2

Introduction

Though ’strategy’ these days is as much concerned with the promotion of peace as it

is with the conduct of war, the phenomenon of war remains a central concern.

Previous generations might have seen virtues in war, for example, as an

of change or as a vehicle for encouraging heroic virtues, but these ideas have been

rendered obsolete by the destructiveness of modern warfare. In the 20* Century

abolishing war became a top priority and it is argued that the first step in this

direction is to identify its causes.

Historians sometimes argue that since wars are unique events, the causes of war are
as numerous as the number of wars and nothing in general can be said about them.

This chapter takes a different view. It seeks to identify similarities and patterns

between the causes of one war and another so’thatwe can group causes under such

.headings as ’human nature’, ’misperception’, ’the nature of states’ and ’the structure

of the international system’. Its overall aim is twofold. First, to relate contemporary

scholarship across a range of disciplines - biology, political science, philosophy,

history, etc - to the problem of war causation, and second, to elaborate a number of

distinctions which help us to identify different of ‘cause’, ’underlying’ and

’immediate’ causes, ’conscious’ and ‘unconscious’ motives. Throughout the chapter

these distinctions are used to analyze the various causes of war and to discriminate
between them.

Since there is little scholarly agreement on what causes war attention is directed

more towards explaining the debate than to answering the question in a decisive

way. The arguments are more than academic because, if the cure for war is related
 3

to its causes, then different causes will lead to different policy recommendations. If,

for example, wars are caused by arms races then policies of disarmament and arms

control will be judged appropriate solutions to the problem of war. On the other

hand, if it is believed that wars are caused by despotic or authoritarian states then

the way to peace lies in the spread of democracy. If the basic cause of war is deemed

to be the 'international anarchy' which characterizes the current system of states then

attempts to rid the world of war will be geared towards promoting 'system change' -

perhaps in the direction of strengthened international law or a system of collective

security or world government.

Clearly, some explanations for war offer less hope for solutions than others. For

example, those that locate war in a fundamentally flawed human nature suggest a

more bleak future for the human race than those that locate the causes of war in

'learned behaviour. If war is learned rather than instinctive then there is a

possibility that it can be eliminated through social engineering. Three conclusions

emerge from this analysis. First, that the search for a single cause appropriate to all

wars is futile, and second, that since war comes in a variety of forms and has a

multiplicity of causes, its elimination will almost certainly require simultaneous

political action on a variety of levels, both domestic and international. Third, that a

world-wide 'just' peace is unattainable.

The Study

In the field

‘Why war? y

a human disaster, a source of misery on a catastrophic scale, and, in the nuclear age,

a threat to the entire human race. But it is worth noting that war has not always

been viewed so negatively. In the for example, numerous writers identified

virtues in war. believed that war preserved the ethical health of nations, and

in a similar vein H. von Treitschke regarded war as ”the only remedy for ailing

nations”. (Gowans 1914: 23). For him, war was one of the conditions for progress,

the cut of the whip which prevents a country from going to sleep, forcing satisfied

mediocrity to leave its apathy. This kind of thinking alerts us to the idea that war

can be thought of as a purposive, functional thing. E.H. Carr regarded it as ’the

midwife of change’ (1942: 3) ”Wars .... Break up and sweep away the half-rotted

structures of an old social and political order”. They herald rapid technological

progress, territorial change, strengthened group consciousness and economic

development. However, the idea of war as a purposive, functional thing sits

uneasily in an age which typically interprets war as an abnormal, pathological

condition which threatens us all.

Most investigators into the causes of war have not been motivated by idle curiosity

or an aimless spirit of enquiry. They have studied war in order to abolish it. They

have believed that the first step towards eliminating war is to identify its causes

because, in much the same way that the cures for disease are related to the causes of

disease, so the cures for war are to be found in its causes. So long as students of war

do not allow their enthusiasm for prescription to affect their diagnostic no

 5

harm is done, but there is a danger that researchers may be tempted to gloss over the

more intractable causes of war in favour of those which suggest the possibility of

solutions.

Many social scientists recoil from the idea that though particular wars may be

avoided, war is endemic in the condition. The idea that war is inevitable is

pretty difficult to swallow, psychologically and that may explain why

pessimistic interpretations of the causes of war meet with resistance. Take, for

example, the view that the root cause of war is to be found in human nature, that

aggression and violence are genetically built into all human beings, that we do what

we do because of what we are. Despite some scientific evidence in support of this

idea, there is enormous resistance to it. Why? Because since human nature is fixed

there is not much we can do about it. That is, for many, an intolerable counsel of

despair even though it is a useful reminder that just because the elimination of war is

desirable does not mean that it is therefore possible.

Actually, even a gloomy interpretation of human nature and an admission of its

intractability does not automatically lead to despair of ever being able to rid the

world of war. Some would argue that wars are not caused by human nature; they

are caused by human behaviour.

And while it may not be possible to change human nature, it is certainly possible to

modify human behaviour -by offering rewards, by making threats, by education

programmes, by propaganda, etc. Richard has pointed out that 'our genes

may instruct us to be selfish but we are not necessarily compelled to obey them all
our lives' "It may --be more difficult to learn altruism than it would be if we were
o

many potential criminals can be deterred from robbing banks by the threat of

imprisonment.

