Dangerous Trade: Arms Exports, Human Rights, and International Reputation. By Jennifer L. Erickson. New York: Columbia University Press, 2015. 288p. $50.00.

trade are less common than Copeland asserts. For war to pay (or be the least bad option), the odds of victory have to be good, the spoils of war have to exceed the cost, and the opportunity cost has to be worse. But nothing is more expensive and uncertain than war. Perhaps for these reasons, war is more likely to cause decline than arrest it. The Franco-Prussian, Boer, Russo-Japanese, and First and Second World Wars mangled most of the states that blundered into them. Violence has sometimes been a useful tool of statecraft, but, for more than a century, preventive war has not. Rational, security-seeking states are not perfect, but they should be more cautious than Copeland contends. Ultimately, Economic Interdependence andWar is a work of passion, conviction, and erudition. If it does not achieve all it sets out to, that is no stain given how high it shoots. If it can account for at least some of the scourge of war, it is a worthy service. If the causes of war literature is crowded, they should push aside other arguments to make room for TET.