I find it interesting that each person arguing for [insert oversimplified view of history here] as the ultimate cause of all human conflict manages to selectively discuss only those wars which support their point of view.
Land? Let’s avoid theTaiping Rebellion.
Economics? The Islamic expansion ned not apply.
Power? Nicely braod, but what about the Battle of Allia and subsequent fallout?
These are far from the only counterexamples to each idea. They are just the ones that occurred to me upon a moment’s reflection.
Bumper sticker aphorisms are tempting. They offer pat answers to hard questions. And they are almost always wrong (or at best incomplete).
I think the problem here stems from the widely held Clausewitzean view on war; the poor translation that says “war is the continuation of politics by other means”. It was this doctrine that indirectly led to the mechanization of warfare in the 20th century, during which an estimated 100 million people died in war, probably more than all previous centuries combined.
For wars shaped by politicians, this view has a tendency to hold to some extent. And since most people are only familiar with the big wars of the last couple centuries, they don’t examine the whole history of war. As Spiritus suggests, such generalizations fall apart when you see all the counter-examples.
For a very interesting and enlightening view on the subject, I’d recommend Keegan’s A History of Warfare. In a nutshell, his opinion seems to be that variable and complex cultural mechanisms interacting with social, ecomomic, political and ideological forces cause war. I say “seems” because that is my interpretation; he never comes out and says it–I’m just trying to summarize, and even my summary is probably a gross simplification.
For those of who insist on simple explanations, please explain how you think land, power, economics, or any single factor explains the nuclear buildup. Nuclear warfare, for all intents and purposes, is the END of land, politics, power, economics, and ideology. Yet we have been on the brink of nuclear war a few times. I understand you can argue that we never had that type of war, therefore it does not apply, but I think since it is (or at least was) very possible, your theory needs to explain it.
OK, let’s suppose that all wars are initiated purely by motivation for economic gain. Basically, that means Country A invades country B because A wants B’s stuff. Obviously, if B is content to just roll over, no war is fought and A now controls B. However, B’s people enjoy their current way of life, and do not wish to be under the thumb, so to speak, of A’s rule. So, B resists, and we have a war. Is B’s motivation for fighting purely economic? Hardly. And even if it were, so what? B’s people worked hard to build up their way of life, why shouldn’t they defend it? To say that they shouldn’t fight over ‘money’ is basically saying ‘let the bullies rule the world.’ In this case, it IS the principle of the matter - B will not stand idly by and let A take what is not rightfully theirs.
Suppose Country C is allied with Country B. B and C enjoy numerous trade advantages, and, since they are on such friendly terms, they have a mutual defense pact.
Now, suppose Country B is small (not being the expansionistic type), and doesn’t have much in the way of a military force. Certainly, A would have no problem conquering B, even if B did put up a fight. C, however, is large enough to lend defense forces to B. So, C gets involved in the conflict to help defend its ally. Is this wrong? Realistically, since B is so small, C could do just fine without the trade agreements. C could just stay out of it, and let B ‘fight its own battles’ (literally and figuratively speaking), since, realistically, C has nothing to really gain by getting involved. Of course, that would be letting A’s belligerence be rewarded. So, C’s involvement would just about have to be motivated by ideology, rather than economy.
Even in this overly simplistic case, while the initial attack may have been motivated by greed, can it be honestly said that greed is the sole motivation for all those concerned?
Wars are initiated (not necessarily continued) due to economic influences. It boils down to generally armed robbery on a national scale. A poster stated earlier that the expansion of Islam is an example of a non-economic war. Islam can be perverted towards the wrong ends just like any other religion or idea (take the crusades for example, which were in the name of christianity). It does not necessitate war for the expansion of Islam, it is in of itself a peaceful religion that can be misguided by it’s leaders. And that misguidance tends to be simple economics. To illustrate, even Saddam said he fought in the name of Islam.
I think a more accurate way of stating my contention is that wars start due to economics. There are many further reasons why they continue, including patriotism, idealism etc etc.
The initial leaders of Islam were directly responsible for the military expansion. You are free to sit in your tower and call them hypocrites motivated by greed if you wish – distance affords you that luxury. I doubt, however, that many men alive at the time would have shared your view.
Perhaps you would like to explain the economic impulse behind the Taiping Rebellion and teh Battle of Allia while you are at it.
I feel almost guilty going ack to the same examples over and over again. I would happily switch to new ones if someone would like to explain this batch with their pet unified theory of war.
Don’t get testy Spiritus. I don’t know about other posters, but this not my “pet theory.” It’s my little hypothesis, that I posted here to be either proved or disproved. It seems some agree with it, some do not.
