Index#: 03726
Will Count Towards Political Science MAJOR
Will Count Towards Political Science MINOR
War is one of the most destructive forms of human behavior and a persistent theme in the relationships between political systems since the beginning of human civilization. Although some kinds of war have declined in frequency and/or magnitude, other forms of warfare have become more common, leading some to conclude that “only the dead have seen the end of war.” Any serious attempt to reduce the frequency or magnitude of war requires that we first understand its causes and whether they change over changing economic, political, technological, and cultural conditions. Yet well over two millennia of debate in a variety of scholarly disciplines has produced no consensus as to why wars happen.
Debates about the causes of war continue both between disciplines and within disciplines. We engage these debates by adopting an interdisciplinary perspective and drawing on insights from biology, evolutionary theory, primatology, anthropology, archaeology, sociology, psychology, political science, economics, military science, history, philosophy, theology, feminist theory, international legal theory, literature, and art. Among the questions we ask are. What is war? Is war a break from politics or a continuation of it? What are the different kinds of warfare? When did war begin, and how? Is war “natural,” perhaps biologically determined, or is it learned behavior shaped by politics and culture? How has war evolved over time? Is the increasing destructiveness of warfare primarily due to changes in military technology, or have economic, political, and sociological changes also contributed? Is the “long peace” (among the great powers) since World War II due to nuclear weapons or to something else? Is it likely to continue? Why do civil wars occur? Is it possible to generalize about something as complex and varied as war, or are all wars unique? What kinds of war, if any, are just?
About Professor Levy
JACK LEVY is Board of Governors’ Professor at Rutgers University and an Affiliate of the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University. He received a B.S. in Physics from Harvey Mudd College and a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He held tenured positions at the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Minnesota before coming to Rutgers in 1989. He has also held visiting or adjunct positions at Tulane, Stanford, Harvard, Yale, NYU, Aoyama Gakuin, and Columbia University. Levy received APSA's Helen Dwight Reid Award for the best dissertation in International Relations in 1975-76, and the Distinguished Scholar Award from the Foreign Policy Analysis Section of the International Studies Association (2000). He is a past president of the International Studies Association (2007-08) and of the Peace Science Society International (2005-06). Levy was listed (PS, 2007) among the top twenty most widely cited international relations scholars.