Leo Strauss: Warmonger, Pacifist, or Something Else?

Worshipped by his students and vilified by his enemies as the founder of a shadowy neoconservative conspiracy responsible for the 2003 Iraq war, Leo Strauss has generated attention highly unusual for a scholar of Xenophon, Plato, and Maimonides. A recent book, provocatively entitled Leo Strauss: Man of Peace, seeks to dispel the myths of both Strauss’s devotees and his denigrators. According to its author, Robert Howse, Strauss was committed to international law as a means of constraining the violence inherent in the relations between states, even if he was skeptical of utopian schemes promising perpetual peace. In his review, Gary Rosen evaluates Howse’s arguments and reflects on Strauss’s background and legacy: