Understanding War and Peace

This introductory chapter presents some fundamental concepts that lay the foundation for the rest of the book. It seeks to accomplish three goals. First, it discusses the nature of war, and in particular Clausewitz’s dictum that war is politics by other means. It is stressed that the book employs a very broad concept of war, including conflicts between states, civil wars, terrorism, some forms of interpersonal violence, and others. Second, it considers the possibility that the practice and frequency of war have changed over time. It observes how some modes of warfare have changed and some have not. It also suggests that it may be premature to celebrate the end of war, or even the significant decline of war. Third, it describes the scientific approach to understanding war and peace, highlighting the importance of asking general questions, developing theoretical answers to those questions, and testing those answers with empirical data. It also defines concepts such as hypotheses, independent variables, and dependent variables, and describes different kinds of data that can be used to test war-related hypotheses.