The article begins with an overview of the historic moment of ?the end of the Cold War?, and of the paradoxically deepening moral, social, and environmental problems posed by the military system. It demonstrates that historical and contemporary analyses of defence and war have dogmatically presupposed the military paradigm, and have therefore failed to recognize the self?reproducing structure of covert premisses and inferences upon which it rests. In laying bare this underlying system of unreason, the analysis demonstrates that the military (...) paradigm's ultimately self?contradictory concepts of ?security? and ?defence? repose on unstated interests of social and political rule. Proposing new distinctions between pathological and life?enabling forms of war, and between guilty and innocent combatants, the argument develops alternative, non?military principles of war to guide rational and moral agency. (shrink)