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Peace and War: Armed Conflicts and International Order, 1648–1989
In this book, Professor Holsti approaches the study of the origins of war and the foundations of peace from a new perspective. He asks three interrelated questions. Which issues generate conflict? How have attitudes toward war changed? And, what attempts have been made historically to create international institutions and orders that can manage, control or prevent international conflicts? Starting with the peace treaties of Munster and Osnabruck of 1648, Kalevi Holsti examines 177 international wars. Through these, he identifies the variety of conflict-producing issues and how they, as well as the attitudes of policy makers to the use of force, have changed over the past 350 years. He demonstrates how the new orders established by the great peace-making efforts of 1648, 1713, 1815, 1919 and 1945 attempted to solve the issues of the past, yet few successfully anticipated those of the future. Indeed, some created the basis of new conflicts.
397 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1991
About the author
Kalevi J. Holsti
7 books8 followersKal Holsti (PhD Stanford, 1961) retired in July 2000, but is now a Research Associate with the Centre for International Relations in the Liu Institute. His areas of special interest are international relations theory, security studies, and foreign policy analysis. He is a former editor of the International Studies Quarterly, co-editor of the Canadian Journal of Political Science, and former President of both the Canadian Political Science Association and the International Studies Association. He has taught as a visiting professor at the University of Hawaii, the International University of Japan, Kyoto University, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and at McGill University. He was also a visiting scholar at the Australian National University in 1983. Between 1984 and 1986 he was an appointee of the Governor General to the Governing Council, Canadian International Institute for Peace and Security
Holsti was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1983, and named University Killam Professor at the University of British Columbia in 1997. He was the seventh scholar to receive this status in the history of the university. In 2005, he was elected a foreign member of the Finnish Academy of Sciences and Letters. He is the first Canadian to be so honoured.
He has authored articles in all the major journals of his fields, as well as numerous chapters in edited volumes. His major books include International Politics: A Framework for Analysis (7 editions), Why Nations Realign: Foreign Policy Restructuring since World War II (1983), The Dividing Discipline: Hegemony and Pluralism in International Theory (1985), Change in the International System (1991), Peace and War: Armed Conflict and International Order (1991), The State, War, and the State of War (1996), and Taming the Sovereigns: Institutional Change in International Politics (2004). Cambridge University Press published the last three titles. His most recent publication is a collection of his essays, edited by Adam Jones, Politica Mundial: Cambio y Conflicto, Mexico City: Centro de Investigacion y Docencia Economicas, 2005.
Holsti was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1983, and named University Killam Professor at the University of British Columbia in 1997. He was the seventh scholar to receive this status in the history of the university. In 2005, he was elected a foreign member of the Finnish Academy of Sciences and Letters. He is the first Canadian to be so honoured.
He has authored articles in all the major journals of his fields, as well as numerous chapters in edited volumes. His major books include International Politics: A Framework for Analysis (7 editions), Why Nations Realign: Foreign Policy Restructuring since World War II (1983), The Dividing Discipline: Hegemony and Pluralism in International Theory (1985), Change in the International System (1991), Peace and War: Armed Conflict and International Order (1991), The State, War, and the State of War (1996), and Taming the Sovereigns: Institutional Change in International Politics (2004). Cambridge University Press published the last three titles. His most recent publication is a collection of his essays, edited by Adam Jones, Politica Mundial: Cambio y Conflicto, Mexico City: Centro de Investigacion y Docencia Economicas, 2005.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
October 28, 2019
Excellent book. Holsti develops the first parts of his work by following the positivist method; not so the last parts, a flaw in his work. However, his findings are fascinating. He does not tackle the puzzle of the causes of war from a behavioural perspective, but more likely from the points of view of different peace settlements, which make this research original. In his positivist approach, he identifies and classifies the structural causes of peace treaties departing in 1648 (Westphalia) where he goes from to Utrecht, Vienna, Versailles and San Francisco. By addressing the five most significant peace deals in history, he ignores the circumstances of other settlements.
At points his work is frivolous. He does not fully explain the reasons of his chosen cases (DV), so the reader must infer them. He does not attribute specific weight to the causes and characteristics to his chosen conflicts. His quantitative considerations (statistically) are partial. A major flaw in his work is that he does not consider a diversification or correlation with a post WWII (nuclear) world, leaving his conclusions as historic curiosities more than a substantial contribution to the prevention of major conflict in the XXI Century. What we can rescue from that is that it is easy to identify major trends towards armed contest. Another major flaw of the book is that by focusing on those five peace settlements he concentrates his work in Western issues (mainly), which downside is that he does not include the causality of war (or peace) for other regions or periods of history of the world. One could say that his work is (almost) European focused. By underlining the evolution of attitudes towards war, particularly from the XIX to the early XX Centuries (he studies over three centuries of history), Holsti signals the reasoning behind armed conflicts in selected periods of history, but because of that he misses the generalization of his conclusions, one of them being that the prevalence of the state is key (not a new finding, really).
