War: Ends and Means
War can be preferable to peace: This is the unconventional argument of Seabury, a political scientist at Berkeley, and Codevilla, a Research Fellow of the Hoover Institute. Their smoothly written monograph surveys war's causes and discusses how wars are fought. Its major contribution, however, is its development of the thesis that human intercourse produces objective circumstances in which kill or be killed becomes the best option. Since 1900 three times as many lives have been lost as a result of shootings, gassings, and famines inflicted on defenseless victims than have been sacrificed to military operations. In this context the kinds of war a nation will fight depends less on the material factors stressed in such works as Paul Kennedy's The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (LJ 12/87) than on the kinds of peace leaders and people believe available and are willing to accept. A controversial but persuasive book. Recommended.- Dennis Showalter, Colorado Coll., Colorado SpringsCopyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.