Customer Reviews

War, Peace, and International Politics

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Ziegler's book is a very readable, balanced overview of what most people see as the key question in national security -- how to prevent war. I have personally read 3 different editions of this book over the years, because I find it useful to think again about the issue. The primary approach of the book is two-fold. First there are some historical examples of times of crisis in war and peace. Then, using those examples (for which Ziegler can now have confidence in at least part of what the reader knows about them), a wide variety of appraoches to preventing war (military strength, arms control, diplomacy, world government, etc.) are considered in individual chapters. The conclusion I draw from reading this book is that there is no clear way to prevent war, but that there are lots of tools we can bring to bear in ensuring that, if war comes, it was not caused by regretable error (a la the Guns of August). As you can see, I recommend it as both a good read and a comprehensive (if introductory) discussion of the topic.

Dr Ziegler is the best Professor at Western Washington University bar none. He made Political Science come alive in his class.. His book was also required reading and I can't think of one student who did not read it from cover to cover. After I graduated from Western, I gave the book to my dad to read because of Zieglers great insight. I took two classes from Dr Ziegler even though my major only required one.

I haven't gotten too far into this book of yet, primarily because it's painfully dry material. Ziegler certainly seems to have his ducks in a row as far as the subject material is concerned. If you want a definitive book on modern conflict theory, this is it.