Winning the War on War
The Decline of Armed Conflict Worldwide
by Joshua S. Goldstein
Penguin Group USA
Dutton
Pub Date
Description
An award-winning expert on international affairs and military history reveals the astounding truth about war: Peacekeeping is working.
Read the newspapers, and you'll be convinced war is worse than it's ever
been: more civilian deaths, more rapes, more armed conflicts all around the
world. But as leading scholar and writer Joshua Goldstein shows in this vivid,
dramatic book, the reality is just the opposite. The commonly quoted statistic
that "a century ago 90 percent of war deaths were military, but nowadays 90
percent are civilian" is based on one error in a little-read, twenty-year-old
report. The truth is that the military-civilian death ratio has remained at
around 50-50 for centuries. Most amazingly, we are in the midst of a general
decline in armed conflict that is truly extraordinary in human history.
Winning the War on War is filled with startling observations, including:
No national armies are currently fighting one another-all current wars are civil wars.
UN peacekeeping actually works very well, and 67 percent of
Americans support the UN, according to a recent poll.
Goldstein compiled evidence ranging from the histories of UN peacekeeping
missions to the latest Swedish data on armed conflicts. He tells the
stories of peacekeeping failures such as Bosnia and Rwanda, but also the lessheralded
success stories such as Mozambique and El Salvador. In this "boots
on the ground" account, Goldstein shows why global peacekeeping efforts are
working-how large-scale looting, sexual assault, and genocidal atrocities are
being stopped-and how we can continue winning the war on war.
Questions? Comments? E-mail us at duttonpublicity@us.penguingroup.com
Available Editions
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| ISBN | 9780525952534 |
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