The past decade has witnessed a (re)newed scholarly concern with peace, as opposed to the standard concentration on war. Most notable have been Stephen Pinker’s The Better Angels of Our Nature (2011) and Joshua Goldstein’s Winning the War on War (2011). The present book is consistent with that reorientation, but with several notable differences.

As do these other works, this one posits greater peace in the international system, but with a different time frame than other studies. Whereas others argue for the evolution of peace occurring over long periods of human history, and some pinpoint 1945 (the end of World War II) as the key transition point, the onset of a peaceful international system here begins with the end of the Cold War, circa 1989 (the “Rise” in the title). Other studies regard peace as continuing to the present (or at least until the end of their studies), but Michael Mandelbaum is unique in arguing that peace has ended (the “Fall” in the title), with 2014 as the termination date. This date corresponds to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a key moment for the book, but one that seems better suited for understanding the European region, rather than the other two regions that merit case studies and chapters: the Middle East and Asia.

What kind of peace does the book consider? Security studies have traditionally confined themselves to “negative peace,” or the absence of war and widespread violence. The author here is squarely in this camp, but extends the peace concept to conditions that states cease “to anticipate war, to prepare for war, and to gear their foreign policies to the real possibility of imminent war” (p. xii). This is a slightly higher standard than merely avoiding war, but it does not reflect broader and deeper conceptions of peace—so-called positive peace—that are found in other recent works such as The Puzzle of Peace (2016) by Gary Goertz and his colleagues.

What is the scope of the argument about peace and to which actors or areas does it apply? Most studies of peace purport to apply to the international system writ large or at least to all state–state relationships therein, if not to internal political processes as well. Despite the last part of the book title (“On Earth”), this work is more narrowly conceived. As already mentioned, the three case study chapters examine peace in given geographic regions: Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. Although their applicability goes beyond the great powers—that is, this is more than another analysis of “the long peace”—a powerful revisionist state in the region is a key part of the narrative, and minor power conflict is largely ignored.

What is the explanation for peace and then its purported downfall? Pinker’s explanation is overdetermined in that it offers too many possible explanations; Goldstein suffers from the opposite problem, in that the United Nations and peacekeeping get center stage, but such an account does not match the phenomena he describes or their temporal development. Goertz and coauthors focus on the management of territorial disputes and international norms. In contrast, Mandelbaum offers three factors as accounting for peace in the 25-year period studied: (1) the geopolitical dominance of the United States, (2) economic interdependence, and (3) the spread of democracy. In effect, he relies on two-thirds of the Kantian Triad (the latter two factors), while substituting a realist factor (US hegemony) for the role of international organizations. In discussing each region, however, the utility of the three factors varies substantially, which the author sometimes acknowledges. For example, democracy is not a factor in the Middle East. Accordingly, the explanations for peace are more compelling for Europe than they are for the other two regions.

The end of the peaceful period for each of the regions depends substantially on the rise of a revisionist state committed to expanding its influence there. For Europe, it is Russia that is the villain in the story, expanding into Ukraine. The author does not claim that the result is a return to the Cold War, but that some characteristics of the new reality are shared with that epoch. Counterintuitively, Mandelbaum argues that NATO expansion eastward undermined the peace in Europe by weakening democratic forces in Russia and inducing other deleterious effects. The counterfactual that NATO should have included Russia as a member is offered as a way of preventing this decline of peace. The increasing integration of Western Europe (increased EU membership and deepening ties) does not receive much attention as evidence of peace in most of the region or as a counterweight to Russian action.

In Asia, it is the ascendancy of China that is given primary causal weight to the fall of peace. The US–Japan relationship is given credit for maintaining the peace for so long there, but China as a revisionist state is the main part of the story here. In the Middle East, Iran’s attempts at regional influence are said to account for the decline of peace. The reader might be incredulous that the Middle East could even be considered a region of peace, although the 1989–2014 period does not have interstate wars, save those involving Iraq. The author is quick to qualify this condition as a “temporary truce rather than a deep peace” (p. 97).

What is the evidentiary basis for the arguments about the rise and fall of peace in the regions analyzed? Readers looking for extensive documentation and data for the claims in the book will be disappointed. Mandelbaum relies on news reports, secondary sources, and the like to support the arguments made. The analysis in the form of narrative is well written and often compelling on its face. Nevertheless, the evidence for the initial peace claims is most obviously limited, especially as it relates to the additional elements of negative peace specified by the author. For example, data on military spending or conflict interactions might have bolstered claims that peace was present after 1989 (especially if compared to the previous era), but that was not done and could undermine the argument. Indeed, if one looks at Asia (much less the Middle East), there is clear evidence of rivalries, extensive military preparations, and militarized confrontations short of war that suggest that the alleged peace does not extend beyond the absence of war to the deeper peace (“the absence of security competition,” p. 135) that the author claims. The fall of peace is better documented and explained with detailed historical narratives of how the three revisionist powers have come to challenge the status quos in their regions. Again, however, the argument would be more convincing with better evidence in terms of state behavior, and although most of the claims have prima facie validity, there are alternative accounts (ones not based on realist thinking) that could challenge the one here.

The concluding chapter of the book reviews the processes and arguments in the previous chapters, but most importantly offers democracy as the antidote to recent security challenges and as the best way to regain peace. This faith in the democratic peace is not new but is well established in scholarly research, although increasingly challenged by counter-views such as the “territorial peace” and the “capitalist peace.” One might speculate that this book will receive extensive attention from traditional security studies scholars and policy makers, while being ignored by quantitative conflict scholars. Both are overreactions to the value that the book holds for our understanding of peace.