Reviews for Causes of War: Power and the Roots of Conflict

The average rating for Causes of War: Power and the Roots of Conflict based on 2 reviews is 2.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2018-02-28 00:00:00 Steve Goodsell Important read. Complementary, perhaps, to the idea of rationalist explanations of war given that Van Evera seeks to depart from the pure line of logic that Fearon proposed towards perceptions of power. What that means, beyond failures of information, commitment, indivisibility, and time horizons is the material weakness of judgments of perception in power. Said differently, Van Evera makes a cogent argument that the perception of and confidence in the mismeasures of power is much more important than the actual measures themselves. This is a very important insight into the causes of war. So why not a 4 or 5-star rating? Simply put, I find his arguments resultant from his hypotheses testing (such as it is) as explanatorily deficient on the basis of empirical demonstration. Van Evera does a fine job of crafting a descriptive theory here, despite his oft-repeated suggestion that isn't his purpose, and therefore I find him over-extended on inference. It was only when he came to the conclusion that the advent of nuclear annihilation changes everything regarding the perception of power did I find the work a bit more compelling than confusing (his path to the peak of explanation or inference is like ascending a mountain of switchbacks and study of the trees for the forest while in ascent). Still, the inferential power of the work seems limited, where the description shines. It simply wasn't designed to do otherwise, despite the claims for such.

Review # 2 was written on 2014-04-24 00:00:00 John Jurasek As a former submariner, I enjoyed this. Although the submarines I rode were many times larger and more comfortable than the ones of WWII, there were times when I could identify with some of the feelings of the men on those submarines. I am undecided as to whether the mission was unnecessary or not. Maybe it was for revenge or maybe the higher ups in the sub program wanted to prove the submarines were a very viable weapon if used right. I also wonder how many boats and men were lost because of BUORDs bureaucracy regarding torpedos and blaming the submariners for their failures. I occasionally visit the USS Drum at Battleship Park in Mobile and marvel at the conditions the early submariners endured. It definitely takes a different breed.