Hoslti’s work is mainly Realist, but towards the end it becomes a product of his own imagination, not very well, theoretically grounded. His work explains how and why each system ended and how the next one was born but does not explain the structural mistakes that could have prevented those falls from happening.
Another flaw in his method is that he analyses what certain key actors did but misses the external influences on them. In this sense he could have classified the similarities and discrepancies in them and their decisions, to identify possible triggers of war, personal traits and, or major dangerous trends.
One of the main characters that he analyses is W. Wilson. A notorious interventionist in Latin America matters, but Holsti does not conciliate this trait with his bellicosity towards power politics during the 1919 peace process in France. No possible correlation there.
Another problem in the author’s work is that he misses the huge role of civic and ethnic nationalism in his research and the war and peace processes: “peace becomes the father of war” (24) but he could have added that nationalism is the grandfather of dictatorship... e.g.
Another conclusion in Holsti’s statistical conclusions is that territory has become less relevant in international conflicts, however, several other theorists would disagree with that assumption. According to his findings, territory was more of an issue in the past than today, but today's territory is a much more dangerous issue because of new military technologies of the XXI Century, i.e. territorial risk is more dangerous (quality) today than in the past (quantity). He does not contemplate that. Clear, recent examples are Crimea and the failed Islamic Caliphate. Territory continues and will continue being one of the main issues of the nation-state in the foreseeable future.
In his research, the author does not discriminate among the relevant issues (in foreign policy e.g.) and those not so relevant, that lead towards war. He could have classified them to guide the reader towards the crucial ones and distract him from the insignificant or less important ones.
Holsti makes an important distinction of First, Second and Third World countries, but he does not include an analysis on emergent economies or e.g. a classification of the top 10 third world countries that influence the foreign policies of first and second world nation-states.
One accurate conclusion of his work (my takeaway) is that there is a difference between the main intentions of first and second world countries avoidance of major conflicts, i.e. nuclear conflagration, and third world countries, which is balance and permanence of the government in place.
His three areas on analysis, while wide, can be incomplete; the issues that create a war among nations, the meaning of war for the implicated actors, and the role of peace settlements in creating new conflicts could enrich his work with other elements, such as the temporality of issues (threats), opportunity or everlasting controversies as citizenship and nationality meanings and interpretations, just to name a few... e.g. he only looks at the meaning of war from the point of view of policy officers, not from the point of view of non-policy makers, which I am sure would provide with an interesting contrast to his findings.
According to his findings, wars end with peace treaties, but only those that he studies; However, new international orders are not only the result of formal negotiations but also the consequence of serendipity, unintended consequences, which would have been a major contribution to his conclusions. He does not explain why or how new regulations of the use of force are effective or ineffective according to different circumstances and which ones are those, regimes implications in terms of speed of implementation of foreign policy, classification of the terms of peace settlements that lead to minor or major future conflicts.
At points his work is frivolous. He does not fully explain the reasons of his chosen cases (DV), so the reader must infer them. He does not attribute specific weight to the causes and characteristics to his chosen conflicts. His quantitative considerations (statistically) are partial. A major flaw in his work is that he does not consider a diversification or correlation with a post WWII (nuclear) world, leaving his conclusions as historic curiosities more than a substantial contribution to the prevention of major conflict in the XXI Century. What we can rescue from that is that it is easy to identify major trends towards armed contest. Another major flaw of the book is that by focusing on those five peace settlements he concentrates his work in Western issues (mainly), which downside is that he does not include the causality of war (or peace) for other regions or periods of history of the world. One could say that his work is (almost) European focused. By underlining the evolution of attitudes towards war, particularly from the XIX to the early XX Centuries (he studies over three centuries of history), Holsti signals the reasoning behind armed conflicts in selected periods of history, but because of that he misses the generalization of his conclusions, one of them being that the prevalence of the state is key (not a new finding, really).
Hoslti’s work is mainly Realist, but towards the end it becomes a product of his own imagination, not very well, theoretically grounded. His work explains how and why each system ended and how the next one was born but does not explain the structural mistakes that could have prevented those falls from happening.
Another flaw in his method is that he analyses what certain key actors did but misses the external influences on them. In this sense he could have classified the similarities and discrepancies in them and their decisions, to identify possible triggers of war, personal traits and, or major dangerous trends.
