Global Politics: Causes of War

How is war a part of human society? What are the sociological factors that trigger it? In what forms does it manifest itself, and how will it be seen in the post-industrial era? These questions are examined more closely in this paper. First, this essay outlines some of the types of wars that occur. Within each of these forms, the paper discusses how these specific types of war impact the social landscape. War has long been an integral part of the creation and alteration of societies and nations, and remains a major force in the modern world.

Keywords Civil War; Genocide; Hezbollah; International War; Paramilitary Force; Proxy War; Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC); Triple-R

Sociology of Politics & Government > Global Politics: Causes of War

Overview

In the study of war and strategic warfare, military analysts and scholars often cite the work of Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu. His seminal The Art of War, written in 500 BC, remains a critical text for strategists, leaders, and students alike. While Sun Tzu’s work includes suggestions on how to effectively fight a war and conduct battle, he also includes cautionary comments on when not to fight a war. "If ignorant of both your enemy and yourself," he writes, "you are certain to be in peril."

Throughout history, most states do not engage in warfare without careful consideration. Nevertheless, countless international and civil wars that have occurred throughout history. In the 20th century alone, and estimated 187 million people were killed in wars (Hobsawm, 2002). With few exceptions, the modern world has experienced few periods in which war was not being waged in multiple locations.

In The Art of War, Sun Tzu does not advocate for war, but provides guidance about how to undertake it. War, he writes, "is a matter of life and death, a road to either safety or ruin. The art of war is of vital importance to the State" (Sun Tzu, 2000).

How is war a part of human society? What are the sociological factors that can trigger it? In what forms does it manifest itself, and how will war be considered by world leaders in the post-industrial era? These questions are examined more closely in this paper. First, this essay outlines some of the types of wars that occur. Within each of these incarnations, the paper discusses how these specific types have affected the social landscape. As the reader will glean, war has long been an integral part of the creation and alteration of countless societies and nations and will likely continue to impact humanity for generations to come.

The Roots of War

Why do people initiate war when the implications are potentially devastating? After all, even the victors of a modern war may consider the spoils of victory to be, at least in the interim, pyrrhic at best.

Definition

To define war is a challenge in and of itself. War is conflict between two or more parties, but how it is manifest depends on a certain point of view. Some, like Karl von Clausewitz, would assert that it is a conflict between two or more political organizations, such as states or nations. Others would view it as a human condition, pitting not just political groups against one another but also humans. The roots of the English are nebulous: from the Frankish-German root, werra, the term means "confusion" and "discord" as well as strife, giving rise to Clausewitz's own term, "the fog of war" (Moseley, 2001).

Conflict

One major cause of war is relatively simple: irreconcilable conflict between groups. When two or more stable, organized groups are forced into coexistence with each other, conflict can be avoided if each group is satisfied with their comparative situations. Conflict is given life, however, when superiority or inferiority complexes, aggression, or perceived inequities enter the mix. In many cases, these factors combine with one another to create irreconcilable differences. For example, religious or ethnic tensions, when combined with extreme poverty in the face of a wealthy incumbent regime, tend to accelerate conflict and lead to war (Hinde & Pulkinnen, 2000).

The Triple-R

To understand war, it is necessary to study its instances and ask about its roots. Does the conflict stem from sociological differences? Is combat a means to acquire greater resources or repel an oppressive government

In an article entitled “Understanding Causes of War and Peace,” Ohlson simplifies the reasons for war into concept he refers to as "the Triple-R" (Ohlson, 2008). Under this model, wars begin because nations have reasons to go to war, the resources to wage a war, and the resolve to do so.

• Reasons are grievances against other states, such as previous threat or attacks, or goals, such as the acquisition of land or resources that cannot be achieved through peaceful measures.
• Resources are the capabilities, such as weaponry, personnel, or tactical advantages, needed to pursue a war against a particular enemy.
• Resolve arises from the determination that no peaceful measure can assuage the nation's grievances or achieve its goals.

As is made evident in the following examples, examples of the Triple-R model can be found throughout the history of warfare.

Applications

Civil War

Many types of conflicts can occur within a nation's borders, such as rebellions and riots, but few of these can be identified as civil wars. Some recent examples of such battles include police clashes with immigrant groups in France, the separatist movement in Tibet, and ethnic violence in Kenya. Divisive and often brutal as these incidents are, they do not yet fall under what is known as a full "civil war."

Elements of Civil War

The distinction between such types of conflict and an internationally-recognized civil war is based on five important elements:

• The combatants must each hold control over a geographic area.
• Each must have a recognized government structure.
• Each must have some degree of foreign recognition.
• Each must have an organized group of armed forces.
• Each must engage in major military operations in combat zones or on battlefields ("Military glossary," 1996).

