Parity and war: evaluations and expansions of the war record

The book "Parity and War" provides a comprehensive explanation of the reasons why peace prevails in the international arena, and why wars sometimes break out. This book is useful for university students and researchers alike, as it examines and tests ideas of power hegemony that were first discussed more than a decade ago in the widely acclaimed Record of War. An alternative to traditional realism, power supremacy theory holds that peace is maintained when a dominant state supports the status quo. This theory convincingly explains war initiation, recovery, and peace by analyzing military armaments, alliances, regional threats, economic cycles, nuclear deterrence, and the spread of nuclear weapons. The contributors to this volume address and analyze such diverse cases as the peaceful collapse of the Soviet Union, the presence of interstate wars in South America in the last century and their absence - although internal wars - in this century, the economic and political consequences of the American Civil War, and observations of long-standing patterns of conflict and peace in international relations. Moreover, the contributors to Parity and War use game theory, expected utility, and calculus techniques to model major wars and to formulate original intuitive assumptions of power superiority. Their timely research shows that in this era of nuclear weapons dominance by a single superpower, effective guidance of the system by the United States will ensure peace for the next century. Contributors include Arina Arbitman, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, Vesna Danilovich, Daniel S. Geller, Kink W. Hoeling, Kelly M. Kadera, Woo-sang Kim, Jacek Kugler, Douglas Lemke, Ross A. Miller, James D. Muro, A. F. K. Organski, Jan G. Sicama, Randove M. Severson, Ronald Tammen, William R. Thompson, John A. Vasquez, Frank Waylon Wyman, Susan Werner, and Frank C. Zagar.