Why war

My review of Michael C. Horowitz, Allan C. Stam and Cali M. Ellis, Why Leaders Fight (Cambridge University Press, 2015) went up on War on the Rocks under the title He Who Lets Slip the Dogs of War today. Here is are the teaser first two paragraphs:

This is a book that should have been unnecessary. Its main argument is that leaders, particularly chiefs of state and government, are important to the decision to go to war. As the authors argue repeatedly, we all know this. Hitler made a difference to history that some other leader of Germany might not have. People matter. Human agency should not be ignored. Why do we have to prove it?

The problem is an academic one. American political science, in particular its international relations theory, pays little attention to the differences leaders make. Academia attributes war to institutional, structural, and internal factors, leaving little intellectual headroom for the voluminous biographies that sell so well in the mass market and fascinate war and peace practitioners like me.

The solution the authors propose to this disconnect is…[click here for the rest]