An international bestseller, The Rosy Future of War explores the post-Cold War age - one "as different from the Cold War as it is from the Middle Ages" - in which States are dividing against themselves into smaller and increasingly fractious parts.

In the past thirty years, the number of internationally recognized countries has actually doubled; for many of these countries, international law and the benefits of a global economy play no role; they are based only on a drive for ethnic identity. We are left today with a dramatic increase in warfare - ancient, bloody, and confusing conflicts cropping up everywhere.

Only the cohesiveness of "legitimate States," can workthe reality is that strong: stable States provide the sense of oneness and political structure that can prevent constant wars of minorities against majorities, immigrants against natives, and nations against States. The world's major powers, Delmas argues, must look less approvingly on the creation of new ethnic-breakaways and on the international organizations that recognize them.

The major powers posses enough military might to contain the rising tide of warfare. But to be effective, the United States and Western Europe have to turn away from idealistic notions promulgated by international organizations, and find new ways to export stability - rather than new systems - as war's most potent container. To do otherwise gives further rise to a world in which war, possessed of so rich a past, will have a rosy future.