Misplaced Pages

War: Difference between revisions

Article snapshot taken from Wikipedia with creative commons attribution-sharealike license. Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat. We can research this topic together.
Browse history interactively← Previous editContent deleted Content addedVisualWikitext
Revision as of 02:43, 29 July 2011 view sourceMiradre (talk | contribs)9,214 edits Evolutionary psychology: npov description← Previous edit Latest revision as of 08:04, 5 January 2025 view source Nubia86 (talk | contribs)Extended confirmed users26,487 edits Rationalist: LinkTags: Mobile edit Mobile web edit 
Line 1: Line 1:
{{Short description|Intense armed conflict}}
{{About|war in general||war (disambiguation)|and|The War (disambiguation){{!}}The War}}
{{Redirect2|Warring|Warfare|other uses|War (disambiguation)|and|Warring (disambiguation)|and|Warfare (disambiguation)}}
{{Redirect|Conflict zone|the 2001 video game|Conflict Zone{{!}}''Conflict Zone''}}
{{pp-semi-indef|small=yes}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=October 2020}}
{{CS1 config|mode=cs1}}
{{Use American English|date=October 2017}}
{{multiple image|perrow = 2|total_width=300
| image1 = Stele of Vultures detail 01a.jpg
| alt1 = Part of the Stele of the Vultures depicting heavy infantry marching in formation
| image2 = Bayeuxtapestryscene52.jpg
| alt2 = Part of the Bayeux Tapestry depicting Norman heavy cavalry charging Saxon shield wall
| image3 = Nagasakibomb.jpg
| alt3 = Nuclear mushroom cloud
| image4 = Napoleons retreat from moscow.jpg
| alt4 = Painting of Napoleon and his troops in winter retreating from Moscow
| image5 = Into the Jaws of Death 23-0455M edit.jpg
| alt5 = Soldiers wading ashore from landing craft on D-Day
| image6 = British Mark I male tank Somme 25 September 1916.jpg
| alt6 = British rhomboid tank and soldiers preparing to advance
| footer = Clockwise from top-left:<br />Ancient warfare: ], {{circa}} 2500 BCE<br />Medieval warfare: ], 1066<br />Early modern warfare: ], 1812<br />Industrial age warfare: ], 1916<br />Modern warfare: ], 1944<br />Nuclear warfare: ], 1945}}
{{War}} {{War}}
'''War''' is an '''armed conflict'''{{refn|group=lower-alpha|The term "armed conflict" is used instead of, or in addition to, the term "war" with the former being more general in scope. The ] differentiates between international and non-international armed conflict in their definition, "International armed conflicts exist whenever there is resort to armed force between two or more States.... Non-international armed conflicts are protracted armed confrontations occurring between governmental armed forces and the forces of one or more armed groups, or between such groups arising on the territory of a State . The armed confrontation must reach a minimum level of intensity and the parties involved in the conflict must show a minimum of organisation."<ref>{{cite web|title=How is the Term "Armed Conflict" Defined in International Humanitarian Law?|url=https://www.icrc.org/eng/assets/files/other/opinion-paper-armed-conflict.pdf|website=International Committee of the Red Cross|date=March 2008|access-date=7 December 2020|archive-date=1 November 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181101193920/https://www.icrc.org/eng/assets/files/other/opinion-paper-armed-conflict.pdf|url-status=live}}</ref>}} between the armed forces of ], or between ]al forces and armed groups that are organized under a certain command structure and have the capacity to sustain ]s, or between such organized groups.<ref>{{cite web |title=HOW IS THE TERM "ARMED CONFLICT" DEFINED IN INTERNATIONAL HUMANITARIAN LAW? |url=https://www.icrc.org/sites/default/files/document_new/file_list/armed_conflict_defined_in_ihl.pdf |website=International Committee of the Red Cross |date=April 2024 |access-date=7 July 2024 |publisher=ICRC |pages=13–14 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240708054327/https://www.icrc.org/sites/default/files/document_new/file_list/armed_conflict_defined_in_ihl.pdf |archive-date=8 July 2024}}</ref> It is generally characterized by widespread ], destruction, and mortality, using ] or ] ]. '''''Warfare''''' refers to the common activities and characteristics of types of war, or of wars in general.<ref>{{cite web|title=Warfare|url=http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/warfare|website=Cambridge Dictionary|access-date=1 August 2016|archive-date=24 February 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210224072805/https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/warfare|url-status=live}}</ref> ] is warfare that is not restricted to purely ]s, and can result in massive ] or other ] suffering and ].


While some ] scholars consider war a universal and ancestral aspect of ],<ref>Šmihula, Daniel (2013): ''The Use of Force in International Relations'', p. 67, {{ISBN|978-80-224-1341-1}}.</ref> others argue it is a result of specific socio-cultural, economic, or ecological circumstances.<ref name="Sage Publications">{{Cite book | year= 2006 | last1= James | first1= Paul | author-link= Paul James (academic) | last2= Friedman | first2= Jonathan | title= Globalization and Violence, Vol. 3: Globalizing War and Intervention | url= https://www.academia.edu/3587732 | publisher= Sage Publications | location= London | access-date= 3 December 2017 | archive-date= 11 January 2020 | archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20200111045525/https://www.academia.edu/3587732/Globalization_and_Violence_Vol._3_Globalizing_War_and_Intervention_2006_ | url-status= live }}</ref>
'''War''' is a state of organized, armed and often prolonged conflict carried on between ], ]s, or other parties<ref name=AHD>{{cite web|url=http://www.thefreedictionary.com/War |title=American Heritage Dictionary: War |publisher=Thefreedictionary.com |date= |accessdate=2011-01-24}}</ref><ref name=MWD>{{cite web|url=http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/war |title=Merriam Webster's Dictionary: War |publisher=Merriam-webster.com |date=2010-08-13 |accessdate=2011-01-24}}</ref> typified by extreme ], ] disruption, and usually high ].<ref name=AHD /> In addition to the existence of this organized behavior pattern amongst ] ], very similar organized warlike behavior patterns are also found in many other primate species such as ],<ref name = "ApesWar">{{cite news
{{TOC limit|3}}
| url = http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/3317461/Apes-of-war...-is-it-in-our-genes.html
| title= Apes of war... is it in our genes?
| accessdate = 2010-02-06
| location=London
| work=The Daily Telegraph
| first=Sanjida
| last=O'Connell
| date=2004-01-07}} Analysis of chimpanzee war behavior
</ref>
as well as in many ] species.<ref name = "AntsLandmines">{{cite web
| year = 1996
| url = http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=935783
| title= Warrior Ants: The Enduring Threat of the Small War and the Land-mine
| accessdate = 2010-02-03}} Scholarly comparisons between human and ant wars
</ref><ref name = "AntPacification">{{cite web
| year = 2010
| url = http://www.antcolonies.net/howantscarryonwar.html
| title=Ant war pacification experiments
| accessdate = 2010-02-03}}
</ref><ref name = "AntParallels">{{cite web
| year = 1998
| url = http://jlibsch.web.wesleyan.edu/Ant/Morphology/index.html
| title= The Ant: A Morphological Tour...
| accessdate = 2010-02-03}} Brief discussion of parallels between humans and ants
</ref>
The set of techniques used by a group to carry out war is known as '''warfare'''. An absence of war is usually called ].

War generally involves two or more organized groups or parties. Such a conflict is always an attempt at altering either the ] or material inter-group relationship of equality or domination between such groups. In all cases, at least one participant (group) in the conflict perceives the need to either psychologically or materially dominate the other participant and is unable or unwilling to accept or permit the possibility of a ''true relationship of fundamental equality'' to exist between the groups who have opted for group violence (war).

The attempt to establish or maintain domination and to avoid equality, is a precipitating factor in all wars, i.e., one group wishing to dominate another. Attempts at domination are also often the primary precipitating factor in individual one-on-one violence outside of the context of war, i.e., one individual attempting to dominate another.<ref name = "ViolenceSame">{{cite web
| year = 2009
| url = http://miraclevision.com/miracle.vision.press/the-path-to-extreme-violence.pdf
| title= The Path to Extreme Violence:Nazism and Serial Killers
| accessdate = 2010-02-06}} Analysis of common roots of violence between Nazis and serial killers.
</ref>

In 2003, Nobel Laureate ] identified war as the sixth (of ten) biggest problems facing the society of mankind for the next fifty years.<ref>{{cite web |title=Smalley Institute Grand Challenges |first=Richard E. |last=Smalley |publisher=] |year=2008 |accessdate=24 April 2011 |url=http://cnst.rice.edu/content.aspx?id=246}}</ref> In the 1832 ] ''"]"'', Prussian military general and theoretician ], defined war as follows: "''War is thus an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will''."<ref>{{cite book |last1= Clausewitz|first1= Carl von|authorlink1= Carl Von Clausewitz|editor1-first= Michael|editor1-last= Howard|editor1-link= Michael Howard|editor2-first= Peter|editor2-last= Paret|editor1-link=Peter Paret |title= On War|trans_title= Vom Krieg |edition= Indexed |year= 1984 |origyear= 1832|publisher= Princeton University Press|location= New Jersey |isbn= 978-0-691-01854-6|page= 75}} Italics in original.</ref>

War is a seemingly inescapable and integral aspect of human culture. Its practice is not linked to any single type of political organization or society. Rather, as discussed by ] in his ''History Of Warfare'', war is a universal phenomenon whose form and scope is defined by the society that wages it.<ref>Keegan, John, (1994) "A History Of Warfare", (Pimlico)</ref> The ever changing technologies and potentials of war extend along a historical continuum. At the one end lies the ] of ] {{Citation needed|date=July 2011}} with its stones and clubs, and the naturally limited loss of life associated with the use of such weapons. Found at the other end of this continuum is ], along with the recently developed possible outcome of its use, namely the rather sobering potential risk of the complete ].


==Etymology== ==Etymology==
The English word ''war'' derives from the 11th-century ] words {{lang|ang|wyrre}} and {{lang|ang|werre}}, from ] {{lang|fro|werre}} (also {{lang|fr|guerre}} as in modern French), in turn from the ] {{lang|frk|*werra}}, ultimately deriving from the ] {{lang|gem-x-proto|*werzō}} {{gloss|mixture, confusion}}. The word is related to the ] {{lang|osx|werran}}, ] {{lang|goh|werran}}, and the modern German {{lang|de|verwirren}}, meaning {{gloss|to confuse, to perplex, to bring into confusion}}.<ref>{{cite dictionary |title=war |dictionary=Online Etymology Dictionary |url=http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=war |year=2010 |access-date=24 April 2011 |archive-date=11 January 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120111153016/http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=war |url-status=live }}</ref>
].]]
The English word '''war''' derives from the late ] (c.1050) words '''wyrre''' and '''werre'''; the ] '''werre'''; the ] '''werra'''; and the ] '''werso'''. The denotation of '''war''' derives from the ] '''werran''', ] '''werran''', and the German '''verwirren''': “to confuse”, “to perplex”, and “to bring into confusion”.<ref>{{Cite web |title=war |publisher=Online Etymology Dictionary |url=http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=war |year=2010 |accessdate=24 April 2011}}</ref> Another posited derivation is from the Ancient Greek ''barbaros'', the Old-Persian ''varhara'', and the Sanscrit ''varvar'' and ''barbara''. In German, the equivalent is '''Krieg'''; the equivalent Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian words for '''war''' is '''guerra''', derived from the Germanic '''werra''' (“fight”, “tumult”).<ref>''Diccionario de la Lengua Española'', 21<sup>a</sup> edición (1992) p. 1071</ref> Etymologic legend has it that the Romanic peoples adopted a foreign, Germanic word for ''war'', to avoid using the ] '''bellum''', because, when sounded, it tended to merge with the sound of the word '''bello''' (beautiful).<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=war&searchmode=none|title=Online Etymology Dictionary|accessdate=2009-06-05}}</ref>


==History of warfare== ==History==
{{Main|Military history}}Anthropologists disagree about whether warfare was common throughout human prehistory, or whether it was a more recent development, following the invention of agriculture or organised states.<ref name=":3">{{Cite journal |last=Gat |first=Azar |date=2015-05-06 |title=Proving communal warfare among hunter-gatherers: The quasi-rousseauan error |url=https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/evan.21446 |journal=Evolutionary Anthropology: Issues, News, and Reviews |language=en |volume=24 |issue=3 |pages=111–126 |doi=10.1002/evan.21446 |issn=1060-1538}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Allen |first1=Mark W. |last2=Bettinger |first2=Robert Lawrence |last3=Codding |first3=Brian F. |last4=Jones |first4=Terry L. |last5=Schwitalla |first5=Al W. |date=2016-10-25 |title=Resource scarcity drives lethal aggression among prehistoric hunter-gatherers in central California |journal=Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences |language=en |volume=113 |issue=43 |pages=12120–12125 |doi=10.1073/pnas.1607996113 |doi-access=free |issn=0027-8424 |pmc=5087046 |pmid=27790997|bibcode=2016PNAS..11312120A }}</ref><ref>{{Citation |last1=Haas |first1=Jonathan |title=The Prehistory of Warfare: Misled by Ethnography |date=2013-04-12 |work=War, Peace, and Human Nature |pages=168–190 |editor-last=Fry |editor-first=Douglas P. |url=https://academic.oup.com/book/12748/chapter/162858373 |access-date=2024-12-22 |edition=1 |publisher=Oxford University PressNew York |language=en |doi=10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199858996.003.0010 |isbn=978-0-19-985899-6 |last2=Piscitelli |first2=Matthew}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Kissel |first1=Marc |last2=Kim |first2=Nam C. |date=January 2019 |title=The emergence of human warfare: Current perspectives |url=https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ajpa.23751 |journal=American Journal of Physical Anthropology |language=en |volume=168 |issue=S67 |pages=141–163 |doi=10.1002/ajpa.23751 |pmid=30575025 |issn=0002-9483}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Meijer |first=Hugo |date=September 2024 |title=The Origins of War: A Global Archaeological Review |url=https://link.springer.com/10.1007/s12110-024-09477-3 |journal=Human Nature |language=en |volume=35 |issue=3 |pages=225–288 |doi=10.1007/s12110-024-09477-3 |issn=1045-6767}}</ref> It is difficult to determine whether warfare went on during the ] due to the sparseness of known remains. Evidence of violent conflict appears to increase during the ] period, from around 10,000 years ago onwards.<ref name=":3" /> The ] has been described as a key period in the intensification of warfare, with the emergence of dedicated warriors and the development of metal weapons like swords.<ref>{{Citation |last1=Horn |first1=Christian |title=Introducing Bronze Age Warfare |date=2018-04-26 |work=Warfare in Bronze Age Society |pages=1–15 |editor-last=Horn |editor-first=Christian |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/9781316884522%23CN-bp-1/type/book_part |access-date=2024-12-22 |edition=1 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |doi=10.1017/9781316884522.002 |isbn=978-1-316-88452-2 |last2=Kristiansen |first2=Kristian |editor2-last=Kristiansen |editor2-first=Kristian}}</ref>]
{{Main|History of war}}
Before the dawn of civilization, war likely consisted of small-scale raiding. One half of the people found in a ]n cemetery dating to as early as 12,000 years ago had died of violence.<ref name="Keeley">Keeley: ''War before civilization: The myth of the peaceful savage''</ref> Since the rise of the ] some 5,000 years ago,<ref>Diamond, Jared, Guns, Germs and Steel</ref> military activity has occurred over much of the globe. The advent of ] and the acceleration of technological advances led to modern warfare. According to Conway W. Henderson, "One source claims 14,500 wars have taken place between 3500 BC and the late 20th century, costing 3.5 billion lives, leaving only 300 years of peace (Beer 1981: 20)."<ref>Conway W. Henderson (2010). "''''". John Wiley and Sons. 212. ISBN 1405197641</ref>


In '']'', Lawrence H. Keeley, a professor at the ], says that approximately 90–95% of known societies throughout history engaged in at least occasional warfare,<ref>{{cite web|url=http://brneurosci.org/reviews/war.html |title=Review: War Before Civilization |publisher=Brneurosci.org |date=2006-09-04 |accessdate=2011-01-24}}</ref> and many fought constantly.<ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/HG04Aa02.html|title=The fraud of primitive authenticity|last=Spengler|date=4 July 2006|work=Asia Times Online|accessdate=2009-06-08}}</ref> For instance, between 1801 and 1840, ]s engaged in 633 recorded intertribal battles.<ref>{{Cite book In '']'', ], a professor at the ], says approximately 90–95% of known societies throughout history engaged in at least occasional warfare,<ref>{{cite web |url=http://brneurosci.org/reviews/war.html |title=Review: War Before Civilization |publisher=Brneurosci.org |date=4 September 2006 |access-date=2011-01-24 |url-status=usurped |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101121021158/http://brneurosci.org/reviews/war.html |archive-date=21 November 2010}}</ref> and many fought constantly.<ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/HG04Aa02.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060706042537/http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/HG04Aa02.html|url-status=unfit|archive-date=6 July 2006|title=The fraud of primitive authenticity|last=Spengler|date=4 July 2006|work=Asia Times Online|access-date=2009-06-08}}</ref> Keeley describes several styles of primitive combat such as small ]s, large raids, and ]s. All of these forms of warfare were used by primitive societies, a finding supported by other researchers.<ref>{{cite book |editor-last1=Martin |editor-first1=Debra L. |editor-first2=Ryan P. |editor-last2=Harrod |editor-first3=Ventura R. |editor-last3=Pérez |date=2012 |title=The Bioarchaeology of Violence |location=Gainesville |publisher=University Press of Florida |url=http://www.upf.com/book.asp?id=MARTI002 |access-date=10 January 2013 |archive-date=4 November 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131104230028/http://upf.com/book.asp?id=MARTI002 |url-status=live }}</ref> Keeley explains that early war raids were not well organized, as the participants did not have any formal training. Scarcity of resources meant ] were not a cost-effective way to protect the society against enemy raids.<ref name="Keeley page 55">Keeley, Lawrence H: ''War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage''. p. 55.</ref>
| author = Barry Brailsford
| title =
| publisher = Taylor & Francis
| year = 1972
| page = 35}}
</ref>
]
William D. Rubinstein said that "Pre-literate societies, even those organised in a relatively advanced way, were renowned for their studied cruelty . . . in 1826 ] and an army of 50,000 literally destroyed the ], a rival tribe. This report stated that the Ndwandwe numbered at least 40,000: 'they were all put to death' ".<ref>Rubinstein, W. D. (2004). ''''. Pearson Education. p.22. ISBN 0-582-50601-8</ref> Historically, more than a third of the ] males, on average, died from warfare.<ref>Keeley, Lawrence H. ''War before civilization: The myth of the peaceful savage'', Oxford University Press, USA, 1996.</ref> American anthropologist ] claimed that men who participated in killings had more wives and children than those who did not.<ref>''Yanomamo: The Fierce People'' (Chagnon 1998; Chagnon 1992; Chagnon 1983)</ref>


] wrote "Pre-literate societies, even those organized in a relatively advanced way, were renowned for their studied cruelty.'"<ref>{{cite book|author=W. D. Rubinstein|title=Genocide: A History|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=nMMAk4VwLLwC&pg=PA22|access-date=31 May 2012|year=2004|publisher=Pearson Longman|isbn=978-0-582-50601-5|pages=22|archive-date=8 August 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130808075142/http://books.google.com/books?id=nMMAk4VwLLwC&pg=PA22|url-status=live}}</ref> Since the rise of the state some 5,000 years ago,<ref>Diamond, Jared, ''Guns, Germs and Steel''</ref> military activity has continued over much of the globe. The invention of ], and its eventual use in warfare, together with the acceleration of technological advances have fomented major changes to war itself.
In Western Europe, since the late 18th century, more than 150 conflicts and about 600 battles have taken place.<ref name=War>, From ''14 - 18 Understanding the Great War'', by Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau, Annette Becker</ref>


In Western Europe, since the late 18th century, more than 150 conflicts and about 600 battles have taken place.<ref name="War"> {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180227114356/http://www.ralphmag.org/CG/world-war-one2.html |date=27 February 2018 }}, From ''14–18 Understanding the Great War'', by Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau, Annette Becker</ref> During the 20th century, war resulted in a dramatic intensification of the pace of social changes, and was a crucial catalyst for the growth of ].<ref name = "Kolko 1994 xviitoxviii">{{Harvnb|Kolko|1994|p=xvii–xviii}}: "War in this century became an essential precondition for the emergence of a numerically powerful Left, moving it from the margins to the very center of European politics during 1917–18 and of all world affairs after 1941".</ref>
The ] documented a significant decline in the number and severity of armed conflicts since the end of the ] in the early 1990s. However, the evidence examined in the 2008 edition of the Center for International Development and Conflict Management's "Peace and Conflict" study indicated that the overall decline in conflicts had stalled.<ref>Hewitt, Joseph, J. Wilkenfield and T. nevertheless the concept war is more than just a word but a signification to the meaning Death. Gurr '''', Paradigm Publishers, 2007</ref>


] urged the socialist camp not to fear ] with the United States since, even if "half of mankind died, the other half would remain while imperialism would be razed to the ground and the whole world would become socialist."<ref>{{cite news |title= Instant Wisdom: Beyond the Little Red Book |url= http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,946612,00.html |date= 20 September 1976 |magazine= ] |access-date= 14 April 2013 |archive-date= 29 September 2013 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20130929083531/http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,946612,00.html |url-status= live }}</ref>
Recent rapid increases in the technologies of war, and therefore in its destructiveness (see ]), have caused widespread public concern, and have in all probability forestalled, and may hopefully altogether prevent the outbreak of a nuclear World War III. At the end of each of the last two World Wars, concerted and popular efforts were made to come to a greater understanding of the underlying dynamics of war and to thereby hopefully reduce or even eliminate it all together. These efforts materialized in the forms of the ], and its successor, the ].


]]]
Shortly after ], as a token of support for this concept, most nations joined the United Nations.
During this same post-war period, with the aim of further delegitimizing war as an acceptable and logical extension of foreign policy{{Citation needed|date=April 2011}}, most national governments also renamed their Ministries or Departments of War as their Ministries or Departments of Defense, for example, the former US Department of War was renamed as the ] .


Since 1945, great power wars, large-scale ] and ] have declined in frequency.<ref name=":4">{{Cite journal |last=Fazal |first=Tanisha M. |date=2025 |title=Is War in Decline? |url=https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-polisci-041923-115351 |journal=Annual Review of Political Science |language=en |doi=10.1146/annurev-polisci-041923-115351}}</ref> However, war in general has not necessarily declined.<ref name=":4" /> ] have increased in absolute terms since 1945.<ref name=":4" /> In the modern era, wars have been increasingly regulated by ].<ref name=":4" /> Battle deaths and casualties have declined over time, in part due to advances in military medicine.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Fazal |first=Tanisha M. |date=2014 |title=Dead Wrong? Battle Deaths, Military Medicine, and Exaggerated Reports of War's Demise |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/24480546 |journal=International Security |volume=39 |issue=1 |pages=95–125 |issn=0162-2889}}</ref>
In 1947, in view of the rapidly increasingly destructive consequences of modern warfare, and with a particular concern for the consequences and costs of the newly developed ], the initial developer of the concept of this bomb, ] famously stated, ''"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."''<ref name = "EinsteinWWIV">{{cite web
| year = 1947
| url = http://www.wagingpeace.org/menu/action/urgent-actions/einstein/
| title= Albert Einstein: Man of Imagination
| accessdate = 2010-02-03}} Nuclear Age Peace Foundation paper
</ref>
Fortunately, the anticipated costs of a possible third world war are currently no longer deemed as acceptable by most, thus little motivation currently seems to exist on an international level for such a war.


