At the End of Our Tether? The Rationality of Nonviolence (2008)

Abstract

P erhaps humankind will do the right thing, as Winston Churchill once said of Americans, but only after it has exhausted all other possibilities. In human relations, we‧ve tried brute force, and that is the story of empires rising and falling and the lamentable catalogue of folly that we call history. In 1648 the creators of the Westphalian system of sovereign nation-states improved things slightly by creating a few rules to govern interstate anarchy in Europe. The architects of the post–World War II world improved things a bit more with the creation of international institutions such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the United Nations. But war and militarization have a stronger hold on human affairs than ever, and sooner or later, violence—whether by states, by terrorist groups, or simply by demented individuals—will devour the human prospect.