17.42 Causes and Prevention of War, Spring 2009

The causes and prevention of interstate war are the central topics of this course. The course goal is to discover and assess the means to prevent or control war. Hence we focus on manipulable or controllable war-causes. The topics covered include the dilemmas, misperceptions, crimes and blunders tha...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Van Evera, Stephen
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Political Science
Format: Learning Object
Language:en-US
Published: 2018
Subjects:
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/119150
Description
Summary:The causes and prevention of interstate war are the central topics of this course. The course goal is to discover and assess the means to prevent or control war. Hence we focus on manipulable or controllable war-causes. The topics covered include the dilemmas, misperceptions, crimes and blunders that caused wars of the past; the origins of these and other war-causes; the possible causes of wars of the future; and possible means to prevent such wars, including short-term policy steps and more utopian schemes. The historical cases covered include the Peloponnesian and Seven Years wars, World War I, World War II, Korea, the Arab-Israel conflict, and the U.S.-Iraq and U.S. al-Queda wars. This is an undergraduate course, but it is open to graduate students.