Anarchist and pacifist resonances

I am grateful for the invitation to comment on Christopher Coyne’s In Search of Monsters to Destroy (2022). The book is a great read, well written, and makes a clear and convincing economic argu?ment regarding the deleterious impact of empire. Criticisms of empire are plentiful, but fewer are those couched in the language of economics. Coyne’s book redresses that by elaborating a convincing argument explaining why and how a liberal empire works against liberal aims. The book resonated with me on several levels. For one, judging by its preface, Coyne and I seem to have had a few similar triggers and interests on our academic journeys. My own BA was in economics. I then moved to international relations and European studies. The final examination of that MA was during 9/11. We did not know the planes had hit the towers ten minutes before we went in. Three hours later, fifty students of international politics emerged, caught up, and spent the evening reflecting on how the world had changed (or not).
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