Word: clausewitzian
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...necessity. When Neville Chamberlain declared ''peace for our time'' after Munich, he gave peacemakers a reputation for fatuous optimism and appeasement from which it took them years to recover. Philosophers of war since Hiroshima have taught, hopefully, that the nuclear threat has made armed conflict ultimately untenable as a Clausewitzian instrument (foreign policy that happens to kill) useful in settling disputes. But not everyone has absorbed the lesson. Among other things, war has an archetypal prestige and bristling drama with which peace has trouble competing: Milton's Lucifer in Paradise Lost is much more interesting than Milton...