"The State of War and Peace Atlas brings together a global picture of the bloody costs of war: the death tolls; the plight of refugees; lasting environmental damage; the collapse of whole states. It closes on a tentative note of hope by mapping the world of peace diplomacy and our global peacekeeping processes."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

War has traditionally been studied as a problem deriving from the relations between states. Strategic doctrines, arms control agreements, and the foundation of international organizations such as the United Nations are designed to prevent wars between states. Since 1945, however, the incidence of interstate war has actually been declining rapidly, while the incidence of internal wars has been increasing. The author argues that in order to understand this significant change in historical patterns, we should jettison many of the analytical devices derived from international relations studies and shift attention to the problems of 'weak' states, those states unable to sustain domestic legitimacy and peace. This book surveys some of the foundations of state legitimacy and demonstrates why many weak states will be the locales of war in the future. Finally, the author asks what the United Nations can do about the problems of weak and failed states.

Exposes the deep logical contradictions of Realist political thought and counters it with a new, more robust theory of war

Argues that the key to the formation of an empire lies in a society's capacity for collective action, resulting from people banding together to confront a common enemy, and describing how the growth of empires leads to a growing dichotomy between rich and poor, increasing conflict instead of cooperation, and inevitable dissolution. Reprint. 25,000 first printing.

Introducing students to the scientific study of peace and war, this exciting new reader provides an overview of important and current scholarship in this dynamic area of study. Focusing on the factors that shape relationships between countries and that make war or peace more likely, this collection of articles by top scholars explores such key topics as dangerous dyads, alliances, territorial disputes, rivalry, arms races, democratic peace, trade, international organizations, territorial peace, and nuclear weapons. Each article is followed by the editors’ commentary: a "Major Contributions" section highlights the article’s theoretical advances and relates each study to the broader literature, while a "Methodological Notes" section carefully walks students through the techniques used in the analysis. Methodological topics include research design, percentages, probabilities, odds ratios, statistical significance, levels of analysis, selection bias, logit, duration models, and game theory models.

When the stakes of public words and actions are global and permanent, and especially when they involve war and peace, can we afford not to seek their meaning? For three decades, Francis Beer has pioneered the effort to discover, describe, and connect pieces of the complex puzzle of war, peace, their interrelationship, and their causes. In this volume, Beer (joined by colleagues as co-authors of some chapters) examines the cognitive, behavioral, and linguistic dimensions of war and peace. Language, he shows, is important because it mediates between thought and action. It expresses beliefs about war and peace and affects the perceptions of potential adversaries about one's own intentions. Using multiple perspectives and methods, he explores the uses of communication in international relations and the development of "meaning" for war and peace. In this unique and innovative post-realist analysis, Beer examines how language transmits and creates meaning through interaction with specific audiences. His case studies include the Somalian intervention, Sarajevo and the Balkan conflict, and the Gulf War. Moving beyond the discrete words of war, the book takes a broader view of how political participants interact in war and peace through continuous streams of communication that reflect and construct worlds of meaning. This stimulating and challenging volume brings together insights and evidence from political science, cognitive psychology, linguistics, history, and rhetorical studies and applies them in a focused way to the problem of war and peace.