A distinctive feature of war since 1945 is that combat has largely been a matter of civil wars and insurgencies.<ref>Robert J. Bunker and Pamela Ligouri Bunker, "The modern state in epochal transition: The significance of irregular warfare, state deconstruction, and the rise of new warfighting entities beyond neo-medievalism." ''Small Wars & Insurgencies'' 27.2 (2016): 325–344.</ref> The major exceptions were the ], the ], the ], the ], the ], and the ].
Still since the close of World War II, limited non-nuclear conflicts continue, and surprisingly enough, some outspoken celebrities and politicians have even advocated for the proclamation of another world war.<ref name = "NewsCommentators">{{cite web
| year = 2006
| url = http://mediamatters.org/research/200607140017
| title= Right-wing media divided: Is U.S. now in World War III, IV, or V?
| accessdate = 2010-02-04}} Discussion of attempts to proclaim World Wars III, IV and V
</ref> ] urged the socialist camp not to fear nuclear war with the United States since, even if '' 'half of mankind died, the other half would remain while imperialism would be razed to the ground and the whole world would become socialist'.''<ref>"". TIME. September 20, 1976.</ref>


==Types of warfare==
<div class="center">
<!-- include "warfare" in heading to denote section's focus on methods of conducting wars, excluding their causes -->
<gallery perrow="7">
{{Main|Outline of war#Types of war|l1=Types of war}}
File:Greek-Persian duel.jpg|Greek ] and Persian warrior depicted fighting, on an ancient kylix, 5th century BC
* ] is the methods used in conflicts between ]s of drastically different levels of military capability or size.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Asymmetrical warfare {{!}} Britannica |url=https://www.britannica.com/topic/asymmetrical-warfare |access-date=2023-05-05 |website=www.britannica.com |language=en}}</ref>
File:MS Ghent - Battle of Tewkesbury.jpg|The ] (1471) during the ] in England
* ], or germ warfare, is the use of biological infectious agents or toxins such as bacteria, viruses, and fungi against people, plants, or animals. This can be conducted through sophisticated technologies, like ],<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Guillemin |first=Jeanne |date=July 2006 |title=Scientists and the history of biological weapons: A brief historical overview of the development of biological weapons in the twentieth century |journal=EMBO Reports |language=en |volume=7 |issue=S1 |pages=S45-9 |doi=10.1038/sj.embor.7400689 |issn=1469-221X |pmc=1490304 |pmid=16819450}}</ref> or with rudimentary techniques like catapulting an infected corpse behind enemy lines,<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Wheelis |first=Mark |title=Biological Warfare at the 1346 Siege of Caffa - Volume 8, Number 9—September 2002 - Emerging Infectious Diseases journal - CDC |journal=Emerging Infectious Diseases |year=2002 |volume=8 |issue=9 |pages=971–975 |url=https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/8/9/01-0536_article |language=en-us |doi=10.3201/eid0809.010536|pmid=12194776 |pmc=2732530 |issn=1080-6040}}</ref> and can include weaponized or non-weaponized pathogens.
File:Schwäbischer Bund Luzerner Schilling.jpg|A cattle raid during the ] (])
* ] involves the use of weaponized chemicals in combat. Poison gas as a ] was principally used during ], and resulted in over a million estimated casualties, including more than 100,000 civilians.<ref>{{cite book |title=Handbook of Chemical and Biological Warfare Agents |edition=2nd |author=D. Hank Ellison |date= 2007 |pages=567–570 |publisher=] |isbn=978-0-8493-1434-6}}</ref>
File:Battle of Ravenna (1512).JPG|The '']'', in which France defeated the Spaniards on Easter Sunday in 1512
* ] is an intense international rivalry without direct military conflict, but with a sustained threat of it, including high levels of military preparations, expenditures, and development, and may involve active conflicts by indirect means, such as ], ], ]s, ], ], or ]s.
File:Bad-war.jpg|] and ] pikemen fight at "]" during the ]
* ] is a form of warfare between states in which ], ], ] or ] are not used or see limited deployment.
File:Battle of Orsha (1514-09-08).jpg|Russo-Polish war, '']'' in 1514
* ] involves the actions by a nation-state or international organization to attack and attempt to damage another nation's information systems.
File:Battle of Lepanto 1571.jpg|The Spanish naval victory of the '']'', 1571, the last battle to be fought primarily between ]s
* ] is a rebellion against authority, where irregular forces take up arms to change an existing political order. An insurgency can be fought via ], and may also be opposed by measures to protect the population, and by political and economic actions of various kinds aimed at undermining the insurgents' claims against the incumbent regime.
File:Schlacht am Weißen Berg C-K 063.jpg|'']'', 1620, an early battle in the ]
* ] is the application of destructive force on a large scale against information assets and systems, against the ]s and ] that support the four critical infrastructures (the power grid, communications, financial, and transportation).<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://fas.org/irp/eprint/snyder/infowarfare.htm |title=Information Warfare |last=Lewis |first=Brian C. |website=Federation of American Scientist |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/19970617035106/http://www.fas.org/irp/eprint/snyder/infowarfare.htm |archive-date=17 June 1997 |url-status=dead |access-date=27 February 2017 }}</ref>
File:Van Soest, Four Days Battle.jpg|''The ], 1 –4 June 1666'', during the ]
* ] is warfare in which ]s are the primary, or a major, method of achieving capitulation.
File:Marten's Poltava.jpg|The '']'' (1709), a decisive battle between Russian and Swedish troops
* ] is any form of warfare involving deliberate ] of an area with radiological sources.
File:Charge of the French Cuirassiers at Waterloo.jpg|Depicting French Cuirassiers charging onto the British squares during the '']''
* ] is warfare by any means possible, disregarding the ], placing no limits on ]s, using ]s and ] resulting in significant ], or demanding a ] requiring significant sacrifices by the friendly civilian population.
File:Inkermann.jpg|The ] at the ], Crimean War, 1854
* ] can be defined as "military and quasi-military operations other than ]"<ref name="nagao definition">{{cite web |last1=Nagao |first1=Yuichiro |title=Unconventional Warfare: A Historical Perspective |url=http://www.nids.mod.go.jp/english/event/symposium/pdf/2001/sympo_e2001_6.pdf |website=National Institute for Defense Studies |publisher=] |access-date=18 August 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220816015847/http://www.nids.mod.go.jp/english/event/symposium/pdf/2001/sympo_e2001_6.pdf |archive-date=16 August 2022 |date=2001}}</ref> and may use ] forces or actions such as ], ], ], ], ], ], ] or ].
File:Battle of Fort Fisher.jpg|American Civil War, ] captures ], 1865
File:Crossingtherhine.jpg|USA's Army ] ] in assault boats, 1945
</gallery>
</div>


==Motivations== ==Aims==
] soldiers engaged in a firefight with ] during the ], 2009]]
], sequences from Romania]]
Motivations for war may be different for those ordering the war than for those undertaking the war. For a state to prosecute a war it must have the support of its leadership, its military forces, and its people. For example, in the ], Rome's leaders may have wished to make war with ] for the purpose of eliminating a resurgent rival, while the individual soldiers may have been motivated by a wish to make money. Since many people are involved, a war may acquire a life of its own from the confluence of many different motivations.


Entities contemplating going to war and entities considering whether to end a war may formulate ''war aims'' as an evaluation/propaganda tool. War aims may stand as a proxy for national-military resolve.<ref>{{cite book
The Jewish ] describes in the BeReshit Rabbah commentary on the fight between ] (Parashot BeReshit XXII:7) that there are three universal reasons for wars: A) Economic, B) Ideological/religious, and C) Power/pride/love (personal).<ref name = "MidrashQuote">{{cite web
|last1 = Sullivan
| year = 2008
|first1 = Patricia
| url = http://www.yutorah.org/lectures/lecture.cfm/728352/Rabbi_David_Horwitz/Parashat_Bereshit:_The_Conflict_between_Cain_and_Abel
|title = Who Wins?: Predicting Strategic Success and Failure in Armed Conflict
| title= The Conflict between Cain and Abel
|chapter-url = https://books.google.com/books?id=ceushfFUCpUC
| accessdate = 2010-02-07}} Analysis of Midrash re: Cain & Abel
|publisher = Oxford University Press, US
</ref>
|page = 17
|publication-date = 2012
|doi = 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199878338.003.0003
|isbn = 978-0199878338
|access-date = 2015-08-25
|quote = A state with greater military capacity than its adversary is more likely to prevail in wars with 'total' war aims{{snd}}the overthrow of a foreign government or annexation of territory{{snd}}than in wars with more limited objectives.
|date = 2012
|chapter = War Aims and War Outcomes
|archive-date = 13 September 2015
|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20150913023410/https://books.google.com/books?id=ceushfFUCpUC
|url-status = live
}}</ref>


=== Definition ===
In ''Why Nations Go to War'', by ], the author points out that both sides will claim that morality justifies their fight. He also states that the rationale for beginning a war depends on an overly optimistic assessment of the outcome of hostilities (casualties and costs), and on ].
Fried defines war aims as "the desired territorial, economic, military or other benefits expected following successful conclusion of a war".<ref>{{cite book
|last1 = Fried
|first1 = Marvin Benjamin
|title = Austro-Hungarian War Aims in the Balkans During World War I
|url = https://books.google.com/books?id=ETDtAwAAQBAJ
|publisher = Palgrave Macmillan
|publication-date = 2014
|page = 4
|isbn = 978-1137359018
|access-date = 2015-08-24
|quote = War aims are the desired territorial, economic, military or other benefits expected following successful conclusion of a war.
|date = 2014-07-01
|archive-date = 17 October 2015
|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20151017214443/https://books.google.com/books?id=ETDtAwAAQBAJ
|url-status = live
}}</ref>


=== Classification ===
As the strategic and tactical aspects of warfare are always changing, theories and doctrines relating to warfare are often reformulated before, during, and after every major war. ] said, 'Every age had its own kind of war, its own limiting conditions, and its own peculiar preconceptions.'.<ref>Clausewitz, Carl Von (1976), On War (Princeton University Press) p.593</ref> The one constant factor is war’s employment of organized violence and the resultant destruction of property and/ or lives that necessarily follows.


Tangible/intangible aims:
===Behavioral psychology===
* Tangible war aims may involve (for example) the acquisition of territory (as in the German goal of ] in the first half of the 20th century) or the recognition of economic concessions (as in the ]).
Dutch psychoanalyst ] held that, "War is often ... a mass discharge of accumulated internal rage (where)... the inner fears of mankind are discharged in mass destruction."<ref name = "meerloo">
* Intangible war aims – like the accumulation of credibility or reputation<ref>Welch distinguishes: "tangible goods such as arms, wealth, and – provided they are strategically or economically valuable – territory and resources" from "intangible goods such as credibility and reputation" – {{cite book
| A. M. Meerloo, M.D. ''The Rape of the Mind'' (2009) p.134, Progressive Press, ISBN 9781615773763
|last1 = Welch
</ref> Thus war can sometimes be a means by which man's own frustration at his inability to master his own self is expressed and temporarily relieved via his unleashing of destructive behavior upon ''others''. In this destructive scenario, these ''others'' are made to serve as the scapegoat of man's own unspoken and subconscious frustrations and fears.
|first1 = David A.
|title = Justice and the Genesis of War
|url = https://books.google.com/books?id=i2Z5blE1KGoC
|series = Cambridge Studies in International Relations
|issue = 29
|publisher = Cambridge University Press
|publication-date = 1995
|page = 17
|isbn = 978-0521558686
|access-date = 2015-08-24
|date = 1995
|archive-date = 18 September 2015
|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20150918185242/https://books.google.com/books?id=i2Z5blE1KGoC
|url-status = live
}}</ref> – may have more tangible expression ("conquest restores prestige, annexation increases power").<ref>{{cite book
|last1 = Fried
|first1 = Marvin Benjamin
|title = Austro-Hungarian War Aims in the Balkans During World War I
|url = https://books.google.com/books?id=ETDtAwAAQBAJ
|publisher = Palgrave Macmillan
|publication-date = 2014
|page = 4
|isbn = 978-1137359018
|access-date = 2015-08-24
|quote = Intangibles, such as prestige or power, can also represent war aims, though often (albeit not always) their achievement is framed within a more tangible context (e.g. conquest restores prestige, annexation increases power, etc.).
|date = 2014-07-01
|archive-date = 17 October 2015
|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20151017214443/https://books.google.com/books?id=ETDtAwAAQBAJ
|url-status = live
}}</ref>


Explicit/implicit aims:
Other psychoanalysts such as E.F.M. Durban and ] have argued that human beings are ] violent.<ref>Durbin, E.F.L. and John Bowlby .''Personal Aggressiveness and War'' 1939.</ref> This aggressiveness is fueled by ] and ] where a person transfers their grievances into bias and hatred against other ], religions, nations or ]. By this theory the nation state preserves order in the local society while creating an outlet for aggression through warfare. If war is innate to human nature, as is presupposed and predetermined by many psychological theories, then there is little hope of ever escaping it{{Citation needed|date=January 2010}}.
* Explicit war aims may involve published policy decisions.
* Implicit war aims<ref>Compare:{{cite news
|last1 = Katwala
|first1 = Sunder
|author-link1 = Sunder Katwala
|title = Churchill by Paul Addison
|url = https://www.theguardian.com/books/2005/feb/13/biography.features1
|department = Books
|newspaper = The Guardian
|publisher = Guardian News and Media Limited
|date = 2005-02-13
|access-date = 2015-08-24
|quote = took office and declared he had 'not become the King's First Minister to oversee the liquidation of the British empire'. His view was that an Anglo-American English-speaking alliance would seek to preserve the empire, though ending it was among Roosevelt's implicit war aims.
|archive-date = 28 September 2016
|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20160928012352/https://www.theguardian.com/books/2005/feb/13/biography.features1
|url-status = live
}}</ref> can take the form of minutes of discussion, memoranda and instructions.<ref>Compare {{cite book
|last1 = Fried
|first1 = Marvin Benjamin
|title = Austro-Hungarian War Aims in the Balkans During World War I
|url = https://books.google.com/books?id=ETDtAwAAQBAJ
|publisher = Palgrave Macmillan
|publication-date = 2014
|page = 4
|isbn = 978-1137359018
|access-date = 2015-08-24
|quote = At times, war aims were explicitly stated internally or externally in a policy decision, while at other times the war aims were merely discussed but not published, remaining instead in the form of memoranda or instructions.
|date = 2014-07-01
|archive-date = 17 October 2015
|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20151017214443/https://books.google.com/books?id=ETDtAwAAQBAJ
|url-status = live
}}</ref>


Positive/negative aims:
The Italian psychoanalyst Franco Fornari, a follower of ], thought that war was the paranoid or projective “elaboration” of mourning.<ref>(Fornari 1975)</ref> Fornari thought that war and violence develop out of our “love need”: our wish to preserve and defend the sacred object to which we are attached, namely our early mother and our fusion with her. For the adult, nations are the sacred objects that generate warfare. Fornari focused upon sacrifice as the essence of war: the astonishing willingness of human beings to die for their country, to give over their bodies to their nation.
* "Positive war aims" cover tangible outcomes.
* "Negative war aims" forestall or prevent undesired outcomes.<ref>{{cite book
|last1 = Fried
|first1 = Marvin Benjamin
|chapter = 'A Life and Death Question': Austro-Hungarian War Aims in the First World War
|editor1-last = Afflerbach
|editor1-first = Holger
|title = The Purpose of the First World War: War Aims and Military Strategies
|chapter-url = https://books.google.com/books?id=A6AFCgAAQBAJ
|series = Schriften des Historischen Kollegs
|volume = 91
|location = Berlin/Boston
|publisher = Walter de Gruyter GmbH
|publication-date = 2015
|page = 118
|isbn = 978-3110443486
|access-date = 2015-08-24
|quote = he Foreign Ministry and the Military High Command were in agreement that political and military hegemony over Serbia and the Western Balkans was a vital war aim. The Hungarian Prime Minister István Count Tisza, by contrast, was more preoccupied with so-called 'negative war aims', notably warding off hostile Romanian, Italian, and even Bulgarian intervention.
|date = 2015-07-01
|archive-date = 16 October 2015
|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20151016235519/https://books.google.com/books?id=A6AFCgAAQBAJ
|url-status = live
}}</ref>


War aims can change in the course of conflict and may eventually morph into "peace conditions"<ref>{{cite book
Despite Fornari's theory that man's altruistic desire for self-sacrifice for a noble cause is a contributing factor towards war, in history only a tiny fraction of wars have originated from a desire for war from the general populace.<ref>Blanning, T.C.W. "The Origin of Great Wars." ''The Origins of the French Revolutionary Wars.'' pg. 5</ref> Far more often the general population has been reluctantly drawn into war by its rulers. One psychological theory that looks at the leaders is advanced by Maurice Walsh.<ref>Walsh, Maurice N. ''War and the Human Race.'' 1971.</ref> He argues that the general populace is more neutral towards war and that wars only occur when leaders with a psychologically abnormal disregard for human life are placed into power. War is caused by leaders that seek war such as ] and ]. Such leaders most often come to power in times of crisis when the populace opts for a decisive leader, who then leads the nation to war.
|last1 = Haase
|first1 = Hugo
|author-link1 = Hugo Haase
|chapter = The Debate in the Reichstag on Internal Political Conditions, April 5–6, 1916
|editor1-last = Lutz
|editor1-first = Ralph Haswell
|title = Fall of the German Empire, 1914–1918
|chapter-url = https://books.google.com/books?id=cW6mAAAAIAAJ
|series = Hoover War Library publications
|issue = 1–2
|publisher = Stanford University Press
|publication-date = 1932
|page = 233
|isbn = 978-0804723800
|access-date = 2015-08-25
|quote = Gentlemen, when it comes time to formulate peace conditions, it is time to think of another thing than war aims.
|year = 1932
|archive-date = 25 October 2015
|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20151025051415/https://books.google.com/books?id=cW6mAAAAIAAJ
|url-status = live
}}</ref> – the minimal conditions under which a state may cease to wage a particular war.


==Effects==
===Evolutionary psychology===
]{{Main|Effects of war}}
A distinct branch of the psychological theories of war are the arguments based on ]. This school tends to see war as an extension of animal behavior, such as territoriality and ]. Animals are naturally aggressive, and in humans this aggression manifests itself as warfare. However, while war has a natural cause, the development of technology has accelerated human destructiveness to a level that is irrational and damaging to the species. The earliest advocate of this theory was ].<ref>Lorenz, Konrad ''On Aggression'' 1966</ref>


=== Military and civilian casualties ===
Biologists studying primate behavior have also added to the debate. ] in 1974 documented what she called a war between groups of ]s in the ] of ].<ref>See interview with Jane Goodall, and see , By Peter Miller] (at maricopa.edu)</ref>
] for war per 100,000&nbsp;inhabitants in 2004<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.who.int/entity/healthinfo/global_burden_disease/gbddeathdalycountryestimates2004.xls |title=Mortality and Burden of Disease Estimates for WHO Member States in 2004 |publisher=World Health Organization |access-date=5 October 2020 |archive-date=28 August 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210828123901/https://www.who.int/healthinfo/global_burden_disease/gbddeathdalycountryestimates2004.xls |url-status=live }}</ref>{{Div col|small=yes|colwidth=10em}}
{{legend|#b3b3b3|no data}}
{{legend|#ffff65|less than 100}}
{{legend|#fff200|100–200}}
{{legend|#ffdc00|200–600}}
{{legend|#ffc600|600–1000}}
{{legend|#ffb000|1000–1400}}
{{legend|#ff9a00|1400–1800}}
{{legend|#ff8400|1800–2200}}
{{legend|#ff6e00|2200–2600}}
{{legend|#ff5800|2600–3000}}
{{legend|#ff4200|3000–8000}}
{{legend|#ff2c00|8000–8800}}
{{legend|#cb0000|more than 8800}}
{{div col end}}]]


Throughout the course of human history, the average number of people dying from war has fluctuated relatively little, being about 1 to 10 people dying per 100,000. However, major wars over shorter periods have resulted in much higher casualty rates, with 100–200 casualties per 100,000 over a few years. While conventional wisdom holds that casualties have increased in recent times due to technological improvements in warfare, this is not generally true. For instance, the ] (1618–1648) had about the same number of casualties per capita as ], although it was higher during ] (WWII). That said, overall the number of casualties from war has not significantly increased in recent times. Quite to the contrary, on a global scale the time since WWII has been unusually peaceful.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://ourworldindata.org/war-and-peace/|title=War and Peace|work=Our World in Data|access-date=2017-11-16|archive-date=16 November 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171116083027/https://ourworldindata.org/war-and-peace/|url-status=live}}</ref>
] narrator Sir ] mentioned a 'raid into the territory of their neighbors' by a group of Chimps in the series Planet Earth.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7XuXi3mqYM&NR=1&feature=fvwp |title=BBC WorldWide, 2008 Dec 16, "Planet Earth" (via youtube) |publisher=Youtube.com |date=2008-12-16 |accessdate=2011-01-24}}</ref>


Estimates for total deaths due to war vary widely. In one estimate, primitive warfare from 50,000 to 3000 BCE has been thought to have claimed 400{{nbsp}}million±133,000 victims based on the assumption that it accounted for the 15.1% of all deaths.<ref>Matthew White, {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130414061247/http://necrometrics.com/pre1700b.htm#Primitive |date=14 April 2013 }}</ref> Other scholars find the prehistoric percentage much lower, around 2%, similar to the Neanderthals and ancestors of apes and primates.<ref>Gómez, José María et al (Summer 2016). "The phylogenetic roots of human lethal violence," ''Nature'', vol 538 (7624), https://www.uv.es/~verducam/HHL.pdf</ref> For the period 3000 BCE until 1991, estimates range from 151{{nbsp}}million to 2{{nbsp}}billion.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Eckhardt |first1=William |date=1991 |title=War-related deaths since 3000 BC. |url= |journal=Bulletin of Peace Proposals |volume= 22|issue=4 |pages=437–443 |doi= 10.1177/096701069102200410|s2cid=144946896 |access-date=}}, https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&doi=27e7fdb7d9b671cdcf999f3aab15cca8be25b163</ref>
These theories have been criticized by scholars such as ], who argue that the organized, sustained war of ] differs more than just technologically from the territorial fights between non-human animals. ] strongly denies such universalistic instinctual arguments, arguing that social factors and childhood socialization are important in determining the nature and presence of warfare. Thus, he argues, while human aggression may be a universal occurrence, warfare is not, and would appear to have been a historical invention, associated with certain types of human societies.<ref>Montagu, Ashley (1976), "The Nature of Human Aggression" (Oxford University Press)</ref>


===Economic theories=== ===Largest wars by death toll===
{{Main|List of wars by death toll|Outline of war#Wars|Casualty recording}}
{{Original research|section|date=January 2010}}
The deadliest war in history, in terms of the cumulative number of deaths since its start, is ], from 1939 to 1945, with 70–85&nbsp;million deaths, followed by the ]<ref>*The Cambridge History of China: Alien regimes and border states, 907–1368, 1994, p. 622, cited by White
War can be seen as a growth of ] competition in a competitive international system. In this view wars begin as a pursuit of markets for ]s and for wealth. While this theory has been applied to many conflicts, such counter arguments become less valid as the increasing mobility of capital and information level the distributions of wealth worldwide, or when considering that it is relative, not absolute, wealth differences that may fuel wars. There are those on the extreme ] of the political spectrum who provide support, ]s in particular, by asserting a natural right of the strong to whatever the weak cannot hold by force.
<br />*Matthew White (2011). ''The Great Big Book of Horrible Things: The Definitive Chronicle of History's 100 Worst Atrocities''.</ref> at up to 60&nbsp;million. As concerns a belligerent's losses in proportion to its prewar population, the most destructive war in ] may have been the ] (see ]). In 2013 war resulted in 31,000 deaths, down from 72,000 deaths in 1990.<ref name=GDB2013>{{cite journal|collaboration= | first1= Christopher JL| last1 = Murray|first2=Theo|last2= Vos|first3=Alan D|last3= Lopez|title=Global, regional, and national age-sex specific all-cause and cause-specific mortality for 240 causes of death, 1990–2013: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2013|journal=Lancet|date=17 December 2014|pmid=25530442|doi=10.1016/S0140-6736(14)61682-2|pmc=4340604|volume=385|issue=9963|pages=117–71}}</ref>


War usually results in significant deterioration of infrastructure and the ecosystem, a decrease in social spending, ], large-scale emigration from the war zone, and often the mistreatment of ] or civilians.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Tanton|first1=John|title=The Social Contract|date=2002|page=42}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last1=Moore|first1=John|title=The pursuit of happiness|date=1992|page=304}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last1=Baxter|first1=Richard|title=Humanizing the Laws of War|date=2013|page=344}}</ref> For instance, of the nine million people who were on the territory of the ] in 1941, some 1.6&nbsp;million were killed by the Germans in actions away from battlefields, including about 700,000 prisoners of war, 500,000 Jews, and 320,000 people counted as partisans (the vast majority of whom were unarmed civilians).<ref>Timothy Snyder, ''Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin'', Basic Books, 2010, p. 250.</ref> Another byproduct of some wars is the prevalence of ] by some or all parties in the conflict,<ref>''Dying and Death: Inter-disciplinary Perspectives''. p. 153, Asa Kasher (2007)</ref> and increased revenues by ].<ref>{{cite book|last1=Chew|first1=Emry|title=Arming the Periphery|date=2012|page=49}}</ref>
===Marxist theories===
The ] theory of war is quasi-economic in that it states that all modern wars are caused by competition for resources and markets between great (]) powers, claiming these wars are a natural result of the ] and ]. Part of the theory is that war will only disappear once a ], over-throwing free markets and class systems, has occurred. German Communist ] theorized that ] was the result of capitalist countries needing new ]. Expansion of the ] is only possible if there is a corresponding growth in ]. Since the workers in a ] would be unable to fill the demand, producers must expand into non-capitalist markets to find consumers for their goods, hence driving imperialism.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.marxists.org/archive/mandel/1955/08/imp-crit.html |title=The Marxist Theory of Imperialism and its Critics |first=Einde |last=O'Callaghan |publisher=] |date=25 October 2007 |accessdate=24 April 2011}}</ref>


Three of the ten most costly wars, in terms of loss of life, have been waged in the last century. These are the two World Wars, followed by the ] (which is sometimes considered part of ], or as overlapping). Most of the others involved China or neighboring peoples. The death toll of World War II, being over 60&nbsp;million, surpasses all other war-death-tolls.<ref name="users.erols">McFarlane, Alan: ''The Savage Wars of Peace: England, Japan and the Malthusian Trap'', Blackwell 2003, {{ISBN|978-0-631-18117-0}} – cited by {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171220023849/http://necrometrics.com/pre1700a.htm#Manchu17c |date=20 December 2017 }}</ref>
===Demographic theories===<!-- This section is linked from ] -->
{| class=wikitable
|-
! Deaths<br />(millions)
! Date
! War
|-
| {{right|70–85}} || 1939–1945 || ] (see ])
|-
| {{right|60}} || 13th century || ] (see ] and ])<ref>Ping-ti Ho, "An Estimate of the Total Population of Sung-Chin China", in ''Études Song'', Series 1, No 1, (1970) pp. 33–53.</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://necrometrics.com/pre1700a.htm#Mongol |title=Mongol Conquests |publisher=Users.erols.com |access-date=2011-01-24 |archive-date=20 December 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171220023849/http://necrometrics.com/pre1700a.htm#Mongol |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.globalwebpost.com/genocide1971/articles/general/worst_massacres.htm |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20030517105614/http://www.globalwebpost.com/genocide1971/articles/general/worst_massacres.htm |url-status=dead |archive-date=17 May 2003 |title=The world's worst massacres Whole Earth Review |access-date=2011-01-24 |year=1987 }}</ref>
|-
| {{right|40}} || 1850–1864 || ] (see ])<ref>{{cite encyclopedia |url=http://concise.britannica.com/ebc/article-9380148/Taiping |title=Taiping Rebellion – Britannica Concise |encyclopedia=Britannica |access-date=2011-01-24 |archive-date=15 December 2007 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071215124111/http://concise.britannica.com/ebc/article-9380148/Taiping |url-status=dead }}</ref>
|-
| {{right|36}} || 755–763 || ] (death toll uncertain)<ref>{{cite web |url=http://necrometrics.com/pre1700a.htm#AnLushan |title=Selected Death Tolls for Wars, Massacres and Atrocities Before the 20th Century |publisher=Users.erols.com |access-date=2011-01-24 |archive-date=20 December 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171220023849/http://necrometrics.com/pre1700a.htm#AnLushan |url-status=live }}</ref>
|-
| {{right|25}} || 1616–1662 || ] conquest of ]<ref name="users.erols" />
|-
| {{right|15–22}} || 1914–1918 ||] (see ])<ref name = Britannica>{{Cite web|url=https://www.britannica.com/event/World-War-I/Killed-wounded-and-missing|title=World War I - Killed, wounded, and missing &#124; Britannica|website=Britannica.com|access-date=5 December 2021}}</ref>
|-
| {{right|20}} || 1937–1945 || ]<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/nuclear_01.shtml |title=Nuclear Power: The End of the War Against Japan |work=BBC News |access-date=2011-01-24 |archive-date=28 November 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151128194317/http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/nuclear_01.shtml |url-status=live }}</ref>
|-
| {{right|20}} || 1370–1405 || Conquests of ]<ref>{{cite web |url=http://necrometrics.com/pre1700a.htm#Timur |title=Timur Lenk (1369–1405) |publisher=Users.erols.com |access-date=2011-01-24 |archive-date=20 December 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171220023849/http://necrometrics.com/pre1700a.htm#Timur |url-status=live }}</ref><ref> {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171220023849/http://necrometrics.com/pre1700a.htm#Asian |date=20 December 2017 }} (a compilation of scholarly death toll estimates)</ref>
|-
| {{right|20.77}} || 1862–1877 || ]<ref>{{cite book |title=《中国人口史》 |language=zh |volume=5《清时期》 |page=635 |author=曹树基}} {{Full citation needed|date=February 2016}}</ref><ref name="Lu">{{cite news |title=同治光绪年间陕西人口的损失 |language=zh |author = 路伟东}}{{Full citation needed|date=February 2016}}</ref>
|-
| {{right|5–9}} || 1917–1922 || ] and ]<ref>{{cite web|url=https://spartacus-educational.com/RUScivilwar.htm |title=Russian Civil War |publisher=Spartacus-Educational.com |access-date=2019-02-26 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101205201225/http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/RUScivilwar.htm |archive-date=5 December 2010 }}</ref>
|}


===On military personnel===
Demographic theories can be grouped into two classes, Malthusian theories and ] theories.
] subject to combat in war often suffer mental and physical injuries, including depression, ], disease, injury, and death.


{{Quote|In every war in which American soldiers have fought in, the chances of becoming a psychiatric casualty – of being debilitated for some period of time as a consequence of the stresses of military life – were greater than the chances of being killed by enemy fire.|''No More Heroes'', Richard Gabriel<ref name="War"/>}}
====Malthusian theories====
Malthusian theories see expanding population and scarce resources as a source of violent conflict.


Swank and Marchand's World War II study found that after sixty days of continuous combat, 98% of all surviving military personnel will become psychiatric casualties. Psychiatric casualties manifest themselves in fatigue cases, confusional states, conversion hysteria, anxiety, obsessional and compulsive states, and character disorders.<ref name="autogenerated1996">{{cite book|last=Lt. Col. Dave Grossman|title=On Killing – The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War & Society|publisher= Little, Brown & Co. |year=1996}}</ref>
] in 1095, on the eve of the ], spoke:
{{quote|For this land which you now inhabit, shut in on all sides by the sea and the mountain peaks, is too narrow for your large population; it scarcely furnishes food enough for its cultivators. Hence it is that you murder and devour one another, that you wage wars, and that many among you perish in civil strife. Let hatred, therefore, depart from among you; let your quarrels end. Enter upon the road to the Holy Sepulchre; wrest that land from a wicked race, and subject it to yourselves."<ref>{{cite book |title=Lend me your ears: great speeches in history |first=William |last=Safire |publisher=] |year=200] |isbn=9780393059311 |page=94}}</ref>}}


{{Quote|One-tenth of mobilised American men were hospitalised for mental disturbances between 1942 and 1945, and after thirty-five days of uninterrupted combat, 98% of them manifested psychiatric disturbances in varying degrees.|''14–18: Understanding the Great War'', Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau, Annette Becker<ref name="War"/>}}
This is one of the earliest expressions of what has come to be called the Malthusian theory of war, in which wars are caused by expanding populations and limited resources. ] (1766&ndash;1834) wrote that populations always increase until they are limited by war, ], or ].<ref>{{cite book |title=Geography: an integrated approach |first=David |last=Waugh |publisher=] |year=2000 |isbn=9780174447061 |page=378}}</ref>


Additionally, it has been estimated anywhere from 18% to 54% of Vietnam war veterans suffered from ].<ref name="autogenerated1996"/>
This theory is thought by Malthusians to account for the relative decrease in wars during the past fifty years, especially in the ], where advances in agriculture have made it possible to support a much larger population than was formerly the case, and where ] has dramatically slowed the increase in population.


Based on 1860 census figures, 8% of all white American males aged 13 to 43 died in the ], including about 6% in the North and approximately 18% in the South.<ref>{{cite book|author=Maris Vinovskis|title=Toward a Social History of the American Civil War: Exploratory Essays|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9D4TAwc93VoC|access-date=31 May 2012|date=1990|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-0-521-39559-5|archive-date=26 May 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130526101206/http://books.google.com/books?id=9D4TAwc93VoC|url-status=live}}</ref> The war remains the deadliest conflict in American history, resulting in the deaths of 620,000 military personnel. ] since 1775 have totaled over two million. Of the 60&nbsp;million European military personnel who were mobilized in ], 8&nbsp;million were killed, 7&nbsp;million were permanently disabled, and 15&nbsp;million were seriously injured.<ref>Kitchen, Martin (2000), '' {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080512224100/http://www.jimmyatkinson.com/papers/versaillestreaty.html |date=12 May 2008 }}'', New York: Longman</ref>
====Youth bulge theory====
] by country. A youth bulge is evident for ], and to a lesser extent for South and Southeast Asia and Central America.]]
] theory differs significantly from Malthusian theories. Its adherents see a combination of large male youth cohorts - as graphically represented as a "youth bulge" in a ] - with a lack of regular, peaceful ] opportunities as a risk pool for violence.


] killed and scalped by Sioux {{Circa|1874}}]]
While Malthusian theories focus on a disparity between a growing population and available natural resources, youth bulge theory focuses on a disparity between non-inheriting, 'excess' young males and available social positions within the existing social system of ].
During ]'s retreat from Moscow, more French military personnel died of ] than were killed by the Russians.<ref>. Joseph M. Conlon.</ref> Of the 450,000 soldiers who crossed the ] on 25 June 1812, less than 40,000 returned. More military personnel were killed from 1500 to 1914 by typhus than from military action.<ref name="TIME Magazine 1940">. ''Time''.</ref> In addition, if it were not for modern medical advances there would be thousands more dead from disease and infection. For instance, during the ], the ] reported it conscripted 184,899 sailors, of whom 133,708 (72%) died of disease or were 'missing'.<ref>A. S. Turberville (2006). ''Johnson's England: An Account of the Life & Manners of His Age''. p. 53. {{ISBN|1-4067-2726-1}}</ref> It is estimated that between 1985 and 1994, 378,000 people per year died due to war.<ref>{{cite journal |vauthors=Obermeyer Z, Murray CJ, Gakidou E |title=Fifty years of violent war deaths from Vietnam to Bosnia: analysis of data from the world health survey programme |journal=BMJ |volume=336 |issue=7659 |pages=1482–86 |date=June 2008 |pmid=18566045 |pmc=2440905 |doi=10.1136/bmj.a137 }}</ref>


===On civilians===
Contributors to the development of ] theory include French sociologist Gaston Bouthoul,<ref>Bouthoul, Gaston: "L`infanticide différé" (deferred infanticide), Paris 1970</ref> U.S. sociologist ],<ref>Goldstone, Jack A.: "Revolution and Rebellion in the Early Modern World", Berkeley 1991; Goldstone, Jack A.: "Population and Security: How Demographic Change can Lead to Violent Conflict", </ref> U.S. political scientist Gary Fuller,<ref>Fuller, Gary: "The Demographic Backdrop to Ethnic Conflict: A Geographic Overwiew", in: CIA (Ed.): "The Challenge of Ethnic Conflict to National and International Order in the 1990s", Washington 1995, 151-154</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.strategicinspirations.com/ispu/go/images/F000180/Graham+Fuller+paper.pdf |title=Fuller, Gary (2004): "The Youth Crisis in Middle Eastern Society" |format=PDF |date= |accessdate=2011-01-24}}</ref><ref>Fuller, Gary (2003): "The Youth Factor: The New Demographics of the Middle East and the Implications for U.S. Policy"</ref> and German sociologist ].<ref>Gunnar Heinsohn (2003): "Söhne und Weltmacht: Terror im Aufstieg und Fall der Nationen" ("Sons and Imperial Power: Terror and the Rise and Fall of Nations"), Zurich 2003), available online as free download (in German) ; see also the review of this book by Göran Therborn: "Nato´s Demographer", New Left Review 56, March/April 2009, 136-144 </ref> ] has modified his ] theory by using youth bulge theory as its foundation:
{{see also|Civilian casualties}}
]'' depict the destruction unleashed on civilians during the ].]]
Most wars have resulted in significant loss of life, along with destruction of infrastructure and resources (which may lead to ], disease, and death in the ] ]). During the ] in Europe, the population of the ] was reduced by 15 to 40 percent.<ref> {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171220023849/http://necrometrics.com/pre1700a.htm#30YrW |date=20 December 2017 }}, Alan McFarlane, The Savage Wars of Peace: England, Japan and the Malthusian Trap (2003)</ref><ref> {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130723052625/http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/195896/history-of-Europe/58335/Demographics#ref=ref310375 |date=23 July 2013 }}. Encyclopædia Britannica.</ref> Civilians in war zones may also be subject to war atrocities such as ], while survivors may suffer the psychological aftereffects of witnessing the destruction of war. War also results in lower quality of life and worse health outcomes. A medium-sized conflict with about 2,500 battle deaths reduces civilian life expectancy by one year and increases ] by 10% and ] by 3.3%. Additionally, about 1.8% of the population loses access to ].<ref>{{cite journal|doi=10.1146/annurev-polisci-050317-064057|doi-access=free|title=The Consequences of Contention: Understanding the Aftereffects of Political Conflict and Violence|year=2019|last1=Davenport|first1=Christian|last2=Mokleiv Nygård|first2=Håvard|last3=Fjelde|first3=Hanne|last4=Armstrong|first4=David|journal=Annual Review of Political Science|volume=22|pages=361–377}}</ref>


Most estimates of ] indicate around 60&nbsp;million people died, 40&nbsp;million of whom were civilians.<ref>{{cite web|title=World War II Fatalities|url=http://www.secondworldwar.co.uk/casualty.html|access-date=2007-04-20|archive-date=22 April 2007|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070422000628/http://www.secondworldwar.co.uk/casualty.html|url-status=dead}}</ref> Deaths in the ] were around ].<ref>{{cite news|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4530565.stm|title=Leaders mourn Soviet wartime dead|date=9 May 2005|access-date=6 January 2010|work=BBC News|archive-date=22 December 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191222043852/http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4530565.stm|url-status=live}}</ref> Since a high proportion of those killed were young men who had not yet fathered any children, population growth in the postwar Soviet Union was much lower than it otherwise would have been.<ref>{{cite book|first=Geoffrey A.|last=Hosking|title=Rulers And Victims: The Russians in the Soviet Union|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=CDMVMqDvp4QC&pg=PA242|access-date=31 May 2012|year=2006|publisher=Harvard University Press|isbn=978-0-674-02178-5|pages=242–|archive-date=5 September 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150905171344/https://books.google.com/books?id=CDMVMqDvp4QC&pg=PA242|url-status=live}}</ref>
{{quote|I don't think Islam is any more violent than any other religions, and I suspect if you added it all up, more people have been slaughtered by Christians over the centuries than by Muslims. But the key factor is the demographic factor. Generally speaking, the people who go out and kill other people are males between the ages of 16 and 30.


===Economic===
During the 1960s, 70s and 80s there were high birth rates in the Muslim world, and this has given rise to a huge youth bulge. But the bulge will fade. Muslim birth rates are going down; in fact, they have dropped dramatically in some countries. Islam did spread by the sword originally, but I don't think there is anything inherently violent in Muslim theology."''<ref>‘So, are civilizations at war?’, Interview with Samuel P. Huntington by Michael Steinberger, The Observer, Sunday October 21, 2001 </ref>}}
{{see also|Military Keynesianism}}
Once a war has ended, losing nations are sometimes required to pay ] to the victorious nations. In certain cases, land is ceded to the victorious nations. For example, the territory of ] has been traded between France and Germany on three different occasions.<ref>{{cite encyclopedia |url=https://www.britannica.com/place/Alsace-Lorraine |title=Alsace-Lorraine |encyclopedia=Encyclopædia Britannica |edition=Online |access-date=21 March 2022 |archive-date=20 March 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220320174427/https://www.britannica.com/place/Alsace-Lorraine |url-status=live }}</ref>


Typically, war becomes intertwined with the economy and many wars are partially or entirely based on economic reasons. The common view among economic historians is that the ] ended with the advent of ]. Many economists believe that government spending on the war caused or at least accelerated recovery from the Great Depression, though some consider that it did not play a very large role in the recovery, though it did help in reducing unemployment.<ref name="Britannica1"> {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150509121741/https://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/243118/Great-Depression|date=9 May 2015}}, ''Encyclopædia Britannica''</ref><ref name="Galbraith">Referring to the effect of World War II spending on the economy, economist ] said, "One could not have had a better demonstration of the Keynesian ideas." {{cite video |url=https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/commandingheights/lo/story/ch_menu.html |title=Commanding Heights, see chapter 6 video or transcript |date=2002 |medium=TV documentary |publisher=] |location=U.S. |people=], William Cran (writers / producer)}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Romer |first=Christina D. |author-link=Christina Romer |year=1992 |title=What Ended the Great Depression? |journal=Journal of Economic History |volume=52 |issue=4 |pages=757–784 |doi=10.1017/S002205070001189X |quote=fiscal policy was of little consequence even as late as 1942, suggests an interesting twist on the usual view that World War II caused, or at least accelerated, the recovery from the Great Depression.}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Higgs |first=Robert |date=1 March 1992 |title=Wartime Prosperity? A Reassessment of the U.S. Economy in the 1940s |journal=The Journal of Economic History |volume=52 |issue=1 |pages=41–60 |doi=10.1017/S0022050700010251 |issn=1471-6372 |s2cid=154484756}}</ref> In most cases, such as the wars of Louis XIV, the ], and ], warfare primarily results in damage to the economy of the countries involved. For example, Russia's involvement in World War I took such a toll on the Russian economy that it almost collapsed and greatly contributed to the start of the ].<ref>{{cite book|last1=Gatrell|first1=Peter|title=Russia's First World War : A Social and Economic History|date=2014|publisher=Routledge|location=Hoboken, New Jersey |isbn=978-1317881391|page=270}}</ref>
Youth Bulge theories represent a relatively recent development but seem to have become more influential in guiding U.S. foreign policy and military strategy as both Goldstone and Fuller have acted as consultants to the U.S. Government. CIA Inspector General ] referred to youth bulge theory in his 2002 report "The National Security Implications of Global Demographic Change".<ref>Helgerson, John L. (2002): "The National Security Implications of Global Demographic Trends"</ref>


====World War II====
According to Heinsohn, who has proposed youth bulge theory in its most generalized form, a youth bulge occurs when 30 to 40 percent of the males of a nation belong to the "fighting age" cohorts from 15 to 29 years of age. It will follow periods with ]s as high as 4-8 children per woman with a 15-29 year delay.
]'s Napoleon Square in the aftermath of ]]]
] was the most financially costly conflict in history; its belligerents cumulatively spent about a trillion U.S. dollars on the ] (as adjusted to 1940 prices).<ref>{{cite web |last=Mayer |first=E. |date=2000 |url= http://emayzine.com/lectures/WWII.html |title=World War II course lecture notes|website=Emayzine.com |location=Victorville, California |publisher=Victor Valley College |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090301155526/http://emayzine.com/lectures/WWII.html |archive-date=1 March 2009 |access-date=4 July 2014}}</ref><ref>Coleman, P. (1999) , ''World War II Resource Guide'' (Gardena, California: The American War Library)</ref>
The ] of the 1930s ended as nations increased their production of war materials.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://memory.loc.gov/learn/features/timeline/depwwii/depwar.html |title= Great Depression and World War II, 1929–1945 |publisher=Library of Congress |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071012023043/http://memory.loc.gov/learn/features/timeline/depwwii/depwar.html |archive-date=12 October 2007 |access-date=4 July 2014}}</ref>


By the end of the war, 70% of European industrial infrastructure was destroyed.<ref>{{cite book|author-link1=Marc Pilisuk|author1=Marc Pilisuk|author2=Jennifer Achord Rountree|title=Who Benefits from Global Violence and War: Uncovering a Destructive System|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=r9kNZrmG0E8C&pg=PA136|access-date=31 May 2012|year=2008|publisher=Greenwood Publishing Group|isbn=978-0-275-99435-8|pages=136–|archive-date=26 May 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130526083711/http://books.google.com/books?id=r9kNZrmG0E8C&pg=PA136|url-status=live}}</ref> Property damage in the Soviet Union inflicted by the ] was estimated at a value of 679&nbsp;billion rubles. The combined damage consisted of complete or partial destruction of 1,710 cities and towns, 70,000 villages/hamlets, 2,508 church buildings, 31,850 industrial establishments, {{convert|40000|mi|0|abbr=on}} of railroad, 4100 railroad stations, 40,000 hospitals, 84,000 schools, and 43,000 public libraries.<ref>'']'', 9 February 1946, Volume 95, Number 32158.</ref>
A total fertility rate of 2.1 children born by a woman during her lifetime represents a situation of in which the son will replace the father, and the daughter will replace the mother. Thus, a total fertility rate of 2.1 represents replacement level, while anything below represents a ] rate leading to ].


==Theories of motivation==
Total fertility rates above 2.1 will lead to population growth and to a youth bulge. A total fertility rate of 4-8 children per mother implies 2-4 sons per mother. Consequently, one father has to leave not 1, but 2 to 4 social positions (jobs) to give all his sons a perspective for life, which is usually hard to achieve. Since respectable positions cannot be increased at the same speed as food, textbooks and vaccines, many "angry young men" find themselves in a situation that tends to escalate their adolescent anger into violence: they are
{{see also|International relations theory}}


There are many theories about the motivations for war, but no consensus about which are most common.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Levy |first=Jack S. |year=1989 |title=The Causes of War: A Review of Theories and Evidence |journal=Behavior, Society and Nuclear War |volume=I |page=295 |editor1-first=Philip E. |editor1-last=Tetlock |editor2-first=Jo L. |editor2-last=Husbands |editor3-first=Robert |editor3-last=Jervis |editor4-first=Paul C. |editor4-last=Stern |editor5-first=Charles |editor5-last=Tilly |access-date=4 May 2012 |url=http://fas-polisci.rutgers.edu/levy/1989%20Causes%20of%20War.pdf |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130922150721/http://fas-polisci.rutgers.edu/levy/1989%20Causes%20of%20War.pdf |archive-date=22 September 2013 }}</ref> Military theorist ] said, "Every age has its own kind of war, its own limiting conditions, and its own peculiar preconceptions."<ref>Clausewitz, Carl Von (1976), ''On War'' (Princeton University Press) p. 593</ref>
#Demographically superfluous,
#Might be out of work or stuck in a menial job, and
#Often have no access to a legal sex life before a career can earn them enough to provide for a family. ''See: ], ]''.


===Psychoanalytic===
The combination of these ] factors according to Heinsohn<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.webcitation.org/query?url=http://www.geocities.com/funnyguy_35/DefenceTraining.PDF&date=2009-10-25+22:25:12 |title=Heinsohn, G.(2006): "Demography and War." |publisher=Webcitation.org |date= |accessdate=2011-01-24}}</ref> usually heads for one of six different exits:
Dutch ] ] held that, "War is often...a mass discharge of accumulated internal rage (where)...the inner fears of mankind are discharged in mass destruction."<ref name = "meerloo">
| A. M. Meerloo, M.D. ''The Rape of the Mind'' (2009) p. 134, Progressive Press, {{ISBN|978-1-61577-376-3}}
</ref> Other psychoanalysts such as E.F.M. Durban and ] have argued human beings are ] violent.<ref>Durbin, E.F.L. and John Bowlby. ''Personal Aggressiveness and War'' 1939.</ref> This aggressiveness is fueled by ] and ] where a person transfers his or her grievances into bias and hatred against other ], ]s, ]s or ]. By this theory, the nation state preserves order in the local society while creating an outlet for aggression through warfare.


The Italian psychoanalyst ], a follower of ], thought war was the paranoid or projective "elaboration" of mourning.<ref>(Fornari 1975)</ref> Fornari thought war and violence develop out of our "love need": our wish to preserve and defend the sacred object to which we are attached, namely our early mother and our fusion with her. For the adult, nations are the sacred objects that generate warfare. Fornari focused upon sacrifice as the essence of war: the astonishing willingness of human beings to die for their country, to give over their bodies to their nation.
#] ("non violent ]")
#Violent ]
#Rebellion or ]
#] and/or ]
#] (to take over the positions of the slaughtered)
#] (violent colonization, frequently including genocide abroad).


