La Vengeance et la Paix [Revenge and Peace], written by Marie Robin
(2025) European Review of International Studies — Vol. 12, n° 3, p. 461-465 (2025)
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- Abstract
- What is the common phenomenon driving the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the war in Gaza, and the elimination of Al-Qaeda leaders by US military forces? It's vengeance. Putin claims to take revenge for the 1991 disbanding of the USSR, Hamas uses the Nakba to justify it's 7th October 2025 attacks, while Israel vows to "take mighty vengeance" from it, and both Obama and Biden announce that "justice has been done" when reporting the killing of 9/11 instigators. Although reproved in contemporary discourses as a backward and futile practice, vengeance is used to legitimise violent action on the international scene -even by liberal actors. How can we understand this paradox? Could this understanding help build lasting peace in intractable conflicts? Answering these two questions is the ambition of Robin's La Vengeance et la Paix. The book follows a dialectical structure: vengeance against peace, peace through vengeance, and from vengeance to peace.
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Citations
Loïc Fierens. (2025). La Vengeance et la Paix [Revenge and Peace], written by Marie Robin. European Review of International Studies, 12(3), 461-465. https://doi.org/10.1163/21967415-bja10092 (Original work published 2025)