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Ways of War and Peace: Realism, Liberalism, and Socialism. By Michael W. Doyle. New York: W. W. Norton, 1997. 557p. $30.00.
This lengthy tome undertakes a truly ambitious project, mining the thought of the past two millenia for guidance on how to approach the challenges of international politics today. Michael Doyle structures his account around the three outlooks that have dominated international thought during the twentieth century: realism, liberalism, and Marxism or socialism. Each of these outlooks has older roots, and Doyle explores them at length. Large portions of his book are devoted to treatments of Thucydides, Kant, Marx, Rousseau, Schumpeter, and a host of other writers who contributed to the development of the three paradigms. These writers are often treated perfunctorily in books on international politics, if they are treated at all, but Doyle's discussions are thorough and nuanced. Specialists on each of the authors may quarrel with details of the exposition, but very few will be well enough versed in all the thinkers to play the critic. In that respect, the book is encyclopedic in its range.
The range is impressive, but it creates some problems as well. Some readers may complain that the book lacks a clear thesis or agenda, a criticism that receives some justification from the far-flung and diffuse nature of the work. The same qualities sometimes make the thread of the argument hard to follow and, occasionally, lead the author into redundancies. It is also true that, by dint of giving every thinker and every perspective a sympathetic hearing, Doyle sometimes leaves it unclear where he stands. This I do not regard as a vice, though it does lead to occasional confusion as to what Doyle is saying in his own voice.
The aim of the book is not merely to interpret theorists...