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Azar Gat

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Azar Gat
Born1959 (age 64–65)
Haifa,Israel
Education
Occupation(s)Interdisciplinary researcher of war, nationalism and ideology
OrganizationTel Aviv University
Awards

Azar Gat(born 1959) is an Israeli researcher ofwar,nationalismandideology,and aprofessorat the School of Political Science, Government, and International Relations atTel Aviv University.His research combines expertise in the fields ofhistory,evolution,anthropology,andsocial sciences.He is the author of ten books that deal with the history of military thought, the fundamental questions of war and its causes, the struggles betweendemocraticand non-democratic states, nationalism, and the phenomenon of ideological fixation. His books have been translated into many languages.

Gat has served as a visiting professor and researcher at the universities ofOxford,Yale,Stanford,Georgetown,Ohio State,Freiburg,MunichandKonstanz.He is a three-time winner of both theAlexander von Humboldt Fellowshipand research grants fromIsrael Science Foundation(ISF). He has also won aRothschild Fellowship,aFulbright Fellowship,and aBritish CouncilFellowship. Gat was a recipient of theEMET Prizefor the year 2019, considered Israel's premier scholarly award.

Biography

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Born inIsrael,Gat holds abachelor's degreefrom theUniversity of Haifa(1978), amaster's degreefromTel Aviv University(1983), and a doctorate from theUniversity of Oxford(1986). He served as amajorin theIsrael Defense Forces(IDF).

Since 1987, Gat has been on the faculty of the Department of Political Science at Tel Aviv University (now the School of Political Science, Government and International Affairs), where he is currently afull professorand the incumbent of the Ezer Weizman Chair in National Security. He has twice served as head of the department. Gat also founded and heads the Executive MA Program in Security and Diplomacy[1]and the International MA Program in Security and Diplomacy (which is taught in English).[2]

Research

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The History of Military Thought

Gat's first book,The Origins of Military Thought from the Enlightenment to Clausewitz(1989), merged two fields that were until then completely separate:strategic thoughtand thehistory of ideas.The book showed that the military thought of the 18th century grew out of the ideas ofthe Enlightenmentand sought to create a general theory of war based on universal rules and principles. Prussian general and military theoristCarl von Clausewitz's criticism of it has now been explained as an expression of the sweeping reaction ofRomanticismagainst the ideas of the Enlightenment from the turn of the 19th century.

InThe Development of Military Thought: The Nineteenth Century(1992), Gat continued presenting the main schools of military thought of the 19th century. His bookFascist and Liberal Visions of War: Fuller, Liddell Hart, Douhet, and Other Modernists(1998) revealed the close relationship that existed in the first decades of the 20th century between the leading theorists ofmechanized warfare(both land and air) andfuturistandfascistcurrents which conjured visions of an elitist and mechanized future world. The book also presented the thought ofBasil Liddell Hartinliberal,post-World War I Britainas a pioneering expression of ideas that would become the basis of howliberal democraticsocieties relate to war and its conduct. In both this book and in his 2000 bookBritish Armor Theory and the Rise of the Panzer Arm: Revising the Revisionists,Gat refuted the accusations leveled against Liddell Hart regarding the alleged falsification of his influence on the formation ofGermanarmor doctrineprior toWorld War II.

His books from 1989, 1992 and 1998 were collected into a single volume,A History of Military Thought: From the Enlightenment to the Cold War(2001).

What is War? Basic Questions

Gat's 2006 bookWar in Human Civilizationis aninterdisciplinarywork that critically examines knowledge and insights from the fields ofanthropology,evolutionary theory,political science,history,sociology,economics,andinternational relationsin order to provide answers to age-old questions, some of which have been considered unsolvable. Since when have humans fought each other? Was thestate of human naturebeforeagricultureand thestatewarlike(asHobbesclaimed) or peaceful (asRousseauclaimed)? What are the reasons for war? How did the appearance of states, the process ofmodernization,andliberal democracyaffect war? The book was chosen bytheTimes Literary Supplement(TLS) as one of the books of the year for 2006, and has been translated into Japanese, Korean and Chinese.[3]

The Struggles of Democracies against Their Non-Democratic Rivals (Past and Future)

Gat's 2010 bookVictorious and Vulnerable: Why Democracy Won in the 20th Century and How it is still Imperiled?examines the reasons for thedemocracy's ascendence in the world during the last two centuries, and the relevance of this process to the question of the future development ofChinaandRussiain the 21st century. In addition, the book analyzes the dangers ofunconventionalterrorism.Victorious and Vulnerablewon the book of the year award of the Israeli Political Science Association for 2010.[4]The return of theauthoritarian-capitalistgreat powersto the international arena was at the center of two articles published by Gat in the journalForeign Affairsin 2007 and 2009, at a time when most researchers believed that the final victory of democracy had already been achieved.

