PSCI255 - THE CAUSES OF WAR&PEACE

The existence and endurance of war provides one of the most important puzzles of politics: why is it that people keep making use of such a destructive and painful way of resolving their disputes? This course addresses this question and the related question of what factors contribute to peace, focusing on both academic and popular explanations for conflict, including among others anarchy, over-optimism, shifting power, diversionary war, the malevolent influence of war profiteers, and a variety of explanations grounded in culture, religion and other ideational variables. In this discussion, we will focus on both interstate and civil wars, and on both the onset and the eventual termination of war. At various points in the course we will discuss a wide range of historical and contemporary cases, including the World Wars, Vietnam, the Gulf War, the Iraq War, the various Arab-Israeli wars, the India-Pakistan rivalry, and a number of recent civil conflicts such as the wars in Yugoslavia, Congo, and Sudan. The course concludes with a discussion of strategies for managing ongoing conflicts and for securing peace in post war settings.