The explanation for war that I offered here yesterday has, it seems, upset some people. That is because, I think, some suggested that it was simplistic. I disagree, but perhaps I need to elaborate on that.
It could be argued that the causes for war are diverse and include:
- Territorial disputes
- Ideological and political differences
- Religious conflicts
- Ethnic tensions
- Failed diplomacy
- Civil War
These are obviously additional to:
- Resource disputes
- Economic motivations.
The suggestion is that my thesis of war ignores this much longer list of causes and reduces everything to one explanation, which is that an expedient exploitation of a current economic advantage with the aim of securing a greater economic advantage is the explanation for almost all wars.
My argument is that all the other causes of war do not exist unless this expedient opportunity to exploit an economic advantage also exists. In other words, nobody undertakes a war for the reasons noted above unless they think they have a reasonable chance of successfully pursuing it, and that they would not think that unless it was both expedient to do so and they had what they believed to be a current economic advantage over their opponent, giving them the prospect of success.
As a result, what I suggest is that all the other supposed causes for war are not only subservient to this single explanation that I have offered, but are actually used as excuses for war to disguise the real motive of those pursuing it.
I am not denying that historical, ethnic, religious, territorial and other disputes clearly exist, and are used to explain wars. That obviously happens. However, just as I think that fascists take any hint of a difference or grievance and exploit it to their narrative advantage with the intention of creating the perception of "otherness" on the part of those that they wish to victimise, so does the promoter of expedient economic warfare exploit narratives of the types noted to persuade people to participate in the war that they are actually undertaking with the intention of securing economic gain.
The techniques of the warmonger and the fascist are, in this sense, almost identical. Both are seeking support for a position of their own choosing through the promotion of populist causes that distract attention from their actual motivations for the action that they are undertaking which they could not pursue unless, first of all, they could generate that support - because they clearly need others to make sacrifice for them to secure their again - and, secondly, if they did not think that they were already economically sufficiently advantage in comparison to their opponents to have a reasonable chance of securing victory.
I can, of course, be accused of being simplistic in my approach by trying to reduce my explanation for war breaking out at any particular moment to one single explanation, but it is my opinion that if the cause of war is explained in this way, then what we actually observe is that almost all war is opportunistic. It is begun by someone with sufficiently psychopathic tendency to believe that they have the right to sacrifice others for their own personal gain, and that they will only do this when they believe that their own well-being is unlikely to be prejudiced as a consequence. It is important to recall that those promoting wars have, at least in the modern era, had an exceptionally high survival rate despite creating armed conflicts.
To put this another way, it is entirely reasonable to look at all the other causes of war as methods a populist might use to secure popular support for a conflict, but I do not think they are the causes of conflict arising in themselves. As a result, I do not think that historical analysis of the cause of any war is that important. Precisely because all war is expedient at the moment, the necessary analysis to be undertaken is not why there might be reasons for dispute, because these are used as populist methods of securing support for that conflict, but why there might be a particular cause for the aggressor to decide to resort to conflict at the moment they begin it. Wars, in other words, happened in the present, and not in the past.
I would add one final observation, which is do not confuse the reasons for terrorist action with the causes of war. They are not the same thing.
I hope this clarifies my position.
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Many recent conflicts are due to the stealing of a country’s resources, often oil, and minerals.
It was the basis of the British Empire, and now the US Empire.
Of course the West claims these conflicts are due to other reasons, usually the Communist bogeyman.
That completely fits my thesis
Aims of Operation Barbarossa – the German invasion of the USSR included pinching all the Soviets horses and the Harvest that had already been planted
Very fair points. Frankopan in his Silk Roads book makes the point that a core reason for the Nazis attack on the USSR was economic – specifically food (Ukraine again!). Arguably, the Putin war is for a similar reason – related to economics – people. Russian population is falling off a cliff and Russian attempts to stop this are failing (read an article published in Russia this month on the subject – obvs counched in v diplomatic language). Obvs the Putin war was dressed up in ideological baggage (Nazis etc). In the case of Belarus, it is slowly being re-absorbed into Ruzzia for much the same reason – people.
Mike, It has to be the right people though – after all there are no shortage of people around the World looking to escape their situation and move elsewhere. Does Russia take any sizeable number of refugees?
