Ebook Can War Be Eliminated?, by Christopher Coker
Obtain the benefits of checking out practice for your life design. Schedule Can War Be Eliminated?, By Christopher Coker notification will constantly associate to the life. The actual life, knowledge, scientific research, health and wellness, faith, enjoyment, and much more can be discovered in created e-books. Many authors offer their experience, scientific research, study, and all things to discuss with you. One of them is through this Can War Be Eliminated?, By Christopher Coker This publication Can War Be Eliminated?, By Christopher Coker will provide the required of message as well as declaration of the life. Life will certainly be finished if you know much more points through reading e-books.
Can War Be Eliminated?, by Christopher Coker
Ebook Can War Be Eliminated?, by Christopher Coker
Do you think that reading is a vital task? Locate your reasons adding is essential. Checking out an e-book Can War Be Eliminated?, By Christopher Coker is one component of delightful activities that will certainly make your life high quality better. It is not regarding just what type of book Can War Be Eliminated?, By Christopher Coker you review, it is not simply regarding how numerous e-books you read, it's concerning the behavior. Reviewing habit will be a way to make e-book Can War Be Eliminated?, By Christopher Coker as her or his buddy. It will certainly despite if they spend money and spend more books to complete reading, so does this e-book Can War Be Eliminated?, By Christopher Coker
The method to get this book Can War Be Eliminated?, By Christopher Coker is very easy. You might not go for some places and also invest the time to only find the book Can War Be Eliminated?, By Christopher Coker Actually, you may not consistently get the book as you're willing. But below, just by search and find Can War Be Eliminated?, By Christopher Coker, you could get the lists of guides that you actually anticipate. In some cases, there are numerous publications that are showed. Those publications obviously will certainly impress you as this Can War Be Eliminated?, By Christopher Coker collection.
Are you thinking about primarily publications Can War Be Eliminated?, By Christopher Coker If you are still confused on which of guide Can War Be Eliminated?, By Christopher Coker that should be bought, it is your time to not this site to search for. Today, you will certainly need this Can War Be Eliminated?, By Christopher Coker as one of the most referred publication as well as the majority of required publication as resources, in various other time, you could delight in for a few other publications. It will certainly rely on your willing demands. Yet, we constantly recommend that publications Can War Be Eliminated?, By Christopher Coker can be a great infestation for your life.
Also we talk about the books Can War Be Eliminated?, By Christopher Coker; you may not locate the published publications right here. So many compilations are given in soft documents. It will exactly provide you a lot more benefits. Why? The initial is that you may not have to bring guide everywhere by fulfilling the bag with this Can War Be Eliminated?, By Christopher Coker It is for guide is in soft data, so you could wait in gadget. Then, you could open the device almost everywhere as well as review the book effectively. Those are some couple of advantages that can be obtained. So, take all advantages of getting this soft file publication Can War Be Eliminated?, By Christopher Coker in this website by downloading and install in web link given.
Throughout history, war seems to have had an iron grip on humanity. In this short book, internationally renowned philosopher of war, Christopher Coker, challenges the view that war is an idea that we can cash in for an even better one - peace. War, he argues, is central to the human condition; it is part of the evolutionary inheritance which has allowed us to survive and thrive. New technologies and new geopolitical battles may transform the face and purpose of war in the 21st century, but our capacity for war remains undiminished. The inconvenient truth is that we will not see the end of war until it exhausts its own evolutionary possibilities.
- Sales Rank: #851979 in Books
- Published on: 2014-01-13
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 7.45" h x .45" w x 4.92" l, .34 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 120 pages
Review
"This brilliant work cannot fail to stimulate debate and advance understanding. It is gloriously replete with arguments from and about philosophy, biology, sociology and the course of our all too human history. The reasons for the grim longevity of war have rarely been more cogently explained or better illustrated by telling anecdote."
Colin Gray, director of the Centre for Strategic Studies at the University of Reading
"A wide-ranging meditation on the embeddedness of war- in our cultures, our minds and our expectations - and its evolution by one of the subject's most erudite, informed and reflective scholars."
Philip Bobbitt, author of The Shield of Achilles
"Christopher Coker's new book is a masterpiece of erudite concision in which I learned something new on every page. He is not only Britain's leading philosopher of warfare, but a prolific historian who puts the competition to shame."
Michael Burleigh, author of Small Wars, Faraway Places: Global Insurrection and The Making of the Modern World
"From pre-modern city-state to post-modern cyberspace, Christopher Coker reminds us that war is a natural part of our human condition. Both idealists and realists will benefit from reading this small gem of a book from an outstanding scholar of the role of war in the history of ideas."
Michael Evans, General Sir Francis Hassett Chair of Military Studies, Australian Defence College
"With searingly elegant prose, Professor Coker brings a vast array of ideas and events to bear on one of the most pressing issues of this or any other time. A must-read book."
Steven Metz, Director of Research, U.S. Army War College Strategic Studies Institute
About the Author
Christopher Coker is Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Most helpful customer reviews
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful.
If War Is the Answer, What Was the Question?
By Kevin L. Nenstiel
Like other war-weary eras before ours, we've begun seeking alternatives to violence to solve our global problems. And like prior eras, we've begun realizing, however dimly, that alternatives aren't exactly forthcoming. Christopher Coker, professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics, seems a likely candidate to ruminate on humanity's future military options. But speaking as a guy who's marched for peace, I find his prognosis rather worrisome.
Briefly, Coker answers his title question early, and often: war persists because war makes us human. I repeat myself, as Coker does: war makes us human. Seriously. Screw art, philosophy, science, religion, industry, or even cuisine. We become human by killing others into agreement. This argument might've needed less defense (though probably more than Coker offers) before two world wars and the spectre of nuclear extinction reframed the debate.
Don't mistake me: Coker isn't some crypto-fascist warmonger somehow immune to the Twentieth Century's lingering lessons. He adroitly demonstrates how anti-war advocacy has produced slovenly thinking, particularly among New Agers and similar utopians. Abjuring war will require radically transforming human global politics and public morals, which will come only with great difficulty, even with violence. Global disarmament isn't on our horizon. War will remain common for now, because it's familiar.
Coker has many valid points. He astutely describes how war reproduces itself, through myths of valor and in-group identity, in human culture. And he rightly faults war's opponents for failing to define peace as anything besides "not war." If that's all peace is, then peace cannot exist without wars to oppose. But Coker's inarguably accurate points don't excuse strange, overstated assertions that dedicated newshounds and part-time Quakers could dismantle.
Even in the very early pages, Coker makes sweeping, easily refuted errors of fact. For instance, pitching war as an ever-evolving force, Coker cites UN missions to Congo encountering rape as a "new" weapon in 2010. But Newsweek reported on Bosnian military rape tactics in 1993, and Edwidge Danticat described rape as a weapon of Haitian civil repression even earlier. One could perhaps cite Vikings as pioneers of militarized rape.
Likewise, Coker quotes Edward Luttwak quoting the old maxim: "If you want peace, prepare for war; if you actively want war, disarm yourself and then you'll get it." One wonders, then, why nobody attacks Costa Rica, which abolished its army in 1949. Costa Rica is so peaceful, the Organization of American States (OAS) centers its Inter-American Court of Human Rights there. Likewise, Panama and Haiti disbanded their armies, and military coups mysteriously ceased.
Coker might counter that smaller countries enjoy American and international military defense, and there's something to that. But William Blum observes that America has been involved in a shooting conflict with someone, somewhere, continuously, since 1946; we took a brief breather after WWII and dove back in. Advanced civilizations cannot keep large standing armies, with expensive military technology, and not use them. They get rebellious.
Throughout, Coker repeatedly declares that because war exists, war should exist, QED. He asserts this in ways great and small, correlating it with human evolution, societal norms, and religious dogma. (Coker seems strangely obsessed with religion. The Prince of Peace might take issue.) Logicians call this approach "the naturalistic fallacy," assuming that whatever exists is, ipso facto, good, or anyway normative. Tell that to land mine amputees.