What is interesting is that unlike those who believe that peace can best be promoted

by removing the causes of war, nuclear deterrent strategists hardly care at all about

why wars occur. Their policy is simply to make the of war so bad that

nobody will dare fight even if they want to. In other words, the strategy of nuclear-
deterrence is unique in that its effectiveness does not depend either on particular

interpretations of why wars occur or on any virtuous conceptions of human nature.

The only assumption that deterrent theorists make about human beings is the fairly

uncontroversial one that on the whole people prefer to be alive than dead and hence
are likely to be deterred from aggression by the threat of annihilation.
 7

Difficulties in War

Despite the enormous attention devoted to the question ‘Why war?’, no clear

authoritative answer has emerged, and perhaps one never will. One of the reasons

for this is that the term ’war’ is a blanket term which is used to describe very diverse

activities. There are total wars and limited wars, regional wars and world wars,

conventional wars and nuclear wars, high technology wars and low technology

wars, inter-state wars and civil wars, insurgency wars and ethnic wars, and in recent

years we have had wars fought by coalitions on behalf of the international

It would be very surprising if these widely different activities - linked

only by the fact of organized military violence - could be explained in the same way.

Another reason for the absence of an authoritive answer is that the question what

are the causes of war?’ is a complicated, ’cluster’ question. Under its umbrella, as

Suganami has pointed out, we may be asking a number of different questions. We

may, for example, be asking ’What are the conditions which must be present for

wars to occur?’, or we may be asking ‘under what circumstances have wars occurred

most frequently?’, or we may be about how a particular war came

4). Lumping these questions together inevitably leads to complicated

and diverse answers.

A third reason for complex answers to the question of war causation is that the

concept of ’causation’ itself is fraught with philosophical difficulties. One may note

that X is often a prelude to Y, but that i s not at all the same as proving that X caused

Y. Various writers, for example, noting that wars are often preceded by arms races
between the belligerents, have claimed that arms races cause wars. They may do
sometimes, but an automatic connection is less than proved. Arguably, human

beings do not fight because they have weapons; they acquire weapons because they

already wish to fight. And it is worth pointing out that not all arms races have led to

war. Anglo French naval competition in the led to the Entente Cordiale, and the

Cold War arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union led to a

deterrent stalemate and one of the most prolonged periods of peace in European

history.

Given the difficulties inherent in the problem of causation, some writers (particularly

historians) have preferred to talk about the ’origins’ of wars rather than ’causes’.
Their argument is that the best way of explaining why wars occur is to describe how

they come about in terms of the background and events from which they spring.

Thus, if we are investigating the causes of the Second World War, we need to look at

the Treaty of Versailles, the world depression, the rise of Hitler, German

rearmament, the foreign policies of Britain and France, etc. When we have done this

we are well on the way to understanding why the Second World War occurred.

Those who emphasize the ’origins’ of war hold the view that telling the story of how

they are come about is as close as we can get to understanding why they come about.

Historians who favour this very specific, ‘case-study’ approach to the identification
of the causes of war tend to believe that since every war is a unique event with

unique causes the causes of war are as numerous as the number of wars. Hence,

providing an authoritative answer to the question what are the causes of war?’

would involve a detailed examination of every war that has ever occurred. The

uniqueness of every war means that there is nothing in general to be said about
 9

them. For investigations with the causes of individual wars this a fair

point. Nevertheless, while acknowledging the uniqueness of individual wars, most

political scientists see merit in shifting the level of analysis from the particular to the

general so that we can see patterns and similarities between the causes of one war

and another. At this more general level of analysis we may identify some causes

which are common to many, if not all, wars.

’Immediate‘ and ’Underlving’ Causes

One of the most useful distinctions to be drawn between the various causes of war is

that between ‘immediate’, proximate causes and ’underlying’, more fundamental

causes. Immediate causes, the events which trigger wars, may be trivial, even

accidental. For example, the spark which ignited the First World War was the

assassination of the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand who was visiting Sarajevo

and being driven in an open car. The death of the Archduke was a tragedy, but is

was essentially a trivial event, and no one seriously believes that its occurrence

provides an adequate explanation for the momentous events which followed. What

is more, it was an ‘accident’ which might easily not have happened. If the duke’s

chauffeur had not deviated from the planned route and then stopped the car in order

to rectify his error, the assassin would not have had an opportunity to shoot the

Archduke and his wife. The assassination was undoubtedly the immediate cause of

the First World War, and it is true to say that if it had not happened which

broke out in 1914 would not have happened. But there is plenty of evidence to

suggest that war would have occurred sooner or later. In 1914 war was in the air;

Europe was divided by hostile alliance systems; tensions were rising; mobilization

timetables were pressuring decision makers; an arms race was underway. In short,
r

10

the background circumstances were highly inflammable and if the assassination of

Ferdinand had not set the powder keg alight, sooner or later something else

would surely have provided the spark. Most commentators believe that a proper

examination of the causes of the First World War should pay more attention to those

underlying causes than to the immediate triggering events.

Emphasis on underlying causes is a structural interpretation in the sense that it

emphasizes that importance of international circumstances rather than deliberate

policies in causing wars. It suggests that statesmen are not always in control of

events; they sometimes find themselves caught up in a process which ,despite their

best intentions, pushes them to war. has pointed out that there are

occasions when "the background conditions appear already so war prone that the

particular path through which the actual war broke out s e e m only to have been one

of a number of alternative routes through which a war like that could have been
brought about". (1996: 195)

Of course, this is not always the case. In some situations the setting s e e m relatively
benign and responsibility for war is more easily allocated to the particular policies
followed by the governments involved. Wars often come about as a result of
aggressive, reckless, thoughtless and deliberate acts by statesmen. It would be

impossible to discuss the causes of the Second World War without drawing attention

to the persistently aggressive behaviour of Hitler and the weak, appeasing policies of

Chamberlain. Similarly, the actions of Nasser in seizing the Suez Canal and Eden in

responding to it with military action were critically important causes of the Suez

war. The same point can be made about both the Falklands war and the Gulf war.
 11

In the case of the Falklands, the Argentinian decision to invade South Georgia and
Margaret Thatcher’s decision to resist seem at least as important as any ’structural’

causes which be identified. In the case of the Gulf War, Saddam Hussein’s

decision to seize territory in Kuwait and the decision of Western governments not to

allow him to get away with it were more obvious causes of the Gulf War than any

background

’Efficient’ and ’Permissive’ Causes

Another useful distinction, not too different from that between ’underlying’ and

’immediate’ causes of war, is that which distinguishes between ‘efficient’ and

’permissive’ causes. ’Efficient’ causes are connected to the particular circumstances

surrounding individual wars. War may result because state A has something state B
wants. In this situation the ’efficient’

cause of the war is the desire of state B. Historical examples abound. The efficient

cause of the Gulf war between Iraq and Iran was the desire of Saddam Hussein to

regain from Iran the Shatt-al-Arab waterway; the efficient case of the 1990 war

between Iraq and the Western Coalition was desire to acquire Kuwaitan
territory and resources which, rightly or wrongly, be believed should have belonged
to Iraq.

’Permissive’ causes of war are those features of the international system which,
while not actively promoting war, nevertheless allow it to In this context,

the fact that we live in a world of independent sovereign states with no authority

above them and no institutions sufficiently powerful to regulate the relations

1 .
Kenneth Waltz is renowned for the empha

than ’efficient’ causes of Basica

of war are bewildering in their variety, the

found in international anarchy - the fact th

there is nothing to prevent it. And because

in international relations, a permanent exp

sense of insecurity which pushes states to b

peaceful intentions they may have. Waltz

analogy (See Box 2) to show that warlike b

defect in human nature or states but from

167-68). In the face of

cannot be avoided for ever and is always ju

Kenneth Thompson has made the same po

276). He imagines a situation where, dur

train on the platform of a metro-station fin

crowd of fellow travelers towards the elec

who means no harm. What should he do?

other cheek, but if he does he will end up dead on the rail tracks. And so our good

man and struggles and fights to stay alive. He behaves in this aggressive way
not because he is wicked or violent, but because he finds in an environment
where he cannot afford to be good. The Sermon the Mount is not much use if you

live in the jungle. And so it is with states; it is because they exist in a system where

others behave badly that doing likewise is the only way to survive.
 13

If the main cause of war is to be found in the anarchic international system in which

sovereign states pursue their interests without the constraint of world government,

then an essential condition of peace is the transformation of that system from one of

competing states to a unified world ruled by a single authority sufficiently powerful

to compel peaceful behaviour. The trouble with this is twofold.

First, there is no practical way of implementing it. We did not choose to live in the

world of independent states which emerged from the Peace of Westphilia in 1648

and we cannot now choose not to live in it. Though the international system is

constantly changing, for all practical purposes it is a given, something we have to

accept as a fact of life. We are where we are, and whatever conditions of peace we

may recommend must take that into account. The second reason for skepticism

about the ’world government’ solution to the problem of war is that even if we

achieved it we might not like it. World government might turn out to be world

dictatorship and inter-state wars simply become civil wars.

Those who regard the ungoverned international system as the root cause of war

often compare it with Hobbesian anarchy; but in reality the society of states bears

little resemblance to Hobbes’ ’state of nature’. Although it is not an integrated

society comparable to domestic society, it is neither chaotic, disorderly, nor wholly

unpredictable, and states do not live in conditions of terror. International

society is a regulated, rule governed environment in which states can build upon

their interests, and in which international organizations, customs, habits,

mores and laws built up over hundreds of years moderate and order their

behaviour. Of course, no one would claim that the world of sovereign states is the

best of all worlds; it may not even be the best of all possible worlds; but it is better
r

14

than some imaginable alternatives - even better, perhaps, then world government -

and we ought not to try to jettison it without being very sure that what succeeds it

will be an improvement.

Human Nature Explanations of War

There is widespread agreement that one of the that distinguishes human

beings from animals if that most of their behaviour is learned rather than instinctive.

No one knows what the relative percentages are and there is an ongoing vigorous
debate about the relative importance of ’nature’ versus ’nurture’ or ’heredity versus

environment’ as determinants of human behaviour. Inevitably this debate has

prompted the central question of whether war is an example of ‘innate’or ’learned’

behaviour. If it is innate then we must accept it since in any reasonable timescale

biological evolution is too slow to modify it. However, if it is learned then it can be

unlearned and there is hope for us all. Liberal thinkers prefer to emphasize the

importance of ’nurture’ and are naturally attracted to the idea that aggression and
war can be tamed. Conservative thinkers tend to throw their weight behind ‘nature’
and are therefore skeptical about the possibilities of ridding the world of war.

Though they are disposed to minimize its significance, even committed liberals

admit that there is a genetic, instinctive element in human behaviour. We do not

start with clean slates on which life’s experiences are written to make us what we

are. We come with genetic baggage, biologically with built in drives

and instincts, one of which, it is argued, is a predilection for aggression and violence.

In a celebrated exchange of letters in 1932 both Einstein and Freud agreed that the
roots of war were to be found in an elemental instinct for aggression and
 15

destruction. Einstein thought that ‘man has in him an active instinct for hatred and

destruction’, and Freud believed he had identified a ’death instinct’ which

manifested itself in homicide and 1932) In the 1960s ethological and

socio-biological research brought new life to ’instinct’ theories of aggression.

Konrad argued, largely on the basis of his observations of the behaviour of

birds and fish, that an aggressive instinct is embedded in the genetic makeup of all

animals (including man), and that historically this instinct has been a prerequisite for

survival.( 1976) Robert Ardrey, in ’The Territorial Imperative’ reached a similar

conclusion and suggested a ’territorial’ instinct to run alongside four

instincts -hunger, fear, sex and Edward Wilson in ’On Human

Nature’ noted that human beings are disposed to react with unreasoning hatred to

perceived threats to their safety and possessions, and he argued that “we tend to fear

deeply the actions of strangers and to solve conflict by 119)

Although Richard in his book ’The Selfish Gene’ has shifted the level of

analysis from the individual to the genes which help make him what he is, he too is

under no illusions about human nature. His argument is that ”a predominant

quality to be expected in a successful gene is ruthless selfishness. This gene

selfishness will usually give rise to selfishness in individual behaviour” 2)

“Much as we might wish to believe otherwise, universal love and welfare of the
species as a whole are concepts which simply do not make evolutionary

2-3) This analysis leads Dawkins to the bleak conclusion that if you

wish.. .to build a society in which individuals cooperate generously and unselfishly

towards a common good, you can expect little help from biological 3)
 17

locating war in ‘man’, have offered explanations for its occurrence which rely less on

instinct and more on socially programmed human behaviour. Typically, they argue

that aggression is a result of frustration. When individuals find themselves thwarted

in the achievement of their desires, goals and objectives, they experience frustration

which causes pent-up resentment which has to find an outlet - and this frequently

takes the form of aggressive behaviour which, in turn,has a cathartic effect of

releasing tension and those who engage in it feel better. Usually aggression

is leveled at those who cause the frustration, but sometimes it is vented against

innocents who become scapegoats. This psychological process of transferring

aggression to a secondary group is called ’displacement’. Sometimes individuals

project their frustrated desires and ambitions on to the group or collective, be it tribe

or state, to which they belong. In the words of R. Niebuhr, ”the man in the street,

with his lust for power and prestige thwarted by his own limitations and the

necessities of social life, projects his upon his nation and indulges his anarchic

lusts vicariously”. (1932: 93)

There is a sense in which the ’Frustration-Aggression’ hypothesis, which emphasizes

the connection between violence and the failure of human beings to achieve their

objectives, is somewhat more optimistic than ’instinct’ theories of aggression

because, though some degree of frustration in life is unavoidable, it may be possible

either to channel aggression into harmless activities like sport (psychologists call this

sublimation), or it may be possible to organize society in ways which minimize

frustrations (sociologists call this social engineering).

 18

Explanations of War

Accepting that wars cannot occur unless statesmen decide to wage them, there are

many who believe that those decisions are often the result of misperception,

misunderstanding, miscalculation and errors of judgment. Essentially, those who

think this way regard wars as ‘mistakes’, the tragic consequences of failing to

appreciate things as they are. This being the case, they are caused more by human

frailty or fallibility rather than malice. Robert Jervis, building on the ideas of

Kenneth 1956) has contributed enormously to our understanding of these

psychological causes of war. He makes the point that in order to make sense of the

world around us, all of us develop distorted or biased images of reality through

which we filter the welter of information which bombards our senses. These

‘images’, of reality are more important than reality itself when it comes to

determining our behaviour; they act as a distorting lens which inhibits our ability to

see reality as it is and predispose us to misjudgments and

Critically important misperceptions likely to lead to war include mistaken estimates

of both enemy intentions and capabilities, inaccurate assessments of the military

balance between adversaries, and failures to judge the risks and consequences of war

properly. Quite frequently these kinds of misperceptions are made by both sides

involved in a conflict. For example, Greg has argues that in the Gulf War
Hussein may have perceived a threat from Kuwait’s reluctance to allow

Iraq to cancel its debts and its unwillingness to pump less oil. He may even have

perceived a joint American-Israeli-British conspiracy to deny Iraq sophisticated

weaponry.. .. On the other hand, leaders in virtually all of the Middle East capitals
1 1 1 1 1 1 1
 19

Kuwait was invaded. Thus, while Iraqi leaders overestimated the degree of threat to

their interests, their opponents underestimated the hostility of 63) But

perhaps the most critical misperception of all was failure to

anticipate Western resolve and the creation of a powerful military coalition against

him.

In the run-up to the Second World War Hitler mistakenly believed that Britain

would not fight and Chamberlain mistakenly believed that Germany could be

appeased by concessions. Other delusions and misconceptions which contributed to

the outbreak of war in 1939 have been identified by AJP Taylor. Mussolini was

“deluded” about the strength of Italy; the French believed that France herself was

impregnable. believed that Britain could remain a great power despite the

war, and ”supposed that Germany would contend with Soviet Russia and the

United States for mastery of the and Olin 153-4) In Britain

hardly anyone expected that German blitzkrieg tactics would bring France down in a

matter of weeks, and throughout Europe people grossly overestimated the power of

strategicbombing. Given this plethora of misunderstandings, misjudgments and

misperceptions, it is easy to argue that statesman stumbled into the Second World

War because they were out of touch with reality.

Much the same point can be made about the Falklands war. Misperceptions
abounded. Britain seriously misinterpreted Argentinian intentions in respect of

invasion, and Argentina badly misjudged Britain’s determination to resist. For years

the two government had been involved in intermittent negotiations about a possible

transfer of sovereignty, and, though little progress had been made, the Conservative
 20

government could not believe that the Argentine Junta would seize South Georgia

before the possibilities of negotiation had been exhausted. What the British

government failed to appreciate was the significance of the Malvinas in the

Argentinian psyche and the domestic pressures to act which this put on

President Galtieri and Dr. Costa Mendez. For its part, the government of

Argentina could not believe that at the end of the 20C a Euro-centric, post-colonial

Britain was prepared to spill blood for the sake of a barren relic of empire 10,000

miles away.

What is interesting about the misconceptions prevalent both in Germany before the

Second World War and in Argentina before the Falklands War is that there is a sense
in which both sets of misperceptions were understandable. The signals transmitted

by the policy of appeasement may have suggested to Hitler that since he had got

away with swallowing the Rhineland in 1936, and Austria and the Sudetanland in

1938, he could probably get away with an aggression against Poland in 1939. In the

case of the Falklands the casual pace of British diplomacy and the absence of any
serious military capability in the area may have suggested to the Argentinians that
Britain was not much interested in the fate of the Falkland Islands and was unlikely
to defend them. Perhaps, in both of these cases, it was not so much that signals were
misread but that the were sent. Either way Britain’s enemies made
serious miscalculations of her intentions and war resulted.

If wars are caused by misperceptions, misunderstandings and muddled thinking,

then conditions of peace include more clear thinking, better communications

between countries, and education. This thought lies behind the UNESCO motto
 21

roposals and the

round the

The basic idea is that

s the disputes which

llusory or not

approach relics of

if only

d by removing

ppropriate. First, it

airsgiven the
simplify, the

ance to relinquish or

make some degree

s point when he
try of human

enemies, both

neither can be sure

of the intentions of the other. ”You cannot enter into the other man’s counter fear”
and ”it is never possible for you to realize or remember properly that since he cannot

see the inside of your mind, he can never have the same assurance of your intentions

that you 21) Butterfield makes the point that the greatest war in

history could be caused by statesmen who desperately want peace but whose

cognitive limitations lead them to misinterpret each others 19).

 22

(Discerning students will realize that Butterfield’s ’ultimate predicament’ has, in

recent years, surfaced in the literature of Strategic Studies as ‘The Security

Dilemma’).

A second word of warning is appropriate because it has to be recognized that not all

wars are caused by misperceptions and misunderstandings even though they may

be surrounded by them. Some wars - perhaps most - are rooted in genuine

disagreement and conflicting interests, and in these cases discussions between

enemies simply promote a better understanding of the disputes which divide them.
Indeed, in some situations improved understanding may actually exacerbate the

divisions between adversaries. When it was suggested to him that international

hatred and suspicion could be reduced by getting nations to understand one another

better, Sir Evelyn Baring, British governer in Egypt between 1883

and 1907 replied that ”the more they understand one another the more they will hate

one 1959: 50) Perhaps it can be argued that for most of the 1930s

Britain was at peace with Germany precisely because we did understand

When, in September 1939, the penny finally dropped the first thing Britain did was

to declare war on Germany.

 . .

23

Conscious and Unconscious Motives for War

The trouble with all these explanations which locate the causes of war within ‘man’

is that those leaders and statesmen who actually declare wars would almost

certainly offer quite different explanations for their decisions. Hitler, if he had been

asked why he attacked Poland on September 1st 1939, is unlikely to have replied that

he was acting instinctively, or that he was frustrated or a victim of

He would almost certainly have offered rational, practical reasons to do with the

plight of Germans in and the Polish corridor and the iniquitous way in

which the politicians at Versailles had re-drawn the map of Europe to Germany’s

disadvantage. This discrepancy between the explanations of war offered by

practitioners and those suggested by philosophers and scientists suggests that it may

be useful to distinguish between conscious and unconscious motives for war.

