Have We Seen the End of War?
Braumoeller dispatches the unconvincing argument that, as Pinker claims, the spread of “Renaissance humanism and empathy” is driving a decline in war.
The guided-missile destroyer USS Carney (DDG 64) transits the Arabian Gulf, Feb. 22, 2020 (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Griffin Kersting/Released).America’s Heart of Darkness
Still image of Robert Duvall as Lt. Col. Kilgore in Apocalypse Now. Image: Omni Zoetrope/United Artists.Homecoming and the Trauma of War
Julia Roberts and Stephan James in Homecoming (Amazon Studios).The Long Nuclear Peace
Still image from Operation Crossroads, U.S. nuclear test at Bikini Atoll, July 25, 1946 (Everett Historical/Shutterstock.com).Trade Expectations and the Outbreak of Wars
Why countries go to war remains a perennial question for international relations. Military, ideological, and geopolitical challenges to a nation’s security draw great attention, but its economic interests play an important part that demands greater study. To that end, Dale C. Copeland has written Economic Interdependence and War, a carefully argued contribution to the professional literature on international relations. While controlling resources and gaining territory have long been factors in driving conflict, few wars have been fought ostensibly for market share. Copeland argues that commercial factors have been far more important to the outbreak of war than either realists or liberals…
Critiquing Leo Strauss from the Right
This next episode of Liberty Law Talk is a discussion with author and professor Grant Havers on his conservative critique of Leo Strauss. Many conservatives hold Strauss in high regard as a thinker who shaped their intellectual commitments. Havers discusses the question: what's so conservative about Strauss' philosophy? Havers' recent book Leo Strauss and Anglo-American Democracy: A Conservative Critique contends that Strauss was a liberal Cold War warrior who most wanted to defend the foundational principles of British and American democracy. Going to the heart of Strauss' philosophical principles and his grounding of modern constitutional liberty in classical Greek political thought,…
Diplomatic Insecurity, a Barometer of Policy Failure
Important as it is to fix responsibility for failure to protect America’s diplomatic contingent in Benghazi Libya, which led to the death of four Americans on September 11 2012, the effort to do so detracts from a question that goes to the heart of U.S. foreign policy: Why is it that so many U.S. embassies and outposts need protection by U.S. military forces, and even in civilized countries have had to wrap themselves in ever-heavier blankets of security? What has U.S. foreign policy done to raise the level of hate which millions of foreigners bear for us, while at the same time decreasing fear of American retribution? Addressing such questions requires re-assessing the fundamentals of U.S. foreign policy.
