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Seyom Brown
2[Symbol Not Transcribed] ed.
New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994
xii, 259 pp.
ISBN 0-312-10269-0 (clothbound)
Reviewed by J. David McLeod
Director, Enrolment Services & International Activities and Sessional Instructor, Political Science
Brandon University
Brandon, Manitoba, Canada
In this second edition of The Causes and Prevention of War (the first edition was published in 1987), Seyom Brown undertakes two tasks. The first half of the book summarizes a wide variety of prevalent theories and ideas about why wars occur from individual psychological/biological, to collective raison d'etat, to structural/balance of power reasons. The second half of the book abridges ideas about averting or assuaging war. Occasionally Brown refers to wars in such a way as to include civil or domestic conflicts, but The Causes and Prevention of War is really about the occurrence and prevention of interstate warfare.
This book is a revised edition in which Brown states that he has set out to correct what he perceived in retrospect to be an overly systemic treatment of the subject in the first edition. This edition covers social and psychological factors as they relate to bellicose decision-making, culture, and interactions. This is what is good about Brown's book: it provides a short look at many of the theories and approaches that purport to...