ABSTRACT
This brief article is concerned with the study of those aspects of international politics that are particularly closely related to the phenomenon of war. War is, of course, an antonym for peace and, to some extent, studies of peace and war may be regarded as interchangeable. In this respect, however, it is only some aspects of a peaceful world that are of interest: those that seem relevant to considering how peace turns into war or how war might be returned to peace. Thus, even after trying to discount the professional deformation of having once been a professor of ‘war studies’, I prefer the latter term to ‘peace studies’, for while all conceivable ‘war studies’ are relevant to examining the nature and effects of war and preparations for it, this is true only of a part of conceivable ‘peace studies’.
