Academic

Taylor on Coker on War & Risk

By Lawrence Solum

N.A.J. Taylor (University of Queensland; Taylor McKellar) has posted Book Review: 'War in an Age of Risk', by Christopher Coker (Australian Journal of International Affairs, Forthcoming) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

Sociologists such as Anthony Giddens and Ulrich Beck have for decades argued that society has become organised by the concept of risk. Giddens reasons that risk manifests as either external (i.e. the impact of natural forces) or manufactured (i.e. involving a high degree of human agency), and that it is the complexity bound in these latter risks that is most difficult to predict and manage. Whilst Beck emphasises that uncertainty over hazards and insecurity is perpetuated to a large extent by modern society itself. This ?risk society? is difficult to navigate since uncertainty involving the actions of humans renders it unlikely to ever experience anything close to ?order?.

Pursuing these ideas in his book War in an Age of Risk, Christopher Coker contends that Clausewitz?s conceptualisation of war is dialectical, in that if war is indeed the ?continuation of politics by other means?, it must also change politics. As a result, we are told, ?wars? have become an instrument of risk management? (p.10) and thus the risks, rewards, and costs imbued must continually and relentlessly be categorised, regulated and monitored. That is not to say, that we live in more dangerous (or risky) times, but that ?In the risk age?, according to Coker, ?life is too complex to be reordered, and ? war is too imperfect an instrument to do the reordering? (p.171).

Full post as published by Legal Theory Blog on January 05, 2011 (boomark / email).