Inflection Points of War Cycles
In the judgment of the Nuremberg Tribunal, war of aggression is the supreme crime, and there is hardly any other issue that is more relevant to the social sciences than the study of the decision-making process when a person or a group of persons decides that another group of people must face death. Historians speculated about this decision-making process for centuries without reaching consensus, as wars are complex phenomena with multiple determinants. The decision to initiate a war marks an inflection point of the war-peace cycle, and the decision to cease hostilities marks the end of a particular cycle. Comparative studies of war cycles can contribute to explication of facets of this decision-making process. Most relevant of these facets are those that help us to identify the preventable factors influencing the decision to initiate (and to terminate) a war.
Read more about this topic: War Cycles
Famous quotes containing the words points, war and/or cycles:
“Wonderful “Force of Public Opinion!” We must act and walk in all points as it prescribes; follow the traffic it bids us, realise the sum of money, the degree of “influence” it expects of us, or we shall be lightly esteemed; certain mouthfuls of articulate wind will be blown at us, and this what mortal courage can front?”
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881)
“We are at war with the most dangerous enemy that has ever faced mankind in his long climb from the swamp to the stars, and it has been said if we lose that war, and in so doing lose this way of freedom of ours, history will record with the greatest astonishment that those who had the most to lose did the least to prevent its happening.”
—Ronald Reagan (b. 1911)
“The stars which shone over Babylon and the stable in Bethlehem still shine as brightly over the Empire State Building and your front yard today. They perform their cycles with the same mathematical precision, and they will continue to affect each thing on earth, including man, as long as the earth exists.”
—Linda Goodman (b. 1929)