. Statesmen have a Clausewitzian, ‘instrumental’, view of war. They regard it as a

rational tool for the implementation of policy, a technique which is available for

practitioners to use in appropriate circumstance for the pursuit of national interests.

In other words, for a statesman war results from a calculated, purposive, conscious
decision; but for the philosophers and scientists, trying to look behind the

statesman’s goal orientated acts, war results from unconscious drives and
weaknesses in the human psyche of which practitioners may be unaware but which

nevertheless push them towards war.

Those who regard war simply as an instrument of policy, a consequence of rational

decisions taken in the national interest, underestimate the pressures and constraints
- from public opinion, nationalist sentiment, alliance commitments, the momentum
 24

of events, etc - which may push politicians towards war despite their reservations.
They may also make the mistake of thinking that once the costs and consequences of

war have been made clear to politicians they will refrain from it. Norman

spent much of his life pointing out, quite rightly, that ‘wars do not pay’, that they are

not in the national interest and that even the victors are usually He

thought that once this basic fact had been grasped wars would cease. Sir Norman

failed to appreciate two things. First, that wars are not always a matter of rational

calculation or ’cost-gain’ analysis. Sometimes wars are a kind of madness,

explosions of violence far removed from rational policy. Herman for

example, argued that the National Socialist Movement in Germany during the 1930s
was impelled towards a war of destruction by its own inherent The

second weakness of Angell’s analysis is that although he was right to point out the

disastrous economic consequences of war, he was probably wrong to conclude that

waging war was therefore irrational and not in the national interest. Victors may be
losers as a result of the wars which they fight, but refusing to fight may make them

even bigger losers in the long run. Britain, a victor in the Second World War,

emerged from it permanently weakened, but if Hitler had not been stopped Britain

would probably have ended up in an even worse position. Waging war against

Germany certainly ‘did not pay’, but it was still the rational choice of the least

disastrous of two disastrous outcomes.

Explanations of War

Though embarked upon by individual human beings, war, by definition, is a group

activity. It is waged by human collectives - factions, tribes, nations, states, even

perhaps ‘civilizations‘. This has led some to shift the responsibility for war from
 25

human beings to the groupings within which they live and to which they owe

degrees of allegience. Those who argue in this way believe that there is

nothing much wrong with human beings per se, but they are corrupted by the social

structures in which they live. In the words of ‘Madness is the exception in

individuals but the rule in groups’. Essentially the argument is that there is

something about human collectives which encourages violence.

Perhaps the trouble starts with the sense of difference which we all feel between

and ’them’, between those who belong to our collective grouping - be it tribe, state

or nation -with whom we empathize and share a ’we’ feeling, and other groups

with which we cannot identify easily. It is all too easy for a group to slide from

recognizing that it is different from other groups to believing that it is superior to

them. Hence, this sense of differentiation - what Suganami calls ’discriminatory

sociability’ (1996: 55) - easily leads to group selfishness, inter-group conflict and

ultimately war. As R. Neibuhr once observed “altruistic passion is sluiced into the

reservoirs of nationalism with great ease, and made to flow beyond them with great

91)

G. Le Bon was one of the earliest social psychologists to notice that the behaviour of
social groups is different - and usually worse - than the behaviour of the individuals

comprising them. He developed the idea of ‘crowd psychology’, that in a ’crowd’ a

new entity or collective mind comes into being. He believed that in groups

individuals lose their normal restraints, become more suggestible, more emotional

and less rational. What is more, groups have reduced feelings of responsibility

because the more responsibility is diffused in ‘crowds’ the less heavily it weighs on
each individual. Since responsibility is everywhere (and therefore nowhere) blame

cannot be allocated specifically and this frees human collectives from normal moral

41). This thought was neatly captured in the title of R. Neibuhr’s

classic ‘Moral Man and Immoral Societv’, and Eric Hoffer, in discussing the appeal

of mass movements makes the same point very graphically. ”When we lose our
individual independence in the corporateness of a mass movement, we find a new

freedom - freedom to hate, bully, lie, torture, murder and betray without shame or

remorse”.(1952: 118)

Human beings have always lived in differentiated groups and it is unlikely that this

will change in the foreseeable future. The interesting question is whether some

groups are more war prone than others. In the context of inter-state wars, for

example, can it be argued that capitalist states are more warlike than socialist states

or vice versa? There is no clear answer to that question. Can we argue that

democratic states are more peace-loving than authoritarian states? Again there is no

clear answer. The historical evidence suggests that ”democracies fight as often as do

other types of and Wittkopf 1997: 358) and, in recent years, as wars in

the Gulf and the Former Yugoslavia have shown, democratic states have

demonstrated some enthusiasm for wars of intervention in support of human rights.

This current fashion for waging wars in support of liberal values does not augur
well for a peaceful world.