One of the main characters that he analyses is W. Wilson. A notorious interventionist in Latin America matters, but Holsti does not conciliate this trait with his bellicosity towards power politics during the 1919 peace process in France. No possible correlation there.
Another problem in the author’s work is that he misses the huge role of civic and ethnic nationalism in his research and the war and peace processes: “peace becomes the father of war” (24) but he could have added that nationalism is the grandfather of dictatorship... e.g.
Another conclusion in Holsti’s statistical conclusions is that territory has become less relevant in international conflicts, however, several other theorists would disagree with that assumption. According to his findings, territory was more of an issue in the past than today, but today's territory is a much more dangerous issue because of new military technologies of the XXI Century, i.e. territorial risk is more dangerous (quality) today than in the past (quantity). He does not contemplate that. Clear, recent examples are Crimea and the failed Islamic Caliphate. Territory continues and will continue being one of the main issues of the nation-state in the foreseeable future.
In his research, the author does not discriminate among the relevant issues (in foreign policy e.g.) and those not so relevant, that lead towards war. He could have classified them to guide the reader towards the crucial ones and distract him from the insignificant or less important ones.
Holsti makes an important distinction of First, Second and Third World countries, but he does not include an analysis on emergent economies or e.g. a classification of the top 10 third world countries that influence the foreign policies of first and second world nation-states.
One accurate conclusion of his work (my takeaway) is that there is a difference between the main intentions of first and second world countries avoidance of major conflicts, i.e. nuclear conflagration, and third world countries, which is balance and permanence of the government in place.
His three areas on analysis, while wide, can be incomplete; the issues that create a war among nations, the meaning of war for the implicated actors, and the role of peace settlements in creating new conflicts could enrich his work with other elements, such as the temporality of issues (threats), opportunity or everlasting controversies as citizenship and nationality meanings and interpretations, just to name a few... e.g. he only looks at the meaning of war from the point of view of policy officers, not from the point of view of non-policy makers, which I am sure would provide with an interesting contrast to his findings.
According to his findings, wars end with peace treaties, but only those that he studies; However, new international orders are not only the result of formal negotiations but also the consequence of serendipity, unintended consequences, which would have been a major contribution to his conclusions. He does not explain why or how new regulations of the use of force are effective or ineffective according to different circumstances and which ones are those, regimes implications in terms of speed of implementation of foreign policy, classification of the terms of peace settlements that lead to minor or major future conflicts.
February 20, 2023
Very good book for scholars and students alike who study the politics of war and peace. I use it in my classroom.
February 9, 2016
Holsti's book is seeking to address not only why wars might occur, but also when, where and over what issues. This study examines three areas of pronounced neglect. Firstly, what are the issues that initially generate international conflict? What do men fight about? Secondly, what is the meaning of war to those who resort to it? Thirdly, in what ways do the arrangements of peace serve as a source of future international conflict? He argues that most studies completely ignore the issues in whose name war is waged, and asserts that should we ignore this we will fail to understand the conflicts in question.
Additionally, he looks at the "meaning of war", or how policy-makers conceptualize war. He notes most wars end with formal negotiations leading to peace; they reaffirm international norms and conventions. The great multilateral peace conferences were attempts to build new international orders, and succeeded or failed to different extents. These new orders included; the definitions of norms regarding the use of force; systems of governance for the society of states; conflict-resolving mechanisms and procedures; the resolution of war-producing issues; specific terms of settlement that will preclude wars of revenge; and some consideration over types of issues that might cause conflict in the future. Holsti then provides an overview of conflict from the Westphalian peace of 1648, until the end of the Cold War. He concludes that different orders were more or less successful based on how the were able to prevent hegemony, prevent transformation of the system, or prevent total war. He argues they failed due to their inability to prepare for transformation of the order (and the resulting wars), as they were backward looking.
Additionally, he looks at the "meaning of war", or how policy-makers conceptualize war. He notes most wars end with formal negotiations leading to peace; they reaffirm international norms and conventions. The great multilateral peace conferences were attempts to build new international orders, and succeeded or failed to different extents. These new orders included; the definitions of norms regarding the use of force; systems of governance for the society of states; conflict-resolving mechanisms and procedures; the resolution of war-producing issues; specific terms of settlement that will preclude wars of revenge; and some consideration over types of issues that might cause conflict in the future. Holsti then provides an overview of conflict from the Westphalian peace of 1648, until the end of the Cold War. He concludes that different orders were more or less successful based on how the were able to prevent hegemony, prevent transformation of the system, or prevent total war. He argues they failed due to their inability to prepare for transformation of the order (and the resulting wars), as they were backward looking.
January 13, 2013
i want it to read because i need it to my class..
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews