On Wars, without a subtitle, is Michael Mann’s latest contribution to a long and distinguished career as a professor of sociology on both sides of the Atlantic. He is currently Emeritus Professor at the University of California–Los Angeles. Most famous for the four-volume The Sources of Social Power, which was produced over decades, Mann has…
Tag: war
H-Diplo|RJISSF Roundtable 15-10 on Chan, Rumbles of Thunder
With the recent return of great-power politics, we are also seeing a resurrection of power transition, a realist theory in international relations.[1] Positing an inevitable war between the reigning power and the contending state, power transition seems well suited to explain the unrelenting competition between the United States and China in the last few years….
H-Diplo|RJISSF Commentary II-1: “Massacre in Israel: A Transformational Moment, or More of the Same?”
H-Diplo|RJISSF Commentary Editor: Diane Labrosse | Production Editor: Christopher Ball 15 October 2023 | Vol. II: No. 1 “Massacre in Israel: A Transformational Moment, or More of the Same?” https://hdiplo.org/to/CII-1 Essay by James R. Stocker, Trinity Washington University On 7 October 2023, the Palestinian militant group Hamas shocked the world by launching attacks by land,…
H-Diplo|RJISSF Review Essay 73: Threlkeld on Barnhart & Trager, The Suffragist Peace
At the turn of the twentieth century, women suffragists in the United States and Britain argued that because women were more naturally pacifist than men, allowing them to vote would lead to greater peace among nations. As the “givers and nurturers of life,” according to Lucia Ames Mead, who chaired the Peace Committee of the…
H-Diplo|RJISSF Roundtable on Malkasian, The American War in Afghanistan & Whitlock, The Afghanistan Papers
Just over 21 years ago, the United States invaded Afghanistan. Just over one year ago, the United States withdrew from Afghanistan. Understanding the two decades in between, which became by almost any measure America’s longest war, will continue to occupy and often bedevil scholars and policymakers for years to come. The two books under review…
H-Diplo | ISSF Roundtable 14-7 on Barder, Global Race War: International Politics and Racial Hierarchy
“Theory” makes the world of the professors go ‘round. It is the gold ring on the dissertation-award, post-doc, tenure ladder, lead article, monograph, promotion, citation count endowed chair carousel. In political science in the United States the dominant view of theory among a self-identified ‘mainstream’ roughly corresponds to that of their colleagues in the natural…
Roundtable 13-10 on Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War
Samuel Moyn raises many questions in his new, provocative book, Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War. The four reviews, by Anne Kornhauser, Jana K. Lipman, Tejasvi Nagaraja, and Scott D. Sagan, engage deeply, appreciatively, and critically with Moyn’s work. For Nagaraja the book’s key question is, “how the post-9/11 Forever War…
Roundtable 12-13 on Peacekeeping in the Midst of War
Peacekeeping was born in 1948, in the midst of the American civil rights and anti-colonial movements. The basic thrust of the idea was to resolve violent conflict without resorting to violence. In that sense, peacekeeping is unlike other forms of military intervention because of its foundational principles: consent, impartiality, and the use of force in…
Review Essay 52 on Only the Dead: The Persistence of War in The Modern Age
These days, international relations (IR) and the study of war need more books that are big in ambition, asking important questions and providing sweeping answers. Unfortunately, the professional incentives in political science these days tend to steer most scholars away from writing big books. It is hard to imagine returning to the heyday of big…
Article Review 138 on “The Sturdy Child vs. the Sword of Damocles: Nuclear Weapons and the Expected Cost of War.”
With the advent of nuclear weapons came the question of how their very existence changed the way we conduct and think about warfare. Nearly seventy five years after their first (and, to date, only) use at the end of World War II, the question remains far from resolved, as nuclear ‘optimists’ and ‘pessimists’ continue to…