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On the Origins of War and the Preservation of Peace. By Donald Kagan. New York: Doubleday, 1995. 606 pages. $30. Reviewed by Colonel David A. Fastabend, FM 100-5 Writing Team, School of Advanced Military Studies, US Army Command and General Staff College, Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas.
On the Origins of War is directed "to those who wish to have a clear understanding both of events in the past and of those in the future which will, in all human likelihood, happen again in the same or a similar way." These are the words of Thucydides, one of Donald Kagan's earliest predecessors in that long line of chroniclers who have examined war's origins and causes. Thucydides figures prominently in this work, and not only as a primary source for Kagan's account of the road to war in the Peloponnesus. He is also the fountainhead of Kagan's fundamental thesis that people go to war out of "honor, fear, and interest."
Professor Kagan does not discount the more prevalent, realist position that war springs from the competition for power. But he goes on to argue-compellingly, in my view-that there is "a clearer, more profound, more elegant, and comprehensive explanation of why people organized in states are moved to fight wars." Honor, fear, and interest are "that trio of...