Book review: useful enemies: when waging wars is more important than winning them

There are currently between twenty and thirty civil wars occurring worldwide, while at a global level the Cold War has been succeeded by the War on Terror, which continues to rage a decade after 9/11. When we know how destructive war is in both human and economic terms, why do wars continue for so long? Why do the efforts of aid organizations and international diplomats so often fail? David Keen investigates why conflicts are so prevalent and so intractable, even when one side has much greater military resources. Reviewed by Meike de Goede.