I could continue, but laundry-listing Coker's logical omissions gets wordy. I could scarcely savvy two pages in this mercifully brief monograph without encountering something so intellectually unsteady, it felt disrespectful. Coker never subjects his assertions to evidentiary testing; he rejects what Peter Elbow calls "The Believing Game," never assessing his ideas by viewing them from the opposite perspective. This leaves his thesis appallingly vulnerable to frankly rudimentary counterargument.
As I write, world powers stand poised before a possible second Crimean War. Watching Vladimir Putin bait NATO into an unnecessary battle nobody could possibly win, I have difficulty believing this great global pissing contest is merely, as Coker asserts, "a product of the social complexity of life." The exigencies of unfolding history, unencumbered by faux Darwinian jargon, conspire to spit in Christopher Coker's eye.
Coker's title implies he'll investigate the debates surrounding a powerful, world-defining issue. But he essentially answers his own question in the preface: "No." Then he spends about 110 pages (plus back matter) explaining why there is no debate. War is important enough to justify a broader, more even-handed discussion. Coker instead proffers a manifesto so lopsided and easily rebutted, informed readers will find it insulting.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
The fault is in ourselves
By Robert G. Leroe
Can War Be Eliminated? is not an idealistic, utopian, “kumbaya” tract, but a thoughtful, well-reasoned assessment of society’s tendency towards aggression from historical, political and social/cultural perspectives. Clausewitz defines war as the achieving of objectives via the use of force. Coker questions whether any resulting peace enrich life and can it be maintained? In other words, is peace something that can only be coerced, and if so, does that mean that society can at best live at peace only by compulsion/pacification?
Or is the fault (as Shakespeare posed), not in our stars, but in ourselves, our “human condition”? Is there something in human nature that causes us towards aggression? Christians would say that human nature is fallen, in need of redemption. “Deep down, we really may be a species obsessed with its own self-destruction” (67). Perhaps we are slouching towards dystopia. Humanists might agree that “our judgments of right and wrong are just matters of sentiment” (83). If there are no moral absolutes, we’re left with arbitrary preferences (individual codes of conduct), which may include war as a reasonable option, and which gives humankind “an illusion of control” (103)
Can war be prevented? Or is a nation unprepared to wage war unprepared to enjoy peace? Is rejecting the option of war “as fatal as rejecting agriculture” (5)? Can we progress to where we reject war as an option? Can we make war unprofitable? As the title indicates, questions will be raised, and the answers won’t come easy.
(Personal note--I served as an instructor of Military Ethics at the US Army Air Defense Artillery School)
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
Spoiler: "No"
By Benjamin Lukoff
As reviewer Kevin L. Nenstiel notes, the answer is essentially given at the beginning, with the rest of the book explaining that it's "no" because war is an intrinsic part of being human. Yet I didn't find it as useless a read as he or C. Scanlon did. I didn't see this as being an example of the naturalistic fallacy, as Nenstiel claims. "Throughout, Coker repeatedly declares that because war exists, war should exist, QED"? Strike "because" and everything after "exists" and I'll agree with that statement. His mention of human evolution is appropriate, though, because this seems to be a similar reaction to that people showed to works like The Selfish Gene. I don't think the assumption that "whatever exists is, ipso facto, good, or anyway normative" is being made here. I think the assumption *is* being made that war *has been* an integral part of being human -- I don't see any approval of this hard-to-escape fact. In fact, I believe he ends his book, as did Dawkins (I say "I believe" because I don't have my copy with me as I write this--I'll correct this review if it turns out I'm wrong) with a slight note of hope, in that at least we have the ability to recognize this. Dawkins didn't say we were complete slaves to our biology and I don't think Coker is, either.
Whether or not I agree with Coker or what he has to say, this is a thought-provoking book, and that's got to be worth something.
Can War Be Eliminated?, by Christopher Coker PDF
Can War Be Eliminated?, by Christopher Coker EPub
Can War Be Eliminated?, by Christopher Coker Doc
Can War Be Eliminated?, by Christopher Coker iBooks
Can War Be Eliminated?, by Christopher Coker rtf
Can War Be Eliminated?, by Christopher Coker Mobipocket
Can War Be Eliminated?, by Christopher Coker Kindle
Tidak ada komentar:
Posting Komentar