Despite Fornari's theory that man's altruistic desire for self-sacrifice for a noble cause is a contributing factor towards war, few wars have originated from a desire for war among the general populace.<ref>Blanning, T.C.W. "The Origin of Great Wars." ''The Origins of the French Revolutionary Wars.'' p. 5</ref> Far more often the general population has been reluctantly drawn into war by its rulers. One psychological theory that looks at the leaders is advanced by Maurice Walsh.<ref>Walsh, Maurice N. ''War and the Human Race.'' 1971.</ref> He argues the general populace is more neutral towards war and wars occur when leaders with a psychologically abnormal disregard for human life are placed into power. War is caused by leaders who seek war such as ] and ]. Such leaders most often come to power in times of crisis when the populace opts for a decisive leader, who then leads the nation to war.
Religions and ideologies are seen as secondary factors that are being used to legitimate violence, but will not lead to violence by themselves if no youth bulge is present. Consequently, youth bulge theorists see both past "Christianist" European colonialism and imperialism and today's "Islamist" civil unrest and terrorism as results of high birth rates producing youth bulges.<ref>Heinsohn, G.(2005): "Population, Conquest and Terror in the 21st Century." </ref> With the ] now being seen as another example of youth-bulge-driven violence, especially if compared to ] which is geographically close, yet remarkably more peaceful.<ref>G. Heinsohn: "Why Gaza is Fertile Ground for Angry Young Men." Financial Times Online, June 14, 2007 , retrieved on December 23, 2007; compare demographic data for Gaza Strip (,)and Lebanon (, ) provided by the U.S. Census Bureau; see also David Bau: "History is Demographics", retrieved on December 23, 2007</ref>


{{Quotation|Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship. ... the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.|
Among prominent historical events that have been linked to the existence of youth bulges is the role played by the historically large youth cohorts in the rebellion and revolution waves of early modern Europe, including ] of 1789,<ref>Goldstone, Jack A.: "Revolution and Rebellion in the Early Modern World", Berkeley 1991 </ref> and the importance of economic depression hitting the largest German youth cohorts ever in explaining the rise of ] in Germany in the 1930s.<ref>Moller, Herbert (1968): ‘Youth as a Force in the Modern World’, Comparative Studies in Society and
] at the ], 18 April 1946<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.snopes.com/quotes/goering.htm|title=In an interview with Gilbert in Göring's jail cell during the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials (18 April 1946)|access-date=5 August 2015|date=2017-04-18}}</ref>}}
History 10: 238–260; 240–244</ref> The 1994 ] has also been analyzed as following a massive youth bulge.<ref>Diessenbacher, Hartmut (1994): Kriege der Zukunft. Die Bevölkerungsexplosion gefährdet den Frieden. Muenchen: Hanser 1998; see also (criticizing youth bulge theory) Marc Sommers (2006): "Fearing Africa´s Young Men: The Case of Rwanda." The World Bank: Social Development Papers - Conflict Prevention and Reconstruction, Paper No. 32, January 2006 </ref>


===Evolutionary===
While the implications of population growth have been known since the completion of the ] in 1974,<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.population-security.org/28-APP2.html |title='&#39;National Security Study Memorandum 200 (NSSM 200) - April 1974'&#39; |publisher=Population-security.org |date= |accessdate=2011-01-24}}</ref> neither the U.S. nor the WHO have implemented the recommended measures to control population growth to avert the terrorist threat. Prominent demographer ] attributes this to the influence of the ].<ref>Stephen D. Mumford: </ref>
{{See also|Prehistoric warfare}}


Several theories concern the evolutionary origins of warfare. There are two main schools: One sees organized warfare as emerging in or after the Mesolithic as a result of complex social organization and greater population density and ] over resources; the other sees human warfare as a more ancient practice derived from common animal tendencies, such as territoriality and sexual competition.<ref>Peter Meyer. Social Evolution in Franz M. Wuketits and Christoph Antweiler (eds.) Handbook of Evolution The Evolution of Human Societies and Cultures Wiley-VCH Verlag</ref>
Youth Bulge theory has been subjected to statistical analysis by the World Bank,<ref>Urdal, Henrik (2004): "The Devil in the Demographics: The Effect of Youth Bulges on Domestic Armed Conflict," ,</ref> ],<ref>Population Action International: "The Security Demographic: Population and Civil Conflict after the Cold War"</ref> and the ].<ref>Kröhnert, Steffen (2004): "Warum entstehen Kriege? Welchen Einfluss haben demografische Veränderungen auf die Entstehung von Konflikten?" </ref> Detailed demographic data for most countries is available at the international database of the ].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/idb/informationGateway.php |title=United States Census Bureau: International Database |publisher=Census.gov |date= |accessdate=2011-01-24}}</ref> Statistic data about historical development of demographic and economic parameters over the last 200 years for each country can be visualized at ].<ref>Gapminder World: Development of total fertility rates and income per person, 1800-2009 </ref>


The latter school argues that since warlike behavior patterns are found in many primate species such as ]s,<ref name = "ApesWar">{{cite news| url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/3317461/Apes-of-war...-is-it-in-our-genes.html| title=Apes of war...is it in our genes?| access-date=2010-02-06| location=London| work=The Daily Telegraph| first=Sanjida| last=O'Connell| date=7 January 2004| archive-date=4 September 2018| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180904192203/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/3317461/Apes-of-war...-is-it-in-our-genes.html| url-status=live}} Analysis of chimpanzee war behavior</ref> as well as in many ] species,<ref name = "AntsLandmines">{{citation | year = 1996| ssrn = 935783| title= Warrior Ants: The Enduring Threat of the Small War and the Land-mine| last1 = Anderson| first1 = Kenneth}} Scholarly comparisons between human and ant wars</ref> group conflict may be a general feature of animal social behavior. Some proponents of the idea argue that war, while innate, has been intensified greatly by developments of technology and social organization such as weaponry and states.<ref>Johan M.G. van der Dennen. 1995. ''The Origin of War: Evolution of a Male-Coalitional Reproductive Strategy''. Origin Press, Groningen, 1995 chapters 1 & 2</ref>
Youth bulge theories have been criticized as leading to racial, gender and age "discrimination".<ref>Hendrixson, Anne: "Angry Young Men, Veiled Young Women: Constructing a New Population Threat" </ref>


Psychologist and linguist ] argued that war-related behaviors may have been naturally selected in the ancestral environment due to the benefits of victory.{{refn|group=lower-alpha|name = fn1|
===Rationalist theories===
The argument is made from pages 314 to 332 of ].<ref>{{cite book |last=Pinker |first=Steven |author-link=Steven Pinker |date=2002 |title=The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature |url= |location=London |publisher=The Penguin Group |pages=314–332 |isbn=0-713-99256-5}}</ref> Relevant quotes include on p332 "The first step in understanding violence is to set aside our abhorrence of it long enough to examine why it can sometimes pay off in evolutionary terms.", "Natural selection is powered by competition, which means that the products of natural selection{{snd}}survival machines, in Richard Dawkins metaphor{{snd}}should, by default, do whatever helps them survive and reproduce.". On p323 "If an obstacle stands in the way of something an organism needs, it should neutralize the obstacle by disabling or eliminating it.", "Another human obstacle consists of men monopolozing women who could otherwise be taken as wives.", "The competition can be violent". On p324 "So people have invented, and perhaps evolved, an alternate defense: the advertised deterrence policy known as ''lex talionis'', the law of retaliation, familiar from the biblical injunction "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth." If you can credibly say to potential adversaries, "We won't attack first, but if we are attacked, we will survive and strike back," you remove Hobbes's first two incentives for quarrel, gain and mistrust.". On p326 "Also necessary for vengeance to work as a deterrent is that the willingness to pursue it be made public, because the whole point of deterrence is to give would-be attackers second thoughts ''beforehand''. And this brings us to Hobbes's final reason for quarrel. Thirdly, glory{{snd}}though a more accurate word would be "honor"."}} He also argued that in order to have credible ] against other groups (as well as on an individual level), it was important to have a reputation for retaliation, causing humans to develop instincts for ] as well as for protecting a group's (or an individual's) reputation ("]").{{refn|name = fn1|group=lower-alpha}}
Rationalist theories of war assume that both sides to a potential war are rational, which is to say that each side wants to get the best possible outcome for itself for the least possible loss of life and property to its own side. Given this assumption, if both countries knew in advance how the war would turn out, it would be better for both of them to just accept the post-war outcome without having to actually pay the costs of fighting the war. This is based on the notion, generally agreed to by almost all scholars of war since ], that wars are reciprocal, that all wars require both a decision to attack and also a decision to resist attack.
Rationalist theory offers three reasons why some countries cannot find a bargain and instead resort to war: issue indivisibility, ] with incentive to deceive, and the inability to make credible commitments.<ref>Fearon, James D. 1995. "Rationalist Explanations for War." International Organization 49, 3: 379-414. </ref>


] city-states over resources may have contributed to the eventual ] of the ] by 900 CE.]]
Issue indivisibility occurs when the two parties cannot avoid war by bargaining because the thing over which they are fighting cannot be shared between them, only owned entirely by one side or the other. Religious issues, such as control over the ] in Jerusalem, are more likely to be indivisible than economic issues.
Crofoot and Wrangham have argued that warfare, if defined as group interactions in which "coalitions attempt to aggressively dominate or kill members of other groups", is a characteristic of most human societies. Those in which it has been lacking "tend to be societies that were politically dominated by their neighbors".<ref name="HumanPrimateAggression">''Mind the Gap: Tracing the Origins of Human Universals'' By Peter M. Kappeler, Joan B. Silk, 2009, Chapter 8, "Intergroup Aggression in Primates and Humans; The Case for a Unified Theory", Margaret C. Crofoot and Richard W. Wrangham</ref>


] strongly denied universalistic instinctual arguments, arguing that social factors and childhood socialization are important in determining the nature and presence of warfare. Thus, he argues, warfare is not a universal human occurrence and appears to have been a historical invention, associated with certain types of human societies.<ref>Montagu, Ashley (1976), ''The Nature of Human Aggression'' (Oxford University Press)</ref> Montagu's argument is supported by ethnographic research conducted in societies where the concept of aggression seems to be entirely absent, e.g. the ] and ] of the Malay peninsula.<ref>Howell, Signe and Roy Willis, eds. (1989) ''Societies at Peace: Anthropological Perspectives''. London: Routledge</ref> Bobbi S. Low has observed correlation between warfare and education, noting societies where warfare is commonplace encourage their children to be more aggressive.<ref> {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151016052509/http://sitemaker.umich.edu/eugene.burnstein/files/35._low_93_evolutionaryperspective_war.pdf |date=16 October 2015 }}, Bobbi S. Low, published in ''Behavior, Culture, and Conflict in World Politics'', The University of Michigan Press, p. 22</ref>
A bigger branch of the theory, advanced by scholars of international relations such as ], is that both sides decide to go to war and one side may have miscalculated.


===Economic===
Some go further and say that there is a problem of information asymmetry with incentives to misrepresent. The two countries may not agree on who would win a war between them, or whether victory would be overwhelming or merely eked out, because each side has military secrets about its own capabilities. They will not avoid the bargaining ] by sharing their secrets, since they cannot trust each other not to lie and exaggerate their strength to extract more concessions. For example, Sweden made efforts to deceive Nazi Germany that it would resist an attack fiercely, partly by playing on the myth of Aryan superiority and by making sure that ] only saw elite troops in action, often dressed up as regular soldiers, when he came to visit.
]s on fire during the ], 1 March 1991]]
{{See Also|Resource war}}
War can be seen as a growth of economic competition in a competitive international system. In this view wars begin as a pursuit of markets for ]s and for wealth. War has also been linked to ] by economic historians and development economists studying ] and ].<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Johnson |first1=Noel D. |last2=Koyama |first2=Mark |date=April 2017 |title=States and economic growth: Capacity and constraints |url= |journal= Explorations in Economic History|volume= 64|issue= |pages=1–20 |doi=10.1016/j.eeh.2016.11.002 |access-date=}}</ref> While this theory has been applied to many conflicts, such counter arguments become less valid as the increasing mobility of capital and information level the distributions of wealth worldwide, or when considering that it is relative, not absolute, wealth differences that may fuel wars. There are those on the extreme ] of the political spectrum who provide support, fascists in particular, by asserting a natural right of a strong nation to whatever the weak cannot hold by force.<ref>] and Matthew Feldman, eds., ''Fascism: Fascism and Culture'', New York: ], 2004.</ref><ref>Hawkins, Mike. ''] in European and American Thought, 1860–1945: Nature as Model and Nature as Threat'', ], 1997.</ref> Some centrist, capitalist, world leaders, including ] and U.S. ], expressed support for an economic view of war.
===Marxist===
{{Main|Marxist explanations of warfare}}
The ] theory of war is quasi-economic in that it states all modern wars are caused by competition for resources and markets between great (]) powers, claiming these wars are a natural result of ]. Marxist economists ], ], ] and ] theorized that ] was the result of capitalist countries needing new ]. Expansion of the ] is only possible if there is a corresponding growth in ]. Since the workers in a ] would be unable to fill the demand, producers must expand into non-capitalist markets to find consumers for their goods, hence driving imperialism.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.marxists.org/archive/mandel/1955/08/imp-crit.html |title=The Marxist Theory of Imperialism and its Critics |first=Einde |last=O'Callaghan |publisher=] |date=25 October 2007 |access-date=24 April 2011 |archive-date=8 July 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170708100958/https://www.marxists.org/archive/mandel/1955/08/imp-crit.html |url-status=live }}</ref>


===Demographic===
The American decision to enter the ] was made with the full knowledge that the communist forces would resist them, but did not believe that the guerrillas had the capability to long oppose ].
<!-- This section is linked from ] -->


Demographic theories can be grouped into two classes, Malthusian and youth bulge theories:
Thirdly, bargaining may fail due to the states' inability to make credible commitments.<ref>Powell, Robert. 2002. "Bargaining Theory and International Conflict." Annual Review of Political Science 5: 1-30.</ref> In this scenario, the two countries might be able to come to a bargain that would avert war if they could stick to it, but the benefits of the bargain will make one side more powerful and lead it to demand even more in the future, so that the weaker side has an incentive to make a stand now.


====Malthusian====
Rationalist explanations of war can be critiqued on a number of grounds. The assumptions of cost-benefit calculations become dubious in the most extreme genocidal cases of World War II, where the only bargain offered in some cases was infinitely bad. Rationalist theories typically assume that the state acts as a unitary individual, doing what is best for the state as a whole; this is problematic when, for example, the country's leader is beholden to a very small number of people, as in a personalistic dictatorship. Rationalist theory also assumes that the actors are rational, able to accurately assess their likelihood of success or failure, but the proponents of the psychological theories above would disagree.


] see expanding population and scarce resources as a source of violent conflict. ] in 1095, on the eve of the ], advocating Crusade as a solution to European overpopulation, said:
Rationalist theories are usually explicated with ], for example, the ], not a ] as such, rather a simulation of economic decisions underlying war.
{{quote|For this land which you now inhabit, shut in on all sides by the sea and the mountain peaks, is too narrow for your large population; it scarcely furnishes food enough for its cultivators. Hence it is that you murder and devour one another, that you wage wars, and that many among you perish in civil strife. Let hatred, therefore, depart from among you; let your quarrels end. Enter upon the road to the Holy Sepulchre; wrest that land from a wicked race, and subject it to yourselves.<ref>{{cite book |title=Lend me your ears: great speeches in history |first=William |last=Safire |publisher=] |year=2004 |isbn=978-0-393-05931-1 |page=94}}</ref>}}


This is one of the earliest expressions of what has come to be called the Malthusian theory of war, in which wars are caused by expanding populations and limited resources. ] (1766–1834) wrote that populations always increase until they are limited by war, disease, or ].<ref>{{cite book |title=Geography: an integrated approach |first=David |last=Waugh |publisher=] |year=2000 |isbn=978-0-17-444706-1 |page=378}}</ref> The violent ], ], ] and other countries in the ] region have been exacerbated by ] and population growth.<ref>{{cite news |title=In Mali, waning fortunes of Fulani herders play into Islamist hands |url=https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mali-fulani/in-mali-waning-fortunes-of-fulani-herders-play-into-islamist-hands-idUSKBN13F0L2 |work=Reuters |date=20 November 2016 |access-date=31 March 2019 |archive-date=30 March 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190330131908/https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mali-fulani/in-mali-waning-fortunes-of-fulani-herders-play-into-islamist-hands-idUSKBN13F0L2 |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{cite news |title=How Climate Change Is Spurring Land Conflict in Nigeria |url=https://time.com/5324712/climate-change-nigeria/ |magazine=Time |date=28 June 2018 |access-date=31 March 2019 |archive-date=4 March 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210304231237/https://time.com/5324712/climate-change-nigeria/ |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{cite news |title=The Deadliest Conflict You've Never Heard of |url=https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/nigeria/2019-01-23/deadliest-conflict-youve-never-heard |work=] |date=23 January 2019 |access-date=31 March 2019 |archive-date=18 February 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190218125507/https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/nigeria/2019-01-23/deadliest-conflict-youve-never-heard |url-status=live }}</ref>
===Political science theories===
{{Ref improve section|date=June 2008}}
The ] analysis of war was pioneered by ] following ]. More recent databases of wars and armed conflict have been assembled by the Correlates of War Project, Peter Brecke and the ].


====Youth bulge====
There are several different ] schools. Supporters of ] argue that the motivation of states is the quest for security.
] by country. War reduces life expectancy. A youth bulge is evident for ], and to a lesser extent in some countries in West Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia and Central America.]]
Which sometimes is argued to contradict the realist view, that there is much empirical evidence to support the claim that states that are ] do not go to war with each other, an idea that has come to be known as the ]. Other factors included are difference in moral and religious beliefs, economical and trade disagreements, declaring independence, and others.


According to ], who proposed ] theory in its most generalized form, a youth bulge occurs when 30 to 40 percent of the males of a nation belong to the "fighting age" cohorts from 15 to 29 years of age. It will follow periods with ]s as high as 4–8 children per woman with a 15–29-year delay.<ref>Helgerson, John L. (2002): "The National Security Implications of Global Demographic Trends" {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171010064934/http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/cia/helgerson2.htm|date=10 October 2017}}</ref><ref>Heinsohn, G. (2006): "Demography and War" {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160512185458/https://de.scribd.com/doc/310263543/Gunnar-Heinsohn-Demography-and-War |date=12 May 2016 }}</ref> Heinsohn saw both past "Christianist" European colonialism and imperialism, as well as today's Islamist civil unrest and terrorism as results of high birth rates producing youth bulges.<ref>Heinsohn, G. (2005): "Population, Conquest and Terror in the 21st Century" {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160513082119/https://de.scribd.com/doc/310265022/Gunnar-Heinsohn-Population-Conquest-and-Terror-in-the-21st-Century |date=13 May 2016 }}</ref>
Another major theory relating to ] and '']'' is the ], which distributes the world into a hierarchy and explains major wars as part of a cycle of ] being destabilized by a ] which does not support the hegemons' control.


Among prominent historical events that have been attributed to youth bulges are the role played by the historically large youth cohorts in the rebellion and revolution waves of early modern Europe, including the ] of 1789,<ref>{{cite book|author=Jack A. Goldstone|title=Revolution and Rebellion in the Early Modern World|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=M-T9dR7nWDUC|access-date=31 May 2012|date= 1993|publisher=University of California Press|isbn=978-0-520-08267-0|archive-date=26 May 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130526133145/http://books.google.com/books?id=M-T9dR7nWDUC|url-status=live}}</ref> and the effect of economic depression upon the largest German youth cohorts ever in explaining the rise of ] in Germany in the 1930s.<ref>Moller, Herbert (1968): 'Youth as a Force in the Modern World', ''Comparative Studies in Society and History'' 10: 238–60; 240–44</ref> The 1994 ] has also been analyzed as following a massive youth bulge.<ref>Diessenbacher, Hartmut (1994): ''Kriege der Zukunft: Die Bevölkerungsexplosion gefährdet den Frieden''. Muenchen: Hanser 1998; see also (criticizing youth bulge theory) Marc Sommers (2006): "Fearing Africa's Young Men: The Case of Rwanda." The World Bank: Social Development Papers – Conflict Prevention and Reconstruction, Paper No. 32, January 2006 {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171010064638/http://www.eldis.org/vfile/upload/1/document/0708/DOC21389.pdf|date=10 October 2017}}</ref> Youth bulge theory has been subjected to statistical analysis by the World Bank,<ref>] (2004): "The Devil in the Demographics: The Effect of Youth Bulges on Domestic Armed Conflict", ,</ref> ],<ref>Population Action International: "The Security Demographic: Population and Civil Conflict after the Cold War" {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171010064933/http://pai.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/The_Security_Demographic_Population_and_Civil_Conflict_After_the_Cold_War-1.pdf|date=10 October 2017}}</ref> and the ].<ref>Kröhnert, Steffen (2004): "Warum entstehen Kriege? Welchen Einfluss haben demografische Veränderungen auf die Entstehung von Konflikten?" {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180904230108/https://www.berlin-institut.org/fileadmin/user_upload/Jugend_und_Kriegsgefahr/Warum_entstehen_Kriege.pdf|date=4 September 2018}}</ref> Youth bulge theories have been criticized as leading to racial, gender and age discrimination.<ref>Hendrixson, Anne: "Angry Young Men, Veiled Young Women: Constructing a New Population Threat" {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100530200503/http://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/item.shtml?x=85999|date=30 May 2010}}</ref>
Military adventurism can sometimes be used by political leaders as a means of boosting their domestic popularity, as has been recorded in US war-time presidential popularity surveys taken during the presidencies of several recent US leaders.<ref name = "MilitaryAdventurism">{{cite web
===Cultural===
| year = 2001
] argues that what distinguishes the "Western way of war" based in Western Europe chiefly allows historians to explain its extraordinary success in conquering most of the world after 1500:<blockquote> The Western way of war rests upon five principal foundations: technology, discipline, a highly aggressive military tradition, a remarkable capacity to innovate and to respond rapidly to the innovation of others and{{snd}}from about 1500 onward{{snd}}a unique system of war finance. The combination of all five provided a formula for military success....The outcome of wars has been determined less by technology, then by better war plans, the achievement of surprise, greater economic strength, and above all superior discipline.<ref>Geoffrey Parker, "Introduction" in Parker, ed. ''The Cambridge illustrated history of warfare'' (Cambridge University Press 1995) pp 2–11, </ref></blockquote>
| url = http://www.bepress.com/peps/vol7/iss3/3/
| title= Peace Economics, Peace Science and Public Policy (pg. 19)
| accessdate = 2010-02-07}} Leaders may use war as instant popularity boost
</ref>


Parker argues that Western armies were stronger because they emphasized discipline, that is, "the ability of a formation to stand fast in the face of the enemy, where they're attacking or being attacked, without giving way to the natural impulse of fear and panic." Discipline came from drills and marching in formation, target practice, and creating small "artificial kinship groups: such as the company and the platoon, to enhance psychological cohesion and combat efficiency.<ref>Parker, :Introduction: pp 2, 3.</ref>
==Morality of wars==
]", by John Heaviside Clarke, 1816.]]


===Rationalist===
{{Unreferenced section|date=June 2008}}


] is an ] or framework. Rationalism (and ]) operate under the assumption that states or international actors are rational, seek the best possible outcomes for themselves, and desire to avoid the costs of war.<ref name=":0">{{Cite journal|title = Rationalist Explanations for War|last = Fearon|first = James D.|date = Summer 1995|journal = International Organization |volume=49 |issue=3 |pages=379–414|doi = 10.1017/s0020818300033324|jstor=2706903| s2cid=38573183 }}</ref> Under one ] approach, rationalist theories posit all actors can ], would be better off if war did not occur, and likewise seek to understand why war nonetheless reoccurs. Under another rationalist game theory without bargaining, the ], optimal strategies can still be found that depend upon number of iterations played. In "Rationalist Explanations for War", ] examined three rationalist explanations for why some countries engage in war:
{{Original research|section|date=January 2010}}
* Issue indivisibilities
* Incentives to misrepresent or ]
* Commitment problems<ref name=":0" />


"Issue indivisibility" occurs when the two parties cannot avoid war by bargaining, because the thing over which they are fighting cannot be shared between them, but only owned entirely by one side or the other. "] with incentives to misrepresent" occurs when two countries have secrets about their individual capabilities, and do not agree on either: who would win a war between them, or the magnitude of state's victory or loss. For instance, ] argues that war is a result of miscalculation of strength. He cites historical examples of war and demonstrates, "war is usually the outcome of a diplomatic crisis which cannot be solved because both sides have conflicting estimates of their bargaining power."<ref>{{cite book|author=Geoffrey Blainey|title=Causes of War|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Mcknp3tt0LMC&pg=PA114|year=1988|edition=3rd|page=114|publisher=Simon and Schuster |access-date=2016-03-19|isbn=978-0029035917|archive-date=1 January 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160101210934/https://books.google.com/books?id=Mcknp3tt0LMC&pg=PA114|url-status=live}}</ref> Thirdly, bargaining may fail due to the states' inability to make credible commitments.<ref>{{cite journal | last1 = Powell | first1 = Robert | year = 2002 | title = Bargaining Theory and International Conflict | journal = Annual Review of Political Science | volume = 5 | pages = 1–30 | doi = 10.1146/annurev.polisci.5.092601.141138 |doi-access=free}}</ref>
Throughout history war has been the source of serious ] questions. Although many ancient nations and some modern ones have viewed war as noble, over the sweep of history, concerns about the morality of war have gradually increased. Today, war is seen by some as undesirable and morally problematic. At the same time, many view war, or at least the preparation and readiness and willingness to engage in war, as necessary for the defense of their country and therefore a ]. ] believe that war is inherently immoral and that no war should ever be fought.


Within the rationalist tradition, some theorists have suggested that individuals engaged in war suffer a normal level of ],<ref>Chris Cramer, 'Civil War is Not a Stupid Thing', {{ISBN|978-1850658214}}</ref> but are still "as rational as you and me".<ref>From point 10 of {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160222013124/http://asiafoundation.org/in-asia/2014/12/10/modern-conflict-is-not-what-you-think/ |date=22 February 2016 }}, accessed 16 December 2014.</ref> According to philosopher ], "Most instigators of conflict overrate their chances of success, while most participants underrate their chances of injury...."<ref>Quote from ], in {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160222013124/http://asiafoundation.org/in-asia/2014/12/10/modern-conflict-is-not-what-you-think/ |date=22 February 2016 }}</ref> King asserts that "Most catastrophic military decisions are rooted in ]" which is faulty, but still rational.<ref>Point 6 in {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160222013124/http://asiafoundation.org/in-asia/2014/12/10/modern-conflict-is-not-what-you-think/ |date=22 February 2016 }}</ref> The rationalist theory focused around bargaining, which is currently under debate. The Iraq War proved to be an anomaly that undercuts the validity of applying rationalist theory to some wars.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Lake|first1=David A.|title=Two Cheers for Bargaining Theory: Assessing Rationalist Explanations of the Iraq War|journal=International Security|date=November 2010|pages=7–52|doi=10.1162/isec_a_00029|volume=35|issue=3|s2cid=1096131}}</ref>
Another supporter of war, ], favoured it as part of the necessary process required for history to unfold and allow society to progress. At the outbreak of World War I, the writer ] wrote, "Is not peace an element of civil corruption and war a purification, a liberation, an enormous hope?" This attitude has been embraced by societies from ] and ] in the ancient world to the ] states of the 1930s. Support for war continues to this day, especially regarding the notion of a Just War (necessary wars required to halt an aggressor or otherwise dangerous nation or group).
] lost much of its male population in the ] against Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay.]]
] recognizes only two cases for a legitimate war:


===Political science===
:1. Wars of defense: when one nation is attacked by an aggressor, it is considered legitimate for a nation along with its allies to defend itself against the aggressor.
The statistical analysis of war was pioneered by ] following ]. More recent databases of wars and armed conflict have been assembled by the ] Project, Peter Brecke and the ].<ref name="UCDP">{{Cite web|url=https://www.pcr.uu.se/research/ucdp/about-ucdp/|title=Uppsala Conflict Data Program – About|access-date=2019-04-09|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190403211437/http://pcr.uu.se/research/ucdp/about-ucdp|archive-date=2019-04-03|url-status=live}}</ref> The following subsections consider causes of war from system, societal, and individual levels of analysis. This kind of division was first proposed by ] in '']'' and has been often used by political scientists since then.<ref name=Levy1998 />{{rp|143}}


====System-level====
:2. Wars sanctioned by the ]: when the United Nations as a whole acts as a body against a certain nation. Examples include various ] or ] operations around the world, as well as the ] and ].


There are several different ] schools. Supporters of ] argue that the motivation of states is the quest for security, and conflicts can arise from the inability to distinguish defense from offense, which is called the ].<ref name=Levy1998>{{cite journal|last1=Levy|first1=Jack S.|title=The Causes of War and the Conditions of Peace|journal=Annual Review of Political Science|date=Jun 1998|volume=1|pages=139–65|doi=10.1146/annurev.polisci.1.1.139|doi-access=free}}</ref>{{rp|145}}
The subset of international law known as the ] or ] also recognises regulations for the conduct of war, including the ] governing the legitimacy of certain kinds of weapons, and the treatment of ]. Cases where these conventions are broken are considered ], and since the ] at the end of World War II the international community has established a number of tribunals to try such cases.


