In a rare blend of political science, sociology, history and cultural thought, Christopher Coker peels away the layers of meaning shrouding our current understanding of war and warfare. Using the ideas of writers such as Zygmunt Bauman, Ulrich Beck and Frank Furedi, he shows that risk has become the language of business, politics and public policy and so we should not be surprised that it has now become the language of war. The book highlights the increasing difference between homeland security and national security in the modern world, arguing that the defense of the citizen is often now more challenging than the defense of the state. By demonstrating the changing character and complexity of conflict from World War I to the current the current fight against terrorism, the book provides a powerful and highly distinctive account of the re-branding of war in an age of risk. -- Back cover.
