Buy the article on CAIRN websiteAbstract

Long considered as not only legitimate but moreover desirable, war has lost substantial legitimacy after the two World Wars. The relative gain of legitimacy that followed the end of the Cold War —with the proliferation of humanitarian military operations— will not be sufficient to reverse this trend. It is even possible that the most dominant type of conflict today, civil wars, will also face a real decline.John Mueller, President of the Woody Hayes Chair of National Security Studies at the Mershon Center for International Security Studies, is a Professor of Political Sciences at the Ohio State University. He is a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His last book is: Overblown (New York, Free Press, 2006).