Within the realist school as represented by scholars such as ] and ], and the ] school represented by scholars such as ] and ], two main sub-theories are:
A nation's economy is often stimulated by government war-spending. When countries wage war, more weapons, armor, ammunition, and the like are needed to be created and sold to the armies, thus their economies can enter a boom (or ]) reducing unemployment. A very popular example of this was the United States' ability to overcome the Great Depression with the onset of ], emerging afterwards as one of two ]s (the other being the USSR). Note though that this doesn't result in net increase of a nation's prosperity—see ]; the U.S. went into deep debt as a result of unprecedented war spending ].
# ] theory: States have the goal of preventing a single state from becoming a hegemon, and war is the result of the would-be hegemon's persistent attempts at power acquisition. In this view, an international system with more equal distribution of power is more stable, and "movements toward unipolarity are destabilizing."<ref name=Levy1998 />{{rp|147}} However, evidence has shown power ] is not actually a major factor in the occurrence of wars.<ref name=Levy1998 />{{rp|147–48}}
# ]: Hegemons impose stabilizing conditions on the world order, but they eventually decline, and war occurs when a declining hegemon is challenged by another rising power or aims to pre-emptively suppress them.<ref name=Levy1998 />{{rp|148}} On this view, unlike for balance-of-power theory, wars become ''more'' probable when power is more equally distributed. This "power preponderance" hypothesis has empirical support.<ref name=Levy1998 />{{rp|148}}
The two theories are not mutually exclusive and may be used to explain disparate events according to the circumstance.<ref name=Levy1998 />{{rp|148}} ] as it relates to international relations emphasizes factors such as trade, and its role in disincentivizing conflict which will damage economic relations. Critics respond that military force may sometimes be at least as effective as trade at achieving economic benefits, especially historically if not as much today.<ref name=Levy1998 />{{rp|149}} Furthermore, trade relations which result in a high level of dependency may escalate tensions and lead to conflict.<ref name=Levy1998 />{{rp|150}} Empirical data on the relationship of trade to peace are mixed, and moreover, some evidence suggests countries at war do not necessarily trade less with each other.<ref name=Levy1998 />{{rp|150}}


====Societal-level====
==Conduct of wars==
* ], also known as the "scapegoat hypothesis", suggests the politically powerful may use war to as a diversion or to rally domestic popular support.<ref name=Levy1998 />{{rp|152}} This is supported by literature showing out-group hostility ] in-group ], and a significant domestic "rally effect" has been demonstrated when conflicts begin.<ref name=Levy1998 />{{rp|152–13}} However, studies examining the increased use of force as a function of need for internal political support are more mixed.<ref name=Levy1998 />{{rp|152–53}} U.S. war-time presidential popularity surveys taken during the presidencies of several recent U.S. leaders have supported diversionary theory.<ref name="MilitaryAdventurism">{{cite web| year = 2001| url = http://www.bepress.com/peps/vol7/iss3/3/| title = Peace Economics, Peace Science and Public Policy (p. 19)| access-date = 2010-02-07| url-status=dead| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20110707224412/http://www.bepress.com/peps/vol7/iss3/3/| archive-date = 7 July 2011}} More recently studies (Lebow 2008, Lindemann 2010) demonstrated that striving for self-esteem (i.e. virile self images), and recognition as a Great Power or non-recognition (exclusion and punishment of great powers, denying traumatic historical events) is a principal cause of international conflict and war.
{{Original research|section|date=January 2010}}
</ref>
The war, to become known as one, must entail some degree of confrontation using weapons and other ] by ] employing ] and ] within the broad ] subject to ]. ] by military theorists throughout ] have sought to identify the ], and to reduce it to a ].


====Individual-level====
In general, modern military science considers several factors before a ] is created to allow a war to commence: the environment in the area(s) of combat operations, the posture national forces will adopt on the commencement of a war, and the type of warfare troops will be engaged in.


These theories suggest differences in people's personalities, decision-making, emotions, belief systems, and biases are important in determining whether conflicts get out of hand.<ref name=Levy1998 />{{rp|157}} For instance, it has been proposed that conflict is modulated by ] and various ],<ref name=Levy1998 />{{rp|157}} such as ].<ref name=Levy1997>{{cite journal|last1=Levy|first1=Jack S.|title=Prospect Theory, Rational Choice, and International Relations|journal=International Studies Quarterly|date=Mar 1997|volume=41|issue=1|pages=87–112|url=http://www.ou.edu/uschina/texts/Levy.97.ISQ.ProspectTheory.pdf|doi=10.1111/0020-8833.00034|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150924075824/http://www.ou.edu/uschina/texts/Levy.97.ISQ.ProspectTheory.pdf|archive-date=24 September 2015}}</ref>
===Behaviour and conduct in war===
{{rquote|right|The nature of warfare ''never'' changes, only its superficial manifestations. ] and ], ] and ] would recognize the combat that our soldiers and Marines have waged in the alleys of Somalia and Iraq. The uniforms evolve, bronze gives way to titanium, arrows may be replaced by laser-guided bombs, but the heart of the matter is still killing your enemies until any survivors surrender and do your will.|]<ref>Peters, Ralph. "New Glory: Expanding America's Global Supremacy", 2005. p. 30</ref>}}
The behaviour of troops in warfare varies considerably, both individually and as units or armies. In some circumstances, troops may engage in ], ] and ]. Commonly, however, the conduct of troops may be limited to posturing and sham attacks, leading to highly rule-bound and often largely symbolic combat in which casualties are much reduced from that which would be expected if soldiers were genuinely violent towards the enemy.<ref>{{cite book|last=Lt. Col. Dave Grossman|title=On Killing – The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War & Society|publisher= Little, Brown & Co., |year=1996}}</ref> Situations of deliberate dampening of hostilities occurred in ] by some accounts, ''e.g.'', a volley of gunfire being exchanged after a misplaced mortar hit the British line, after which a German soldier shouted an apology to British forces, effectively stopping a hostile exchange of gunfire.<ref>Axelrod, Robert. 1984. ''The Evolution of Cooperation.'' New York: Basic Books.</ref> Other examples of non-aggression, also from ], are detailed in ]. These include spontaneous ceasefires to rebuild defences and retrieve casualties, alongside behaviour such as refusing to shoot at enemy during ablutions and the taking of great risks (described as 1 in 20) to retrieve enemy wounded from the battlefield. The most notable spontaneous ceasefire of ] was the ].


==Ethics==
It has been postulated that sport serves as an direct alternative to war, and may be regarded as having an equivalent social function. Sipes found war and sporting alternatives to be positively correlated.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Sipes|first=Richard G. |date=(Feb., 1973)|journal=American Anthropologist|issue=, New Series, Vol. 75, No. 1 |pages=64–86 |url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/672340}}</ref>
]'' (1871) by ]]]


The ] of war has been the subject of debate for thousands of years.<ref name="DeForrest">{{cite web|last=DeForrest |first=Mark Edward |title=Conclusion |url=http://www.gonzagajil.org/content/view/72/26/ |website=Just War Theory and the Recent U.S. Air Strikes Against Iraq |publisher=Gonzaga Journal of International Law |access-date=1 August 2011|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100402204812/http://www.gonzagajil.org/content/view/72/26 |archive-date=2 April 2010 }}</ref>
The psychological separation between combatants, and the destructive power of modern weaponry, may act to override this effect and facilitate participation by combatants in the mass slaughter of combatants or civilians, such as in the bombing of ].{{Citation needed|date=September 2009}} The unusual circumstances of warfare can incite apparently normal individuals to commit atrocities.<ref>{{cite book|last=Waller|first=James|title=Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing}}</ref>


The two principal aspects of ethics in war, according to the ], are '']'' and '']''.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2020/entries/war/|title=War|last=Lazar|first=Seth|date=2020-03-21|website=The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy |editor-first=Edward N. |editor-last=Zalta|access-date= 2022-10-04 }}</ref>
===Types of warfare===
{{Unreferenced section|date=June 2008}}


''Jus ad bellum'' (right to war), dictates which unfriendly acts and circumstances justify a proper authority in declaring war on another nation. There are six main criteria for the declaration of a just war: first, any just war must be declared by a lawful authority; second, it must be a just and righteous cause, with sufficient gravity to merit large-scale violence; third, the just belligerent must have rightful intentions – namely, that they seek to advance good and curtail evil; fourth, a just belligerent must have a reasonable chance of success; fifth, the war must be a last resort; and sixth, the ends being sought must be proportional to means being used.<ref>{{cite web|last=Aquinas|first=Thomas|title=Part II, Question 40|url=http://ethics.sandiego.edu/Books/Texts/Aquinas/JustWar.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20020212080058/http://ethics.sandiego.edu/Books/Texts/Aquinas/JustWar.html|url-status=dead|archive-date=12 February 2002|website=The Summa Theologica|publisher=Benziger Bros. edition, 1947|access-date=1 August 2011}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|last=Mosley|first=Alexander|title=The Jus Ad Bellum Convention|url=http://www.iep.utm.edu/justwar/|website=Just War Theory|publisher=Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy|access-date=1 August 2011|archive-date=16 April 2010|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100416023712/http://www.iep.utm.edu/justwar/|url-status=live}}</ref>
{{Original research|section|date=January 2010}}
] is an attempt to reduce an opponent's military capability through open battle. It is a declared war between existing states in which nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons are not used or only see limited deployment in support of conventional military goals and maneuvers.


]. "Hitler ordered that Moscow and Leningrad were to be razed to the ground; their inhabitants were to be annihilated or driven out by starvation. These intentions were part of the ']'." – ''The Oxford Companion to World War II.''<ref>], ] (2001). ''The Oxford Companion to World War II.'' Oxford University Press. p. 88. {{ISBN|0-19-860446-7}}</ref>]]'']'' (right in war), is the set of ethical rules when conducting war. The two main principles are proportionality and discrimination. Proportionality regards how much force is necessary and morally appropriate to the ends being sought and the injustice suffered.<ref name="Moseley">{{cite web|last=Moseley|first=Alexander|title=The Principles of Jus in Bello|url=http://www.iep.utm.edu/justwar/|website=Just War Theory|publisher=Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy|access-date=1 August 2011|archive-date=16 April 2010|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100416023712/http://www.iep.utm.edu/justwar/|url-status=live}}</ref> The principle of discrimination determines who are the legitimate targets in a war, and specifically makes a separation between combatants, who it is permissible to kill, and non-combatants, who it is not.<ref name="Moseley"/> Failure to follow these rules can result in the loss of legitimacy for the just-war-belligerent.<ref name="Codevilla, Seabury 1989 304">{{cite book|last1=Codevilla|last2=Seabury|first1=Angelo|first2=Paul|title=War: Ends and Means|year=1989|publisher=Basic Books|location=New York|isbn=978-0-465-09067-9|page=|url=https://archive.org/details/war00paul/page/304}}</ref>
The opposite of conventional warfare, ], is an attempt to achieve military victory through acquiescence, capitulation, or clandestine support for one side of an existing conflict.


The just war theory was foundational in the creation of the United Nations and in ]'s regulations on legitimate war.<ref name="DeForrest"/>
] is a war in which ]s are the primary method of coercing the capitulation of the other side, as opposed to a supporting tactical or strategic role in a conventional conflict.


Lewis Coser, an American conflict theorist and sociologist, argued conflict provides a function and a process whereby a succession of new equilibriums are created. Thus, the struggle of opposing forces, rather than being disruptive, may be a means of balancing and maintaining a social structure or society.<ref>Ankony, Robert C., "Sociological and Criminological Theory: Brief of Theorists, Theories, and Terms", ''CFM Research'', Jul. 2012.</ref>
] is a war where the forces in conflict belong to the same nation or political entity and are vying for control of or independence from that nation or political entity.


==Limiting and stopping==
] is a conflict between two populations of drastically different levels of military capability or size. Asymmetric conflicts often result in ] tactics being used to overcome the sometimes vast gaps in technology and force size.
]
{{main|Anti-war movement}}Religious groups have long formally opposed or sought to limit war as in the ] document '']'': "Any act of war aimed indiscriminately at the destruction of entire cities of extensive areas along with their population is a crime against God and man himself. It merits unequivocal and unhesitating condemnation."<ref>" {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110411023509/https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_cons_19651207_gaudium-et-spes_en.html |date=11 April 2011 }}"</ref>


Anti-war movements have existed for every major war in the 20th century, including, most prominently, ], ], and the ]. In the 21st century, worldwide anti-war movements occurred in response to the United States ] and ]. Protests ] occurred in Europe, Asia, and the United States.
Intentional air pollution in combat is one of a collection of techniques collectively called ]. Poison gas as a ] was principally used during ], and resulted in an estimated 91,198 deaths and 1,205,655 injuries.{{Citation needed|date=June 2008}} Various treaties have sought to ban its further use. Non-lethal chemical weapons, such as ] and ], are widely used, sometimes with deadly effect.


===Military posture=== == Pauses ==
During a war, brief pauses of violence may be called for, and further agreed to{{snd}}], temporary cessation, humanitarian pauses and corridors, days of tranquility, de-confliction arrangements.<ref name=":1">{{Citation |title=Glossary of Terms: Pauses During Conflict |date=June 2011 |url=https://www.unocha.org/sites/unocha/files/dms/Documents/AccessMechanisms.pdf |publisher=United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs |access-date=6 March 2022 |archive-date=6 March 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220306050930/https://www.unocha.org/sites/unocha/files/dms/Documents/AccessMechanisms.pdf |url-status=live }}</ref> There are a number of disadvantages, obstacles and hesitations against implementing such pauses such as a ].<ref>{{Cite web |date=2012-03-19 |title=Why humanitarians wary of "humanitarian corridors" |url=https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/report/95101/briefing-why-humanitarians-wary-%E2%80%9Chumanitarian-corridors%E2%80%9D |access-date=2022-03-06 |website=] |archive-date=6 March 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220306060708/https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/report/95101/briefing-why-humanitarians-wary-%E2%80%9Chumanitarian-corridors%E2%80%9D |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last1=Reindorp |first1=Nicola |last2=Wiles |first2=Peter |date=June 2001 |title=Humanitarian Coordination: Lessons from Recent Field Experience |url=https://www.unhcr.org/3bb04e232.pdf |website=], London |via=UNHCR |access-date=6 March 2022 |archive-date=6 March 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220306064004/https://www.unhcr.org/3bb04e232.pdf |url-status=live }}</ref> Pauses in conflict can also be ill-advised, for reasons such as "delay of defeat" and the "weakening of credibility".<ref name=":2">{{Cite web |last=Nemeth |first=Maj Lisa A. |date=2009 |others=Monograph |title=The Use of Pauses in Coercion: An Examination in Theory |url=https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA506197.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220306053118/https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA506197.pdf |url-status=live |archive-date=6 March 2022 |website= |publisher=School of Advanced Military Studies, United States Army Command and General Staff College}}</ref> Natural causes for a pause may include events such as the 2019 ].<ref>{{Cite web |author1=Laura Wise |author2=Sanja Badanjak |author3=Christine Bell |author4=Fiona Knäussel |date=2021 |title=Pandemic Pauses: Understanding Ceasefires in a Time of Covid-19 |url=https://www.politicalsettlements.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Ceasefires-Covid-19-Report-Digital-002-compressed.pdf |website=politicalsettlements.org |publisher=Political Settlements Research Programme |access-date=6 March 2022 |archive-date=18 May 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220518045121/https://www.politicalsettlements.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Ceasefires-Covid-19-Report-Digital-002-compressed.pdf |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Drexler |first=Madeline |date=10 September 2021 |title=When a Virus Strikes, Can the World Pause Its Wars? – |url=https://science.thewire.in/external-affairs/world/when-a-virus-strikes-can-the-world-pause-its-wars/ |access-date=2022-03-06 |publisher=] |language= |archive-date=6 March 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220306054241/https://science.thewire.in/external-affairs/world/when-a-virus-strikes-can-the-world-pause-its-wars/ |url-status=live }}</ref>
Historian ] has claimed there exists a unique "Western Way of War", in an attempt to explain the military successes of Western Europe.{{citation needed|date=May 2011}} It originated in ], where, in an effort to reduce the damage that warfare has on society, the city-states developed the concept of a decisive pitched battle between heavy infantry. This would be preceded by formal declarations of war and followed by peace negotiations. In this system constant low-level skirmishing and guerrilla warfare were phased out in favor of a single, decisive contest, which in the end cost both sides less in casualties and property damage. Although it was later perverted by ],{{clarify|date=May 2011}} this style of war initially allowed neighbors with limited resources to coexist and prosper.

He argues that Western-style armies are characterized by an emphasis on discipline and teamwork above individual bravado. Examples of Western victories over non-Western armies include the ], the ], the ], the ] and the defense of ].

===Warfare environment===
The environment in which a war is fought has a significant impact on the type of combat which takes place, and can include within its area different types of terrain. This in turn means that soldiers have to be trained to fight in a specific types of environments and terrains that generally reflects troops' mobility limitations or enablers.
These include:
{{col-begin}}
{{col-2}}
'''Warfare by doctrine'''
*]
*]
*]
*]
*]
*]
*]

'''Warfare by terrain'''
*]
*]
*]
*]
*]
*]

==Effects of war==
] for war per 100,000&nbsp;inhabitants in 2004.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.who.int/entity/healthinfo/global_burden_disease/gbddeathdalycountryestimates2004.xls |title=Mortality and Burden of Disease Estimates for WHO Member States in 2004 |work=World Health Organization |accessdate=}}</ref><div class="references-small" style="-moz-column-count:3; column-count:3;">
{{legend|#b3b3b3|no data}}
{{legend|#ffff65|less than 100}}
{{legend|#fff200|100-200}}
{{legend|#ffdc00|200-600}}
{{legend|#ffc600|600-1000}}
{{legend|#ffb000|1000-1400}}
{{legend|#ff9a00|1400-1800}}
{{legend|#ff8400|1800-2200}}
{{legend|#ff6e00|2200-2600}}
{{legend|#ff5800|2600-3000}}
{{legend|#ff4200|3000-8000}}
{{legend|#ff2c00|8000-8800}}
{{legend|#cb0000|more than 8800}}
</div>]]
It is estimated that 378 000 people died due to war each year between 1985 and 1994.<ref>{{cite journal |author=Obermeyer Z, Murray CJ, Gakidou E |title=Fifty years of violent war deaths from Vietnam to Bosnia: analysis of data from the world health survey programme |journal=BMJ |volume=336 |issue=7659 |pages=1482–6 |year=2008 |month=June |pmid=18566045 |pmc=2440905 |doi=10.1136/bmj.a137 |url=}}</ref>
]]]

===On soldiers===
{{Quote|They would have dedicated their lives to fighting battles, with little possibility of regaining the ability to live successfully as a civilian. One-tenth of mobilised American men were hospitalised for mental disturbances between 1942 and 1945, and after thirty-five days of uninterrupted combat, 98% of them manifested psychiatric disturbances in varying degrees.|''14–18: Understanding the Great War'', Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau, Annette Becker<ref name=War/>}}

Based on 1860 census figures, 8% of all white American males aged 13 to 43 died in the ], including about 6% in the North and approximately 18% in the South.<ref>Maris Vinovskis (1990). "''''". Cambridge University Press. p.7. ISBN 0-521-39559-3</ref> The war remains the deadliest conflict in American history, resulting in the deaths of 620,000 soldiers. Of the 60 million European soldiers who were mobilized in ], 8 million were killed, 7 million were permanently disabled, and 15 million were seriously injured.<ref>Kitchen, Martin (2000),'''', New York: Longman</ref>
]'' (''Los desastres de la guerra''), by ], 1812-15. A collection of depictions of the brutalities of the ].]]

During ]'s retreat from ], more French soldiers died of ] than were killed by the Russians.<ref>. Joseph M. Conlon.</ref> Felix Markham thinks that 450,000 crossed the ] on 25 June 1812, of whom less than 40,000 recrossed in anything like a recognizable military formation.<ref>See a large copy of the chart here: http://www.adept-plm.com/Newsletter/NapoleonsMarch.htm, but discussed at length in Edward Tufte, ''The Visual Display of Quantitative Information'' (London: Graphics Press, 1992)</ref> More soldiers were killed from 1500-1914 by typhus than from all military action during that time combined.<ref>. ''TIME''.</ref> In addition, if it were not for the modern medical advances there would be thousands of more dead from disease and infection. For instance, during the ], the ] reported that it conscripted 184,899 sailors, of whom 133,708 died of disease or were 'missing'.<ref>A. S. Turberville (2006). "''Johnson's England: An Account of the Life & Manners of His Age''". ISBN READ BOOKS. p.53. ISBN 1-4067-2726-1</ref>
]'' depict the destruction unleashed on civilians during the ].]]

===On civilians===
{{see also|Civilian casualties}}

Many wars have been accompanied by significant depopulations. During the ] in Europe, for example, the population of the ] states was reduced by about 30%.<ref>, Alan McFarlane, The Savage Wars of Peace: England, Japan and the Malthusian Trap (2003)</ref><ref>. Encyclopædia Britannica.</ref> The ] armies alone may have destroyed up to 2,000 castles, 18,000 villages and 1,500 towns in Germany, one-third of all German towns.<ref name="Population-HLS">{{cite web
|url=http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/population_thirty_years_war.htm|title=Population|publisher=History Learningsite|accessdate=2008-05-24}}</ref>

Estimates for the total ] vary, but most suggest that some 60 million people died in the war, comprising around 20 million soldiers and 40 million civilians.<ref>{{cite web|title=World War II Fatalities|url=http://www.secondworldwar.co.uk/casualty.html|accessdate=2007-04-20}}</ref> The ] lost around ] during the war, about half of all World War II casualties.<ref>{{cite news|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4530565.stm|title=Leaders mourn Soviet wartime dead | date=May 9, 2005 | accessdate=January 6, 2010|work=BBC News}}</ref> Since a high proportion of those killed were young men, the postwar Soviet population was 45 to 50 million fewer than post–1939 projections would have led one to expect.<ref>Geoffrey A. Hosking (2006). "''''". ]. p.242. ISBN 0-674-02178-9</ref> The largest number of civilian deaths in a single city was 1.2 million citizens dead during the 872-day ].

===On the economy===
{{see also|Military keynesianism}}

Once a war has ended, losing nations are sometimes required to pay ] to the victorious nations. In certain cases, land is ceded to the victorious nations. For example, the territory of ] has been traded between France and Germany on three different occasions.

Typically speaking, war becomes very intertwined with the economy and many wars are partially or entirely based on economic reasons such as the ]. In some cases war has stimulated a country's economy (World War II is often credited with bringing America out of the ]) but in many cases, such as the wars of Louis XIV, the ], and ], warfare serves only to damage the economy of the countries involved. For example, Russia's involvement in World War I took such a toll on the Russian economy that it almost collapsed and greatly contributed to the start of the ].

====World War II====
One of the starkest illustrations of the effect of war upon economies is the ]. The ] of the 1930s ended as nations increased their production of war materials to serve the ].<ref>. ''The Library of Congress''.</ref> The financial cost of World War II is estimated at about a $1944 billion U.S. dollars worldwide,<ref>Mayer, E. (2000) course lecture notes on ''Emayzine.com'' (Victorville, California: Victor Valley College)</ref><ref>Coleman, P. (1999) ''World War II Resource Guide'' (Gardena, California: The American War Library)</ref> making it the most costly war in capital as well as lives.

By the end of the war, the European economy had collapsed with 70% of the industrial infrastructure destroyed.<ref>Marc Pilisuk, Jennifer Achord Rountree (2008). "''''". ]. p.136. ISBN 0-275-99435-X</ref> Property damage in the Soviet Union inflicted by the ] was estimated to a value of 679 billion rubles. The combined damage consisted of complete or partial destruction of 1,710 cities and towns, 70,000 villages/hamlets, 2,508 church buildings, 31,850 industrial establishments, 40,000 miles of railroad, 4100 railroad stations, 40,000 hospitals, 84,000 schools, and 43,000 public libraries.<ref>'']'', 9 February 1946, Volume 95, Number 32158.</ref>

==Factors ending a war==
{{Unreferenced section|date=June 2008}}

{{Original research|section|date=January 2010}}
]. ''(])'']]
The political and economic circumstances in the peace that follows war usually depends on the "]". Where evenly matched adversaries decide that the conflict has resulted in a ], they may cease hostilities to avoid further loss of life and property. They may decide to restore the ] territorial boundaries, redraw boundaries at the line of military control, or negotiate to keep or exchange captured territory. Negotiations between parties involved at the end of a war often result in a ], such as the ] of 1919, which ended the ].

A warring party that ] or ] may have little negotiating power, with the victorious side either imposing a settlement or dictating most of the terms of any treaty. A common result is that conquered territory is brought under the dominion of the stronger military power. An ] is made in the face of overwhelming military force as an attempt to prevent further harm to life and property. For example, the ] gave an unconditional surrender to the ] after the ] (see ]), the preceding massive strategic bombardment of Japan and declaration of war and the immediate invasion of Manchuria by the Soviet Union. A settlement or surrender may also be obtained through ] or bluffing.

Many other wars, however, have ended in complete destruction of the opposing territory, such as the ] of the ] between the ]n city of ] and Ancient Rome in 149 BC. In 146 BC the Romans burned the city, enslaved its citizens, and razed the buildings.

Some wars or aggressive actions end when the military objective of the victorious side has been achieved. Others do not, especially in cases where the state structures do not exist, or have collapsed prior to the victory of the conqueror. In such cases, disorganised ] may continue for a considerable period. In cases of complete surrender conquered territories may be brought under the permanent dominion of the victorious side. A raid for the purposes of ] may be completed with the successful capture of goods. In other cases an aggressor may decide to end hostilities to avoid continued losses and cease hostilities without obtaining the original objective, such as happened in the ].

Some hostilities, such as ] or ], may persist for long periods of time with only a low level of military activity. In some cases there is no negotiation of any official treaty, but fighting may trail off and eventually stop after the political demands of the belligerent groups have been reconciled, a political settlement has been negotiated, or combatants are gradually killed or decide the conflict is futile.