Another point is that most countries (especially the richer nations) are seeing population declines, and yet they don’t go for grabbing other countries (excepting possibly the US re Canada, Greenland, Panama…)
The wider thesis Richard is putting forward – my comment on that is that he can’t declare war, I can’t declare war, and I warrant that everyone who reads this blog cannot declare war – only the Trumps, Putins and Starmers of this world can declare war on another country. They might well be convinced by advisors that declaring war is needed to improve their economy, but ultimately it is their individual decision, and given human nature, such decision could be as prosaic as being a bully wanting to impose their will.
With regards to Ukraine – Russia is the largest by land mass of any country, and with a declining population there seems little to suggest a purely economic reason behind this invasion.
One of my hobbies is wargaming – and in particular I have games that simulate WW2 at various levels. When you look at 1941 and the start line for Barbarossa – the German invasion of the USSR, consider if Ukraine had been an Axis minor ally like Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania and therefore offered a starting point for German forces. Stalingrad would have been immediately surrounded and almost certainly taken, rather than proving to be one of the key turning points. The Caucasus oil fields would have been much easier to reach, starting from the eastern Ukraine border. A swing North to surround Moscow would also have been much more achievable. Now this viewpoint has been expressed by Putin as a reason for not wanting NATO in Ukraine – I suggest it does have validity.
Re: Russia’s declining population.
Before the war, Ukraine had an increasing and pretty young population and it isn’t a coincidence that many thousands (or even tens of thousands?) of Ukrainian children from the occupied territories have been ‘adopted’ by Russian families. Resources aren’t necessarily just agricultural land, minerals or fossil fuels.
For the current conflict in Ukraine, you can’t ignore that hubris is a major factor. The invasion in 2014 was as much about geopolitics as anything else, Putin ensuring Russian access to the Black Sea after Yanukovich was ousted and Ukraine looked to break free from Russian influence. The fact that this was met with little more than a shrug meant that he fully expected the same after he expected to be able to quickly take Kyiv and install a ‘friendly’ puppet government in its place, such as in Belarus. He was wrong.
The existence of Liberland is a good exemplar of your thesis. It is a ‘country’ brought into being because there was a sliver of useless land that no adjacent country wanted. If the territory had economic value, we can be sure it would not have been left in limbo.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberland
https://liberland.org/
Weird…
Control of the consumption and production by people could be another way of saying it. With possibly a predicted and in many cases actual population decrease in the world. The flow of emigration and immigration in any country will become tantamount to a country’s economic survival, particularly of elite wealth, power and privilege. The draconian emigration and immigration processes of most western states, I think is a symptom of an unstated fearful recognition of the importance of people consumption of goods and services provided by elites. My view anyway.
Frederick Bastiat (1801-1850) is rather instructive on this:
‘If goods don’t cross borders, armies will.’.
Trump’s disruption – which he and his henchmen laugh about like naughty children – more war could be the consequence of this.
I did regard your, rather dogmatic, first post on this subject somewhat askance, Richard – and not just because of its economic reductionism, with which I cannot agree. War, its causes, cultures and outcomes have been among the major concerns of my academic life and while economic motives of various kinds and shapes have very often played important parts, they have seldom been the only or main motivations. I would suggest that a division between what Scottish lawyers know as the causa causans and the causa sine qua non provides a sensible first step in appreciating/understanding/revealing what has actually been going on – and often may help in clarifying the frequent importance of the economic being inescapably bound in with rational/irrational political motives AND along with sometimes very much stronger emotional impulses, ideological positions and cultural beliefs. I don’t propose to start a tussle over this or that war/example. I’d just caution against, with however many flow charts, risking an unhelpful over-simplification.
We will have to disagree Nigel.
Maybe I’m not really needed here but say Nigel that the first post was ‘dogmatic’ is a bit strong. Sometimes we have to write through getting to to what we really mean. Like taking a first picture and then making a better picture after we have considered the first?
We live in an information rich world and getting to the truth is much harder – a battle in itself. At the heart of Richard’s thesis is that there must be a better way to share the wealth of the planet than contriving any basis for war.
This may not not apply in all cases but it is worth stating.
What I feel rather down about is the other side of the coin – the hubris shown by Europe and the West that they had won a argument and that despite being advised otherwise, that this was end of history and there was nothing put peace and prosperity in the new Jerusalem created by Reagan and Thatcher. That Russia was somehow vanquished.
