Telos 205 (Winter 2023): Forms of War
Forms of War
Every war forces us to reconsider the character of war and the forms that it can take. In the first place, the insight that leads to a war is one about the nature of a conflict. War only begins once the parties determine that there is an otherwise irresolvable conflict about the basis of order. The course of a war also results in a practical insight into the form of a postwar order. Peace and stability cannot arrive until all come to an agreement about the new understanding of order. The essays in Telos 205 are based on papers presented at the Telos-Paul Piccone Institute conference on “Forms of War,” held in New York in the spring of 2023. The participants considered different ways of understanding the relationship between conflict and insight in war as well as examples of how the conceptualization of conflict affects the outbreak, progress, and outcome of wars.
Introduction
David Pan
The Forms of War after 1945: From a World of “Great Wars” to a Planet for “Special Military Operations”
Timothy W. Luke
Anticipation, Social Theory, and the Stories We Tell Ourselves
Mark Maguire and David A. Westbrook
The Second Coming of the Tianxia Empire? A Theopolitical Interpretation of the (Coming) Sino-Taiwan War
Chia-Yu Liang
Learning from Defeat: Sadik al-Azm and the Arab Defeat in 1967
Russell A. Berman
A Professional-Managerial Imperium: The National Security State and American Power
Mark G. E. Kelly
From Kant to Krupp—and Kiev: Vladimir Ern on Kantianism as a Source of War, 1914 and Today
Matthew J. Dal Santo
The Confluence of Western Monotheism and Eastern Buddhism as a Potent Force for World Peace
Aryeh Botwinick