Dicionário de política I Norberto Bobbio, Nicola Matteucci e Gianfranco Pasquino; trad.

Carmen C,
Varriale et ai.; coord. trad. João Ferreira; rev. geral João Ferreira e Luis Guerreiro Pinto Cacais. - Brasília
: Editora Universidade de Brasília, 1 la ed., 1998. Vol. 1: 674 p. (total: 1.330 p.) Vários Colaboradores.
Obra em 2v.

Guerra.

Várias foram as definições deste conceito. Entre as mais conhecidas estão as que se inspiram no
direito. Os internacionalistas estudaram os critérios com base nos quais é possível distinguir
exatamente o estado de Guerra do estado de paz, a fim de aplicar as normas denominadas de direito
bélico. Estas definições, porém, não visam tanto colher a essência do fenômeno, quanto evidenciar
seus determinados momentos formais, os quais, contudo, vão desaparecendo cada vez mais na praxe
atual. O resultado é que também os juristas devem prestar cada vez mais atenção à natureza
substancial deste e de outros fenômenos, quando recorrem ao chamado princípio da "efetividade".

Do ponto de vista substancial, Q. Wright define a Guerra, numa primeira análise, como "um violento
contato de entidades distintas mas semelhantes". Obviamente, esta definição compreende
numerosas facetas, mas está também sujeita a duas críticas: 1) não consegue exaurir o conceito de
Guerra; 2) nem tudo aquilo que ela compreende é catalogável, conforme o sentido comum, como
Guerra.

A tradição doutrinal tem insistido muito sobre o fato de que a violência se expressa na Guerra por
meio da "força armada". Isto reduziu bastante os casos que podemos configurar como Guerra; mas,
mesmo assim, se se ganhou em matéria de precisão, perdeu-se um pouco o contato com a realidade
do nosso tempo. Hoje, a "força" não se expressa mais (nem é mais assim concebida) apenas em termos
militares, mas em termos econômicos, psicológicos, e de outros tipos. Conforme, porém, o direito
bélico, suas normas são hoje aplicáveis somente ao fenômeno da Guerra entendida como contato
violento mediante a força armada. Todos os outros tipos de Guerra (Guerra psicológica ou Guerra fria,
Guerra econômica, etc), que têm tanta influência sobre as relações internacionais atuais, fogem a esta
norma específica. Tudo isto equivale a dizer que é muito vago o limite entre a Guerra e a paz e os
escritores que se ocuparam deste assunto têm pleno conhecimento do problema.

Von Clausewitz, fixando-se na forma exterior das relações internacionais, sustentou que a Guerra é a
continuação da política por outros meios. Outros quiseram aprofundar-se mais e declararam que a
essência da Guerra depende do grau de hostilidade psicológica que caracteriza, num dado tempo, as
relações entre Estados. Também Hobbes afirmou: "the nature of war consisteth not in actual fighting,
but in the known disposition thereto...". Observando o que foi dito por Hobbes, verificamos que tudo
está estritamente ligado à conhecida problemática sobre a paz negativa e a paz positiva. Na tentativa
de conciliar as várias interpretações do fenômeno, Q. Wright concluiu que a Guerra é a "condição
jurídica que permite, igualmente a dois ou mais grupos hostis, conduzir um conflito com a força
armada". É claro, porém, que também esta definição, como todas as fórmulas de compromisso, não
é imune a críticas no plano substancial. Deve-se destacar, contudo, como a doutrina não foi muito
além desta definição, e isto é uma prova da complexa natureza do fenômeno.

Para Bouthoul, por exemplo, as características distintivas da Guerra são três: 1) é um fenômeno
coletivo; 2) é luta a mão armada; 3) tem caráter jurídico. A partir da individualização de tais elementos,
o autor apresenta a seguinte definição de Guerra: "Luta armada e cruenta entre grupos organizados",
onde a caracterização jurídica, porém, não aparece em toda a sua evidência.
A análise da doutrina nos leva a concluir que não existe uma definição unívoca do conceito de Guerra.
Mais próxima da realidade poderia estar uma definição que considerasse — como propõe alhures Q.
Wright — a análise dos fatos históricos concretos, que foram chamados "Guerras". Tais fatos se
caracterizam por: a) atividade militar; b) alto grau de tensão na opinião pública; c) adoção de normas
jurídicas atípicas, referentes às vigentes no período de paz; d) uma progressiva integração política
dentro das estruturas estatais dos beligerantes. Assim, a Guerra se configura, ao mesmo tempo, como
uma espécie de conflito, uma espécie de violência, um fenômeno de psicologia social, uma situação
jurídica excepcional e, finalmente, um processo de coesão interna.

