The Lessons of History
by Will Durant and Ariel Durant · 1 Jan 1968 · 133pp · 31,263 words
die for their country in the anesthesia of battle and the aura of glory? Even a philosopher, if he knows history, will admit that a long peace may fatally weaken the martial muscles of a nation. In the present inadequacy of international law and sentiment a nation must be ready at any
The Intelligence War Against the IRA
by Thomas Leahy · 26 Mar 2020 · 1,149pp · 141,412 words
and the Roots of the Good Friday Agreement’, in Michael Cox, Adrian Guelke and Fiona Stephen (eds.), A Farewell to Arms? From ‘Long War’ to Long Peace in Northern Ireland (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), p. 52. 13. Martin Mansergh, ‘The Background to the Irish Peace Process’, in Cox, Guelke and Stephen
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and the Roots of the Good Friday Agreement’, in Michael Cox, Adrian Guelke and Fiona Stephen (eds.), A Farewell to Arms? From ‘Long War’ to Long Peace in Northern Ireland (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000). Fulton, Kevin with Nally, Jim and Gallagher, Ian. Unsung Hero: How I Saved Dozens of Lives as
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, Martin. ‘The Background to the Irish Peace Process’, in Michael Cox, Adrian Guelke and Fiona Stephen (eds.), A Farewell to Arms? From ‘Long War’ to Long Peace in Northern Ireland (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000). Mansergh, Martin. ‘Mountain-Climbing Irish-Style: The HiddenChallenges of the Peace Process’, in Marianne Elliott (ed.), The
Atomic Obsession: Nuclear Alarmism From Hiroshima to Al-Qaeda
by John Mueller · 1 Nov 2009 · 465pp · 124,074 words
the Truman Doctrine a Real Turning Point?” Foreign Affairs 52(2) January: 386–401. ______. 1982. Strategies of Containment. New York: Oxford University Press. ______. 1987. The Long Peace: Inquiries Into the History of the Cold War. New York: Oxford University Press. ______. 1992. The United States and the Cold War: Implications, Reconsiderations, Provocations. New
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, Bruce. 2003. Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly About Security in an Uncertain World. New York: Copernicus. Schroeder, Paul W. 2006. “The Life and Death of a Long Peace, 1763–1914.” In The Waning of Major War: Theories and Debates, ed. Raimo Väyryen. New York: Routledge, 33–63. Schuman, Howard, Jacob Ludwig, and Jon
Winning the War on War: The Decline of Armed Conflict Worldwide
by Joshua S. Goldstein · 15 Sep 2011 · 511pp · 148,310 words
Nations Peace Operations. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2003b: 171–200. Krech, Shepard III. “Genocide in Tribal Society.” Nature 371, Sep. 1, 1994: 14–15. Kriesberg, Louis. “Long Peace or Long War: A Conflict Resolution Perspective.” Negotiation Journal, April 2007: 97–116. Krippner, Stanley, and Teresa M. McIntyre. “Overview: In the Wake of War
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Children First in Setting Priorities for Humanitarian Assistance in War Zones. [Press Release.] October 14, 2003b. Schroeder, Paul W. The Life and Death of a Long Peace, 1763–1914. In Raimo Väyrynen, ed. The Waning of Major War: Theories and Debates. London: Routledge, 2006: 33–63. Seybolt, Taylor B. Humanitarian Military Intervention
Presidents of War
by Michael Beschloss · 8 Oct 2018
him that within the next two years, he would inevitably be hauled into war with Spain. McKinley did not wish to end the nation’s long peace since Appomattox. Trying to fix the Cuba problem, he offered to buy the island, but the Spanish turned him down flat. McKinley sent a personal
Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance
by Noam Chomsky · 1 Jan 2003 · 351pp · 96,780 words
Out of Democracy (University of Illinois, 1997). 37. Cited by Melvin Leffler, A Preponderance of Power (Stanford, 1992), p. 78. 38. John Lewis Gaddis, The Long Peace (Oxford, 1987), p. 10. 39. Mark Laffey, Review of International Studies 29 (2003), a critical account of the convention. Chapter 4: DANGEROUS TIMES 1. Michael
On Grand Strategy
by John Lewis Gaddis · 3 Apr 2018 · 461pp · 109,656 words
Historians Map the Past We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History The United States and the End of the Cold War: Implications, Reconsiderations, Provocations The Long Peace: Inquiries into the History of the Cold War Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of American National Security Policy During the Cold War Russia, the
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, p. 199. 46. For more on this, see John Lewis Gaddis, “Drawing Lines: The Defensive Perimeter Strategy in East Asia, 1947–1951,” in Gaddis, The Long Peace: Inquiries into the History of the Cold War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), pp. 71–103. Taiwan was not included, because the Chinese Nationalists
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the Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy. His previous books include The United States and the Origins of the Cold War; Strategies of Containment; The Long Peace; We Now Know; The Landscape of History; Surprise, Security, and the American Experience; and The Cold War: A New History. Professor Gaddis teaches courses on