Time and time again the West has gone into places and been to cocksure of its self – its power and its ideas. And time and time again it has come undone because it has been so sure of its own infallibility.
The reason for this needs exploring and maybe be is related to Richard’s own thesis, but what I see is that if we continue tolerate and even celebrate inequality as we are now, we are heading into abyss because all the money, all the power, all the influence will concentrated in an increasingly narrow and unrepresentative group who will just continue to rob us all blind.
PSR
You are right
A theory is a map. An abstraction from reality that you hope illustrates reality. It is not complete. But if it helps you navigate reality it is a good map.
Richard
OK … I see why you are keeping things at a high level.
Is there a case to include another reason for war which is not rational. For example, ‘I’m in a hole anyway, and keeping digging is better than losing face now’: This is particularly a risk when there is an (irrational) strong man on at least one side whose justification is more about a sense of place in history or a personal animosity. A rational person may choose to end a conflict — and madman may just keep on going – because his loss of face matters more than other peoples’ lives, wellbeing, ‘home’. I think that is different (though related) to ‘failed diplomacy’, ‘ideology’, ‘ethnic’ or ‘religious’ aspects…. Also, the ‘solution’ may be different: e.g. offer the despot a life of apparent luxury in a safe 3rd party state and massage his ego with opulence (but allow the country to resume peaceful existence)?
Madmen with fragile egos also seems relevant currently ……
I’m following this with interest, but conscious that there will have been decades (centuries) of study about the causes of war, including economic causes. Any thoughts I have are starting from scratch, but I don’t think I want to take an MA in War studies either. Does anyone know of a relevant literature review?
Your idea that the history is not relevant to the analysis, is this new? Is it true? I’ve always thought/assumed that one should try and understand how things got to where they are, especially with competing and parallel narratives. But maybe not. Does it depend on what the analysis is for? Can you be independent of parallel narratives if you don’t examine them?
Some of what you’ve got assumes that the participants are rational (in their own way). Country A wants a strip of land in country B so it takes it if it can. This is war as done for centuries. But the EU hasn’t had an internal war for 80 years, and has resolved or avoided disputes in other ways. So there must also be a mindset about what is an acceptable way of doing things. (It hasn’t stopped EU countries taking resources from non-EU countries, which in itself must be notable.)
I think any discussion should separate an analysis of what is happening from any sense of what ought to happen, and be clear at any point which one is being talked about. On the latter, it would be very good to have a UN that wasn’t crippled by political interests, and could make decisions that were respected and would be obeyed. But there you are.
I want to say this again, that it’s rare for borders to be fixed. Oceans, mountains, and desert are good.
But otherwise they shift, from local wars or colonial powers. Borders could be included in your territory category, or as resources between groups, but the groups might not correspond with the borders. (It might then matter why the groups see themselves as different, although as history that might be excluded. And groups themselves aren’t fixed, or people take multiple identities.)
So, I hope your thinking continues to be productive, this is a lot. But it’s good to follow and roll the ideas about.
There are a lot of points here. Let me address one point you raise. You asked:
“I’m following this with interest, but conscious that there will have been decades (centuries) of study about the causes of war, including economic causes. Any thoughts I have are starting from scratch, but I don’t think I want to take an MA in War studies either. Does anyone know of a relevant literature review?”
Let me be clear, I don’t care. One of the pleasures of no longer working as an academic is that I will no longer have to do literature reviews.
Nor will I have to fit my arguments into an existing structure of thinking.
Even more so, I will not have to just dot i’s and cross t’s.
The whole process of academic publishing that now exists is designed to:
1) Crush original thinking
2) Make current academics the slaves of some past model of thinking that long cased to be relevant
3) As a result, perpetuate the status quo.
Two things follow:
a) Academia is the last place to look for original thinking. Academics are trained to not do that: you cannot progress if you do.
b) Academia produces the most extraordinary volume of utterly meaningless so-called research. I have seen recent suggestions that at least fifty per cent of all medical papers are simply wrong: they compare a thesis with a null hypothesis that is so absurd that there is no research contribution from the work undertaken, and so no contribution to learning. I saw the same suggested with regard to accounting research last week as well. I strongly suspect that is also right.
I am doing something quite different here.
I am doing original thinking. These are my ideas.
I am taking the risk that they may be wrong. This is a risk I am permitted to take. No one can deny it to me.
