Why Major-Power War Is Still Possible, Though Not Inevitable!

Abstract

At the very end of the Cold War, the scenario of a major-power war had largely been dismissed by “end of history” and other variants of democratic- liberal theory. Fukuyama’s “end of history” arguments had been preceded by the obsolescence-of-war theories of Norman Angel, presented in The Great Illusion (1910), and updated by John Mueller among others, who argued that the expense of war preparations and the benefits of free trade, as well as the destruction and insanity of war itself, make major-power war largely unthinkable and even more so in the nuclear age.¹