Azar Gat

Azar Gat (born 1959 in Haifa, Israel) is a researcher and author on military history, military strategy and war and peace in general. Along with Steven Pinker and others, Gat argues that war is in decline in today's world.

He is currently Ezer Weizman Professor of National Security and in his second term (first from 1999–2003) as Chair of the Department of Political Science at Tel Aviv University. He is the founder and head of the University's Executive Masters Program in Diplomacy and Security. Gat is also a Major (res.) in the Israeli Army. [1]

Gat holds a doctoral degree from the University of Oxford (1984–86), an MA from Tel Aviv University (1979–83), and a BA from the University of Haifa (1975–78).

He has been Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at the University of Freiburg, Germany; Fulbright Fellow at Yale University, USA; British Council Scholar at the University of Oxford, Great Britain; Visiting Fellow at the Mershon Center, Ohio State University, USA; Goldman Visiting Israeli Professor at Georgetown University, USA; and Koret Distinguished Visiting Fellow for Israel Studies at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, USA.

Gat's 2006 book War in Human Civilization (Oxford University Press) was named one of the best books of the year by The Times Literary Supplement (TLS).

Research

Azar Gat started his career focusing on military history and strategy, exemplified in his 1989 book The Origins of Military Thought from the Enlightenment to Clausewitz, a book frequently cited especially in relation to Clausewitz. Over the years he has broadened his scope to include causes of war and the larger state of the world. In War in Human Civilization (2006) and following up in Victorious and Vulnerable: Why Democracy won in the 20th Century and How it is Still Imperiled, Gat argues that the world has been becoming steadily more peaceful for thousands of years. He finds that there are two major steps to this process. The first came with the emergence of the state: When populations entered into a social contract with the state, they gave up parts of their autonomy in return for the state taking care of their security. The second step came with modernization and the industrial revolution, which led to economic growth and interdependence and a corresponding increase in affluence and standard of living. It also brought with it liberal democracies and nuclear deterrence. Both these steps and all of these factors led to a reduction in wars and war casualties. In other words, peace has become profitable and therefore more common. At the same time, there are still countries less affected by this development, and war is more frequent in these parts of the world. [2] In claiming that war is in decline, Gat aligns with Steven Pinker, Joshua Goldstein and Robert Muchembled, who all argue the same.

Gat's broad views on war and its links to culture and human nature are similar to those of Steven A. LeBlanc. He incorporates viewpoints from ethology, evolution, evolutionary psychology, anthropology, archaeology, history, historical sociology, and political science. See especially his seminal 2006 book War in Human Civilization, but another example is the paper "The Human Motivational Complex: Evolutionary Theory And The Causes Of Hunter-Gatherer Fighting." [3], cited in "Evolutionary Psychology, Memes and the Origin of War". [4]

Publications

• Victorious and Vulnerable: Why Democracy Won in the 20th Century and How it is still Imperiled (Hoover, 2009)
• "So Why Do People Fight: Evolutionary Theory and the Causes of War", European Journal of International Relations 15(4), December 2009
• "Are Authoritarian China and Russia Doomed? Is Liberal Democracy’s Victory Preordained?", Foreign Affairs, May–June 2009
• "The Return of Authoritarian Great Powers", Foreign Affairs, July–August 2007
• War in Human Civilization (Oxford UP, 2006)
• "The Democratic Peace Theory Reframed: The Impact of Modernity", World Politics, October 2005
• War in a Changing World (Michigan, 2001) (Editor with Zeev Maoz)
• A History of Military Thought: From the Enlightenment to the Cold War (Oxford UP, 2001) [Collected reissue of the three earlier Oxford books]
• British Armour Theory and the Rise of the Panzer Arm: Revising the Revisionists (St Antony/Macmillan, 2000)
• Fascist and Liberal Visions of War: Fuller, Liddell Hart, Douhet, and Other Modernists (Oxford UP, 1998)
• The Development of Military Thought: The Nineteenth Century (Oxford UP, 1992)
• The Origins of Military Thought from the Enlightenment to Clausewitz (Oxford UP, 1989)

External links

• The Return of Authoritarian Capitalists, op-ed in NY Times, June 14, 2007
• Interview with Gat on "New Books in History"