Is War Avoidable?

More on this later, but this article is an excellent piece to start this important discussion. I have long argued that maintaining, not freezing in place, an acceptable international order is one of our most important national security interests. The international order formed mostly at the close of WWII has led to relatively growing peace around the globe. The international order that served us well for 5 decades is crumbling, what comes next? An adjustment that makes the international order more acceptable to emerging actors or war?

http://nationalinterest.org/feature/...ling-war-12662

Russia and America: Stumbling to War

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AFTER THE Soviet Union collapsed, Richard Nixon observed that the United States had won the Cold War, but had not yet won the peace. Since then, three American presidents—representing both political parties—have not yet accomplished that task. On the contrary, peace seems increasingly out of reach as threats to U.S. security and prosperity multiply both at the systemic level, where dissatisfied major powers are increasingly challenging the international order, and at the state and substate level, where dissatisfied ethnic, tribal, religious and other groups are destabilizing key countries and even entire regions.

Most dangerous are disagreements over the international system and the prerogatives of major powers in their immediate neighborhoods—disputes of the sort that have historically produced the greatest conflicts.

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