Deliberating War is a thorough, insightful, and well-written discussion of how people in the Western tradition deliberate about war and treat deliberation as war. In discussing various kinds of war, and various kinds of deliberating about war, Roberts-Miller illuminates how and why some of these are more dangerous than others. This book is a must-read for scholars in history, political science, and communication who care about war, democracy, and the relationships between them.
- Mary E. Stuckey, Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Communication Arts & Sciences at Penn State University 

This book argues that treating politics as war derails essential democratic processes, including deliberation and policy argumentation, in complicated ways. “Politics is war” is not always just a figure of speech, but often a sincere expression of how people see disagreement—they mean it literally—and they use it to evade the responsibilities of rhetoric. This book takes the metaphor seriously. Using a series of case studies ranging from the 432 BCE “Debate at Sparta” to Bill O’Reilly’s recent invention of a “War on Christmas,” Deliberating War illustrates pathologies of deliberation that arise when a community understands itself to be at political war. This book identifies recurrent rhetorical strategies that constrain or even effectively prohibit deliberation, such as deflecting, reframing, threat inflation, appealing to paired terms, claiming moral license, radicalizing a base. Once communities become persuaded that they are in an apocalyptic battle between Good and Evil, politics as war can quickly become real war—often with far-reaching and catastrophic consequences.

Patricia Roberts-Miller is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Rhetoric and Writing at the University of Texas at Austin. She is the author of many books, including Speaking of Race: Constructive Conversations About an Explosive Topic (The Experiment, January 2021), and Rhetoric and Demagoguery, (Southern Illinois UP, 2019), which was a finalist for the Rhetoric Society of America book of the year).

“Drawing on a rich collection of examples from ancient Greece to the present day, Patricia Roberts-Miller ably demonstrates the failure of political leaders to engage in deliberation when choosing to undertake, continue, or escalate war. Instead, they reframe the situation, deflect the real issues, demonize the enemy, and make themselves the victim, all to convince themselves that war already has been forced upon them and they have no choice. Sometimes wars are justified, but political leaders, specialists, and citizens will all benefit from this accessible work that shows what can happen when deliberation is an essential feature of the rhetoric of war.” (David Zarefsky, Northwestern University, Author of “Lyndon Johnson, Vietnam, and the Presidency: The Speech of March 31, 1968”)

“Deliberating War is a thorough, insightful, and well-written discussion of how people in the Western tradition deliberate about war and treat deliberation as war. In discussing various kinds of war, and various kinds of deliberating about war, Roberts-Miller illuminates how and why some of these are more dangerous than others. This book is a must-read for scholars in history, political science, and communication who care about war, democracy, and the relationships between them.” (Mary E. Stuckey, Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Communication Arts & Sciences at Penn State University)

“Deliberating War takes rhetoric’s relationship to war out of the realm of meaningless metaphor and into the realm of real, critical, potentially cataclysmic importance. For millennia, debates about war have translated to the battlefield and events on the battlefield have translated into debates about who we are, what we value, and how we should act towards one another. Given how high the stakes are, Roberts-Miller demands that readers grapple with how politicians use rhetoric to drag people to war. But politicians don't act alone, so she also demands that everyone learn to choose their words more wisely in matters of war, politics, and life.” (Ryan Skinnell, Associate Professor of Rhetoric and Writing, San José State University)

“Patricia Roberts-Miller’s Deliberating War is a probing study of the rhetorical dynamics that feed on political factionalism to displace deliberation and transform the trope of “politics as war” into real war. It is a sustained and close study of multiple cases of armed conflict that cross historical periods and involve an assortment of adversaries. Various rhetorical practices are insightfully analyzed for how they obstruct democratic deliberation, including how the call to arms is strategically framed, which fallacies typically are deployed, which issues are obscured and left unaddressed, and how the dynamics of the discourse can even carry adversaries into a war they wanted to avoid. Her critique of appeasement rhetoric is particularly acute, as is the point she makes about the militarization of politics in general, which reduces the spectrum of normal policy disagreements to political combat. This is an important work of scholarship on the consequences of literalizing the metaphor of war.” (Robert L. Ivie, Professor Emeritus in English (Rhetoric) & American Studies, Indiana University, Bloomington)

“In this incisive and necessary book, Patricia Roberts-Miller skillfully interrogates the political factors in the decisions made by nations to go to war and the critical lack of deliberation when making those decisions. Her analysis captures the enormity and the tragedy of governments choosing war without losing the humanity of those who must carry out those decisions. In addition to political rhetoric scholars, this book should be required reading within the halls of the U.S. Congress, inside the walls of the Pentagon, and in the classrooms of military academies and war colleges.” (Derek G. Handley, Assistant Professor of English, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (CDR, U.S. Navy Retired))