However, various observes have noted that democracies seldom, if ever, each

other. Michael Doyle, for example, has argued that liberal states are more peacefully

towards each other because their governments are more constrained by

 27

democratic institutions, because they share the same democratic values and because

commercial interdependence between liberal states gives them a vested interest in

peace. (1983 and 1986) If Doyle and those who share his views are right, one of

the conditions of peace is the spread of democracy - a trend which has gathered pace

particularly since the end of the Cold War. For the first time ever, almost half of the

world’s governments are now democratic. However, the thesis that the spread of

democracy will promote peace is plausible but no more than that, and it would be

unwise to accept it uncritically.

Wars ’within’ and bevond’ States

Whether its decline is to the spread of democracy or not, inter-state

violence now seems less of a problem that it used to. But intra-state war, particularly

ethnic war - has become much more of a problem, and S.P. Huntington has alerted
us to the prospect of war between ’civilizations’. Ethnic groups and tribes, once
contained, even suppressed, within states have suddenly erupted on to the political

scene, reviving ancient racial hatreds and creating mayhem in countries as diverse as

Yugoslavia, Somalia and Indonesia. What is particularly about ethnic

wars is that people are brutalized and killed not because of anything they have done,

not even because of their politics, but simply because of who thev are. That is what

is so terrible about the persecution of the Tutsis in Rwanda, the Tamils in Sri Lanka,

the Kurds in Iraq, the Muslims in Bosnia, and the Albanians in Kosovo.

Ethnic wars are quite different from Clausewitzian politically motivated conflicts
where the belligerents disagree about something and seek to resolve their

disagreement by inter-state war - an activity conducted according to rules, both

moral and legal. It may be going to far to describe such wars as rational and
 28

civilized but there is a grain of sense in the thought. Ethnic wars are quite different.

They are not about the pursuit of interests as normally understood. They are about

malevolence and they are unrestrained by rules either legal or moral. 'Ethnic

cleansing', like 'the final solution', is surely one of the most sinister phrases to enter

the political vocabulary of the

One of the reasons for the recent upsurge of ethnic violence is surely to be found in

the failure of modern states to hold the ring between warring factions. It is ironic
that authoritarian governments, so frequently blamed for inter-state wars, were

instrumental in preventing wars in countries like Yugoslavia and the Soviet

Union. Hobbes' Leviathian may have its attractions if the alternative is genocidal

violence. If the thousands of ethnic groups which exist in the world can no longer be

contained within nation states then we face the break-up of international society into

a myriad of micro groups. It has to be said that the consequence of 'Balkanization'

on this scale are incalculable and unlikely to lead to a more peaceful world.

Wars between states and wars between nations and tribes within states are
depressingly familiar, but the idea that future conflicts of global politics will occur

between civilizations is a new one. In a provocative and influential article in Foreign

Affairs S.P. Huntington has predicted that the fundamental source of conflict in the
years ahead will be cultural. "The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle
lines of the future" 22). In Europe, for example, as the ideological divisions

of the Cold War disappeared, the age old cultural divisions between Western
Christendom on the one hand and Orthodox Christianity and Islam on the other
 29

reappeared . As W. Wallace has suggested, “the most significant dividing line in

Europe may well be the eastern boundary of Western Christianity in the year

This cultural fault weaves its way from the Balkans to the Mediterranean

and conflict along it is to be expected.

Huntington argues that a civilization is “the highest cultural grouping of people and

the broadest level of cultural identity people 24) He has identified

eight civilizations -Western, Japanese, African, Latin American, Confucian, Hindu,

Islamic and Slavic Orthodox - all of which differ from each other in terms of their

respective attitudes to democracy, free markets, liberalism, church-state relations

and international intervention. The differences between civilizations on these issues

is deeper than those between states and ideologies and in consequence consensus

and agreement is difficult to achieve. Among the reasons for thinking

conflict is likely is that in many parts of the world ’Western’ values are

being challenged, there is a resurgence of religion and fundamentalism which has

widened the gulf between peoples, and the revolution’ has made
people more aware of the differences which divide them.

and ’Sufficient’ Causes of War

Various writers have found it useful to distinguish between ’necessary’ and

‘sufficient’ causes of A ’necessary’ condition of war is one which must be

present if war is to occur. If war break out without that condition existing
then it is necessary condition. The existence of armaments is a necessary condition

of war because without them no war could be fought. For wars to occur it is also

necessary for human beings to be organized in discrete collectives - states, tribes,

ethnic groups, nations, factions etc. Equally, it is a necessary condition of war that

there be no effective mechanism for preventing it. An effective world government

for example, would make it impossible for inter-state wars to occur, and an all

powerful state government would make it impossible for civil wars to occur. Thus,

the absence of these mechanisms is a necessary condition of war.

There is an element of tautology in the above analysis in the sense that if we define

war as organized violence between groups then it is obvious that wars cannot occur

if human beings are not organized in groups which have the capacity for organized

violence, and it is equally obvious that wars cannot occur if there is a mechanism

which prevents them. More controversially, as we have been (pp it has been

suggested that one of the necessary conditions of war is that at least one of the

parties to it must have a non-democratic government.

A ’sufficient’ cause of war is one that, if present, guarantees the occurrence of war.

