Course Highlights
This course features an extensive reading list addressing topics related to the causes and prevention of war.
Course Description
The causes and prevention of interstate war are the central topics of this course. The course goal is to discover and assess the means to prevent or control war. Hence we focus on manipulable or controllable war-causes. The topics covered include the dilemmas, misperceptions, crimes and blunders that caused wars of the past; the origins of these and other war-causes; the possible causes of wars of the future; and possible means to prevent such wars, including short-term policy steps and more utopian schemes.
The historical cases covered include World War I, World War II, Korea, Indochina, and the Peloponnesian, Crimean and Seven Years wars.