In Man, the State, and War (1959), Kenneth Waltz identifies Spinoza as a “first-image theorist.” Alongside Augustine, Niebuhr, and Morgenthau, Spinoza holds the view, according to Waltz, that “political ills [are deducible] from human defects.” The description is disputable. And the inclusion of two contemporary thinkers alongside two classics cannot but provoke intellectual historians fearful of anachronism.

In his most recent book, An Australian Band of Brothers, Dr Mark Johnston tells the story of Don Company of the 2/43rd Australian Infantry Battalion – part of the 9th Division, which sustained more casualties and won more decorations than any other Australian division in the Second World War. Like his previous works on Australians at war, the book is a ‘warts and all’ exploration of the life of front-line servicemen.

Pacifism, in its most familiar form, is the view that waging war is never morally justified—call this the pacifism-of-acts. This is to be carefully distinguished from what we might call the pacifism-of-institutions. The latter position is not characterised by an absolute objection to waging war with the military resources that we have amassed. It is characterised, rather, by an objection to the amassing of those resources to begin with.