The Conquest of War: Alternative Strategies for Global Security

Remember the Peace Dividend? Where did it go? If I could trace one book that radicalized me, it was this one. It was on the reading list for a course I took in college called "Alternatives to War" (right after the Persian Gulf War, of all things). I took the class because it was something I'd never thought of - alternatives to war? War seemed inevitable, like the tides.But this book contains some of the most interesting and overlooked ideas you'll find. It radicalized me because the ideas made so much sense and flew in the face of everything I'd been taught while growing up. They weren't pie-in-the-sky, but actually practical. It got me thinking that if alternatives could be found for something as seemingly overwhelming as warfare, then alternatives could be found for anything.I'm sad to see this book out of print, but am not really surprised. Works like this clash with conventional wisdom. Leaders don't want citizens thinking about ideas like this. If you stumble across this book, grab it quickly, because you'll find things that you simply don't see anywhere else - lost to the dustbin of history. Things like the Clark-Sohn Plan, minimum deterrence, qualitative disarmament, nonprovocative defense, civilian-based defense, and so forth. I personally found qualitative disarmament among the most intriguing ideas, devised by Basil Liddell Hart, the British military strategist - probably the most influential military thinker of the 20th century (he invented the concept of the Blitzkrieg - too bad that the Germans were the only ones reading his works prior to World War II!)The book is divided into three parts: Part One explores the United Nations and the above-mentioned alternatives to war; Part Two covers issues that apply to all of the above-things like verification, international law, and peacetime conversion. Part Three troubleshoots the relative strengths and weaknesses of each security alternative.Despite having three writers, this book is very readable considering it covers such a deep topic. They clearly wrote it to make it accessible to everyday people. My sincere hope is that Westview Press reprints this book, because it's needed now more than ever, in the post-Cold War era we're in.What you come to realize after reading this book is that nations don't really want peace, despite lip service and lofty rhetoric - or that true peace is an obstacle to national and international power, not a goal in itself. Just look at where the money goes. But everyday people do want peace, and in the age of weapons of mass destruction, it seems more important than ever for people to consider alternatives to war, rather than continuing the endless upward spiral of military spending.I held onto this book after college because I realized it was an important work. I hope you can find it.