12

UNDERSTANDING MAN,

THE STATE AND WAR

Hidemi Suganami

Introduction

I bought Man, the State and War: A Theoretical Analysis(hereafter MSW) in 1971
when working for a Master’s degree in International Politics at Aberystwyth. The
book was recommended by several teachers, its title was intriguing, and I found a
copy in a local bookstore on my way to the railway station. I was travelling to
London that day and began reading the book while waiting for the train. If the train
had never come, I could have sat there, at the station buffet, and finished the book.
Encountering MSW, already a classic by then, was an exciting experience. I saw
everything I thought I knew, or had not even thought, about the causes of war
expounded and challenged. And it gave me an idea of what ‘a theoretical analysis’
might mean – a question which had intrigued me then. Waltz wrote:

our subject is ‘How to Think about War and Peace.’ The chapters that follow

are, in a sense, essays in political theory. This description is justified partly by

the mode of inquiry – we proceed by examining assumptions and asking

repeatedly what differences they make – and partly by the fact that we consider

a number of political philosophers directly.^1

Considering political philosophers does not necessarily make a work an exercise in
political theory. What makes it so is its mode of inquiry combined with its subject-
matter. Waltz’s subject-matter is a range of positions taken on the causes of war and
the conditions of peace, which are clearly ‘political’. Waltz’s main mode of enquiry
is ‘theoretical’ in the sense that it aims to uncover the assumptions of the various
positions taken and to work out their implications, thereby subjecting them to a
sustained critical scrutiny. Such a mode of enquiry is especially pertinent to the field,
such as the causes-of-war study, which is filled with a variety of often firmly held
answers, all equally plausible at first glance and each having potentially serious