Richard Ned Lebow

On his book Why Nations Fight: Past and Future Motives for War

Cover Interview of October 03, 2010

A close-up

The Iraq invasion of 2003 was justified by the Bush administration on the grounds of national security. But all of the principal advisors of the administration of president George W. Bush’s father privately told the president that no security or economic interest was at stake—and that intervention could put them at risk.

Oil is another unsatisfactory explanation for the Iraq invasion. The oil companies themselves did not favor war, but wanted the administration to end sanctions so they could buy and distribute Iraqi oil.

The invasion is best understood as an attempt to exploit America’s comparative military advantage to lock in “the unipolar movement” for reasons of standing. Rather than making friend and foe alike more complaint, it provided the need and opportunity for them to become more recalcitrant.

history / philosophy / polemics / violence / globalization / power / wwii / war / united nations / aristotle /

[T]he Holocaust transformed our whole way of thinking about war and heroism. War is no longer a proving ground for heroism in the same way it used to be. Instead, war now is something that we must avoid at all costs—because genocides often take place under the cover of war. We are no longer all potential soldiers (though we are that too), but we are all potential victims of the traumas war creates. This, at least, is one important development in the way Western populations envision war, even if it does not always predominate in the thinking of our political leaders.

Carolyn J. Dean,
Interview of February 01, 2011

The dominant premise in evolution and economics is that a person is being loyal to natural law if he or she attends to self’s interest and welfare before being concerned with the needs and demands of family or community. The public does not realize that this statement is not an established scientific principle but an ethical preference. Nonetheless, this belief has created a moral confusion among North Americans and Europeans because the evolution of our species was accompanied by the disposition to worry about kin and the collectives to which one belongs.

Jerome Kagan,
Interview of September 17, 2009