And what I stress is that only by taking the risk of undertaking original thinking, free from the requirement to base it in thinking and frameworks that exist solely to constrain such an activity can progress be made.
If you want to know why the world is stagnating this is one of the biggest explanations. The supposed world of thinking not only does not think, but it is also trained not to do so. Of course we cannot progress. I am free of having to try to comply with that constraint now.
Let me summarise this: if you want to change the world you cannot believe that everything thought about it to date is right. Isn’t that pretty obvious?
God that sounds horrible. From what you say it isn’t just here. Best of luck/whatever you need/ with your endeavour. I’ve only written one literature review and I really enjoyed it, so I assumed there would be an equivalent. I was partly setting the world to rights by picking at the central authority’s assumptions, but also paying my dues to people who had done the initial work in the 1950s, and whatever is interesting now. A very different subject, but what you wrote reminded me that I was warned off criticising the authority in a review, as in how dare you, you just can’t. But it has to be done. So, no academia for me, and I doubt if anyone has read it, but I learnt a lot from doing it. I’m sorry for others if it’s a numbing experience.
There is a joke that most academic papers are read by six people. They are the two authors, the editor, two peer reviewers and the mum of one author, who thought she should support their offspring’s work. That might exaggerate things a little, but not massively.
Why did Wilson tell LBJ to jump when invited to join the Vietnam debacle? Perhaps, like Supermac and the rest, he knew what war actually meant. I always feel that it was those who experienced WW2 in action were a restraining hand on those who hadn’t; that generation was passing when Thatcher reversed her unpopularity with the Falklands War, and gone when Blair lied and lied again to embroil us in Iraq. Those who return are forever changed, usually in ruinous ways; my stepfather in nightmares from viewing concentration camps, a son with personality changes. All wars end with negotiations; the only unscathed victors are armament manufacturers.
I remember Denis Healey speaking out against the Falklands war, saying that war should be the last resort. I’d thought he’d been in tanks during World War 2 but wikipedia says he was a gunner. He was in North Africa, Sicily, and Italy, so he knew what he was talking about. We now go to war to take other people’s stuff, I really did think we’d stop doing that.
He was a major commanding tanks. He saw a lot of people die.
First, a reference to a post from a surprising source, a US right-wing financial commentator describing Peter Turchin’s work. https://www.mauldineconomics.com/frontlinethoughts/the-science-of-cycles . Turchin suggests that rising inequality is the force that leads to the collapse of civilisations.
I am not convinced by Richard and I think we have to go further back. We are descended from an animal that hunted in packs, which has led to natural selection for particular patterns of behaviour. Unfortunately, these traits no longer confer a selective advantage, but we are stuck with them. Why do Putin’s troops march off to be killed pointlessly? Why did normal Americans elect Trump? Why is it a vote-winner to depict immigrants as less than human? These are all traits that helped when our ancestors were hunting as a pack. The same traits lead us to make decisions that are wrong for today. We need to adapt to our present environment.
I have explained this – narratives of the types used by fascists are used to persuade them to do so. This is done using modern psychology which gave us public relations and propaganda. We don’t need evolution or pck behaviour to explain that, expect to the extent that it creates willingness to believe propaganda. Nothing you say challenges my thesis once these points are considered.
My immediate reaction to your analysis was to wonder how the very nasty Falklands war fitted, as the large scale engagement was apparently the result of Thatcher’s political opportunism. But of course the conflict wouldn’t have started without the Argentine invasion, which was perhaps partly due to the desire to secure resources and subjugate (or evict) the population, but undoubtedly it was also designed to generate popular support for its fascist government. Thatcher enthusiastically joined in, seeing the opportunity to bolster her own waning popularity, with the right wing press, in particular the Sun, jumping on the bandwagon. I suspect that Argentina probably failed to factor that into their plan.
The war was over oil. The Falklands deny vast areas of water to Argentina. They wanted them. Economics again – and they miscalculated the ability of the UK to command resources to mount a defence. It was all economics.
[…] commentator named Andtew R on this blog asked yesterday whether there was academic thought and a literature review that supported the suggestion I have […]
Might this article be of interest?
https://michael-hudson.com/
Which article on his website?
Re. Michael Hudson website:
“Why Banking Isn’t What You Think It Is”. (05/03/25)
Thanks