These distinctive qualities are important because, as an aggregate, they tend to have a deeper social impact within the nation and can also have international consequences. For instance, no revolutionary forces are seeking the dismantlement of the French or Kenyan governments; even though they do seek change, none of the protesting groups have formed militias or staged planned assaults on government forces. Similarly, the Dalai Lama may be the leader of the Tibetan people, but he has not made any effort to assert himself or his government as the leader of China, which oversees Tibet; no international organization has recognized the legitimacy of his regional leadership; and any major violence that has occurred has happened during protests, not in major combat situations. Each of these incidents may, if unattended or exacerbated, lead to civil war in the future, but, they are not causing widespread social and political disruption as civil wars do.

Liberia

In the early 1800s, slaves who had been freed in the United States emigrated to what is now the West African country of Liberia. The ex-slaves and their descendants established a new republic of which they were firmly in control, keeping at bay the indigenous population. One hundred-fifty years later, a military coup led by Samuel Doe removed the previous regime but retained the same authoritarian style of government, violently suppressing rivals and galvanizing ethnic groups. In 1990, Doe was killed by one such group, which installed its own leader in his place. Neighboring African states contributed a peacekeeping force to the region, but they were unable to keep the warring factions apart nor help establish a coalition government. Countless refugees fled into other countries, and potential investors and business groups avoided doing business in Liberia. Extremely tentative accords were struck in the mid- to late-1990s, but the regimes that held power during that time continued to disenfranchise and repress rival groups, each of which waited in the wings for the opportunity to overthrow the incumbent government (Carter Center, 1997).

Several nations in Africa continue to struggle with civil war, as rival, tribally-based factions vie for power in a number of nations and refuse to engage one another in peaceful arenas. After more than 150 years of civil war, however, Liberia's competing factions, which are now heavily-armed militias with their own political leadership and zones of power, have still not reached reconciliation (McDonough, 2008).

Yugoslavia

Yugoslavia, which comprised the area now divided among Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, Kosovo, and Macedonia, was thrust together by the international community at the end of World War I. A collection of disparate provinces (which were in fact ethnic enclaves) were melded together despite their clear differences in ethnicity and allegiance. Although Albanians and Kosovars clearly aligned with one another and not with the Serb leadership in Belgrade, Serbia continued to dominate Yugoslavia and its myriad of ethnic groups. After Marshal Josip Broz Tito, to whom Albanian Kosovars were loyal, died in 1980, the people of Kosovo began to assert their autonomy. However, during the era of Slobodan Miloševic, that autonomy began to shrink significantly in favor of consolidated Serbian rule. Civil disobedience ruled Kosovo during the Yugoslavia disintegration as conflict grew between ethnic Albanians and the Serbian government. Charges of genocide were later brought against Miloševic for activities that occurred as part of the civil war, but he died during the proceedings.

While the Kosovo government and its paramilitary forces were not recognized entities by official international circles, the clashes with Serb forces and growing sympathy from the West (especially NATO) helped speed along the impending civil war in Kosovo ("Kosovo: History, bloody history," 1999). Belgrade was forced back from a campaign of "ethnic cleansing" by NATO in the 1990s, but Kosovo remained under Serbian control, even though the rest of Yugoslavia had become independent. In 2008, Kosovo's leadership declared the enclave's independence, a move welcomed by the West but greeted coldly by other key countries such as Russia. Serbia has not used military force yet to return Kosovo to its fold, but it has threatened retaliation against those nations who support its independence ("Kosovo declares independence from Serbia," 2008).

Liberia & the former Yugoslavia Today

Civil wars like the ones in Liberia and Kosovo underscore the significant impact of such conflicts on nations' social, economic, and political infrastructures. In Liberia's case, ethic animosities have endured for over a century and come to head repeatedly in the form of coups and even in democratic elections. That country's civil war has had profound implications for Liberian society, as tribal differences were defined, isolated, and attacked during the course of various conflicts. Even today, when a new order and economic promise abound, the scars of those 150 years of war have yet to fully heal-only in 2003 did the coup-installed dictatorships come to an end when Charles Taylor was ousted. The current government has gained the support of the US, amongst other countries, but observers still believe that the equilibrium that is in place in Liberia is delicate at best (Stolberg, 2008).

In Kosovo, the pain of civil war has been intensified for decades, and the dissolution of Yugoslavia exacerbated the ethnic tensions that existed since before the 19th century. Its unilateral declaration of independence has bolstered the ethnocentric pride of Albanian Kosovars, but without recognition from the United Nations, Kosovo's social fabric remains torn as a result of a civil war that has persisted for more than a century.