==Ten largest wars (by death toll)==
{{Main|List of wars by death toll}}
Three of the ten most costly wars, in terms of loss of life, have been waged in the last century. These are of course the two World Wars, then followed by the Second Sino-Japanese War. The death toll of World War II, being 60 million plus, surpasses all other war-death-tolls by a factor of two. This may be due to significant recent advances in weapons technologies, as well as recent increases in the overall human population.
*60,000,000&ndash;72,000,000 - ] (1939&ndash;1945), (see ])<ref>Wallinsky, David: ''David Wallechinsky's Twentieth Century : History With the Boring Parts Left Out'', Little Brown & Co., 1996, ISBN 0-316-92056-8, ISBN 978-0-316-92056-8 - cited by </ref><ref>Brzezinski, Zbigniew: ''Out of Control: Global Turmoil on the Eve of the Twenty-first Century'', Prentice Hall & IBD, 1994, ASIN B000O8PVJI - cited by </ref>
*36,000,000 - ] (China, 755&ndash;763)<ref>{{cite web|url=http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat0.htm#AnLushan |title=Selected Death Tolls for Wars, Massacres and Atrocities Before the 20th Century |publisher=Users.erols.com |date= |accessdate=2011-01-24}}</ref>
*30,000,000&ndash;60,000,000 - ] (13th century) (see ] and ])<ref>Ping-ti Ho, "An Estimate of the Total Population of Sung-Chin China", in ''Études Song'', Series 1, No 1, (1970) pp. 33-53.</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat0.htm#Mongol |title=Mongol Conquests |publisher=Users.erols.com |date= |accessdate=2011-01-24}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|url=http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1510/is_1987_Fall/ai_5151514/pg_2 |title=The world's worst massacres Whole Earth Review |publisher=Findarticles.com |date= |accessdate=2011-01-24 |year=1987}}</ref>
*25,000,000 - ] conquest of ] (1616&ndash;1662)<ref>McFarlane, Alan: ''The Savage Wars of Peace: England, Japan and the Malthusian Trap'', Blackwell 2003, ISBN 0-631-18117-2,
ISBN 978-0-631-18117-0 - cited by </ref>
*20,000,000 - ] (1914&ndash;1918) (see ])<ref>{{cite web|author= Michael Duffy |url=http://www.firstworldwar.com/features/casualties.htm |title=Military Casualties of World War One |publisher=Firstworldwar.com |date=2009-08-22 |accessdate=2011-01-24}}</ref>
*20,000,000 - ] (China, 1850&ndash;1864) (see ])<ref>{{cite web|url=http://concise.britannica.com/ebc/article-9380148/Taiping |title=Taiping Rebellion - Britannica Concise |publisher=Concise.britannica.com |date= |accessdate=2011-01-24}}</ref>
*20,000,000 - ] (1937&ndash;1945)<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/nuclear_01.shtml |title=Nuclear Power: The End of the War Against Japan |publisher=Bbc.co.uk |date= |accessdate=2011-01-24}}</ref>
*10,000,000 - ] (China, 475 BC&ndash;221 BC)
*8,000,000&ndash;12,000,000 - ] (China, 1862 &ndash;1877)
*7,000,000 - 20,000,000 Conquests of ] (1370–1405)<ref>{{cite web|url=http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat0.htm#Timur |title=Timur Lenk (1369-1405) |publisher=Users.erols.com |date= |accessdate=2011-01-24}}</ref><ref>Matthew's White's website (a compilation of scholarly estimates) -</ref>


==See also== ==See also==
* ]
{{portal|War}}
* ]
{{Misplaced Pages-Books|War}}
{{-}}

;Possible causes
{{Div col|cols=2}}
*]
*]
*]
*]
*]
{{Div col end}}

;General reference
{{Div col|cols=2}}
*]
*]
*]
*]
*]
*]
*]
*]
*], '']''
*]
*]
*]
*]
{{Div col end}}

;War-related lists
{{Div col|cols=2}}
*]
*]
*]
*]
*]
*]
*]
*]
*]
*]
*]
{{Div col end}}


==Notes==
{{notelist}}
==References== ==References==
{{Reflist|30em}}

{{reflist|colwidth=30em}}


===Bibliography=== ===Bibliography===
{{refbegin|30em}}
<div class="references-small">
* {{cite book |last1=Barzilai |first1=Gad |title=Wars, Internal Conflicts and Political Order: A Jewish Democracy in the Middle East |date=1996 |publisher=State University of New York Press |location=Albany}}
*Angelo Codevilla and Paul Seabury, (Potomac Books, Revised second edition by Angelo Codevilla, 2006) ISBN-X
* {{cite book |last1=Beer |first1=Francis A. |title=How Much War in History: Definitions, Estimates, Extrapolations, and Trends |date=1974 |publisher=Sage|location=Beverly Hills}}
*Angelo M. Codevilla, ''No Victory, No ]'' (Rowman and Littlefield, 2005) ISBN
* {{cite book |last1=Beer |first1=Francis A. |title=Peace against War: The Ecology of International Violence |url=https://archive.org/details/peaceagainstware00beer |url-access=registration |date=1981 |publisher=W.H.Freeman |location=San Francisco }}
*Barzilai Gad, ''Wars, Internal Conflicts and Political Order: A Jewish Democracy in the Middle East'' (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996).
* {{cite book |last1=Beer |first1=Francis A. |title=Meanings of War and Peace |date=2001 |publisher=Texas A&M University Press|location=College Station}}
*Clausewitz, Carl Von (1976), On War (Princeton and New Jersey: Princeton University Press)
* {{cite book |last1=Blainey |first1=Geoffrey |title=The Causes of War |date=1973 |publisher=Simon and Schuster}}
*Fry, Douglas P., 2005, ''The Human Potential for Peace: An Anthropological Challenge to Assumptions about War and Violence'', Oxford University Press.
* ] (1935). '']''.
*Gat, Azar 2006 ''War in Human Civilization'', Oxford University Press.
* Chagnon, N. (1983). ''The Yanomamo''. Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
*Gunnar Heinsohn, ''Söhne und Weltmacht: Terror im Aufstieg und Fall der Nationen'' ("Sons and Imperial Power: Terror and the Rise and Fall of Nations"), Orell Füssli (September 2003), ISBN, available online as (in German)
* Clausewitz, Carl Von (1976). ''On War'', Princeton University Press
*{{cite book | author=Fabio Maniscalco, | title=World Heritage and War - monographic series "Mediterraneum", vol. VI| publisher=Massa, Naples | year=2007 | id=ISBN }}
* Codevilla, Angelo (2005). ''No Victory, No Peace''. Rowman and Littlefield
*Keegan, John, (1994) "A History Of Warfare", (Pimlico)
* {{cite book |last1=Codevilla |first1=Angelo |last2=Seabury |first2=Paul |title=War: Ends and Means |date=2006 |publisher=Potomac Books |edition=2}}
*Kelly, Raymond C., 2000, ''Warless Societies and the Origin of War,'' University of Michigan Press.
* {{cite book |last1=Fog |first1=Agner |title=Warlike and Peaceful Societies: The Interaction of Genes and Culture |date=2017 |publisher=Open Book Publishers |doi=10.11647/OBP.0128 |isbn=978-1-78374-403-9 |doi-access=free }}
*{{cite book | author=Small, Melvin & Singer, David J.| title=Resort to Arms: International and Civil Wars, | publisher=Sage Publications | year=1982 | id=ISBN}}
* {{cite book |last1=Fornari |first1=Franco |title=The Psychoanalysis of War |url=https://archive.org/details/psychoanalysisof00forn |url-access=registration |date=1974 |publisher=Doubleday Anchor Press |location=NY |isbn=978-0385043472 |translator-last1=Pfeifer |translator-first1=Alenka }}
*Otterbein, Keith, 2004, ''How War Began''.
* {{cite book |last1=Fry |first1=Douglas |editor1-last=Kemp |editor1-first=Graham |title=Keeping the Peace |url=https://archive.org/details/keepingpeaceconf00kemp |url-access=limited |date=2004 |publisher=Routledge |pages=–204 |chapter=Conclusion: Learning from Peaceful Societies }}
*Turchin, P. 2005. ''War and ] and War: Life Cycles of Imperial Nations''. New York, NY: Pi Press. ISBN
* Fry, Douglas (2005). ''The Human Potential for Peace: An Anthropological Challenge to Assumptions about War and Violence''. Oxford University Press.
*Van Creveld, Martin ''The Art of War: War and Military Thought'' London: Cassell, Wellington House
* Fry, Douglas (2009). ''Beyond War''. Oxford University Press.
*Fornari, Franco (1974). ''The Psychoanalysis of War.'' Tr. Alenka Pfeifer. Garden City, New York: Doubleday Anchor Press. ISBN: . Reprinted (1975) Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ISBN
* Gat, Azar (2006). ''War in Human Civilization''. Oxford University Press.
*Walzer, Michael (1977) ] (Basic Books)
* {{cite book |last1=Heinsohn |first1=Gunnar |title=Söhne und Weltmacht: Terror im Aufstieg und Fall der Nationen |date=2003 |publisher=Orell Füssl |url=http://www.pseudology.org/Gallup/Heinsohn.pdf#Zweig4 |language=de |access-date=19 March 2016 |archive-date=4 March 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304060229/http://www.pseudology.org/Gallup/Heinsohn.pdf#Zweig4 |url-status=live }}
*Keeley, Lawrence. ''War Before Civilization'', Oxford University Press, 1996.
* Heuser, Beatrice. (2022) ''War: A Genealogy of Western Ideas and Practices'' (Oxford UP, 2022)
*Zimmerman, L. ''The Crow Creek Site Massacre: A Preliminary Report'', US Army Corps of Engineers, Omaha District, 1981.
* Heuser, Beatrice. (2010) ''The Evolution of Strategy: Thinking War from Antiquity to the Present '' (2010)
*Chagnon, N. ''The Yanomamo'', Holt, Rinehart & Winston,1983.
* Howell, Signe; Willis, Roy (1990). ''Societies at Peace: Anthropological Perspectives.'' London: Routledge.
*Pauketat, Timothy. ''North American Archaeology'' 2005. Blackwell Publishing.
* {{Cite book | year= 2006 | last1= James | first1= Paul | author-link= Paul James (academic) | last2= Friedman | first2= Jonathan | title= Globalization and Violence, Vol. 3: Globalizing War and Intervention | url= https://www.academia.edu/3587732 | publisher= Sage Publications | location= London | access-date= 3 December 2017 | archive-date= 11 January 2020 | archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20200111045525/https://www.academia.edu/3587732/Globalization_and_Violence_Vol._3_Globalizing_War_and_Intervention_2006_ | url-status= live }}
*Wade, Nicholas. ''Before the Dawn'', Penguin: New York 2006.
* {{Cite book | year= 2006 | last1= James | first1= Paul | author-link= Paul James (academic) | last2= Sharma | first2= RR | title= Globalization and Violence, Vol. 4: Transnational Conflict | url= https://www.academia.edu/3587761 | publisher= Sage Publications | location= London | access-date= 3 December 2017 | archive-date= 18 August 2021 | archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20210818150635/https://www.academia.edu/3587761 | url-status= live }}
*Rafael Karsten, ''Blood revenge, war, and victory feasts among the Jibaro Indians of eastern Ecuador'' (1923).
* ] (1994). '']''. Pimlico.
*S. A. LeBlanc, ''Prehistoric Warfare in the American Southwest'', University of Utah Press (1999).
*Duane M. Capulla, ''War Wolf'', University of Pili (2008) * Keeley, Lawrence (1996). ''War Before Civilization'', Oxford University Press.
* {{cite book |last1=Keen |first1=David |title=Useful Enemies: When Waging Wars Is More Important Than Winning Them |date=2012 |publisher=Yale University Press}}
</div>
* Kelly, Raymond C. (2000). ''Warless Societies and the Origin of War,'' University of Michigan Press.
* Kemp, Graham; Fry, Douglas (2004). ''Keeping the Peace.'' New York: Routledge.
* {{Cite book |last= Kolko |first= Gabriel |author-link= Gabriel Kolko |year= 1994 |title= Century of War: Politics, Conflicts, and Society since 1914 |location= New York,&nbsp;NY |publisher= ] }}
* Lebow, Richard Ned (2008). ''A Cultural Theory of International Relations''. Cambridge University Press.
* Lindemann, Thomas (2010). ''Causes of War. The Struggle for Recognition''. Colchester, ECPR Press
* {{cite book|author=Maniscalco, Fabio|title=World heritage and war: linee guida per interventi a salvaguardia dei beni culturali nelle aree a rischio bellico|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=lelEGQAACAAJ|year=2007|publisher=Massa|isbn=978-88-87835-89-2|access-date=19 October 2015|archive-date=1 January 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160101210934/https://books.google.com/books?id=lelEGQAACAAJ|url-status=live}}
* McIntosh, Jane (2002). ''A Peaceful Realm: The Rise and Fall of the Indus Civilization.'' Oxford, UK: Westview Press.
* Metz, Steven and Cuccia, Philip R. (2011). {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220730083954/https://permanent.fdlp.gov/websites/ssi.armywarcollege.edu/pubs/display.cfm-pubID=1036.htm |date=30 July 2022 }} ], ]. {{ISBN|978-1-58487-472-0}}
* Montagu, Ashley (1978). ''Learning Nonaggression.'' New York: Oxford University Press.
* Otterbein, Keith (2004). ''How War Began''. College Station TX: Texas A&M University Press.
* Parker, Geoffrey, ed. (2008) ''The Cambridge Illustrated History of Warfare: The Triumph of the West'' (Cambridge University Press, 1995, revised 2008)
* Pauketat, Timothy (2005). ''North American Archaeology''. Blackwell Publishing.
* {{cite book|author1=Small, Melvin|author2=Singer, Joel David|title=Resort to arms: international and civil wars, 1816–1980|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=rvASAQAAMAAJ|year=1982|publisher=Sage Publications|isbn=978-0-8039-1776-7|access-date=19 October 2015|archive-date=1 January 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160101210933/https://books.google.com/books?id=rvASAQAAMAAJ|url-status=live}}
* {{cite book|author=Smith, David Livingstone|title=The Most Dangerous Animal: Human Nature and the Origins of War|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FwBUuzr6QFAC|date= 2009|publisher=Macmillan|isbn=978-0-312-53744-9|access-date=19 October 2015|archive-date=1 January 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160101210934/https://books.google.com/books?id=FwBUuzr6QFAC|url-status=live}}
* Sponsel, Leslie; Gregor, Thomas (1994). ''Anthropology of Peace and Nonviolence.'' Lynne Rienner Publishing.
* ] (2013). ''The Direction of War''. Cambridge University Press.
* Turchin, P. (2005). ''War and Peace and War: Life Cycles of Imperial Nations''. NY: Pi Press.
* Van Creveld, Martin. ''The Art of War: War and Military Thought'' London: Cassell, Wellington House
* Wade, Nicholas (2006). ''Before the Dawn'', New York: Penguin.
* Walzer, Michael (1977). '']''. Basic Books.
{{refend}}


==External links== ==External links==
{{Sister project links
|collapsible=collapsed
|b=War
|c=War
|d=no
|m=no
|mw=no
|n=War
|q=War
|s=War
|species=no
|species_author=no
|v=no
|voy=no
|wikt=no
}}
<!--Any links that have not been cited in the article, but related to the article subject area--> <!--Any links that have not been cited in the article, but related to the article subject area-->
<!--======================== {{No more links}} ============================ <!--======================== {{No more links}} ============================
| PLEASE BE CAUTIOUS IN ADDING MORE LINKS TO THIS ARTICLE. Misplaced Pages | | PLEASE BE CAUTIOUS IN ADDING MORE LINKS TO THIS ARTICLE. Misplaced Pages |
| is not a collection of links nor should it be used for advertising. | | is not a collection of links nor should it be used for advertising. |
| |
| |
| Excessive or inappropriate links WILL BE DELETED. | | Excessive or inappropriate links WILL BE DELETED. |
| See ] & ] for details. | | See ] & ] for details. |
| |
| |
| If there are already plentiful links, please propose additions or | | If there are already plentiful links, please propose additions or |
| replacements on this article's discussion page, or submit your link | | replacements on this article's discussion page, or submit your link |
| to the relevant category at the Open Directory Project (dmoz.org) | | to the relevant category at the Open Directory Project (dmoz.org) |
| and link back to that category using the {{dmoz}} template. | | and link back to that category using the {{dmoz}} template. |
======================= {{No more links}} =============================--> ==={{No more links}}=========-->
*
{{Commons category|War}}
* on Histropedia
{{Commons category|Warfare}}
{{Library resources box
{{wikiquote}}
|by=no
*
|onlinebooks=yes
*
|others=no
*
|about=yes
*
}}
* - A database on the human impact of conflicts and other complex emergencies.
* {{Wikivoyage-inline|War zone safety}}
*

*
{{Military and war}}
{{navboxes
|list=
{{War navbox}}
{{Political philosophy}}
{{International relations}}
}}
{{Authority control}}


] ]
]
]
] ]
] ]

{{Link FA|sh}}

]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]

Latest revision as of 08:04, 5 January 2025

Intense armed conflict "Warring" and "Warfare" redirect here. For other uses, see War (disambiguation), Warring (disambiguation), and Warfare (disambiguation). "Conflict zone" redirects here. For the 2001 video game, see Conflict Zone.

Part of the Stele of the Vultures depicting heavy infantry marching in formationPart of the Bayeux Tapestry depicting Norman heavy cavalry charging Saxon shield wallNuclear mushroom cloudPainting of Napoleon and his troops in winter retreating from MoscowSoldiers wading ashore from landing craft on D-DayBritish rhomboid tank and soldiers preparing to advanceClockwise from top-left:
Ancient warfare: Stele of the Vultures, c. 2500 BCE
Medieval warfare: Battle of Hastings, 1066
Early modern warfare: Retreat from Moscow, 1812
Industrial age warfare: Battle of the Somme, 1916
Modern warfare: Normandy landings, 1944
Nuclear warfare: Atomic bombing of Nagasaki, 1945
Part of a series on
War
(outline)
History
Military






Battlespace


Weapons
TacticsList of military tactics
Operational
StrategyList of military strategies and concepts
Grand strategy
Administrative
Organization
Personnel
Logistics
Science
Law
Theory
Non-warfare
Culture
Books
Related
Lists

War is an armed conflict between the armed forces of states, or between governmental forces and armed groups that are organized under a certain command structure and have the capacity to sustain military operations, or between such organized groups. It is generally characterized by widespread violence, destruction, and mortality, using regular or irregular military forces. Warfare refers to the common activities and characteristics of types of war, or of wars in general. Total war is warfare that is not restricted to purely legitimate military targets, and can result in massive civilian or other non-combatant suffering and casualties.

While some war studies scholars consider war a universal and ancestral aspect of human nature, others argue it is a result of specific socio-cultural, economic, or ecological circumstances.

Etymology

The English word war derives from the 11th-century Old English words wyrre and werre, from Old French werre (also guerre as in modern French), in turn from the Frankish *werra, ultimately deriving from the Proto-Germanic *werzō 'mixture, confusion'. The word is related to the Old Saxon werran, Old High German werran, and the modern German verwirren, meaning 'to confuse, to perplex, to bring into confusion'.

History

Main article: Military history

Anthropologists disagree about whether warfare was common throughout human prehistory, or whether it was a more recent development, following the invention of agriculture or organised states. It is difficult to determine whether warfare went on during the Paleolithic due to the sparseness of known remains. Evidence of violent conflict appears to increase during the Mesolithic period, from around 10,000 years ago onwards. The Bronze Age has been described as a key period in the intensification of warfare, with the emergence of dedicated warriors and the development of metal weapons like swords.

The percentages of men killed in war in eight tribal societies, and Europe and the U.S. in the 20th century. (Lawrence H. Keeley, archeologist)

In War Before Civilization, Lawrence H. Keeley, a professor at the University of Illinois, says approximately 90–95% of known societies throughout history engaged in at least occasional warfare, and many fought constantly. Keeley describes several styles of primitive combat such as small raids, large raids, and massacres. All of these forms of warfare were used by primitive societies, a finding supported by other researchers. Keeley explains that early war raids were not well organized, as the participants did not have any formal training. Scarcity of resources meant defensive works were not a cost-effective way to protect the society against enemy raids.

William Rubinstein wrote "Pre-literate societies, even those organized in a relatively advanced way, were renowned for their studied cruelty.'" Since the rise of the state some 5,000 years ago, military activity has continued over much of the globe. The invention of gunpowder, and its eventual use in warfare, together with the acceleration of technological advances have fomented major changes to war itself.

In Western Europe, since the late 18th century, more than 150 conflicts and about 600 battles have taken place. During the 20th century, war resulted in a dramatic intensification of the pace of social changes, and was a crucial catalyst for the growth of left-wing politics.

Mao Zedong urged the socialist camp not to fear nuclear war with the United States since, even if "half of mankind died, the other half would remain while imperialism would be razed to the ground and the whole world would become socialist."

American tanks moving in formation during the Gulf War

Since 1945, great power wars, large-scale territorial conquests and war declarations have declined in frequency. However, war in general has not necessarily declined. Civil wars have increased in absolute terms since 1945. In the modern era, wars have been increasingly regulated by international humanitarian law. Battle deaths and casualties have declined over time, in part due to advances in military medicine.

A distinctive feature of war since 1945 is that combat has largely been a matter of civil wars and insurgencies. The major exceptions were the Korean War, the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971, the Iran–Iraq War, the Gulf War, the Eritrean–Ethiopian War, and the Russo-Ukrainian War.

Types of warfare

Main article: Types of war

Aims

United States Army soldiers engaged in a firefight with Taliban insurgents during the War in Afghanistan, 2009

Entities contemplating going to war and entities considering whether to end a war may formulate war aims as an evaluation/propaganda tool. War aims may stand as a proxy for national-military resolve.

Definition

Fried defines war aims as "the desired territorial, economic, military or other benefits expected following successful conclusion of a war".

Classification

Tangible/intangible aims:

  • Tangible war aims may involve (for example) the acquisition of territory (as in the German goal of Lebensraum in the first half of the 20th century) or the recognition of economic concessions (as in the Anglo-Dutch Wars).
  • Intangible war aims – like the accumulation of credibility or reputation – may have more tangible expression ("conquest restores prestige, annexation increases power").

Explicit/implicit aims:

  • Explicit war aims may involve published policy decisions.
  • Implicit war aims can take the form of minutes of discussion, memoranda and instructions.

Positive/negative aims:

  • "Positive war aims" cover tangible outcomes.
  • "Negative war aims" forestall or prevent undesired outcomes.

War aims can change in the course of conflict and may eventually morph into "peace conditions" – the minimal conditions under which a state may cease to wage a particular war.

Effects

Global deaths in conflicts since the year 1400.
Main article: Effects of war

Military and civilian casualties

Disability-adjusted life year for war per 100,000 inhabitants in 2004   no data   less than 100   100–200   200–600   600–1000   1000–1400   1400–1800   1800–2200   2200–2600   2600–3000   3000–8000   8000–8800   more than 8800

Throughout the course of human history, the average number of people dying from war has fluctuated relatively little, being about 1 to 10 people dying per 100,000. However, major wars over shorter periods have resulted in much higher casualty rates, with 100–200 casualties per 100,000 over a few years. While conventional wisdom holds that casualties have increased in recent times due to technological improvements in warfare, this is not generally true. For instance, the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648) had about the same number of casualties per capita as World War I, although it was higher during World War II (WWII). That said, overall the number of casualties from war has not significantly increased in recent times. Quite to the contrary, on a global scale the time since WWII has been unusually peaceful.

Estimates for total deaths due to war vary widely. In one estimate, primitive warfare from 50,000 to 3000 BCE has been thought to have claimed 400 million±133,000 victims based on the assumption that it accounted for the 15.1% of all deaths. Other scholars find the prehistoric percentage much lower, around 2%, similar to the Neanderthals and ancestors of apes and primates. For the period 3000 BCE until 1991, estimates range from 151 million to 2 billion.

Largest wars by death toll

Main articles: List of wars by death toll, Outline of war § Wars, and Casualty recording

The deadliest war in history, in terms of the cumulative number of deaths since its start, is World War II, from 1939 to 1945, with 70–85 million deaths, followed by the Mongol conquests at up to 60 million. As concerns a belligerent's losses in proportion to its prewar population, the most destructive war in modern history may have been the Paraguayan War (see Paraguayan War casualties). In 2013 war resulted in 31,000 deaths, down from 72,000 deaths in 1990.

War usually results in significant deterioration of infrastructure and the ecosystem, a decrease in social spending, famine, large-scale emigration from the war zone, and often the mistreatment of prisoners of war or civilians. For instance, of the nine million people who were on the territory of the Byelorussian SSR in 1941, some 1.6 million were killed by the Germans in actions away from battlefields, including about 700,000 prisoners of war, 500,000 Jews, and 320,000 people counted as partisans (the vast majority of whom were unarmed civilians). Another byproduct of some wars is the prevalence of propaganda by some or all parties in the conflict, and increased revenues by weapons manufacturers.

Three of the ten most costly wars, in terms of loss of life, have been waged in the last century. These are the two World Wars, followed by the Second Sino-Japanese War (which is sometimes considered part of World War II, or as overlapping). Most of the others involved China or neighboring peoples. The death toll of World War II, being over 60 million, surpasses all other war-death-tolls.

