Can War Be Eliminated? is a slim volume – an essay bound up in book form, really – and that very much dictates the tack it takes to answer its provocative titular question. It is a solid overview of what war is from an evolutionary, cultural, sociological, technological, and political perspective. However, its scope is necessarily limited by its size, which in turn negatively impacts its depth in favour of breadth.
Nothing radically new was presented and I often found the persuasiveness and cogency of the arguments to have been hindered by their briefness, and in some areas also by their lack of thorough interrogation. For example, I very much appreciated his deconstruction of the “warrior ideal” and the role it has played and continues to play in our personal and cultural construction of what war means to us. However, I found some of the logic used to interpret data on women in the armed forces to be unconvincing, even if the broader argument it fit into made sense. This lack of cogency is likely owed in large part to the broad brush strokes with which he paints most of his examples. Given that my answer to the titular question was “no” before picking up the book, I do wish that there had been deeper interrogation, but I recognise that the text is limited by its length.
I also must highlight that audience wise, this book reads an exercise in academia more than in clear communication of ideas – something for the field and not for the layman. There is definitely an assumption of a basic working knowledge of the subject area, and the language is highbrow enough to permit that. As someone in the field I have both the knowledge and the linguistic capacity to digest this, but not every reader is going to be a war scholar, historian, political scientist, analyst, or anyone else working in this area.
A positive is that the essay increases in both its convincingness and its lyricism as it builds. The chapter “Technology” was a favourite of mine, with zingers like:
We are human only to the extent that others recognise their humanity in us.
I also appreciated that he often harked back to the place of war in fiction as an extension of how we (individuals in society) perceive it. It emphasises, through a humanities frame, how so much of war – as a practice of the societies that wage it – relies on constructs to be understood, validated, waged, and processed after the fact. Coker’s arguments did prompt questions on specific points that he brought up, particularly on religion, so that is a benefit in and of itself, and I will certainly be consulting the recommended further reading. I also appreciate how certain examples or statements in this book (published in 2014) have erred close to being prophetic (reading in 2021).
Overall, it is a a solid review of the ideas and literature surrounding the perpetual despairing question of why we go to war, that in its answer confirms why the question will likely continue to be asked ad infinitum. I would recommend to anyone new enough to war studies to benefit from the thought-prompting that Coker’s conclusions will provoke, but not so new as to have no background at all in basic political theory and war history.
★★★½