The Rosy Future of War

Chronicles the end of the Cold War and argues that there now exists an explosive world political situation without historical precedent--economic globalization accompanied by the quest for ethnic identity

French military analyst Delmas argues for a new world order based not on encouraging the growth of democracy but on ensuring the stability of states. In place of the Cold War's world order, Delmas contends, statesmen are designing economic alliances (like NAFTA) and politically integrated combinations of states founded on economic self-interest, and developing principles of international law (like the European Union) that seek to prevent war by bypassing the sovereignty of states and linking them to a broader framework. But, the author argues, economics and international law can never ensure world peace: While shared prosperity can bring about economic integration, it can also bring about a dangerous interdependence that can itself result in war, and the legal utopias envisioned by international lawyers have little relevance for the real world. Meanwhile, states have multiplied without regard to their actual legitimacy; nuclear weapons are available on a small scale to almost all nations; and wars are fought with increasing frequency and ferocity around the world. And, the author asserts, more wars will take place--wars of survival, in which the stakes are not national pride or chauvinism, but access to precious and diminishing resources. Such wars may be nuclear in nature even though local in effect. Delmas argues that strong entities like the US and the European Union should make ensuring the stability of states the touchstone of their foreign policies: They should ensure that smaller states are legitimate, economically viable, and politically stable. Delmas also argues that ensuring the stability of Europe and creating a more equal partnership between the US and the EU are keys to developing a coherent approach to the ensuring of world peace. A stimulating, if at times frightening, outlook on the possibility that war may become widespread, and a rational strategy for its prevention. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From a French official comes this relentless realpolitik appraisal of international relations. Envisioning nothing more inspiring than a Hobbesian world, Delmas inveighs against the two principles that proponents (chiefly American politicians of both parties) believe will organize world affairs: free trade and international law. Regarding law and economics as insufficiently strong to integrate the world, Delmas comments skeptically about their advocates' thinking, criticizing them repeatedly for supposing that law and lucre, instead of raw power and self-interest, can organize international affairs, citing the troubles of the European Union, among many other organizations, as evidence. And since emphasis on power is his metier, Delmas delves into one reason for the increase in warfare since the end of the cold war, namely, the breakdown of states under ethnic or narco-criminal pressures. All in all, a cold shot to Americans lullabied by their leaders' aspirational rhetoric about democracy and human rights; yet Delmas' compact, well-written framework offers another way to think about the increasingly disordered and dangerous state of the world. Gilbert Taylor