Forbidden Fruit: Counterfactuals and International Relations

by Richard Ned Lebow

Could World War I have been averted if Franz Ferdinand and his wife hadn't been murdered by Serbian nationalists in 1914? What if Ronald Reagan had been killed by Hinckley's bullet? Would the Cold War have ended as it did? In Forbidden Fruit , Richard Ned Lebow develops protocols for conducting robust counterfactual thought experiments and uses them to probe the causes and contingency of transformative international developments like World War I and the end of the Cold War. He uses experiments, surveys, and a short story to explore why policymakers, historians, and international relations scholars are so resistant to the contingency and indeterminism inherent in open-ended, nonlinear systems. Most controversially, Lebow argues that the difference between counterfactual and so-called factual arguments is misleading, as both can be evidence-rich and logically persuasive. A must-read for social scientists, Forbidden Fruit also examines the binary between fact and fiction and the use of counterfactuals in fictional works like Philip Roth's The Plot Against America to understand complex causation and its implications for who we are and what we think makes the social world work.

352 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2010

About the author

Richard Ned Lebow FBA is an American political scientist best known for his work in international relations, political psychology, classics and philosophy of science. He is Professor of International Political Theory at the Department of War Studies, King's College London, Bye-Fellow of Pembroke College, University of Cambridge, and James O. Freedman Presidential Professor Emeritus at Dartmouth College. Lebow also writes fiction. He has published a novel and collection of short stories and has recently finished a second novel.

Reviews

[Mathieu Gaudreault · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you want to read alternate history the what if this is not your book. I am ok with that.

If you want to understand what a counterfactual, how to use it this is a great book and should be considered for students in history at Universities. This good book by Dr Lebow explains what a counterfactuals, the minimal rewrite rule of counterfactual and also chances events , avoiding insight(keeping the mindset of people of the time of the event) and last freeing it of straight jacket of Dr Niall Fergusson(only persons with higher powers per exemple heads of state, senior advisors etc cdecisions can alter history).

June 28th 1914 is so bungled by mistakes, wrong turns and bad schedules.

maybe dry or academic but this great book does the job.