The Phenomenon of Nationalism

Gat's 2013 bookNations: The Long History and Deep Roots of Political Ethnicity and Nationalism(withAlexander Yakobson), refutes the claim thatnationalismis a purely artificial, if not completely manipulative, modern phenomenon. The book shows that the close relationship betweenethnicityand thestatehas existed since the appearance of states at the beginning of history.Modernityled to the tightening of national ties and their empowerment through the concepts ofpopular sovereigntyandcivil equality.However, the book argues that there is no basis for the claim that national ties - which in the past as in the present have always given rise to powerful manifestations ofcollective identity,sacrifice and devotion - are new or superficial. The book has been translated into Spanish, Turkish and Korean.

The Causes of War

Gat's 2017 bookThe Causes of War and the Spread of Peace: But Will War Rebound?lays out the system of humanmotivationsthat lead to war, a subject that has hitherto been completely neglected in the literature ofinternational relations.The book shows how the process ofmodernizationin the last two centuries has resulted in a continuous decrease in the incidence of war since 1815 because it has changed the relative attractiveness between the three fundamental strategies of humansocial behavior:cooperation,peacefulcompetition,and violentconflict.The book also explains the major exception to this trend: the twoworld wars.Gat refutes the popular belief that war has become more expensive and more costly in the modern industrial age and shows instead that it ispeacethat has become more profitable.

Ideological Fixation

In his recent bookIdeological Fixation: From the Stone Age to Today's Culture Wars(2022), Gat again combines knowledge from a variety of disciplines. The book attempts to resolve theparadoxaccording to which everyone recognizes the phenomenon ofideologicalfixation and thebiasin thefactualinterpretation ofrealityit involves, and yet, so often, fall victim to it.

Publications

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Books

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  • The Origins of Military Thought: From the Enlightenment to Clausewitz.Oxford University Press. 1989.ISBN978-0198229483.
  • The Development of Military Thought: The Nineteenth Century.Oxford University Press. 1992.ISBN978-0198202462.
  • Fascist and Liberal Visions of War: Fuller, Liddell Hart, Douhet, and Other Modernists.Oxford University Press. 1998.ISBN978-0198207153.
  • British Armour Theory and the Rise of the Panzer Arm: Revising the Revisionists.Palgrave Macmillan. 2000.ISBN978-0312229528.
  • Zeev Maoz, ed. (2001).War in a Changing World.University of Michigan Press.ISBN9780472111855.
  • A History of Military Thought: From the Enlightenment to the Cold War.Oxford University Press. 2001.ISBN9780199247622.
  • War in Human Civilization.Oxford University Press. 2006.ISBN978-0199236633.
  • Victorious and Vulnerable: Why Democracy Won in the 20th Century and How it is Still Imperiled.Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. 2010.ISBN978-1442201149.
  • Nations: The Long History and Deep Roots of Political Ethnicity and Nationalism.Cambridge University Press. 2012.ISBN978-1107400023.
  • The Causes of War and the Spread of Peace: But Will War Rebound?.Oxford University Press. 2017.ISBN9780198795025.
  • War and Strategy in the Modern World: From Blitzkrieg to Unconventional Terrorism.Routledge. 2018.ISBN9781138632561.
  • Ideological Fixation: From the Stone Age to Today's Culture Wars.Oxford University Press. 2022.ISBN9780197646700.

Journal articles

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References

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  1. ^"Executive MA Program in Security and Diplomacy"(in Hebrew).
  2. ^"International MA Program in Security and Diplomacy, Tel Aviv University".
  3. ^"Prof. Azar Gat, Faculty of Social Sciences, Tel Aviv University"(in Hebrew).
  4. ^"The Israeli Political Science Association Annual Conference (2010)"(PDF)(in Hebrew).
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