A is a sufficient cause of B if B always occurs whenever A exists. If two states hate

each other so much that neither can tolerate the independent existence of the other

then that is a sufficient cause of war which makes was between them inevitable. But

it is not a condition of war since many wars between states which do

not share that degree of hatred and are perfectly content with each others’ continued
existence as a independent states in international society. Clearly, a cause of war can
be sufficient without being necessary, and the converse of this is also true - a cause

can be necessary without being sufficient. For example, the existence of weapons is

a necessary condition of war, but as we saw on p.. ... it is not a sufficient cause of

war since even the existence of high levels of armament does not always lead to war.
 31

The categories necessary’ and sufficient’ do not cover all the possible causes of

war. We must not fall into the trap of thinking that the causes of war must be either

necessary sufficient because there are many causes which are neither necessary

nor sufficient. For example, the desire of statesmen to annex territory belonging to

neighbouring states is a common cause of war but it is neither a necessary nor a

sufficient cause. It is not a necessary cause because many wars are fought for

reasons which have nothing to do with territory, and it not a sufficient cause because

the desire to annex territory may not be acted upon - perhaps because of deterrence.

Conclusion

There is no shortage of ‘cures’ for the ‘disease’ of war. Some are bizarre - like, for

example, Linus Pauling’s suggestion that since wars are caused by a vitamin

deficiency we can eat our way out of aggression by swallowing the appropriate

tablets. Others- like calls to change human nature, to reconstruct the state system, to

equitably redistribute the world’s wealth, to abolish armaments, to ’re-educate’

mankind, etc, - follow with faultless logic from the various causes of war which

scholars have identified; but since there is no prospect of implementing them in the

foreseeable future there is sense in which they are not solutions at all. Henry

reputed comment on an equally impractical proposal for peace is still appropriate, ‘It

is perfect’, the said, ‘Perfect. I see no single flaw in it save one, namely, that no

earthly prince would ever agree to Hedley Bull has rightly condemned such

solutions as “a corruption of thinking about international relations and a distraction

from its proper 26-27)

 32

We have to begin by recognizing the limits of what is possible. Hopefully, we can

then edge our way forward by improving our techniques of diplomacy,

communication, crisis avoidance and crisis managements; by developing a t

of self interest which is sensitive to the interests of others; by extending

the scope of international law and building on existing moral constraints; by

learning how to manage military power through responsible civil-military relations

and sophisticated measures of arms control; by strengthening cooperation through

international organizations and world trade. These are not spectacular, radical, or

foolproof solutions to the problem of war, but they are practical steps which offer the

possibility if not of abolishing war, at least of reducing its frequency, and perhaps

also of limiting its destructiveness.

Even if war could be abolished we need to remember that peace is not a panacea in

which all human antagonisms are resolved. Peace is simply the absence of war, not

the absence of conflict, and, as the Cold War demonstrated, it is just as possible to

wage peace as it is to wage war. Though 'peace' and 'war' are usually regarded as

opposites there is a sense in which both are aspects of the same thing - the conflict

which is in all social life. War is simply a special kind of conflict which

differs from peace only by its violence nature.

The fact that peace is not a panacea explains why, when confronted with the stark

choice of peace or war, leaders sometimes choose war. Some of peace - under
dictatorships for example - may be worse than some of war. In other words,

although almost every one wants peace, almost no one (apart from strict pacifists)

wants only peace or peace at any price. If it were otherwise the problem of war

would disappear since as a last resort states can always avoid war by surrendering.
 33

Capitulation might bring peace but it would almost certainly entail the loss of some

of those other things that states want - like independence, justice, prosperity and

freedom, and when it comes to the crunch states may think that these are worth

fighting for.

Ideally, of course, what people want is a worldwide peace. Unfortunately, this

is an unattainable dream. It would require agreement on whose justice is to prevail;

it would require a fundamental redistribution of the worlds’ wealth from the Haves

to the Have-nots; it would require religious and political movements - Muslins,

Christians, Jews, Hindus, Communists, Capitalists - to tolerate each other; it would

require an end to cultural imperialism and an agreement that differing cultural

values are equally valid. It would probably require the disappearance of borders

and differentiated societies with their ’them’ and mentalities. In short, it would

require human beings to behave in ways in which they have never behaved. It

would, to quote one “require an animal that is not what human beings

are”.

Since ‘Justice’ and ’peace’ do not go together statesmen will have to continue

choosing between them. The pursuit of justice may require them to wage war, and

the pursuit of peace may require them to put up with injustice. Arguably, during

the Cold War years, Western politicians, by abandoning Eastern Europe to its fate

under thought probably rightly that peace was more important than

justice. Since the end of the Cold War they have tended to put justice before peace -

witness the upsurge of violence caused by wars of intervention in support of human

rights and democratic values. The critical question facing us now is whether, in
 34

juggling the priorities of peace and justice, we have got the balance right, or whether

our current enthusiasm for Western values and human rights implies an ever so

slightly casual attitude to the problem of war. Perhaps, in the interests of peace,

there is something to be said for the Realist policy of fighting ’necessarv’ rather than

wars.
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