International War

The causes of international war are as varied as the nations. Ethnic and tribal conflicts, like the ones that occurred in the Liberia and the region formerly known as Yugoslavia, can come into play in international conflicts, particularly when national borders are established in spite of long-standing ethnic or cultural boundaries; however conflict over natural resources, like oil deposits, water, and seaports, is also a major contributor to international war.

It has been more than half a century since a formal declaration of war was issued between nations, at least in the manner by which the Allies and Axis powers declared war on each other at the start of World War II. Still, such a fact does not mean that wars have not occurred or have not been declared between nations since that era. In fact, international wars continue in the 21st century just as they have in centuries past. The overt "battlefield" form warfare may have evolved, but the sociological issues surrounding the initiation of warfare have not dramatically changed (Malesevic, 2008).

2008 Andean Crisis

In some cases, the economic risks of war have prevented all-out regional war. In South America, three nations became embroiled in a border dispute that could have very well led to war in 2010. The conflict centered on leftist insurgents that have been operating in opposition to the incumbent Colombian government since the 1950s. There have been a number of attempts to stop the intra-state conflict between the two sides, but during the late 1990s and early 2000s the violence between the government and such groups as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and National Liberation Army (ELN) resurfaced.

In 2008, the FARC had the sympathy of Hugo Chàvez, the leftist President of Venezuela. Chàvez consistently railed against Colombia's close ties with the US, and was critical of Colombia's treatment of the FARC’s Marxist insurgency. In 2008, a standoff occurred when Colombian forces entered the neighboring country of Ecuador, a close ally of Venezuela, to assassinate a key FARC leader. In the cross-territorial raid, the Colombian government claimed to have found evidence of direct support of FARC coming from the Venezuelan government. Chàvez then sent troops and weaponry to the Colombian border to protect the region from any incursion ("Conflict grows between Colombia, Venezuela and Ecuador," 2008). Tensions continued to mount until Chàvez and the Colombian president, Alvaro Uribe, reconciled in July 2008, most likely in the interest of restoring trade relations between the two countries (Brodzinsky, 2008).

Middle East Tensions

In many respects, international warfare has not ended-it has just changed forms. The face of this new look of international war is can be seen in current Middle Eastern military operations. Here, instead of open state to state warfare, nation-states often use and support sub-national or extra-national armed organizations to work against enemies. This type of conflict is known as proxy war.

Lebanon as Battlefield

Between 1975 and 1990, Lebanon served as an unofficial battlefield for numerous Middle Eastern combatants. Lebanon, a country that is almost equally divided among Christians and Muslims, has been nearly torn apart by foreign countries that have been using the small nation as their own chessboard. In late 20th century, Iran and Syria influenced terrorist organizations in Lebanon in order to launch attacks against Israel. In response, Israel retaliated against these groups and their backers on Lebanese soil. Much of Lebanon's political situation stems from the diversity of its people and their differing access to power within the state. While 60% of Lebanon is Muslim and 40% Christian, there are in fact 18 distinct religious sects as well as 2 major subnational terrorist organizations (Hezbollah and Fatah al-Islam) seeking power in Lebanon and receiving backing from a number of external sources (Hardy, 2007).

As is often the case in international war, the central vehicle employed by the combatants in Lebanon has been appealing to the fundamental interests of the people, such as the Shia Muslim population. A great many Lebanese are, of course, dedicated to the survival of their indigenous system-this group celebrated the successful backlash that drove out Syrian "peacekeeping" troops in 2005 and repelled Israeli troops a year later (albeit at the hands of the Iran-backed Hezbollah, which seized power immediately following that incident). For this faction, Lebanon must be free from outside forces, even if those forces have already fostered home-grown destabilizing elements. A delicate governing coalition was formed of Sunni Muslims, Christians, liberals and Druze (an offshoot of Shia Islam), and this group was able to garner a majority in the 2005 Parliamentary elections. However, Hezbollah and local interest groups undid this success by seizing leadership in a number of key enclaves ("Iran's tool fights America's stooge," 2008). Beginning in March 2011, the Syrian Civil war has resulted in hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees fleeing to Lebanon.

