Volume 44, Number 15 · October 9, 1997
The Gods of War
By Michael Ignatieff
Blood Rites: Origins and History of the Passions of War
by Barbara Ehrenreich
Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt, 292 pp., $25.00
The Rosy Future of War
by Philippe Delmas
Free Press, 236 pp., $24.00
Postmodern War: The New Politics of Conflict
by Chris Hables Gray
Guilford Press, 314 pp., $23.95
War remains one of the ecstatic activities of mankind, like sport or sex. Why this should be so is the question at the heart of Barbara Ehrenreich's extraordinarily interesting—and contentious—book. People have always thought they had good reasons for going to war and they always will: they want to acquire territory and resources, defeat their enemies, extirpate heresy or evil, secure the release of captive or enslaved peoples, and so on. Ehrenreich wants to argue, however, that war has never been a rational activity; it has not merely been the continuation of politics by other means, as Clausewitz argued. Wars break out for frivolous reasons; they are sometimes pursued when almost everyone knows they are insane; they drag on when mired in stalemate; and they frequently end with both sides defeated. But it is not the failure of most wars to achieve their ends that makes them irrational, but the mystical manner in which they are given legitimacy for those who have to fight them.
Review, 3970 words
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