I would tackle your examples gladly, but I honestly don’t know anything about those wars. That’s why all my examples were American fought war. Maybe I’m just ignorant, or the Califorina Public Schools system is severly lacking.
To say all Wars are rooted in the quest, defense or maintaining control of power may be somewhat broad. Yet, you can’t get away from the fact that it is always the underlying reason.
As Mustapha has clearly pointed out, land is a key component of Power. What next? You need a population. Land without a population does not give you power.
So now you have land and a population. From this point, the question of power and the wielding of it come into play. The population on your land must recognize the power of the rulers unquestionably. There have been many ways to do this: Some examples.
Tyranny; A population in fear will accept the power of the ruler. Of course an unhappy population may also create a movement which questions the power of the ruler and so may be cause for internal conflict. Russia is a prime example of this, they revolted against the Tyranny of the Czars only to be replaced by the tyranny of the Bolsheviks. How they have suffered.
Religion; The fear of God has been and still is a cunning way to control the population and to ensure the support of the population and thereby obtaining power. Organized religions in all forms have been developed purely to control the masses. Need I mention examples?
Nationalism; The “us against them” or “we are number one” way of obtaining power is also a very powerful way to convince your population that the neighboring population needs smiting. Sprinkle freely with words like “pride”, “honor”, “freedom” and “glory” and don’t forget the medals. You will be sending troops off to fight for your power in no time. As a “democratic” society the US really only has this option for obtaining and wielding power over the population and neighbors.
Now you have a land and a population under your control and you wield your power unquestionably. Is this enough? Hardly, now you have to worry about your neighbors. Each one competing with each other to obtain the most power. Through religion and nationalism you send your boys to war to obtain more land in order to expand your population or to obtain natural resources to grow your economy, both adds to your power. Sometimes you may get involved in a war, which gains you no power, but will contain the power of your neighbor.
I can go on but I think I’ve made my point. The cause of war is and will remain the quest, defense or maintaining control over power.
One additional point, Spiritus Mundi mentioned “The Battle of Allia” as being a conflict, which was not for power. I confess I am ignorant about this conflict and would be curious of the historical facts. I tried doing a search on the net and came up empty. I would be surprised if the underlying motivation was not power.
The Rebels rose up against their Manchu masters to change the way their country was run. In other words, control of their own lands in the way they see fit.
The Battle of Allia 390 BC
Brennus and his Celts were freebooters. They fought for the right to go into any land they liked and take anything that wasn’t nailed down. And they exercised considerable power: the power to demand tribute from the Romans, the Greeks, the Aetolians, etc; and the power to make the locals do whatever they wanted just to be rid of them (like rebuilding bridges, acting as guides). Free agency is also a form of power.
The Islamic expansion
This had begun even before Mohammed’s death in 632, with the capture of his hometown Mecca and with a number of conflicts with Medina’s rival cities and tribes.
When the Prophet died, Medina was a powerful, wealthy city and Arabia, Iraq and Palestine had a common religion. Further expansion into new territory was inevitable whatever the justifications made for it.
If the Islamic expansion was truly about religion, please explain the power struggle between the Ummayad and Abbasid dynasties and the rise of rogue caliphates in Spain and North Africa. Clearly somebody lost faith in their rulers’ ability or right to govern the empire properly.
Spiritus, of course we’re oversimplifying. It’s the only way to get a straight answer from such a broad question.
Yes, I have a pet theory about land being the primary cause of all wars. I came to that conclusion about 7 years ago, and I’m sticking with it.
But you have a pet theory too. “There is no simple answer. Wars are fought for many reasons.”
That’s fine, you run with that. However, please allow the rest of us mere mortals a crack at actually answering the question at hand.
If you insisted on one source, it could be traced to ego.
Jimmy Durante said “Why can’t everybody leave everybody else the hell alone?” It is true for those in power and the citizens they control, the macro, and the micro.We are doomed.
Scope Distributive and Cummutative justice, it’s pretty hectic. What do you think? Y’all seem like a pretty sharp bunch.
what motivates the cannon fodder to fight the war?
70% of the men that fought for the confederacy were not slave owners. what did they have to get out of it? you can be logical about what motivates the leaders to fight the war, but you have to analyze the stupid psychological nonsense to see how the leaders induce the followers to go along with it.
For most of history, it was generally the spoils. Looting and pillaging was the offensive mindset, defending your wife, children, and estate (or farm) was the defensive mindset. But certainly other factors weighed in, and those factors became more important as looting became unacceptable.
In more modern history (say Civil War), much of the common man’s motivation has been political/ideological (preserve the union/freedom of the south or free slaves/preserve slavery), economic (I make more in the army than on my dad’s farm/I stand to lose my farm), social (all my buddies are going and I’ll look like a wuss or it’s the “honorable” thing), or the ancient violent tendencies (ain’t got nothing better to do; let’s go kick some ass!). Individual reasons vary as much as the individual.
