Energy, War, and Peace

DateMarch 7, 2014

Time7:00am to 8:30am

Location
11377 Bunche Hall

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Is the Long Peace following 1945 a general decline of international war, and if so, what caused it? This paper explores how the shift to fossil fuel consumption following the Industrial Revolution fundamentally changed the political economy of war. I focus on what I call the Energy Revolution 1945-1973, which was the greatest period of energy consumption growth in human history. In effect, THE Energy Revolution divided the world into a gradually expanding set of states that are energy-modern and the rest that are energy-primitive. After 1945, wars between energy-modern states virtually disappeared, while wars within or involving energy-primitive states continued and even grew in severity. I seek to evaluate an energy-based explanation for these changes in the patterns of war against various competing and complementary explanations, including the democratic peace, selectorate theory, and the nuclear revolution.

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