Deaths
(millions)
Date War
70–85 1939–1945 World War II (see World War II casualties)
60 13th century Mongol Conquests (see Mongol invasions and Tatar invasions)
40 1850–1864 Taiping Rebellion (see Dungan Revolt)
36 755–763 An Lushan Rebellion (death toll uncertain)
25 1616–1662 Qing dynasty conquest of Ming dynasty
15–22 1914–1918 World War I (see World War I casualties)
20 1937–1945 Second Sino-Japanese War
20 1370–1405 Conquests of Tamerlane
20.77 1862–1877 Dungan Revolt
5–9 1917–1922 Russian Civil War and Foreign Intervention

On military personnel

Military personnel subject to combat in war often suffer mental and physical injuries, including depression, posttraumatic stress disorder, disease, injury, and death.

In every war in which American soldiers have fought in, the chances of becoming a psychiatric casualty – of being debilitated for some period of time as a consequence of the stresses of military life – were greater than the chances of being killed by enemy fire.

— No More Heroes, Richard Gabriel

Swank and Marchand's World War II study found that after sixty days of continuous combat, 98% of all surviving military personnel will become psychiatric casualties. Psychiatric casualties manifest themselves in fatigue cases, confusional states, conversion hysteria, anxiety, obsessional and compulsive states, and character disorders.

One-tenth of mobilised American men were hospitalised for mental disturbances between 1942 and 1945, and after thirty-five days of uninterrupted combat, 98% of them manifested psychiatric disturbances in varying degrees.

— 14–18: Understanding the Great War, Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau, Annette Becker

Additionally, it has been estimated anywhere from 18% to 54% of Vietnam war veterans suffered from posttraumatic stress disorder.

Based on 1860 census figures, 8% of all white American males aged 13 to 43 died in the American Civil War, including about 6% in the North and approximately 18% in the South. The war remains the deadliest conflict in American history, resulting in the deaths of 620,000 military personnel. United States military casualties of war since 1775 have totaled over two million. Of the 60 million European military personnel who were mobilized in World War I, 8 million were killed, 7 million were permanently disabled, and 15 million were seriously injured.

The remains of dead Crow Indians killed and scalped by Sioux c. 1874

During Napoleon's retreat from Moscow, more French military personnel died of typhus than were killed by the Russians. Of the 450,000 soldiers who crossed the Neman on 25 June 1812, less than 40,000 returned. More military personnel were killed from 1500 to 1914 by typhus than from military action. In addition, if it were not for modern medical advances there would be thousands more dead from disease and infection. For instance, during the Seven Years' War, the Royal Navy reported it conscripted 184,899 sailors, of whom 133,708 (72%) died of disease or were 'missing'. It is estimated that between 1985 and 1994, 378,000 people per year died due to war.

On civilians

See also: Civilian casualties
Les Grandes Misères de la guerre depict the destruction unleashed on civilians during the Thirty Years' War.

Most wars have resulted in significant loss of life, along with destruction of infrastructure and resources (which may lead to famine, disease, and death in the civilian population). During the Thirty Years' War in Europe, the population of the Holy Roman Empire was reduced by 15 to 40 percent. Civilians in war zones may also be subject to war atrocities such as genocide, while survivors may suffer the psychological aftereffects of witnessing the destruction of war. War also results in lower quality of life and worse health outcomes. A medium-sized conflict with about 2,500 battle deaths reduces civilian life expectancy by one year and increases infant mortality by 10% and malnutrition by 3.3%. Additionally, about 1.8% of the population loses access to drinking water.

Most estimates of World War II casualties indicate around 60 million people died, 40 million of whom were civilians. Deaths in the Soviet Union were around 27 million. Since a high proportion of those killed were young men who had not yet fathered any children, population growth in the postwar Soviet Union was much lower than it otherwise would have been.

Economic

See also: Military Keynesianism

Once a war has ended, losing nations are sometimes required to pay war reparations to the victorious nations. In certain cases, land is ceded to the victorious nations. For example, the territory of Alsace-Lorraine has been traded between France and Germany on three different occasions.

Typically, war becomes intertwined with the economy and many wars are partially or entirely based on economic reasons. The common view among economic historians is that the Great Depression ended with the advent of World War II. Many economists believe that government spending on the war caused or at least accelerated recovery from the Great Depression, though some consider that it did not play a very large role in the recovery, though it did help in reducing unemployment. In most cases, such as the wars of Louis XIV, the Franco-Prussian War, and World War I, warfare primarily results in damage to the economy of the countries involved. For example, Russia's involvement in World War I took such a toll on the Russian economy that it almost collapsed and greatly contributed to the start of the Russian Revolution of 1917.

World War II

Ruins of Warsaw's Napoleon Square in the aftermath of World War II

World War II was the most financially costly conflict in history; its belligerents cumulatively spent about a trillion U.S. dollars on the war effort (as adjusted to 1940 prices). The Great Depression of the 1930s ended as nations increased their production of war materials.

By the end of the war, 70% of European industrial infrastructure was destroyed. Property damage in the Soviet Union inflicted by the Axis invasion was estimated at a value of 679 billion rubles. The combined damage consisted of complete or partial destruction of 1,710 cities and towns, 70,000 villages/hamlets, 2,508 church buildings, 31,850 industrial establishments, 40,000 mi (64,374 km) of railroad, 4100 railroad stations, 40,000 hospitals, 84,000 schools, and 43,000 public libraries.

Theories of motivation

See also: International relations theory

There are many theories about the motivations for war, but no consensus about which are most common. Military theorist Carl von Clausewitz said, "Every age has its own kind of war, its own limiting conditions, and its own peculiar preconceptions."

Psychoanalytic

Dutch psychoanalyst Joost Meerloo held that, "War is often...a mass discharge of accumulated internal rage (where)...the inner fears of mankind are discharged in mass destruction." Other psychoanalysts such as E.F.M. Durban and John Bowlby have argued human beings are inherently violent. This aggressiveness is fueled by displacement and projection where a person transfers his or her grievances into bias and hatred against other races, religions, nations or ideologies. By this theory, the nation state preserves order in the local society while creating an outlet for aggression through warfare.

The Italian psychoanalyst Franco Fornari, a follower of Melanie Klein, thought war was the paranoid or projective "elaboration" of mourning. Fornari thought war and violence develop out of our "love need": our wish to preserve and defend the sacred object to which we are attached, namely our early mother and our fusion with her. For the adult, nations are the sacred objects that generate warfare. Fornari focused upon sacrifice as the essence of war: the astonishing willingness of human beings to die for their country, to give over their bodies to their nation.

Despite Fornari's theory that man's altruistic desire for self-sacrifice for a noble cause is a contributing factor towards war, few wars have originated from a desire for war among the general populace. Far more often the general population has been reluctantly drawn into war by its rulers. One psychological theory that looks at the leaders is advanced by Maurice Walsh. He argues the general populace is more neutral towards war and wars occur when leaders with a psychologically abnormal disregard for human life are placed into power. War is caused by leaders who seek war such as Napoleon and Hitler. Such leaders most often come to power in times of crisis when the populace opts for a decisive leader, who then leads the nation to war.

Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship. ... the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.

— Hermann Göring at the Nuremberg trials, 18 April 1946

Evolutionary

See also: Prehistoric warfare

Several theories concern the evolutionary origins of warfare. There are two main schools: One sees organized warfare as emerging in or after the Mesolithic as a result of complex social organization and greater population density and competition over resources; the other sees human warfare as a more ancient practice derived from common animal tendencies, such as territoriality and sexual competition.

The latter school argues that since warlike behavior patterns are found in many primate species such as chimpanzees, as well as in many ant species, group conflict may be a general feature of animal social behavior. Some proponents of the idea argue that war, while innate, has been intensified greatly by developments of technology and social organization such as weaponry and states.

Psychologist and linguist Steven Pinker argued that war-related behaviors may have been naturally selected in the ancestral environment due to the benefits of victory. He also argued that in order to have credible deterrence against other groups (as well as on an individual level), it was important to have a reputation for retaliation, causing humans to develop instincts for revenge as well as for protecting a group's (or an individual's) reputation ("honor").

Increasing population and constant warfare among the Maya city-states over resources may have contributed to the eventual collapse of the Maya civilization by 900 CE.

Crofoot and Wrangham have argued that warfare, if defined as group interactions in which "coalitions attempt to aggressively dominate or kill members of other groups", is a characteristic of most human societies. Those in which it has been lacking "tend to be societies that were politically dominated by their neighbors".

Ashley Montagu strongly denied universalistic instinctual arguments, arguing that social factors and childhood socialization are important in determining the nature and presence of warfare. Thus, he argues, warfare is not a universal human occurrence and appears to have been a historical invention, associated with certain types of human societies. Montagu's argument is supported by ethnographic research conducted in societies where the concept of aggression seems to be entirely absent, e.g. the Chewong and Semai of the Malay peninsula. Bobbi S. Low has observed correlation between warfare and education, noting societies where warfare is commonplace encourage their children to be more aggressive.

Economic

Kuwaiti oil wells on fire during the Gulf War, 1 March 1991
See also: Resource war

War can be seen as a growth of economic competition in a competitive international system. In this view wars begin as a pursuit of markets for natural resources and for wealth. War has also been linked to economic development by economic historians and development economists studying state-building and fiscal capacity. While this theory has been applied to many conflicts, such counter arguments become less valid as the increasing mobility of capital and information level the distributions of wealth worldwide, or when considering that it is relative, not absolute, wealth differences that may fuel wars. There are those on the extreme right of the political spectrum who provide support, fascists in particular, by asserting a natural right of a strong nation to whatever the weak cannot hold by force. Some centrist, capitalist, world leaders, including Presidents of the United States and U.S. Generals, expressed support for an economic view of war.

Marxist

Main article: Marxist explanations of warfare

The Marxist theory of war is quasi-economic in that it states all modern wars are caused by competition for resources and markets between great (imperialist) powers, claiming these wars are a natural result of capitalism. Marxist economists Karl Kautsky, Rosa Luxemburg, Rudolf Hilferding and Vladimir Lenin theorized that imperialism was the result of capitalist countries needing new markets. Expansion of the means of production is only possible if there is a corresponding growth in consumer demand. Since the workers in a capitalist economy would be unable to fill the demand, producers must expand into non-capitalist markets to find consumers for their goods, hence driving imperialism.

Demographic

Demographic theories can be grouped into two classes, Malthusian and youth bulge theories:

Malthusian

Malthusian theories see expanding population and scarce resources as a source of violent conflict. Pope Urban II in 1095, on the eve of the First Crusade, advocating Crusade as a solution to European overpopulation, said:

For this land which you now inhabit, shut in on all sides by the sea and the mountain peaks, is too narrow for your large population; it scarcely furnishes food enough for its cultivators. Hence it is that you murder and devour one another, that you wage wars, and that many among you perish in civil strife. Let hatred, therefore, depart from among you; let your quarrels end. Enter upon the road to the Holy Sepulchre; wrest that land from a wicked race, and subject it to yourselves.

This is one of the earliest expressions of what has come to be called the Malthusian theory of war, in which wars are caused by expanding populations and limited resources. Thomas Malthus (1766–1834) wrote that populations always increase until they are limited by war, disease, or famine. The violent herder–farmer conflicts in Nigeria, Mali, Sudan and other countries in the Sahel region have been exacerbated by land degradation and population growth.

Youth bulge

Median age by country. War reduces life expectancy. A youth bulge is evident for Africa, and to a lesser extent in some countries in West Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia and Central America.

According to Heinsohn, who proposed youth bulge theory in its most generalized form, a youth bulge occurs when 30 to 40 percent of the males of a nation belong to the "fighting age" cohorts from 15 to 29 years of age. It will follow periods with total fertility rates as high as 4–8 children per woman with a 15–29-year delay. Heinsohn saw both past "Christianist" European colonialism and imperialism, as well as today's Islamist civil unrest and terrorism as results of high birth rates producing youth bulges.

Among prominent historical events that have been attributed to youth bulges are the role played by the historically large youth cohorts in the rebellion and revolution waves of early modern Europe, including the French Revolution of 1789, and the effect of economic depression upon the largest German youth cohorts ever in explaining the rise of Nazism in Germany in the 1930s. The 1994 Rwandan genocide has also been analyzed as following a massive youth bulge. Youth bulge theory has been subjected to statistical analysis by the World Bank, Population Action International, and the Berlin Institute for Population and Development. Youth bulge theories have been criticized as leading to racial, gender and age discrimination.

Cultural

Geoffrey Parker argues that what distinguishes the "Western way of war" based in Western Europe chiefly allows historians to explain its extraordinary success in conquering most of the world after 1500:

The Western way of war rests upon five principal foundations: technology, discipline, a highly aggressive military tradition, a remarkable capacity to innovate and to respond rapidly to the innovation of others and – from about 1500 onward – a unique system of war finance. The combination of all five provided a formula for military success....The outcome of wars has been determined less by technology, then by better war plans, the achievement of surprise, greater economic strength, and above all superior discipline.

Parker argues that Western armies were stronger because they emphasized discipline, that is, "the ability of a formation to stand fast in the face of the enemy, where they're attacking or being attacked, without giving way to the natural impulse of fear and panic." Discipline came from drills and marching in formation, target practice, and creating small "artificial kinship groups: such as the company and the platoon, to enhance psychological cohesion and combat efficiency.

Rationalist

Rationalism is an international relations theory or framework. Rationalism (and Neorealism (international relations)) operate under the assumption that states or international actors are rational, seek the best possible outcomes for themselves, and desire to avoid the costs of war. Under one game theory approach, rationalist theories posit all actors can bargain, would be better off if war did not occur, and likewise seek to understand why war nonetheless reoccurs. Under another rationalist game theory without bargaining, the peace war game, optimal strategies can still be found that depend upon number of iterations played. In "Rationalist Explanations for War", James Fearon examined three rationalist explanations for why some countries engage in war:

"Issue indivisibility" occurs when the two parties cannot avoid war by bargaining, because the thing over which they are fighting cannot be shared between them, but only owned entirely by one side or the other. "Information asymmetry with incentives to misrepresent" occurs when two countries have secrets about their individual capabilities, and do not agree on either: who would win a war between them, or the magnitude of state's victory or loss. For instance, Geoffrey Blainey argues that war is a result of miscalculation of strength. He cites historical examples of war and demonstrates, "war is usually the outcome of a diplomatic crisis which cannot be solved because both sides have conflicting estimates of their bargaining power." Thirdly, bargaining may fail due to the states' inability to make credible commitments.

Within the rationalist tradition, some theorists have suggested that individuals engaged in war suffer a normal level of cognitive bias, but are still "as rational as you and me". According to philosopher Iain King, "Most instigators of conflict overrate their chances of success, while most participants underrate their chances of injury...." King asserts that "Most catastrophic military decisions are rooted in groupthink" which is faulty, but still rational. The rationalist theory focused around bargaining, which is currently under debate. The Iraq War proved to be an anomaly that undercuts the validity of applying rationalist theory to some wars.

Political science

The statistical analysis of war was pioneered by Lewis Fry Richardson following World War I. More recent databases of wars and armed conflict have been assembled by the Correlates of War Project, Peter Brecke and the Uppsala Conflict Data Program. The following subsections consider causes of war from system, societal, and individual levels of analysis. This kind of division was first proposed by Kenneth Waltz in Man, the State, and War and has been often used by political scientists since then.

System-level

There are several different international relations theory schools. Supporters of realism in international relations argue that the motivation of states is the quest for security, and conflicts can arise from the inability to distinguish defense from offense, which is called the security dilemma.

Within the realist school as represented by scholars such as Henry Kissinger and Hans Morgenthau, and the neorealist school represented by scholars such as Kenneth Waltz and John Mearsheimer, two main sub-theories are:

  1. Balance of power theory: States have the goal of preventing a single state from becoming a hegemon, and war is the result of the would-be hegemon's persistent attempts at power acquisition. In this view, an international system with more equal distribution of power is more stable, and "movements toward unipolarity are destabilizing." However, evidence has shown power polarity is not actually a major factor in the occurrence of wars.
  2. Power transition theory: Hegemons impose stabilizing conditions on the world order, but they eventually decline, and war occurs when a declining hegemon is challenged by another rising power or aims to pre-emptively suppress them. On this view, unlike for balance-of-power theory, wars become more probable when power is more equally distributed. This "power preponderance" hypothesis has empirical support.

The two theories are not mutually exclusive and may be used to explain disparate events according to the circumstance. Liberalism as it relates to international relations emphasizes factors such as trade, and its role in disincentivizing conflict which will damage economic relations. Critics respond that military force may sometimes be at least as effective as trade at achieving economic benefits, especially historically if not as much today. Furthermore, trade relations which result in a high level of dependency may escalate tensions and lead to conflict. Empirical data on the relationship of trade to peace are mixed, and moreover, some evidence suggests countries at war do not necessarily trade less with each other.

Societal-level

  • Diversionary theory, also known as the "scapegoat hypothesis", suggests the politically powerful may use war to as a diversion or to rally domestic popular support. This is supported by literature showing out-group hostility enhances in-group bonding, and a significant domestic "rally effect" has been demonstrated when conflicts begin. However, studies examining the increased use of force as a function of need for internal political support are more mixed. U.S. war-time presidential popularity surveys taken during the presidencies of several recent U.S. leaders have supported diversionary theory.

Individual-level

These theories suggest differences in people's personalities, decision-making, emotions, belief systems, and biases are important in determining whether conflicts get out of hand. For instance, it has been proposed that conflict is modulated by bounded rationality and various cognitive biases, such as prospect theory.

Ethics

The Apotheosis of War (1871) by Vasily Vereshchagin

The morality of war has been the subject of debate for thousands of years.

The two principal aspects of ethics in war, according to the just war theory, are jus ad bellum and jus in bello.

Jus ad bellum (right to war), dictates which unfriendly acts and circumstances justify a proper authority in declaring war on another nation. There are six main criteria for the declaration of a just war: first, any just war must be declared by a lawful authority; second, it must be a just and righteous cause, with sufficient gravity to merit large-scale violence; third, the just belligerent must have rightful intentions – namely, that they seek to advance good and curtail evil; fourth, a just belligerent must have a reasonable chance of success; fifth, the war must be a last resort; and sixth, the ends being sought must be proportional to means being used.

In besieged Leningrad. "Hitler ordered that Moscow and Leningrad were to be razed to the ground; their inhabitants were to be annihilated or driven out by starvation. These intentions were part of the 'General Plan East'." – The Oxford Companion to World War II.

Jus in bello (right in war), is the set of ethical rules when conducting war. The two main principles are proportionality and discrimination. Proportionality regards how much force is necessary and morally appropriate to the ends being sought and the injustice suffered. The principle of discrimination determines who are the legitimate targets in a war, and specifically makes a separation between combatants, who it is permissible to kill, and non-combatants, who it is not. Failure to follow these rules can result in the loss of legitimacy for the just-war-belligerent.

The just war theory was foundational in the creation of the United Nations and in international law's regulations on legitimate war.

Lewis Coser, an American conflict theorist and sociologist, argued conflict provides a function and a process whereby a succession of new equilibriums are created. Thus, the struggle of opposing forces, rather than being disruptive, may be a means of balancing and maintaining a social structure or society.

Limiting and stopping

Anti-war rally in Washington, D.C., 15 March 2003
Main article: Anti-war movement

Religious groups have long formally opposed or sought to limit war as in the Second Vatican Council document Gaudiem et Spes: "Any act of war aimed indiscriminately at the destruction of entire cities of extensive areas along with their population is a crime against God and man himself. It merits unequivocal and unhesitating condemnation."

Anti-war movements have existed for every major war in the 20th century, including, most prominently, World War I, World War II, and the Vietnam War. In the 21st century, worldwide anti-war movements occurred in response to the United States invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq. Protests opposing the War in Afghanistan occurred in Europe, Asia, and the United States.

Pauses

During a war, brief pauses of violence may be called for, and further agreed to – ceasefire, temporary cessation, humanitarian pauses and corridors, days of tranquility, de-confliction arrangements. There are a number of disadvantages, obstacles and hesitations against implementing such pauses such as a humanitarian corridor. Pauses in conflict can also be ill-advised, for reasons such as "delay of defeat" and the "weakening of credibility". Natural causes for a pause may include events such as the 2019 coronavirus pandemic.

See also

Notes

  1. The term "armed conflict" is used instead of, or in addition to, the term "war" with the former being more general in scope. The International Committee of the Red Cross differentiates between international and non-international armed conflict in their definition, "International armed conflicts exist whenever there is resort to armed force between two or more States.... Non-international armed conflicts are protracted armed confrontations occurring between governmental armed forces and the forces of one or more armed groups, or between such groups arising on the territory of a State . The armed confrontation must reach a minimum level of intensity and the parties involved in the conflict must show a minimum of organisation."
  2. ^ The argument is made from pages 314 to 332 of The Blank Slate. Relevant quotes include on p332 "The first step in understanding violence is to set aside our abhorrence of it long enough to examine why it can sometimes pay off in evolutionary terms.", "Natural selection is powered by competition, which means that the products of natural selection – survival machines, in Richard Dawkins metaphor – should, by default, do whatever helps them survive and reproduce.". On p323 "If an obstacle stands in the way of something an organism needs, it should neutralize the obstacle by disabling or eliminating it.", "Another human obstacle consists of men monopolozing women who could otherwise be taken as wives.", "The competition can be violent". On p324 "So people have invented, and perhaps evolved, an alternate defense: the advertised deterrence policy known as lex talionis, the law of retaliation, familiar from the biblical injunction "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth." If you can credibly say to potential adversaries, "We won't attack first, but if we are attacked, we will survive and strike back," you remove Hobbes's first two incentives for quarrel, gain and mistrust.". On p326 "Also necessary for vengeance to work as a deterrent is that the willingness to pursue it be made public, because the whole point of deterrence is to give would-be attackers second thoughts beforehand. And this brings us to Hobbes's final reason for quarrel. Thirdly, glory – though a more accurate word would be "honor"."

