Heroically aspirational and wildly ambitious as Alex Bellamys book may appear at first sight, it is full of measured and thoughtful analysis of the causes of both war and peace, and timely prescriptions for policymakers as to what they should and can do to minimize the risk of future catastrophic conflict.
Alex J. Bellamy is Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies and Director of the Asia Pacific Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, at The University of Queensland, Australia. He is also Non-Resident Senior Adviser at the International Peace Institute in New York and Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia. Since 2012 he has served as a consultant for the United Nations Office for Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect. For some of his work, he has been awarded a United Nations Association award for 'outstanding service' to the purposes and principles of the UN Charter. In 2014-2015 and 2017-2018 he was a Visiting Fellow in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford. He was the winner of the Ethics Section of the International Studies Association Prize 2013 for his book Massacres and Morality: Mass Atrocities in an Age of Civilian Immunity.