The Post-Cold War Order: The Spoils of Peace

Take a look at the book's publication date. 9 August 2001. We all know what happened a month later. Through entirely no fault of the author, we can see that the book was perhaps prematurely optimistic. The Spoils of Peace?! Nothing wrong with optimism, but as the author was drafting this book, some months earlier, Osama bin Laden and his cohorts were going to upend and obsolete significant portions of the text. Yet, give Clark his due. The Cold War involved a very real danger of going nuclear. With both sides having tens of thousands of warheads. It could have destroyed civilisation. It is too easy to decry this book as obsolete. Keep some perspective. The terrorist attacks in 2001 killed some 3000 people. Even the protracted conflicts now underway in Iraq and Afghanistan do not contain in them the dangers of global nuclear war. For all the perils that Islamist terrorists pose, they do not have the nuclear armaments that the Soviets possessed. So, yes, we are indeed in a relative age of peace, as Clark posited.