This groundbreaking survey explains why war remains predominant in today's world by showing how the spread of nationalism and capitalism has brought about modern warfare. It argues that the key explanation for modern conflict, which is characterized by violent conflicts between nation-states, civil war, and wars over resources, rests in the dialectical relationship between nation-states and capitalist modes of production, where nations have finite boundaries that capitalism seek to transcend in search of increased profits. Discussing issues such as globalization, global capitalism, North and Latin American continental policies, the nature of democracy, decolonization, and technology and military industrial complexes, this unique work challenges common approaches to international relations and peace studies. This innovative, accessible work provides new insights into the causes and nature of modern war that will appeal to any student concerned with peace and violent conflict within the various fields of international relations, political economy, peace studies, and more.

Why has warfare always been part of the human story? From biology to belief, what explains the persistence of violent conflict? What light can this shed on humanity’s past – and its future? There can be few more important but also more contentious issues than attempting to understand the human propensity for conflict. Our history is inextricably tangled in wave after wave of inter-human fighting from as far back as we have records. Repeatedly humans have foresworn war, have understood its appalling risks and have wished to create more pacific, productive societies. And yet almost inevitably circumstances emerge under which war once more seems inevitable or even desirable How can we make sense of what Einstein called 'the dark places of human will and feeling'? Richard Overy draws on a lifetime's study of conflict to write this challenging account of how we can understand the causes of war. Looking at every facet of war from biology to belief, psychology to security, Overy allows readers to understand the many contradictory or self-reinforcing ways in which warfare can suddenly appear a legitimate option, and why it is likely to be part of our future as well as our past.

Over the past decade, psychoanalysis has been a focus of continuing controversy for feminism, and at the centre of debates in the humanities about how we read literature and culture. In these essays, Jacqueline Rose continues her engagement with these issues while arguing for a shift of attention - from an emphasis on sexuality as writing to the place of the unconscious in the furthest reaches of or cultural and political lives. With essays on war, capital punishment and the dispute over seduction in relation to Freud, she opens up the field of psychopolitics. Finally in two extended essays on Melanie Klein and her critics, she suggests that it is time for a radical rereading of Klein's work.

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 behavior, 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-center 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 behavioral underpinnings, offering new ways of thinking about our species' unique and deadly preoccupation.

"Instead of proposing another theory of war, their goal is a more modest one of raising the theoretical consciousness of historians. Specifically, they argue that '1) ideology does influence theory, 2) historians do have ideologies as well as theories . . . about which they are not always conscious or consistent, and 3) we can better understand, compare, and evaluate what historians are saying when we comprehend their ideological and theoretical perspectives.' They attempt then, to classify historical interpretations of war according to their ideological/ theoretical orientations, however covert." --Perspective "Nelson and Olin .. . are concerned with enhancing history's social utility by advancing its capacity to produce generalizations that can explain or predict events and are subject to empirical testing. Their exploration of historical generalization focuses on an issue itself of the highest importance, the causes of war; but their aim is also to create a model for historical generalization applicable to other issues. They argue that to understand generalizations in history, one must recognize their roots in theory, and that historians' theories in turn proceed from their own ideologies. To demonstrate, they survey theories about the causes of war that have come out of conservative, liberal, and radical ideologies. . . . any historian will profit from this rigorous approach to the problem." --Choice "Learned and suggestive, this book clarifies much of what is already known, and points toward new ways of understanding."--Library Journal

Why did America invade Iraq? Why do nations choose to fight certain wars and not others? How do we bring ourselves to believe that the sacrifice of our troops is acceptable? For most, the answers to these questions are tied to struggles for power or resources and the machinations of particular interest groups. Philip Smith argues that this realist answer to the age-old "why war?" question is insufficient. Instead, Smith suggests that every war has its roots in the ways we tell and interpret stories. Comprised of case studies of the War in Iraq, the Gulf War, and the Suez Crisis, Why War? decodes the cultural logic of the narratives that justify military action. Each nation, Smith argues, makes use of binary codes—good and evil, sacred and profane, rational and irrational, to name a few. These codes, in the hands of political leaders, activists, and the media, are deployed within four different types of narratives—mundane, tragic, romantic, or apocalyptic. With this cultural system, Smith is able to radically recast our "war stories" and show how nations can have vastly different understandings of crises as each identifies the relevant protagonists and antagonists, objects of struggle, and threats and dangers. The large-scale sacrifice of human lives necessary in modern war, according to Smith, requires an apocalyptic vision of world events. In the case of the War in Iraq, for example, he argues that the United States and Britain replicated a narrative of impending global doom from the Gulf War. But in their apocalyptic account they mistakenly made the now seemingly toothless Saddam Hussein once again a symbol of evil by writing him into the story alongside al Qaeda, resulting in the war's contestation in the United States, Britain, and abroad. Offering an innovative approach to understanding how major wars are packaged, sold, and understood, Why War? will be applauded by anyone with an interest in military history, political science, cultural studies, and communication.

A new translation from the original German manuscript of Freud's famous 1933 "Why War?" letter written to Einstein followed by related works on war and death. This edition contains the following works: 1933 Why War? 1915 Contemporary Notes on War and Death 1933 On a Worldview This edition includes an introduction by the translator on the philosophic differences between Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud, a glossary of Freudian Psychological terminology and a timeline of Freud’s life & works. This is the final volume, Volume XIV, in the Complete Works of Sigmund Freud by NL Press. This new translation of Freud's collected systematic works laid out across 14 volumes contains essays which have never been translated into until now.