São muitos os critérios segundo os quais pode ser decomposto o conceito de Guerra. Por exemplo,
com referência aos grupos em luta, a Guerra se classifica como internacional quando conduzida entre
grupos sujeitos ao ordenamento jurídico internacional; interna ou civil, se conduzida entre membros
de um mesmo grupo organizado (cidadãos de um mesmo Estado); colonial, se os grupos contendentes
são povos de civilizações diferentes, uma das quais é considerada inferior à outra. Conforme a
intenção ou a psicologia dos protagonistas, a Guerra se subdivide em ofensiva, defensiva, preventiva,
de nervos. Com referência ao tipo de armamentos utilizados, a Guerra pode ser convencional ou
nuclear. Finalmente, com referência às finalidades perseguidas, ela pode ser limitada (Guerra política,
segundo o conceito de Clausewitz) ou então total ou absoluta (quando ela é levada às suas
consequências extremas).

A Guerra merece uma consideração particular como instrumento político. Enquanto a Guerra absoluta
tem como objetivo a destruição total do adversário, a Guerra limitada (a que R. Aron chama de
"Guerra real") é instrumental, ligada a uma finalidade desejada. A política, "inteligência do Estado
personificado", utiliza-se de dois instrumentos: a diplomacia e a Guerra. Porém, se os meios são
diferentes, é único o desígnio que guia a ação. A diplomacia se retira quando seus fins podem ser
conseguidos somente através da força armada, sempre pronta, no entanto, a fazer sentir o peso de
sua ação, logo que isso seja considerado possível. O objetivo final não é a anulação completa do
contendor, mas sim a modificação de algumas de suas motivações.

A história da Guerra pode dividir-se em quatro fases histórico-qualitativas: a Guerra animal (em
sentido psicológico), a Guerra primitiva (em sentido sociológico), a Guerra histórica entre grupos
civilizados (em sentido jurídico), a Guerra atual (em sentido tecnológico). Assim, a definição da Guerra
se enriquece cada vez mais de novas dimensões com o progresso da civilização, ficando cada vez mais
perto da natureza complexa do fenômeno. Correlativamente, as interpretações sobre as causas da
Guerra são de ordem psicológica, sociológica, jurídica e tecnológica.

O estudo da Guerra animal é extremamente instrutivo para uma compreensão cada vez mais clara dos
instintos que movem os homens a combater entre si. Apesar das semelhanças, são também
importantes as diferenças, que refletem as diferentes funções da Guerra animal e da Guerra humana.
Por exemplo, a Guerra animal é, sobretudo, uma Guerra entre espécies diferentes, enquanto a Guerra
humana é um conflito entre membros da mesma espécie. As estatísticas mostram uma alta correlação
entre Guerra e grau de interdependência entre Estados (Q. Wright, 1942).

Assim, a primeira deve ser interpretada funcionalmente em termos de espécie, enquanto a segunda
deve ser interpretada funcionalmente em termos de sociedade e cultura. A primeira assegura o
equilíbrio, a segunda a mudança. Como declara, porém, Q. Wright, "mesmo quando a Guerra teve
como função assegurar mudanças na civilização, seu efeito último foi o de produzir oscilações no
surgimento e na queda de Estados e de civilizações. Toda e qualquer evolução persistente que tenha
acontecido na história humana nunca dependeu da Guerra, mas do pensamento. Os Alexandres, os
Césares e os Napoleões produziram oscilações, mas os Aristóteles, os Arquimedes, os Agostinhos e os
Galileus produziram o progresso".

Uma análise das causas das Guerras pode levar a resultados tanto mais concretos quanto mais nos
referimos a dados oferecidos pela realidade histórica. O estudo cuidadoso de um grande número de
Guerras reais (Q. Wright) mostra, como conclusão, que as causas dos conflitos bélicos podem ser
subdivididas em cinco categorias: causas ideológicas, econômicas, psicológicas, políticas e jurídicas.
Dizer isto, porém, não é suficiente. O analista deve indagar mais profundamente, e faz isso a três níveis
distintos (D. V. Edward): o individual, o de grupo (Estado) e o de sistemas de grupos (sistema
internacional).

