War, like diplomacy, propaganda, etc., is an instrument of national policy. It has been used by states to achieve their national goals and aspirations and fulfil their national interests. Questions of war and peace are central to the understanding of international relations; these are questions that involve the problem of survival.
Today the term ‘war’ is used in many different ways. We speak of cold war, hot war, limited war, total war, conventional and unconventional war, civil war, guerrilla war, preventive war, and so on. Wars have also been labelled as imperialist wars or wars of national liberation depending on the perceptions of the users.
Distribution of Wars
In the twentieth century, despite the horrors of the two world wars and the nuclear holocaust, the incidence of war has not diminished.
- Although there has been peace between the great 4 powers in the last half of the 20th century. the number of regional or civil armed conflicts has continued to grow, reaching a peak of 68 in the year 2000.
- A majority of these were low-intensity and intrastate, and mostly confined to the developing part of the world. In 1968, historians Will and Ariel Durant calculated that there had been only 268 years free 1 of war in the previous 3,421 years. It is most likely, that they undercounted the wars. Certainly there has been no year without war since.
- Today the spectrum of war has expanded from the traditional military dimension to areas like political and economic warfare, psychological warfare, etc. But the traditional definitions of war still use the narrow point of reference.
- Hoffman Niclerson states that ‘war is the use of organised force between two human groups pursuing contradictory policies, each group seeking to impose its policies upon the other’.
- Yet another scholar, Malinowski defines war as an ‘armed conflict between two independent political units, by means of organised military force, in pursuit of a tribal or national policy’.
- A mention must be made of Karl von Clausewitz’s argument that war ‘is only a part of political intercourse, therefore by no means an independent thing in itself. .war is nothing but a continuation of political intercourse with an admixture of other means’. This definition helps in understanding the broader setting in which war is located.
- Quincy Wright accepts that war is waged on the diplomatic, economic, and propaganda fronts as well as on the military front and that the art of war coordinates all these elements to the purpose of victory. Yet he argues that in the narrower sense the art is confined to the military aspect. This embraces the organisation, discipline, and the maintenance of morale of the armed forces; the invention, development and procurement of weapons; the provision of transport and movement of forces; strategy of campaigns and tactics of battles etc.
Causes of War
Generally the causes of war are classified under political, economic, social and psychological causes. Quincy Wright points out that causes of war can be looked at from different angles. War has politico-technological, juro-ideological, socio-religious and psycho-economic causes.
- For Marxists, the roots of war are located in capitalism and imperialism. They also distinguish between certain kinds of wars like imperialist wars, revolutionary wars, and wars of national liberation.
- Others look for psychological causes and stress on the feeling of insecurity that nations feel.
- The causes of war are related to war as an instrument of national policy since wars are fought for the safeguard of national objectives, goals and aspirations. This may relate to territory, to identity, or to the very survival of the nation-state.
Levels of analysis
It is convenient to discuss the theoretical approaches that seek to understand the causes of war at the following levels of analysis:
- System-level causes,
- State-level causes, and
- Individual-level causes.
Theories of War
Several theories were given to point out the reasons behind the occurrence of war such as
- Idealist View of War
- Realist View of War
- Marxist Approach to War
- The Just War
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