I may be mistaken, but the idea of real “cannon fodder”, where the commanders use men to exhaust the enemy’s ammunition is probably relatively recent as well (you need to have ammunition to exhaust). It usually would require a rather draconian military discipline (ie. we’re going to shoot you anyway if you don’t follow orders) for large groups of men to willingly obey suicide operations. Of course, there are always exceptions.
Mustapha:
Thanks for answering. The Taiping Rebellion
Self determination == land ?
This seems to me to be a textbook example of cramming a square peg into a round theory. Yes, people live on land. Therefore, if they wish to govern themselves they must do so on land. People also must breath. Shall we say all wars are fought over air? Without air, there would be no war. It is obvious.
Celts
Were not interested in controlling the lands of the Etruscans. Booty == land, now? The Celts were not interested in Rome at all, until the Roman negotiators violated their nuetrality and fought actively for the Etruscans. The Celts then sought a diplomatic solution and were rudely rebuffed. The Battle of Allia and the sack of Rome were motivated entirely by Celtic ideals of honor and insult.
Islam]
Well, are we talking about the initial cause or the schisms that happened decades (or centuries) later? For that matter, why do you assume that religious schism occurs only when one or both sides have lost faith? Differences of interpretation abound among the faithful of every religion.
But that’s just the point, isn’t it. You casually ascribe the motivations of generations to facile “justifications” of the lust for new territory. Those “justifications” are the reasons rulers declared war and the reasons men followed.
As to the “inevitability” of new expansion, I am curious how you would demonstrate that. Are you saying that wealth and a common religion inevitably lead to territorial expansion?
Then perhaps we shouldn’t be looking for a straight answer. I remember a slogan about fighting ignorance. I don’t recall the one about encouraging ignorance when it offers simple answers to complex questions.
I think that Pepperlandgirl oversimplified. But, essentially she is correct. Wars and conflicts can be fought over “idealogical” reasons. But, if you go down deep enough there is always an economic motive. It’s all about competition. Why do the Serbs and Albanians hate each other. Because they’ve been fighting over the same piece of land. Why did they do that? Rescources. You look at the conflict in Rwanda. Ethnic confilct. But, that conflict was started in large part by the Europeans. They put one ethnic group in charge and discriminated against the others. Why? Economic reasons.
Any two groups that are active in the same invironment compete for resources (if resoources are limited). Not every case of economic competition results in warfare. Therefore, the existence of economic competition is not a sufficient cause for war.
Most conflicts can be shown to have many elements: economic, historical, religious, territorial, etc. The existence of an element is not sufficient to declare it causal for the conflict.
Not at first. But, the eventual conclusion of economic conflicts, if they can not be solved via other means, is war.
How are territorial elements different from economic? Historical elements can be traced back to earlier economic conflicts. Religon is often an excuse, but it can always be traced to competition over rescources. The middle east is a great example, sure it’s about religion, but when it comes down to it it’s about land.
So, if a problem isn’t solved by other means then it will be solved by war. Or it won’t be solved at all. Economic competition exists in all human environments. In most, it does not lead to war. Air also occurs in all human environments. In most, it does not lead to war.
The aboe is not a rigorous argument for either economics or air to be the root cause of all wars.
Territory is distinct from economics in all situations where the desire to possess teritory is not driven primarily by economic concerns. can yu say “ancestral homeland”? How about, “God gave it to me”. The fact that a resource can be used for economic gain does not mean that economic gain is the root of conflict over that resource. Ever see two children fight over a sentimental heirloom?
As to the Middle east, you dismiss the ardent beliefs of millions of people in your haste to declare the conflict “about land”. It is not about “land”. It is abouit “this land”. If economic resource were the only issue then neither side would resist relocation to other territory, would they?
Unless I missed it, no one has even mentioned the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese. December 7, 1941, “A day that will live in infamy.” America declared War on the Japanese the next day, I believe, and Germany immediately declared war on the United States. Having no choice but to defend ourselves, we in turn declared war on Germany. Germany compelled Italy to declare war on the Allies and so we in turn declared war on Italy. That was World War II in case no one remembers–the one war in which the population of the United States was almost 100% solidly behind the war effort. Plenty of people got wealthy as a result of that war but economics did not dictate our entry.
We entered the Korean Conflict to honor treaty commitments made to South Korea. No economic factor compelled our entry since it was North Korea’s invasion of South Korea that started the entire thing.
We got involved in Vietnam out of pure insanity though it can be argued that we did send troops to protect the rights and properties of some American and multi-national business interests.
I will not again be drawn into the War Between the States. “Southern revisionists” my ass.