Conflict After the Cold War: Arguments on Causes of War and Peace

Edited by one of the most renowned scholars in the field, Richard Betts’ Conflict After the Cold War assembles classic and contemporary readings on enduring problems of international security. Offering broad historical and philosophical breadth, the carefully chosen and excerpted selections in this popular reader help students engage key debates over the future of war and the new forms that violent conflict will take. Conflict After the Cold War encourages closer scrutiny of the political, economic, social, and military factors that drive war and peace.

New to the Fifth Edition:

• Original introductions to each of 10 major parts as well as to the book as a whole have been updated by the author.
• An entirely new section (Part IX) on Threat Assessment and Misjudgment explores fundamental problems in diagnosing danger, understanding strategic choices, and measuring costs against benefits in wars over limited stakes.
• 12 new readings have been added or revised:

Fred C. Iklé, The Dark Side of Progress

G. John Ikenberry, China’s Choice

Kenneth N. Waltz, Why Nuclear Proliferation May Be Good

Daniel Byman, Drones: Technology Serves Strategy

Audrey Kurth Cronin, Drones: Tactics Undermine Strategy

Eyre Crowe and Thomas Sanderson, The German Threat? 1907

Neville Henderson, The German Threat? 1938

Vladimir Putin, The Threat to Ukraine from the West

Eliot A. Cohen, The Russian Threat

James C. Thomson, Jr., How Could Vietnam Happen? An Autopsy

Stephen Biddle, Afghanistan’s Legacy

Martin C. Libicki, Why Cyberdeterrence is Different

Richard K. Betts is the Arnold Saltzman Professor of War and Peace Studies in the Department of Political Science, the director of the Institute of War and Peace Studies, and the director of the International Security Policy Program in the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. He is also Adjunct Senior Fellow for National Security Studies on the Council of Foreign Relations, a commissioner to the National Commission on Terrorism, and former staff member of the Senate Intelligence Committee. His research interests include national security, military strategy, and international conflict, and he has published numerous articles on foreign policy, military strategy, intelligence operations, conventional forces, nuclear weapons, arms trade, collective security, strategic issues in Asia, and other subjects.