Understanding war and peace
Prerequisiti
No prerequisites, students from any year of course can participate
Programma
The course investigates the relationships between States, war, capitalism, the international order, and the prospects for peace, combining the perspectives of international relations and political economy. It focuses on key concepts and issues, and on major cases of military strategies and conflicts, considering the United States, Europe, Russia, China and the wars in Ukraine, Gaza and sub-Saharan Africa in particular. The course will address:
- The current expansion of military conflicts in the world, exploring the relevant contexts, the actors involved, the types of armed conflict and weapons used, their drivers and strategies, their political, economic, social and environmental consequences.
- The role military power plays in States – focusing on major powers - including definitions of security, military alliances, the strategies associated to nuclear weapons, the evolution of war-fighting models, the role of private and non-State actors, the relationships with foreign policy, diplomacy, international economic policy, ‘soft power’.
- The relationships between capitalism and war, in different historical contexts, considering the relevance of military power and international hegemony in the rise of economic power.
- The economic dimensions of militarisation, considering the role of the military-industrial complex, the characteristics of the military economy, arms production and civilian-military alternatives in technology and industry.
- The transformations of the international order and the State system, considering the views on security – military and non-military - the role played by military power, by different types of conflict, by the political and economic dimensions of security, by international and regional integration and cooperation.
- The proposals and policies for non-military security – human security, social security, environmental security - and a peace order, including disarmament, alternative security arrangements, conflict resolution and peace-making, alongside the role played by peace movements.
Obiettivi formativi
The goal of the course is to provide students with the conceptual, analytical, empirical and policy tools needed to understand war and peace issues. The aim is to encourage students to explore the relationships between the international order – with its structures and processes - and specific military and power dynamics, considering cases of conflicts and peace-making – with their actors, objectives and forms of agency. The tools developed in the course could be related to the themes of the PhD projects of students.
Riferimenti bibliografici
N. Machiavelli, The prince, Penguin, 2011
I. Kant, Perpetual peace: a philosophical sketch, 1795
J.M. Keynes, The economic consequences of the peace, Macmillan, 1919
M. Kaldor, The baroque arsenal, Abacus, 1982, Introdution, ch.1,3, 6, Conclusions
M. Mann, Capitalism and militarism, in M. Shaw (ed.) War, state and society, Macmillan, 1984.
C. Tilly, War Making and State Making as Organized Crime, in Bringing the State Back In edited by Peter Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer, and Theda Skocpol, Cambridge University Press, 1985.
Leander, Anna. "Wars and the un-making of states: taking Tilly seriously in the contemporary world." Contemporary security analysis and Copenhagen peace research. Routledge, 2003. 85-96.
Woodward, Susan L. "The Inequality of Violence: On the Discovery of Civil War as a Threat to “the North” in the 1990s and the Debate over Causes and Solutions." (2005).
Kaldor, Mary. "In defence of new wars." Stability: International journal of security and development 2.1 (2013).
O.Palme Commission, Independent Commission on Disarmament and Security Issues (Palme Commission), Common security: a blueprint for survival, Simon & Schuster, 1982
G. Pontara, The rejection of violence in Gandhian ethics of conflict resolution, Journal of Peace Research 1965 2: 197
E.P. Thompson, Notes on exterminism, the last stage of civilisation, in Exterminism and cold war, Verso, 1982
J. Galtung, There are alternatives! Four roads to peace and security, Spokesman, 1984, ch.1,4.
D. Cortright, Peace. A History of Movements and Ideas, Cambridge University Press, 2008