A nível individual encontram-se as decisões conscientes e as motivações inconscientes. A respeito das

primeiras, deve ser aqui assinalado o que afirma K. Deutsch, isto é, que as Guerras pressupõem
sempre a organização. De um outro ponto de vista, mas na mesma linha de pensamento, Theodore
Abel afirmava, em 1941, em seu artigo (The element of decision in the pattern of war. in "American
Sociological Review", 1941, 6) — após uma análise minuciosa de 25 guerras históricas —, que "a
decisão racional e calculada é conseguida muito antes da eclosão efetiva das hostilidades... a decisão
de iniciar uma Guerra precede sempre de um a cinco anos o início das hostilidades". A respeito das
segundas, bastará evocar aqui a escola psicanalítica e, a título de exemplo, o estudo de Sigmund Freud
e William Bullitt sobre Thomas Woodrow Wilson.

A nível de grupo (Estado), devemos levar em consideração subsistemas, como o governativo, o

burocrático, o legislativo, o econômico, os grupos de pressão, assim como a natureza do Estado
(caráter nacional, geográfico, etc). A análise realizada a este nível deu frutos concretos mostrando,
por exemplo, como a Guerra não estaria mais em relação causal direta com um regime absolutista do
que com um regime democrático. É apoiado em precisas e importantes estatísticas que Q. Wright
pode afirmar que: "a paz produziu a democracia, mais do que a democracia produziu a paz". Através
de análises feitas a este nível, constata-se que as grandes potências desencadeiam maior número de
conflitos do que as médias e pequenas potências. Este resultado parece que poderia ser contestado
no período mais recente, visto à luz da nova natureza da Guerra como consequência da revolução
nuclear. Diante dos fatos de hoje, parece estar muito perto da verdade a afirmação segundo a qual as
Guerras são agora "privilégio" das pequenas potências. Não obstante a indubitável importância dos
fatos oferecidos pelas análises realizadas a este nível, outros estudos mostram que a política externa
dos Estados é mais influenciada pelas situações exteriores.

Aqui a análise coloca-se a nível de sistema internacional (sistema de grupos). Com base no fato de que
cada sistema tende à auto conservação (conceito de homeostase), a Guerra é explicada em termos
sistêmicos como um instrumento para manter o equilíbrio (balance of power). A nosso ver, este nível
de análise é particularmente adequado para o estudo das possíveis causas de uma Guerra nuclear.
Neste caso, a interação parece prevalecer sobre a ação.

Herman Kahn enumera quatro hipóteses sobre sua origem: 1) Guerra não-intencional; 2) Guerra como
resultado de um cálculo errado; 3) Guerra calculada; 4) Guerra catalítica (quando é provocada por
uma terceira parte). Como se vê, o ambiente externo assume um papel predominante, apreciável
somente no plano da análise sistêmica.

Obviamente, uma explicação completa dos conflitos bélicos pressupõe uma pesquisa cuidadosa para
cada um desses níveis. As explicações oferecidas situam-se numa escala temporal, que vai das
condições-bases, que são inelutáveis (nível do processo decisório), até as causas indiretas ou
mediatas, que necessitam de um fato ou evento particular (nível de grupo) e até as específicas e
imediatas (nível do sistema de grupos).

Vistas de um outro ângulo, as causas da Guerra podem ser classificadas com base nas propostas
substancialmente homogêneas feitas por cientistas, historiadores e publicistas, mesmo quando tais
categorias de escritores — conforme lembra Wright — dão significados diferentes ao conceito de
causa: 1) forças materiais (os cientistas falam de balance of power, os historiadores de fatores políticos
e os publicistas de necessidade); 2) influências racionais (direito internacional, interesse nacional,
razão); 3) instituições sociais (organização internacional, ideologia, cultura ou costumes); 4) reações
da personalidade (opinião pública, fatores psicológicos e econômicos, capricho ou emoção).

É óbvio que serão bem diferentes as concepções sobre as causas da Guerra, de acordo com o
significado atribuído a este último conceito (Guerra como conflito de armas, de leis, de culturas e de
indivíduos).

Entre as causas dos conflitos bélicos, poderiam e deveriam ser medidas as conexas com a opinião
pública. A instituição e a atualização contínua dos "mapas" da tensão coletiva deveriam ser tarefa das
Nações Unidas ou também da UNESCO, que assim assumiriam o papel de instituições sentinelas, tão
necessárias ao nosso tempo.

