The Demise of Ares: The End of War as We Know It?

In 1990, U.S. political scientist John Mearsheimer predicted that we would soon ‘‘miss the Cold War.’’John J. Mearsheimer, ‘‘Why We Will Soon Miss the Cold War,’’ The Atlantic Monthly 266, no. 2 (August 1990), http://mearsheimer.uchicago.edu/pdfs/A0014.pdf. In the months and years that followed, the eruption of bloody conflicts in the Balkans and in Africa gave birth to fears of a new era of global chaos and anarchy. Authors such as Robert Kaplan and Benjamin Barber spread a pessimistic vision of the world in which new barbarians, liberated from the disciplines of the East—West conflict, would give a free rein to their ancestral hatreds and religious passionsRobert D. Kaplan, Balkan Ghosts: A Journey Through History (New York: Vintage Books, 1993); Ibid., The Ends of the Earth (New York: Random House, 1996); and Benjamin Barber, Jihad vs McWorld: How the Planet Is Both Falling Apart and Coming Together and What This Means for Democracy (New York: Times Books, 1995).. Journalists James Dale Davidson and William Rees-Mogg chimed in that violence would reassert itself as the common condition of lifeJames Dale Davidson and William Rees-Mogg, The Great Reckoning: How The World Will Change in the Depression of the 1990s (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991).. Former U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan warned that the planet was about to become a ‘‘pandemonium.’’Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Pandemonium: Ethnicity in International Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).

[...]

Download (PDF)