International war has indeed changed in terms of tactics, and nowhere else in the world is this change more evident than in the Middle East. Lebanon may on the surface appear to be a classic case of civil war, but, in truth, the main combatants are not domestic. The United States, Syria, Iran and others are actively seeking sympathizers, or proxies, to carry their respective flags on the Lebanese battlefield. Perhaps the biggest reason why such manipulation has been able to occur is sociological: the fact that, although Lebanon sought to move away from the pain of those 15 years of civil conflict through economic development and tourism, the underlying conflicts between factions were never resolved. Thus, the war has been able to continue.

Conclusion

Although The Art of War suggests that Sun Tzu was a master in the field of military strategy, he was also an expert on when not to fight. "A sovereign should not start a war out of anger, nor should a general give battle out of rage," he wrote. "While anger can revert to happiness and rage to delight, a nation that has been destroyed cannot be restored, nor can the dead be brought back to life" (Sun Tzu, 2007, 5). In this comment, Sun Tzu was saying that a nation ought not to enter into war lightly or solely in order to exact revenge.

While the "Triple-R" model depicts a very broad picture of the causes and influences that have historically initiated and spurred warfare, the examples of both civil and international war seen in the 21st century suggest that the nature of war has changed. The precepts of this model, however, remain largely sound. The goal of the struggles in Liberia and Kosovo is to empower previously disenfranchised parties. In Lebanon and Syria, the religious and political animosities among a number of factions, have become useful points of leverage for foreign countries seeking to counter each other’s power. The resolve of Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador temporarily galvanized each country into defending its territory.

The shift in warfare tactics owes itself largely to a change in the social order. Civilians and civilian groups are increasingly involved in political activities and, as a result, more and more battles are being fought by or through paramilitary groups. Arguably, the combat roles of groups like Fatah al-Islam, Hezbollah, FARC and others suggest that national governments are seeing opportunities to stay out of direct, interstate warfare by recruiting fighters from sympathetic forces on the battlefield instead.

Another important element of which to take note has become a familiar theme in each of the examples provided. Many of these countries have repeatedly fallen victim to civil or international war and flare-ups still occur. In Liberia, Kosovo, Latin America and in the Middle East, the failure of governments to recognize and address latent destabilizing local issues, such as ethnic, political, or religious disenfranchisement, have contributed almost exclusively to civil and international wars. After all, the face of war may be changing in the 21st century, but the animosity and brutality that accompanies it remains as powerful as ever.

Terms & Concepts

Civil War: Conflict that occurs within a nation's borders between defined combatants.

Genocide: The systematic killing of a racial, ethnic, or cultural group.

Hezbollah: Shia terrorist group operating in Middle East with ties to Syria and Iran.

International War: Conflict that occurs between two or more distinct nations.

Paramilitary Force: Non-governmental group organized to assume military activity either independently or alongside official military forces.

Proxy War: A war fought between two or more governments that is carried out by third parties, which can be outside governments, extra-national or sub-national armed groups.

Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC): Leftist guerrilla terrorist organization targeting the Colombian government.

Triple-R: Under this model, wars begin because people or nations have reasons to go to war, the resources to wage a war, and the resolve to do so.

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Suggested Reading

Branco, C. (2006). Ethnicity and ethnic violence. Relacoes Internacioais, 9(6903), 129-150. Retrieved May 29, 2008, from EBSCO Online Database International Bibliography of the Social Sciences. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ioh&AN=3379419&site=ehost-live

Gagnon, Jr. V.P. (2006) The Myth of Ethnic War: Serbia and Croatia in the 1990s. (Cornell University Press: Ithaca).

Nikolic-Ristanovic, V. (2008). Local conflicts and international interventions. Contemporary Justice Review, 11, 101-115. Retrieved May 29, 2008 from EBSCO Online Database Academic Search Premier. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=31974392&site=ehost-live

Skaperdas, S. (2008). An economic approach to analyzing civil wars. Economics of Governance, 9, 25-44. Retrieved May 29, 2008, from EBSCO Online Database Business Source Premier. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bth&AN=27630649&site=ehost-live

Sorensen, J. S. (2003). War as social transformation. Civil Wars, 6, 55-82. Retrieved May 29, 2008 from EBSCO Online Database Academic Search Premier. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=13865870&site=ehost-live

Tilly, C. (2003) The politics of collective violence. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Wohlforth, W.C. (2002). Hierarchy, status and war. Conference Papers — American Political Science Association, 1-38. Retrieved May 29, 2008, from EBSCO Online Database Academic Search Premier. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=17986382&site=ehost-live

Zhihua, S., & Yafeng, X. (2013). Contested Border: A Historical Investigation into the Sino-Korean Border Issue, 1950-1964. Asian Perspective, 37, 1–30. Retrieved December 4, 2014, from EBSCO Online Database SocINDEX with Full Text. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=85953640