cover image THE INVENTION OF PEACE: Reflections on War and International Order

THE INVENTION OF PEACE: Reflections on War and International Order

Michael Howard, THE INVENTION OF PEACE: Reflections on War and Internationa. , $15 (128pp) ISBN 978-0-300-08866-3

Howard, professor emeritus of military and naval history at Yale (The Lessons of History; etc.), reviews the history of the concept of peace, which he defines as "the order, however imperfect, that results from agreement between states, and can only be sustained by that agreement." For all its brevity, this book is extraordinarily ambitious in scope. Howard's aim is to examine Western political history from the year 800 to the present, extracting from that history the essential views of each era about the role of war among nations and the possibility of achieving peace. Because the treatment of each era is so compressed (the book is an expanded lecture), readers will have to marshal all their knowledge of history to understand the author's points. This is no introductory survey, but rather a work to turn to for a culminating synthesis of its subject. According to Howard, modern concepts of peace derive from the Enlightenment, and especially from Kant's teaching that a stable world order can arise only from forms of government in which the citizens or subjects have some effective say over the making of war. Howard traces how successive models of world order (conservative, liberal, Marxist) have competed for dominance over the past 200 years. The author convincingly demonstrates that the long struggle for stability among nations is not yet over, and that the latest new world order arising after the end of the Cold War still poses as much danger of conflict as it holds out promises of peace. (Mar.)