When policy makers discuss issues of war and peace they structure policy to ensure the prosperity of their own nation. There are a number of viewpoints for deciding when war is appropriate, some based on morals, some based on costs and benefits. The main theories that explain policy decisions about war and peace are the theories of realism, pacifism, just war, and the requirement of discrimination theory.

The just war theory is currently being applied to iraq by the united states, which can help rid the world of weapons of mass destruction. This theory implicates that moral norms should not be thought about when policy making. The rights of the individual are limited, and cannot exceed the rights of the states. The rights of states surpass the rights of the individual even though the rights of the states originated from the rights of the individual. People who believe that there is no justification for war are called absolutists or pacifists. They believe that the immorality of war cannot be challenged, and they are close minded about the idea of change.

Some pacifists believe that while war is morally wrong, self defense is acceptable. However, by believing in individual self defense suggests that the pacifists must believe in war to some extent simply because war is often an act of self defense. The just war theory provides the common sense aspect for the use of violence by the individual as well as the common sense aspect for violence by the state. The theory of means discusses the limits of war and peace is a historical novel. Tolstoy made great efforts to ensure the accuracy of his facts and dates, and the characters of tsar alexander i, napoleon, speranski, and other dignitaries generally respect historical factuality.

Yet almost all the important and interesting characters in the novel are fictional. Why does tolstoy merge fact and fiction in this fashion? the short answer is that historical novels always merge fact and fiction, as the contradictory terms ldquo historical rdquo and ldquo novel rdquo remind us. But the deeper and more interesting answer as to why tolstoy chose a historical context for this particular story mdash unlike his later anna karenina, which is completely fictional mdash involves his complex theory of history.

Essay Writing Youth Culture

As tolstoy repeatedly shows us in war and peace, historians do not give us the whole truth about what happened on the battlefield, or anywhere else for that matter. They give us only their particular slant on what happened, distorted by their own prejudices, interpretations, and fantasies. The historian is, then, much more akin to a creative writer than he would likely admit.

By writing an account of napoleon rsquo s war with russia from the russian perspective, which had not yet been attempted at the time of the novel rsquo s publication or so tolstoy tells us , tolstoy is suggesting that a fictional work may do the job of recording history just as well. Literature may tell the truth as effectively as supposedly objective history books that are in fact not objective at all. Moreover, fiction has the power to reconstruct the lowly figures of history that the historian must necessarily leave out, as history itself forgets small individuals in its focus on great men and great leaders. Tolstoy rsquo s philosophy of history insists that great men are illusions, and that the high and the low alike are swept along by networks of circumstances. Therefore, he has a vested interest in depicting the significance of nobodies like platon karataev or pierre rsquo s executed prison mates. History books may be forced to overlook these small figures, but the novelist has the power to conjure them up before our eyes, to restore their rightful importance in the overall scheme of things. Early in the novel, tolstoy takes great care in depicting two pairs of childhood sweethearts: nicholas and sonya, and natasha and boris.