The title of the book is doubly provocative. The first part of Antonio Giustozzi’s stimulating volume paraphrases Machiavelli’s work, The Art of War. The second part is a play on primitive accumulation, a term widely used in understanding the evolution of capitalism but rarely employed in analysing the evolution of state structures. If the title certainly raises eyebrows, Giustozzi’s work is rewarding for anyone interested in the current debates on intervention, territorial sovereignty and ethical questions on when, where and how the international community must use force.
Since the end of the Cold War, the divisions over these questions between the western and non-western powers, idealists and realists, unilateralists and multilateralists have been at the very heart of global political discourse. Giustozzi cuts across these debates to develop a valuable analytical framework to understand the challenges of state formation and the negative effects of external intervention on it.