Introduction

Abstract

That this is the umpteenth analytical effort dedicated to war should alone suffice to underscore from the very beginning of this yearbook that we live in ‘interesting times,’ as the philosopher Slavoj Žižek (2011) would argue. Žižek maintains that in China, in cases of extreme hatred, one uses the curse, ‘May you live in interesting times.’ And historically, ‘interesting times’ have always been characterized by power struggles, extreme social inequalities, war and the like. Žižek rightly points out the historical persistence of (and somehow the advent of new) ‘interesting times,’ though it would appear that the curse is not of Chinese origin.