The State, War, and the State of War

by Kalevi J. Holsti

• ISBN13: 9780521577908
• ISBN10: 052157790X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1996-08-28
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• More Book Details
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Summary

Why do we have Rwandas, Bosnias, and Somalias? This book explores the sources of such bitter, prolonged conflicts that result in immense human tragedies of civilian deaths and mass refugee flows. The author argues that such conflicts, and not wars between states, are the wars of the future. What can the United Nations and other international institutions do about them? Can organizations designed to manage conflicts between states successfully manage wars whose origins are domestic? The author develops some ideas about conflict resolution and peace derived from such recent experiences of war.

Table of Contents

Preface	xi
Thinking about war in international politics	1	(18)
The theoretical analysis of war	6	(4)
Theoretical solutions to war	10	(3)
The relevance of old concepts to new environments	13	(6)
Wars of the third kind	19	(22)
Institutionalized war	28	(4)
The descent to total war	32	(4)
From total war to wars of the third kind	36	(5)
The formation of states before 1945	41	(20)
The community of citizens	45	(3)
The community of nationals	48	(5)
The problem of state creation in 1919	53	(5)
War and the making of states in Europe	58	(3)
The creation of states since 1945	61	(21)
The question of nationalism	67	(5)
National liberation	72	(1)
International legitimation of post-colonial states	73	(6)
The universalization of the state format	79	(3)
The strength of states	82	(17)
Authority/consent	84	(3)
Community	87	(3)
The continuum of state strength	90	(1)
Strong states	91	(8)
The perils of the weak: the state-strength dilemma	99	(24)
The variety of states	102	(2)
Structural characteristics of weak states	104	(4)
Practices and policies that prevent or erode legitimacy	108	(8)
The state-strength dilemma	116	(2)
Individual responses to the state-strength dilemma	118	(1)
Failed states	119	(4)
Wars of the third kind and international politics	123	(27)
Patterns of external involvement in wars of the third kind	126	(2)
Local, regional, and systemic sources of wars of the third kind: political-security approaches	128	(8)
Systemic sources of wars of the third kind: political-economy approaches	136	(5)
Aggregating states: zones of war, zones of peace	141	(9)
Analyzing an anomaly: war, peace, and the state in South America	150	(33)
South America in the nineteenth century: a classical zone of war	151	(3)
Twentieth-century South America: a no-war zone	154	(3)
From Hobbes to Kant: South America as a zone of peace?	157	(4)
From zone of war to no-war zone: the problem of explanation	161	(14)
Toward a zone of peace? System transformation at the end of the millennium	175	(5)
The theoretical significance of the South American states system	180	(3)
International responses to the weak state: managing and resolving wars of the third kind	183	(27)
The founding fathers' image of the United Nations	188	(2)
Expanding tasks and changing norms since 1989	190	(2)
The creation of states and conflict resolution: the Bosnia prototype	192	(10)
The ultimate question	202	(3)
War, the state, and the study of international politics	205	(5)
Appendix: Major armed conflicts by region and type, 1945--1995	210	(15)
References	225	(25)
Index	250