The Glass Half-Empty: Debunking the Myth of Progress in the Twenty-First Century
by Rodrigo Aguilera · 10 Mar 2020 · 356pp · 106,161 words
is more peaceful in in the past, the chapter questions the causes given to this phenomenon, particularly the claim that the post-World War II “long peace” represents some kind of paradigm shift away from war and conflict. This lays the stage for Chapter Eight, which discusses how the progress narrative has
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is important when understanding the particularly peaceful period in human history that begins with the end of World War II, a period known as the “Long Peace”. During this period, conflict between the great powers became a rare occurrence so much that the only major instance is the US (and Allied) fight
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million-strong Chinese “volunteers” during the Korean War in 1950–1953. Pinker may downplay the predictive aspects of his narrative, but he nevertheless sees the Long Peace as something more than just a statistical oddity, so much that a large part of The Better Angels of Our Nature is spent trying to
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another statistical study by computer scientist Aaron Clauset suggests that we need another 100–150 years of data to make a definitive claim that the Long Peace “could plausibly be called a genuine trend”.31 Laying the rates of conflict-related violence between the twentieth century next to those of the relatively
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have made anyone writing in the middle part of the millennium claim things had never been better (Figure 7.3). Figure 7.3: Is the Long Peace really that peaceful? Notes: This chart overlays the death rates in combat in the twentieth century with those of the relatively peaceful fourteenth and fifteenth
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chart uses a logarithmic scale of 2 (the smallest possible), representing a doubling on the left axis. Source: Conflict Catalog. The only oddity of the Long Peace, after all, is the absence of great power war. But it is not a period of uninterrupted decline in war-related violence: death ratios went
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in contrast to homicides. Sources: Conflict Catalog,32 PRIO,33 UCDP.34 By New Optimist logic, the fifteenth century should have been seen as a Long Peace as well, and if there were longer datasets, probably many other centuries would be seen as such too. For example, one of the most misleading
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structural drivers identified by Pinker (primarily the nation-state, the Enlightenment, and trade) are truly the causes of the reduction in violence seen during the Long Peace, regardless of whether it is a statistical oddity or not. To answer this is also to answer the question of whether we can use these
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, which stands opposed to the rosier liberal view of a rules-based global community. Pinker, unsurprisingly, is squarely in the liberal camp, conceding that “the Long Peace was also helped along by some Realpolitik” but insisting that “the biggest single change in the international order is an idea we seldom appreciate today
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less war-prone than ever before, conquest attempts still occur frequently enough that territorial war remains the predominant type of interstate war”.41 Will the Long Peace endure for longer? In his response to Taleb,42 Pinker writes that “none of these phenomena proves that a war between developed states is less
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the disclaimer on any financial report that “past performance is no guarantee of future results”. If this is the case, then any explanation of the Long Peace on the basis of Enlightenment ideals instead of great power dynamics is meaningless. When describing the distinctly American abhorrence of realism, international relations scholar (and
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’s claim that security competition and war will persist despite our best efforts to eliminate them.43 In short, there’s no reason that the Long Peace can’t be longer. Just not for the reasons Pinker thinks it could. The unique balance of power circumstances that emerged after World War II
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are far more important determinants of the Long Peace than Enlightenment ideas. For example, the pacifying of former militaristic great powers like Germany and Japan has more to do with the fact that non
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.danielwaltman.com/uploads/3/2/3/1/32312379/evolution_of_territorial_conquest.pdf 42 Pinker, S., “Fooled by Belligerence: Comments on Nassim Taleb’s ‘The Long Peace is a Statistical Illusion’”, https://stevenpinker.com/files/comments_on_taleb_by_s_pinker.pdf 43 Mearsheimer, J., “The False Promise of International Institutions”, International
Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress
by Steven Pinker · 13 Feb 2018 · 1,034pp · 241,773 words
self-control in early modern Europe. The Humanitarian Revolution is another name for the Enlightenment-era abolition of slavery, religious persecution, and cruel punishments. The Long Peace is the historians’ term for the decline of great-power and interstate war after World War II. Following the end of the Cold War, the
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these that all three measures of war—frequency, duration, and lethality—declined in tandem, and the world entered the period that has been called the Long Peace. It’s not just the great powers that have stopped fighting each other. War in the classic sense of an armed conflict between the uniformed
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of people rather than the hundreds of thousands or millions who died in the all-out wars that nation-states have fought throughout history. The Long Peace has certainly been tested since 2011, such as in conflicts between Armenia and Azerbaijan, Russia and Ukraine, and the two Koreas, but in each case
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the Democratic Peace theory, in which pairs of countries that are more democratic are less likely to confront each other in militarized disputes.22 The Long Peace was also helped along by some realpolitik. The massive destructive powers of the American and Soviet armies (even without their nuclear weapons) made the Cold
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rest. The legal scholars Oona Hathaway and Scott Shapiro argue that it’s the outlawry of war that deserves much of the credit for the Long Peace. The idea that nations should agree to make war illegal was proposed by Kant in 1795. It was first agreed upon in the much-ridiculed
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20th century, nuclear weapons might have struck people as equally bizarre. Nor do nuclear weapons deserve credit for ending World War II or cementing the Long Peace that followed it—two arguments that repeatedly come up to suggest that nuclear weapons are good things rather than bad things. Most historians today believe
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weapons: Mueller 1989, 2004; Pinker 2011, pp. 268–78. For new data see Sechser & Fuhrmann 2017. 24. Norms and taboos as a cause of the Long Peace: Goertz, Diehl, & Balas 2016; Goldstein 2011; Hathaway & Shapiro 2017; Mueller 1989; Nadelmann 1990. 25. Civil wars less deadly than interstate wars: Pinker 2011, pp. 303
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; Mueller 2010a; Ray 1989. 103. Nuclear taboo: Mueller 1989; Sechser & Fuhrmann 2017; Tannenwald 2005; Ray 1989, pp. 429–31; Pinker 2011, chap. 5, “Is the Long Peace a Nuclear Peace?” pp. 268–78. 104. Effectiveness of conventional deterrence: Mueller 1989, 2010a. 105. Nuclear states and armed burglars: Schelling 1960. 106. Berry et
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–14 intellectual scorn for, 34, 446 Optimism Gap and, 115 sympathy and, 34 Locke, John, 230, 412 London, England, 63, 130, 135 London, Jack, 446 Long Peace, 43, 157–8, 451 and civil wars, 158–60, 466n11 and democracies, rise of, 162–3, 200 Kellogg-Briand pact and, 163–4 realpolitik and
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as inherently worthy, 164–5, 166 peacekeeping forces, success of, 404–5 romantic militarism giving way to, 165–6 as self-reinforcing, 164 See also Long Peace; war Peak Car, Carbon, Children, Coal, Paper, Timber, 144 Peak Farmland, 76, 144 Peak Oil, 135 Peak Stuff, 135–6 Peanuts (comic), 377 Pearl Harbor
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–30 romantic militarism, 165–6 state-based cyber-sabotage as, 304 terrorism as largely a phenomenon of, 193 See also civil wars; Cold War; genocide; Long Peace; nuclear war; peace; weapons; specific wars washing machine, 251–2, 252 Washington, George, 13 water chlorination of, 63, 64 desalination of, 129, 149 flooding and
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, and regulation, 365, 483nn39,42 education in, 236–7, 237 emancipative values in, 225–7, 226, 227 homicide rates in, 192–3, 192, 469n4 and Long Peace, 158 per capita income of, 86 secularization and, 436, 489n68 suicide rates in, 278–80, 279 terrorist deaths in, 192–3, 192, 194 vacation time
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and displaced persons in, 160 religiosity of nation-states in, 429–30 rise of democratic governments after, 200 and romantic militarism, 166, 451 See also Long Peace; Nazi Germany Wright, Quincy, 418 XKCD webcomic, 127, 128, 430 Y2K Panic, 293–4 Yazidi people, 162 Yeats, William Butler, 446, 447 yellow fever, 62
The Tragedy of Great Power Politics
by John J. Mearsheimer · 1 Jan 2001 · 637pp · 199,158 words
. The same basic point holds for the Cold War: American military forces were in Europe to contain the Soviet Union, not to maintain peace. The long peace that ensued was the happy consequence of a successful deterrence policy. We find a similiar story in Northeast Asia. The United States did not intervene
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