Why Nations Still Fight

Drawing on an original data set of interventions and wars from 1945 to the current day, as well as numerous short case studies, Richard Ned Lebow offers a novel account of their origins and outcomes – one that emphasises miscalculation, failure to conduct meaningful risk assessments, and cultural and political arrogance.  In a successive work to Why Nations Fight (2010), he explains why initiators routinely lose militarily and politically when they resort to force, as well as accounting for why the great powers, in particular, have not learned from their failures. Lebow offers both type- and region-specific forecasts for the future likelihood of interventions and wars. His account reveals the inapplicability of theories nested in the realist and rationalist paradigms to the study of war.  He argues what is needed instead is an “irrationalist” theory, and he takes the initial steps in this direction.

Author Biography

Richard Ned Lebow is Professor Emeritus of International Political Theory in the War Studies Department of King’s College London, Honorary Fellow of Pembroke College at the University of Cambridge, and James O. Freedman Presidential Professor Emeritus at Dartmouth College. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and a member of the Atheneum. His most recent books include Weimar’s Long Shadow (Cambridge, 2024), co-edited with Ludvig Norman; Fragility and Robustness of Political Orders, also co-edited with Ludvig Norman (Cambridge, 2022); and The Quest for Knowledge in International Relations: How Do We Know? (Cambridge 2021), as well as this book’s predecessor, Why Nations Fight (Cambridge, 2010). He also publishes short stories, murder mysteries, and counterfactual, historical fiction.