Retreat from Doomsday: The Obsolescence of Major War

by John E. Mueller

Public policies and attitudes toward war are examined to determine why, despite unprecedented arms stockpiles, major war as a policy option among developed nations has been disregarded

Genres: Politics, War, History, International Relations, Military Fiction

352 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 1989

About the author

John E. Mueller (born June 21, 1937) is an American political scientist in the field of international relations as well as a scholar of the history of dance. [Wikipedia]

Reviews

[Alex Miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

First came across this work while reading Steven Pinker's "The Better Angels of Our Nature", which prominently cites it in support of its thesis of a general decline of violence in human society, and decided to crack it open. Mueller's book persuasively argues that war among the major powers is in serious decline, perhaps even obsolete, because of a change in norms since 1918. Hard as it is to believe now, but up until WWI, a veritable who's who roster of the intellectual, political, and cultural elite in Europe and the United States argued that war was basically a good thing. Oliver Wendell Holmes told the Harvard graduating class of 1895 that, "as long as man dwells on the globe, his destiny is battle, and he has to take the chances of war." The English literary critic John Ruskin stated that war is "the foundation of all great art", while French author Emile Zola thought war was like "life itself....We must eat and be eaten so that the world might live. It is only warlike nations which have prospered: a nation dies as soon as it disarms." British history professor J.A. Cramb wrote a love letter to war: peace would lead to "a world sunk in bovine content"; it was "a nightmare which shall be realized only when the ice has crept to the heart of the sun, and the stars, left black and trackless, start from their orbits. Some people wax eloquent about nature; this sociopath waxed eloquent about an activity that kills and maims people. And not to be outdone by any of them, French-British author Hilaire Belloc practically masturbated at the thought of a major European war: "How I long for the Great War! It will sweep Europe like a broom!"

The mechanized horror of WWI ended these insane beliefs and spurred along an anti-war movement that has made war not just something to be abhorred and avoided at all costs, but increasingly unthinkable: something that doesn't even rise to the mental surface as an option in a dispute between two developed states. Mueller likens war to dueling, another ancient tradition that faded into oblivion because of a change in attitudes. Just as dueling eventually came to be seen as a stupid and absurd way of resolving disputes between two offended parties, Mueller surmises that the same process is happening to war. War, in other words, is a social construct that begins in the minds of men rather than something that is a natural and inevitable human impulse.

One distinctly odd thing about the book though is the section where he implies that the Vietnam war might actually have been worth it since it may have averted an even bigger war with China. He doesn't provide much evidence for this baffling suggestion. Vietnam is practically the epitome of war's futility, and with war's essential stupidity being the subtext of the book, I find it remarkable that he would defend the rationale of arguably the least defensible war in American history.

Finally, this book isn't the usual turgid political science tract, since Mueller is a fluid writer with a dry sense of humor.

Still a worthy read, warts and all.