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Résumé Faut-il craindre, dans le sillage de l’offensive américaine globale contre le terrorisme, une résurgence des conflits armés, un « retour vers le passé » tel que certains le promettaient il y a plus de dix ans ? Relire John Mueller, qui annonçait dès 1989 l’obsolescence des guerres interétatiques permet de répondre à cette question, dans le contexte turbulent de ce début de millénaire.

In the wake of the war against terrorism, will the international scene become a more violent place ? Should we fear a re-emergence of warfare as a common instrument of statecraft ? In order to answer these questions, this article revisits John Mueller’s argument regarding the obsolescence of major war and ponders its continuing relevance a decade after the end of the Cold war. Mueller’s original thesis and its critics will be presented in the first section of the article. The second part of the analysis attempts to test Mueller’s “marketing theory” of war in the framework of the American onslaught against terrorism. In other words, are neo-conservative ideological “entrepreneurs” succeeding in selling the idea of war as a legitimate instrument of policy to the American people ? Or is the worsening mess in Iraq going to reinforce the American people’s allergy towards war ?