1. When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual Peace.

2. They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.

3. But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,

4. And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said:

5. ‘Stick to the Devil you Know.’

6. Kipling, ‘The Gods of the Copybook Headings’

Over much of the last decade of the twentieth century – as ironically was also the case in the preceding century as well – there was a cautious but growing optimism that the worst aspects of war were at last being brought under some sort of control. The growing reach and appeal of globalization, the growing ‘thickness’ of international law and institutions, especially in the area of human rights and their protection, the evolution of notions of ‘humanitarian intervention’: all were credited, severally or collectively, with helping to tame war, helping to make it increasingly – in the words of one of the academic proponents of this thesis that I have already had occasion to refer to – ‘sub-rationally unthinkable’.