References

  1. "How is the Term "Armed Conflict" Defined in International Humanitarian Law?" (PDF). International Committee of the Red Cross. March 2008. Archived (PDF) from the original on 1 November 2018. Retrieved 7 December 2020.
  2. "HOW IS THE TERM "ARMED CONFLICT" DEFINED IN INTERNATIONAL HUMANITARIAN LAW?" (PDF). International Committee of the Red Cross. ICRC. April 2024. pp. 13–14. Archived from the original (PDF) on 8 July 2024. Retrieved 7 July 2024.
  3. "Warfare". Cambridge Dictionary. Archived from the original on 24 February 2021. Retrieved 1 August 2016.
  4. Šmihula, Daniel (2013): The Use of Force in International Relations, p. 67, ISBN 978-80-224-1341-1.
  5. James, Paul; Friedman, Jonathan (2006). Globalization and Violence, Vol. 3: Globalizing War and Intervention. London: Sage Publications. Archived from the original on 11 January 2020. Retrieved 3 December 2017.
  6. "war". Online Etymology Dictionary. 2010. Archived from the original on 11 January 2012. Retrieved 24 April 2011.
  7. ^ Gat, Azar (6 May 2015). "Proving communal warfare among hunter-gatherers: The quasi-rousseauan error". Evolutionary Anthropology: Issues, News, and Reviews. 24 (3): 111–126. doi:10.1002/evan.21446. ISSN 1060-1538.
  8. Allen, Mark W.; Bettinger, Robert Lawrence; Codding, Brian F.; Jones, Terry L.; Schwitalla, Al W. (25 October 2016). "Resource scarcity drives lethal aggression among prehistoric hunter-gatherers in central California". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 113 (43): 12120–12125. Bibcode:2016PNAS..11312120A. doi:10.1073/pnas.1607996113. ISSN 0027-8424. PMC 5087046. PMID 27790997.
  9. Haas, Jonathan; Piscitelli, Matthew (12 April 2013). Fry, Douglas P. (ed.). "The Prehistory of Warfare: Misled by Ethnography". War, Peace, and Human Nature (1 ed.). Oxford University PressNew York. pp. 168–190. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199858996.003.0010. ISBN 978-0-19-985899-6. Retrieved 22 December 2024.
  10. Kissel, Marc; Kim, Nam C. (January 2019). "The emergence of human warfare: Current perspectives". American Journal of Physical Anthropology. 168 (S67): 141–163. doi:10.1002/ajpa.23751. ISSN 0002-9483. PMID 30575025.
  11. Meijer, Hugo (September 2024). "The Origins of War: A Global Archaeological Review". Human Nature. 35 (3): 225–288. doi:10.1007/s12110-024-09477-3. ISSN 1045-6767.
  12. Horn, Christian; Kristiansen, Kristian (26 April 2018). Horn, Christian; Kristiansen, Kristian (eds.). "Introducing Bronze Age Warfare". Warfare in Bronze Age Society (1 ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 1–15. doi:10.1017/9781316884522.002. ISBN 978-1-316-88452-2. Retrieved 22 December 2024.
  13. "Review: War Before Civilization". Brneurosci.org. 4 September 2006. Archived from the original on 21 November 2010. Retrieved 24 January 2011.
  14. Spengler (4 July 2006). "The fraud of primitive authenticity". Asia Times Online. Archived from the original on 6 July 2006. Retrieved 8 June 2009.
  15. Martin, Debra L.; Harrod, Ryan P.; Pérez, Ventura R., eds. (2012). The Bioarchaeology of Violence. Gainesville: University Press of Florida. Archived from the original on 4 November 2013. Retrieved 10 January 2013.
  16. Keeley, Lawrence H: War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage. p. 55.
  17. W. D. Rubinstein (2004). Genocide: A History. Pearson Longman. p. 22. ISBN 978-0-582-50601-5. Archived from the original on 8 August 2013. Retrieved 31 May 2012.
  18. Diamond, Jared, Guns, Germs and Steel
  19. ^ World War One – A New Kind of War | Part II Archived 27 February 2018 at the Wayback Machine, From 14–18 Understanding the Great War, by Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau, Annette Becker
  20. Kolko 1994, p. xvii–xviii: "War in this century became an essential precondition for the emergence of a numerically powerful Left, moving it from the margins to the very center of European politics during 1917–18 and of all world affairs after 1941".
  21. "Instant Wisdom: Beyond the Little Red Book". Time. 20 September 1976. Archived from the original on 29 September 2013. Retrieved 14 April 2013.
  22. ^ Fazal, Tanisha M. (2025). "Is War in Decline?". Annual Review of Political Science. doi:10.1146/annurev-polisci-041923-115351.
  23. Fazal, Tanisha M. (2014). "Dead Wrong? Battle Deaths, Military Medicine, and Exaggerated Reports of War's Demise". International Security. 39 (1): 95–125. ISSN 0162-2889.
  24. Robert J. Bunker and Pamela Ligouri Bunker, "The modern state in epochal transition: The significance of irregular warfare, state deconstruction, and the rise of new warfighting entities beyond neo-medievalism." Small Wars & Insurgencies 27.2 (2016): 325–344.
  25. "Asymmetrical warfare | Britannica". www.britannica.com. Retrieved 5 May 2023.
  26. Guillemin, Jeanne (July 2006). "Scientists and the history of biological weapons: A brief historical overview of the development of biological weapons in the twentieth century". EMBO Reports. 7 (S1): S45-9. doi:10.1038/sj.embor.7400689. ISSN 1469-221X. PMC 1490304. PMID 16819450.
  27. Wheelis, Mark (2002). "Biological Warfare at the 1346 Siege of Caffa - Volume 8, Number 9—September 2002 - Emerging Infectious Diseases journal - CDC". Emerging Infectious Diseases. 8 (9): 971–975. doi:10.3201/eid0809.010536. ISSN 1080-6040. PMC 2732530. PMID 12194776.
  28. D. Hank Ellison (2007). Handbook of Chemical and Biological Warfare Agents (2nd ed.). CRC Press. pp. 567–570. ISBN 978-0-8493-1434-6.
  29. Lewis, Brian C. "Information Warfare". Federation of American Scientist. Archived from the original on 17 June 1997. Retrieved 27 February 2017.
  30. Nagao, Yuichiro (2001). "Unconventional Warfare: A Historical Perspective" (PDF). National Institute for Defense Studies. Ministry of Defense. Archived from the original (PDF) on 16 August 2022. Retrieved 18 August 2022.
  31. Sullivan, Patricia (2012). "War Aims and War Outcomes". Who Wins?: Predicting Strategic Success and Failure in Armed Conflict. Oxford University Press, US. p. 17. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199878338.003.0003. ISBN 978-0199878338. Archived from the original on 13 September 2015. Retrieved 25 August 2015. A state with greater military capacity than its adversary is more likely to prevail in wars with 'total' war aims – the overthrow of a foreign government or annexation of territory – than in wars with more limited objectives.
  32. Fried, Marvin Benjamin (1 July 2014). Austro-Hungarian War Aims in the Balkans During World War I. Palgrave Macmillan (published 2014). p. 4. ISBN 978-1137359018. Archived from the original on 17 October 2015. Retrieved 24 August 2015. War aims are the desired territorial, economic, military or other benefits expected following successful conclusion of a war.
  33. Welch distinguishes: "tangible goods such as arms, wealth, and – provided they are strategically or economically valuable – territory and resources" from "intangible goods such as credibility and reputation" – Welch, David A. (1995). Justice and the Genesis of War. Cambridge Studies in International Relations. Cambridge University Press. p. 17. ISBN 978-0521558686. Archived from the original on 18 September 2015. Retrieved 24 August 2015.
  34. Fried, Marvin Benjamin (1 July 2014). Austro-Hungarian War Aims in the Balkans During World War I. Palgrave Macmillan (published 2014). p. 4. ISBN 978-1137359018. Archived from the original on 17 October 2015. Retrieved 24 August 2015. Intangibles, such as prestige or power, can also represent war aims, though often (albeit not always) their achievement is framed within a more tangible context (e.g. conquest restores prestige, annexation increases power, etc.).
  35. Compare:Katwala, Sunder (13 February 2005). "Churchill by Paul Addison". Books. The Guardian. Guardian News and Media Limited. Archived from the original on 28 September 2016. Retrieved 24 August 2015. took office and declared he had 'not become the King's First Minister to oversee the liquidation of the British empire'. His view was that an Anglo-American English-speaking alliance would seek to preserve the empire, though ending it was among Roosevelt's implicit war aims.
  36. Compare Fried, Marvin Benjamin (1 July 2014). Austro-Hungarian War Aims in the Balkans During World War I. Palgrave Macmillan (published 2014). p. 4. ISBN 978-1137359018. Archived from the original on 17 October 2015. Retrieved 24 August 2015. At times, war aims were explicitly stated internally or externally in a policy decision, while at other times the war aims were merely discussed but not published, remaining instead in the form of memoranda or instructions.
  37. Fried, Marvin Benjamin (1 July 2015). "'A Life and Death Question': Austro-Hungarian War Aims in the First World War". In Afflerbach, Holger (ed.). The Purpose of the First World War: War Aims and Military Strategies. Schriften des Historischen Kollegs. Vol. 91. Berlin/Boston: Walter de Gruyter GmbH (published 2015). p. 118. ISBN 978-3110443486. Archived from the original on 16 October 2015. Retrieved 24 August 2015. he Foreign Ministry and the Military High Command were in agreement that political and military hegemony over Serbia and the Western Balkans was a vital war aim. The Hungarian Prime Minister István Count Tisza, by contrast, was more preoccupied with so-called 'negative war aims', notably warding off hostile Romanian, Italian, and even Bulgarian intervention.
  38. Haase, Hugo (1932). "The Debate in the Reichstag on Internal Political Conditions, April 5–6, 1916". In Lutz, Ralph Haswell (ed.). Fall of the German Empire, 1914–1918. Hoover War Library publications. Stanford University Press. p. 233. ISBN 978-0804723800. Archived from the original on 25 October 2015. Retrieved 25 August 2015. Gentlemen, when it comes time to formulate peace conditions, it is time to think of another thing than war aims.
  39. Roser, Max (15 November 2017). "War and Peace". Our World in Data. Archived from the original on 16 November 2017. Retrieved 15 November 2017.
  40. "Mortality and Burden of Disease Estimates for WHO Member States in 2004". World Health Organization. Archived from the original on 28 August 2021. Retrieved 5 October 2020.
  41. "War and Peace". Our World in Data. Archived from the original on 16 November 2017. Retrieved 16 November 2017.
  42. Matthew White, 'Primitive War' Archived 14 April 2013 at the Wayback Machine
  43. Gómez, José María et al (Summer 2016). "The phylogenetic roots of human lethal violence," Nature, vol 538 (7624), https://www.uv.es/~verducam/HHL.pdf
  44. Eckhardt, William (1991). "War-related deaths since 3000 BC". Bulletin of Peace Proposals. 22 (4): 437–443. doi:10.1177/096701069102200410. S2CID 144946896., https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&doi=27e7fdb7d9b671cdcf999f3aab15cca8be25b163
  45. *The Cambridge History of China: Alien regimes and border states, 907–1368, 1994, p. 622, cited by White
    *Matthew White (2011). The Great Big Book of Horrible Things: The Definitive Chronicle of History's 100 Worst Atrocities.
  46. Murray, Christopher JL; Vos, Theo; Lopez, Alan D (17 December 2014). "Global, regional, and national age-sex specific all-cause and cause-specific mortality for 240 causes of death, 1990–2013: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2013". Lancet. 385 (9963): 117–71. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(14)61682-2. PMC 4340604. PMID 25530442.
  47. Tanton, John (2002). The Social Contract. p. 42.
  48. Moore, John (1992). The pursuit of happiness. p. 304.
  49. Baxter, Richard (2013). Humanizing the Laws of War. p. 344.
  50. Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, Basic Books, 2010, p. 250.
  51. Dying and Death: Inter-disciplinary Perspectives. p. 153, Asa Kasher (2007)
  52. Chew, Emry (2012). Arming the Periphery. p. 49.
  53. ^ McFarlane, Alan: The Savage Wars of Peace: England, Japan and the Malthusian Trap, Blackwell 2003, ISBN 978-0-631-18117-0 – cited by White Archived 20 December 2017 at the Wayback Machine
  54. Ping-ti Ho, "An Estimate of the Total Population of Sung-Chin China", in Études Song, Series 1, No 1, (1970) pp. 33–53.
  55. "Mongol Conquests". Users.erols.com. Archived from the original on 20 December 2017. Retrieved 24 January 2011.
  56. "The world's worst massacres Whole Earth Review". 1987. Archived from the original on 17 May 2003. Retrieved 24 January 2011.
  57. "Taiping Rebellion – Britannica Concise". Britannica. Archived from the original on 15 December 2007. Retrieved 24 January 2011.
  58. "Selected Death Tolls for Wars, Massacres and Atrocities Before the 20th Century". Users.erols.com. Archived from the original on 20 December 2017. Retrieved 24 January 2011.
  59. "World War I - Killed, wounded, and missing | Britannica". Britannica.com. Retrieved 5 December 2021.
  60. "Nuclear Power: The End of the War Against Japan". BBC News. Archived from the original on 28 November 2015. Retrieved 24 January 2011.
  61. "Timur Lenk (1369–1405)". Users.erols.com. Archived from the original on 20 December 2017. Retrieved 24 January 2011.
  62. Matthew White's website Archived 20 December 2017 at the Wayback Machine (a compilation of scholarly death toll estimates)
  63. 曹树基. 《中国人口史》 (in Chinese). Vol. 5《清时期》. p. 635.
  64. 路伟东. "同治光绪年间陕西人口的损失" (in Chinese).
  65. "Russian Civil War". Spartacus-Educational.com. Archived from the original on 5 December 2010. Retrieved 26 February 2019.
  66. ^ Lt. Col. Dave Grossman (1996). On Killing – The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War & Society. Little, Brown & Co.
  67. Maris Vinovskis (1990). Toward a Social History of the American Civil War: Exploratory Essays. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-39559-5. Archived from the original on 26 May 2013. Retrieved 31 May 2012.
  68. Kitchen, Martin (2000), The Treaty of Versailles and its Consequences Archived 12 May 2008 at the Wayback Machine, New York: Longman
  69. The Historical Impact of Epidemic Typhus. Joseph M. Conlon.
  70. War and Pestilence. Time.
  71. A. S. Turberville (2006). Johnson's England: An Account of the Life & Manners of His Age. p. 53. ISBN 1-4067-2726-1
  72. Obermeyer Z, Murray CJ, Gakidou E (June 2008). "Fifty years of violent war deaths from Vietnam to Bosnia: analysis of data from the world health survey programme". BMJ. 336 (7659): 1482–86. doi:10.1136/bmj.a137. PMC 2440905. PMID 18566045.
  73. The Thirty Years War (1618–48) Archived 20 December 2017 at the Wayback Machine, Alan McFarlane, The Savage Wars of Peace: England, Japan and the Malthusian Trap (2003)
  74. History of Europe – Demographics Archived 23 July 2013 at the Wayback Machine. Encyclopædia Britannica.
  75. Davenport, Christian; Mokleiv Nygård, Håvard; Fjelde, Hanne; Armstrong, David (2019). "The Consequences of Contention: Understanding the Aftereffects of Political Conflict and Violence". Annual Review of Political Science. 22: 361–377. doi:10.1146/annurev-polisci-050317-064057.
  76. "World War II Fatalities". Archived from the original on 22 April 2007. Retrieved 20 April 2007.
  77. "Leaders mourn Soviet wartime dead". BBC News. 9 May 2005. Archived from the original on 22 December 2019. Retrieved 6 January 2010.
  78. Hosking, Geoffrey A. (2006). Rulers And Victims: The Russians in the Soviet Union. Harvard University Press. pp. 242–. ISBN 978-0-674-02178-5. Archived from the original on 5 September 2015. Retrieved 31 May 2012.
  79. "Alsace-Lorraine". Encyclopædia Britannica (Online ed.). Archived from the original on 20 March 2022. Retrieved 21 March 2022.
  80. "Great Depression" Archived 9 May 2015 at the Wayback Machine, Encyclopædia Britannica
  81. Referring to the effect of World War II spending on the economy, economist John Kenneth Galbraith said, "One could not have had a better demonstration of the Keynesian ideas." Daniel Yergin, William Cran (writers / producer) (2002). Commanding Heights, see chapter 6 video or transcript (TV documentary). U.S.: PBS.
  82. Romer, Christina D. (1992). "What Ended the Great Depression?". Journal of Economic History. 52 (4): 757–784. doi:10.1017/S002205070001189X. fiscal policy was of little consequence even as late as 1942, suggests an interesting twist on the usual view that World War II caused, or at least accelerated, the recovery from the Great Depression.
  83. Higgs, Robert (1 March 1992). "Wartime Prosperity? A Reassessment of the U.S. Economy in the 1940s". The Journal of Economic History. 52 (1): 41–60. doi:10.1017/S0022050700010251. ISSN 1471-6372. S2CID 154484756.
  84. Gatrell, Peter (2014). Russia's First World War : A Social and Economic History. Hoboken, New Jersey: Routledge. p. 270. ISBN 978-1317881391.
  85. Mayer, E. (2000). "World War II course lecture notes". Emayzine.com. Victorville, California: Victor Valley College. Archived from the original on 1 March 2009. Retrieved 4 July 2014.
  86. Coleman, P. (1999) "Cost of the War", World War II Resource Guide (Gardena, California: The American War Library)
  87. "Great Depression and World War II, 1929–1945". Library of Congress. Archived from the original on 12 October 2007. Retrieved 4 July 2014.
  88. Marc Pilisuk; Jennifer Achord Rountree (2008). Who Benefits from Global Violence and War: Uncovering a Destructive System. Greenwood Publishing Group. pp. 136–. ISBN 978-0-275-99435-8. Archived from the original on 26 May 2013. Retrieved 31 May 2012.
  89. The New York Times, 9 February 1946, Volume 95, Number 32158.
  90. Levy, Jack S. (1989). Tetlock, Philip E.; Husbands, Jo L.; Jervis, Robert; Stern, Paul C.; Tilly, Charles (eds.). "The Causes of War: A Review of Theories and Evidence" (PDF). Behavior, Society and Nuclear War. I: 295. Archived from the original (PDF) on 22 September 2013. Retrieved 4 May 2012.
  91. Clausewitz, Carl Von (1976), On War (Princeton University Press) p. 593
  92. | A. M. Meerloo, M.D. The Rape of the Mind (2009) p. 134, Progressive Press, ISBN 978-1-61577-376-3
  93. Durbin, E.F.L. and John Bowlby. Personal Aggressiveness and War 1939.
  94. (Fornari 1975)
  95. Blanning, T.C.W. "The Origin of Great Wars." The Origins of the French Revolutionary Wars. p. 5
  96. Walsh, Maurice N. War and the Human Race. 1971.
  97. "In an interview with Gilbert in Göring's jail cell during the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials (18 April 1946)". 18 April 2017. Retrieved 5 August 2015.
  98. Peter Meyer. Social Evolution in Franz M. Wuketits and Christoph Antweiler (eds.) Handbook of Evolution The Evolution of Human Societies and Cultures Wiley-VCH Verlag
  99. O'Connell, Sanjida (7 January 2004). "Apes of war...is it in our genes?". The Daily Telegraph. London. Archived from the original on 4 September 2018. Retrieved 6 February 2010. Analysis of chimpanzee war behavior
  100. Anderson, Kenneth (1996). Warrior Ants: The Enduring Threat of the Small War and the Land-mine. SSRN 935783. Scholarly comparisons between human and ant wars
  101. Johan M.G. van der Dennen. 1995. The Origin of War: Evolution of a Male-Coalitional Reproductive Strategy. Origin Press, Groningen, 1995 chapters 1 & 2
  102. Pinker, Steven (2002). The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. London: The Penguin Group. pp. 314–332. ISBN 0-713-99256-5.
  103. Mind the Gap: Tracing the Origins of Human Universals By Peter M. Kappeler, Joan B. Silk, 2009, Chapter 8, "Intergroup Aggression in Primates and Humans; The Case for a Unified Theory", Margaret C. Crofoot and Richard W. Wrangham
  104. Montagu, Ashley (1976), The Nature of Human Aggression (Oxford University Press)
  105. Howell, Signe and Roy Willis, eds. (1989) Societies at Peace: Anthropological Perspectives. London: Routledge
  106. "An Evolutionary Perspective on War" Archived 16 October 2015 at the Wayback Machine, Bobbi S. Low, published in Behavior, Culture, and Conflict in World Politics, The University of Michigan Press, p. 22
  107. Johnson, Noel D.; Koyama, Mark (April 2017). "States and economic growth: Capacity and constraints". Explorations in Economic History. 64: 1–20. doi:10.1016/j.eeh.2016.11.002.
  108. Roger Griffin and Matthew Feldman, eds., Fascism: Fascism and Culture, New York: Routledge, 2004.
  109. Hawkins, Mike. Social Darwinism in European and American Thought, 1860–1945: Nature as Model and Nature as Threat, Cambridge University Press, 1997.
  110. O'Callaghan, Einde (25 October 2007). "The Marxist Theory of Imperialism and its Critics". Marxists Internet Archive. Archived from the original on 8 July 2017. Retrieved 24 April 2011.
  111. Safire, William (2004). Lend me your ears: great speeches in history. W. W. Norton & Company. p. 94. ISBN 978-0-393-05931-1.
  112. Waugh, David (2000). Geography: an integrated approach. Nelson Thornes. p. 378. ISBN 978-0-17-444706-1.
  113. "In Mali, waning fortunes of Fulani herders play into Islamist hands". Reuters. 20 November 2016. Archived from the original on 30 March 2019. Retrieved 31 March 2019.
  114. "How Climate Change Is Spurring Land Conflict in Nigeria". Time. 28 June 2018. Archived from the original on 4 March 2021. Retrieved 31 March 2019.
  115. "The Deadliest Conflict You've Never Heard of". Foreign Policy. 23 January 2019. Archived from the original on 18 February 2019. Retrieved 31 March 2019.
  116. Helgerson, John L. (2002): "The National Security Implications of Global Demographic Trends" Archived 10 October 2017 at the Wayback Machine
  117. Heinsohn, G. (2006): "Demography and War" (online) Archived 12 May 2016 at the Wayback Machine
  118. Heinsohn, G. (2005): "Population, Conquest and Terror in the 21st Century" (online) Archived 13 May 2016 at the Wayback Machine
  119. Jack A. Goldstone (1993). Revolution and Rebellion in the Early Modern World. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-08267-0. Archived from the original on 26 May 2013. Retrieved 31 May 2012.
  120. Moller, Herbert (1968): 'Youth as a Force in the Modern World', Comparative Studies in Society and History 10: 238–60; 240–44
  121. Diessenbacher, Hartmut (1994): Kriege der Zukunft: Die Bevölkerungsexplosion gefährdet den Frieden. Muenchen: Hanser 1998; see also (criticizing youth bulge theory) Marc Sommers (2006): "Fearing Africa's Young Men: The Case of Rwanda." The World Bank: Social Development Papers – Conflict Prevention and Reconstruction, Paper No. 32, January 2006 Archived 10 October 2017 at the Wayback Machine
  122. Urdal, Henrik (2004): "The Devil in the Demographics: The Effect of Youth Bulges on Domestic Armed Conflict", ,
  123. Population Action International: "The Security Demographic: Population and Civil Conflict after the Cold War" Archived 10 October 2017 at the Wayback Machine
  124. Kröhnert, Steffen (2004): "Warum entstehen Kriege? Welchen Einfluss haben demografische Veränderungen auf die Entstehung von Konflikten?" Archived 4 September 2018 at the Wayback Machine
  125. Hendrixson, Anne: "Angry Young Men, Veiled Young Women: Constructing a New Population Threat" Archived 30 May 2010 at the Wayback Machine
  126. Geoffrey Parker, "Introduction" in Parker, ed. The Cambridge illustrated history of warfare (Cambridge University Press 1995) pp 2–11, online
  127. Parker, :Introduction: pp 2, 3.
  128. ^ Fearon, James D. (Summer 1995). "Rationalist Explanations for War". International Organization. 49 (3): 379–414. doi:10.1017/s0020818300033324. JSTOR 2706903. S2CID 38573183.
  129. Geoffrey Blainey (1988). Causes of War (3rd ed.). Simon and Schuster. p. 114. ISBN 978-0029035917. Archived from the original on 1 January 2016. Retrieved 19 March 2016.
  130. Powell, Robert (2002). "Bargaining Theory and International Conflict". Annual Review of Political Science. 5: 1–30. doi:10.1146/annurev.polisci.5.092601.141138.
  131. Chris Cramer, 'Civil War is Not a Stupid Thing', ISBN 978-1850658214
  132. From point 10 of Modern Conflict is Not What You Think (article) Archived 22 February 2016 at the Wayback Machine, accessed 16 December 2014.
  133. Quote from Iain King, in Modern Conflict is Not What You Think Archived 22 February 2016 at the Wayback Machine
  134. Point 6 in Modern Conflict is Not What You Think Archived 22 February 2016 at the Wayback Machine
  135. Lake, David A. (November 2010). "Two Cheers for Bargaining Theory: Assessing Rationalist Explanations of the Iraq War". International Security. 35 (3): 7–52. doi:10.1162/isec_a_00029. S2CID 1096131.
  136. "Uppsala Conflict Data Program – About". Archived from the original on 3 April 2019. Retrieved 9 April 2019.
  137. ^ Levy, Jack S. (June 1998). "The Causes of War and the Conditions of Peace". Annual Review of Political Science. 1: 139–65. doi:10.1146/annurev.polisci.1.1.139.
  138. "Peace Economics, Peace Science and Public Policy (p. 19)". 2001. Archived from the original on 7 July 2011. Retrieved 7 February 2010. More recently studies (Lebow 2008, Lindemann 2010) demonstrated that striving for self-esteem (i.e. virile self images), and recognition as a Great Power or non-recognition (exclusion and punishment of great powers, denying traumatic historical events) is a principal cause of international conflict and war.
  139. Levy, Jack S. (March 1997). "Prospect Theory, Rational Choice, and International Relations" (PDF). International Studies Quarterly. 41 (1): 87–112. doi:10.1111/0020-8833.00034. Archived from the original (PDF) on 24 September 2015.
  140. ^ DeForrest, Mark Edward. "Conclusion". Just War Theory and the Recent U.S. Air Strikes Against Iraq. Gonzaga Journal of International Law. Archived from the original on 2 April 2010. Retrieved 1 August 2011.
  141. Lazar, Seth (21 March 2020). Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). "War". The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved 4 October 2022.
  142. Aquinas, Thomas. "Part II, Question 40". The Summa Theologica. Benziger Bros. edition, 1947. Archived from the original on 12 February 2002. Retrieved 1 August 2011.
  143. Mosley, Alexander. "The Jus Ad Bellum Convention". Just War Theory. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Archived from the original on 16 April 2010. Retrieved 1 August 2011.
  144. Ian Dear, Michael Richard Daniell Foot (2001). The Oxford Companion to World War II. Oxford University Press. p. 88. ISBN 0-19-860446-7
  145. ^ Moseley, Alexander. "The Principles of Jus in Bello". Just War Theory. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Archived from the original on 16 April 2010. Retrieved 1 August 2011.
  146. Codevilla, Angelo; Seabury, Paul (1989). War: Ends and Means. New York: Basic Books. p. 304. ISBN 978-0-465-09067-9.
  147. Ankony, Robert C., "Sociological and Criminological Theory: Brief of Theorists, Theories, and Terms", CFM Research, Jul. 2012.
  148. "Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World Gaudium et Spes Promulgated by His Holiness, Pope Paul VI on December 7, 1965 Archived 11 April 2011 at the Wayback Machine"
  149. Glossary of Terms: Pauses During Conflict (PDF). United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. June 2011. Archived (PDF) from the original on 6 March 2022. Retrieved 6 March 2022.
  150. "Why humanitarians wary of "humanitarian corridors"". The New Humanitarian. 19 March 2012. Archived from the original on 6 March 2022. Retrieved 6 March 2022.
  151. Reindorp, Nicola; Wiles, Peter (June 2001). "Humanitarian Coordination: Lessons from Recent Field Experience" (PDF). Overseas Development Institute, London. Archived (PDF) from the original on 6 March 2022. Retrieved 6 March 2022 – via UNHCR.
  152. Nemeth, Maj Lisa A. (2009). "The Use of Pauses in Coercion: An Examination in Theory" (PDF). Monograph. School of Advanced Military Studies, United States Army Command and General Staff College. Archived (PDF) from the original on 6 March 2022.
  153. Laura Wise; Sanja Badanjak; Christine Bell; Fiona Knäussel (2021). "Pandemic Pauses: Understanding Ceasefires in a Time of Covid-19" (PDF). politicalsettlements.org. Political Settlements Research Programme. Archived (PDF) from the original on 18 May 2022. Retrieved 6 March 2022.
  154. Drexler, Madeline (10 September 2021). "When a Virus Strikes, Can the World Pause Its Wars? –". The Wire Science. Archived from the original on 6 March 2022. Retrieved 6 March 2022.

Bibliography

External links

Library resources about
War
Military and war
Concepts
Forces
Branches
Structure
Vehicles
Weapons
Land
Sea/Air:
Equipment
Combat systems
Warfare
Battlespace
Tactics
Operational
Strategy
Policy
Lists
Other namespace
Templates
Categories
Related
Category  Commons
Links to related articles
War
Political philosophy
Terms
Government
Ideologies
Concepts
Philosophers
Antiquity
Middle Ages
Early modern
period
18th and 19th
centuries
20th and 21st
centuries
Works
Related
International relations
Organizations
Present
Past
History
Concepts
Theory
Related fields and subfields
Categories: