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The Invention of Peace: Reflections on War and International Order Hardcover – March 1, 2001

by Michael Howard (Author)
4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 22 ratings
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Throughout history the overwhelming majority of human societies have taken war for granted and made it the basis for their legal and social structures. Not until the Enlightenment in the eighteenth century did war come to be regarded as an unmitigated evil and one that could be abolished by rational social organization, and only after the massive slaughter of the two world wars did this become the declared objective of civilized states. Nevertheless, war in one form or another continues unabated. In this elegantly written book, a preeminent military historian considers why this is so.

Is war in some sense still a necessary element in international order? Are war and peace in fact complementary? Does not peace itself breed the conditions that will ultimately lead to war? And if nuclear weapons have made war ultimately suicidal for mankind, what can be done about it? Having devoted half a century largely to studying these questions, Michael Howard offers us his reflections. Unless they can be answered, he notes, the twenty-first century is unlikely to be any more peaceful than the centuries that preceded it.

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  1. Print length
    128 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Yale University Press
  4. Publication date
    March 1, 2001
  5. Dimensions
    7.9 x 5.2 x 0.7 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0300088663
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0300088663
  8. See all details
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4.7 out of 5 stars
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Top reviews from the United States

  • Nicholas Kadar
    5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant analysis of events leading to the modern world
    Reviewed in the United States on January 10, 2014
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    Clear, succinct summary of the march of history and world affairs since the formation of the nation states in Europe.
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  • Valjean
    4.0 out of 5 stars A fighting chance
    Reviewed in the United States on August 2, 2001
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    The title seems mildly ironic, but the cover (at least of my hardbound edition) dispels any subtlety: a panorama of an American military cemetery (Normandy?) with an endless sea of white crosses. Without delving into the philosophic trenches of why we kill one another, Sir Michael Howard has written a bracing account of the lengths we've gone (and continue to go) to avoid such tragedies. A brisk historical survey serves as both background and provider of his introductory thesis: while peace is new, modern, and barely tested, war is very old, established, and more entrenched than we realize.
    Howard's tone throughout remains refreshingly apolitical. He writes as a scholar, deliberately avoiding the easy stridency his subject offers: how *should* we "invent peace?" Where did our ancestors go wrong? Instead, he simply surveys the landscape and allows readers to (gasp!) draw their own conclusions. This is not to suggest the work lacks recommendations; rather, that they appear pithy and well-reasoned, not sonorous and repetitive. Howard could teach his fellow academics a few lessons about writing for an educated popular audience.
    Befitting these methods, the book's style is crisp and concise. Quoting one of the author's best points serves as excellent evidence: "World order cannot be created simply by building international institutions and organizations that do not arise naturally out of the cultural disposition and historical experience of their members." Rarely have I seen a better point made in a single sentence; in a seemingly single stroke, Howard crushes the myth that the U.N. (his obvious target) can somehow impose order on unwilling populations. How many millions of dollars-not to mention thousands of lives-could have been saved by heeding this sage advice?
    Though his historical survey generally supports these points, Howard has actually written more an essay than a book. No major fault in that; I learned more about the historical signposts of peace-the significance of Westphalia, the treaties of Vienna and Berlin-than any university has told me. But covering 1200 years of war (and around 300 of stumbling peace) in a little over a hundred pages feels thin-Sir Michael's pedigree notwithstanding. Even leaving the thin treatment of history aside, a richer development of his major points-like the one quoted above-would have been more than welcome.
    But these faults pale next to the book's lessons. Anyone concerned about the prospects of peace in our increasingly interconnected world will derive huge benefits from this read. The author's call should especially be heard by those attempting to impose order on a worldly scale (certain groups in New York and The Hague come to mind, along with increasingly powerful non-governmental organizations); this book provides ample evidence for reconsidering their methods-if not their very charter.
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  • S. Redwine III
    5.0 out of 5 stars The Invention of Peace
    Reviewed in the United States on April 5, 2002
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    The most important thing for you to know is that yes, peace was invented. It is a relatively new concept that is not clearly defined, and yet we strive for this idea that contradicts essentially all of human history. Michael Howard does a beautiful job of narrating this book, its' brevity hides the true depth of the authors' work. I must wholeheartedly recommend this to everyone.
    4 people found this helpful
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  • Bryan Erickson
    5.0 out of 5 stars A pocket guide to the history of political engineering
    Reviewed in the United States on May 4, 2004
    This is barely more than a pamphlet-sized survey of world history, from a Eurocentric perspective if only because it aims to trace the roots of modern power underlying the basic paradigms of government and control. Certainly, when it comes to the lenses through which the world views the instruments of authority, the world is now in the grips of Europe's dubious gifts. This book is not so much about political science, although it repeatedly gives Kant, Hegel and others their due credit, as about political engineering: how the ideas of before, during, and after the Enlightenment were applied, and continue to be tried out, by the world powers. He pays particular attention to the revolution in how European people thought about what government means, from the inexorable impressions made by the French Revolution and Napoleon, through the rise of Prussia and the German and Italian nations, to the collapses of world order into the first and second world wars and the Cold War.
    Naturally any reasonable thinker could deplore the sweeping generalizations inherent in any condensation of world history and its ideological signposts into 113 ridiculously short pages. Then again, the distillation is potent and leaves a powerful impression, difficult to refute.
    Beginning with the American and French Revolutions, a number of different ideas began to be experimented with in alternative to the traditional aristocratic grip on power, with warfare a limited, almost mere game. The defense of such traditionalists fell under the umbrella of the Conservatives. Some of the alternatives, under the umbrellas of Nationalist, despite being radical in their inception, slowly inverted into alignment with the Conservatives, ultimately leading to the Nazis, while the variety of Liberal forces took their darkest form in the Soviets. The branch of Liberal ideological heirs to the American revolution, however, formed the root of the educated professional class who have risen to cross national boundaries in their common, rational search for peace, and form the best hope of peace actually reigning among nations: "A genuine global transnational community with common values and a common language... Does not this at last provide a firm foundation on which the architects of peace can now at last build a new world order?" (pp. 108-09)
    Modern, liberal democracy is no cure-all, however: in much of the world, "Capitalism, or the rule of the market, is effective only when practised by communities where there already exist stable civil societies held together by efficient bureaucracies and common moral values, conditions that the market itself is powerless to create. Democratic elections have often had the effect of destroying such social cohesion as already existed." Echoing Fareed Zakaria, it's hard not to take a second look at this conjecture given today's events.
    The greatest remaining enemies to peace in our age, after the Cold War, are identified as religious/dogmatic scholars and unemployment - providing a toxic mix of boredom and its worst exploitation - another telling diagnosis from before 9-11. "There is something about rational order that will always leave some people, especially the energetic youth, deeply and perhaps rightly dissatisfied. ...Militant nationalist movements or conspiratorial radical ones provide excellent outlets for boredom." (pp. 112-13) Even allowing for the rightly dissatisfied, though that is accurate as far as it applies, is terribly generous as applied to the world in general.
    Sir Howard is not wanting of a solution: "The estblishment of a global peaceful order thus depends on the creation of a world community sharing the characteristics that make possible domestic order, and this will require the widest possible diffusion of those characteristics by the societies that already possess them." As for those characteristics, going beyond institutions and organizations to include cultural dispositions, "Their creation and operation require at the very least the existence of a transnational elite that not only shares the same cultural norms but can render those norms acceptable within their own societies and can where necessary persuade their colleagues to agree to the modifications necessary to make them acceptable." (p. 105) Peace and democratic freedoms cannot merely be imposed from outside; they must be made to evolve palatably from within.
    In the end, Howard is pragmatic but optimistic: On one hand, "Peace, as we have seen, is not an order natural to mankind: it is artificial, intricate and highly volatile." On the other hand, "whatever else may happen, 'a seed of enlightenment' will always survive." And hopefully, after all, continue to grow.
    5 people found this helpful
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  • Dr. Filthy McNasty
    4.0 out of 5 stars A thoroughly dispassionate explanation for the constancy of war.
    Reviewed in the United States on May 25, 2017
    Verified Purchase
    I've been reading this book slowly for an hour. I'm about halfway through (just finished chapter 3). Michael Howard makes the point that war used to be fought mostly by noblemen and the masses were left out of it. Those were the days of knights, kings and queens. Suddenly everyone started getting educated, decried the old ways, and shouted down all this petty feudal fighting. The result? War went national.

    Nothing bores me more than writers with axes to grind, even if they are grinding my axes. If Michael Howard is grinding an axe, he's done a brilliant job of covering it up (so far...two chapters yet to go). "Why war?" seems like such a deep question. Howard says no, it's all fairly straightforward and the way he tells it makes perfect sense. He doesn't approach his topic with the assumption that war can be avoided or should be or shouldn't be. There's no condescending of posterity in Michael Howard's book.

    With two chapters to go I find myself musing over where our current era is going. Apparently, he's going to tell us. But unless is really changes gears, he will have us understand that war is a constant. And really big wars seem to happen when people start shooting for an end of all wars.
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Top reviews from other countries

  • O M Newton
    5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating perspective
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 6, 2015
    Verified Purchase
    Amazing breadth of learning. Thoroughly enjoyable historical survey with a very interesting thesis.
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