Na via da medição dos fatores úteis para o estudo das causas da Guerra, colocou-se há tempos J. David
Singer (The correlates of War project), o qual construiu uma "taxonomia" geral para a descrição e
análise dos conflitos internacionais que, em diferentes níveis de análise, prevê três classes de
variáveis: os atributos — físicos ou materiais, estruturais e culturais — das entidades sociais, os liames
e relações entre elas e o comportamento que as mesmas manifestam. Uma das hipóteses importantes
que está na base da pesquisa é que a estrutura do sistema é mais importante do que seus atributos
culturais e talvez mesmo do que seus atributos físicos ou materiais.

Com base na hipótese de que a probabilidade de uma Guerra é função das "distâncias" intercorrentes
entre os Estados e das políticas por eles perseguidas, e na tentativa de evitar previsões vãs, Q. Wright
distingue oito aspectos ou categorias de tais "distâncias": tecnológica (T), estratégica (Est), intelectual
(I), jurídica ou legal (L), social (S), política (P), psíquica (Ps) e de expectativa (atitude diante da força,
expectancy) (E). Tais "distâncias" são mensuráveis mesmo que não seja de maneira perfeita, e
constituem importantes índices de previsão.

A análise das políticas dos Estados é, porém, mais importante para os fins de previsão do que o exame
das "distâncias" entre eles. Entre os métodos utilizados para avaliar a probabilidade de um conflito
armado, devemos lembrar o que consiste em extrapolar as tendências de certos índices, como, por
exemplo, os balanços militares e o comércio internacional (L. F. Richardson), e que mede
periodicamente (usa-se falar de "tensiômetros" internacionais) algumas variáveis relevantes, como
atitude, comportamento, capacidade (O. Holsti).

Fala-se frequentemente da função social das Guerras. Estas têm sido vistas como mecanismos de
estabilização do poder ou da economia, ou da regulação da pressão demográfica, ou de desvio das
tendências antissociais, ou ainda de promoção do desenvolvimento da ciência e da tecnologia. Pode-
se afirmar, porém, que o advento das armas nucleares privou-as praticamente de qualquer das
funções acima citadas.

Como consequência disto, desenvolveu-se uma tendência cada vez maior a buscar, seguindo o
caminho científico e tecnológico, quais os meios de controle de que o homem dispõe e quais as
alternativas que existem para os conflitos armados. Esta busca parte da constatação de que os
instrumentos tradicionais de controle, ou seja, as normas jurídicas e éticas, não conseguiram impedir
o deflagrar das Guerras (segundo estudos recentes, em 3.400 anos da história da humanidade, o
mundo teve apenas 234 anos de paz, definível em termos de ausência de conflitos armados; conforme
os cálculos de Singer, desde o Congresso de Viena até hoje, ocorreram 93 Guerras). Diante disto, faz-
se necessário trilhar os caminhos do "ser" e não os do "dever ser". Damos o exemplo de Etzioni, que
sugeriu, como muito útil para estes fins, o estudo de como as indústrias aprendem a mudar seus
objetivos de competição, de negativos e destrutivos (Guerra de preços), em positivos e construtivos
(concorrência qualitativa). Esta pesquisa, que tem a finalidade de controlar a Guerra e de construir
para ela várias alternativas, é hoje conhecida pelo nome de peace research.

A história da avaliação moral da Guerra pode ser dividida em três fases, ao menos com referência às
obras relativamente mais recentes: a do bellum justum, a da raison d'État e a da Guerra como crime.
O que equivale a afirmar que, com o desenvolvimento da consciência social dos povos e com o
progresso da tecnologia militar, a Guerra transformou-se, cada vez mais, num problema "quente" que
exige uma solução pronta e radical.

As justificações da Guerra com base no direito, já bastante frequentes, quando ainda vigorava a tese
do bellum justum, mas não mais consideradas necessárias, quando estava no auge a teoria da raison
d'État, encontraram novamente uma função bem precisa do quadro de um sistema internacional que
agora considera ilícita a Guerra como instrumento de solução para os conflitos internacionais. A Carta
de São Francisco, que instituiu as Nações Unidas, é muito clara neste ponto. Num certo sentido, pode-
se dizer que voltou à atualidade a distinção medieval entre jus ad bellum e jus in bello. Resumindo,
nas três frases citadas, o direito considerou a Guerra: 1) como um possível meio de justiça; 2) como
uma prerrogativa da soberania; 3) como um crime.

Não há dúvida de que a fase da raison d'État coincidiu com a afirmação de um paradigma
interpretativo das relações internacionais já superado pela doutrina, que vê o sistema internacional
como sede de anarquia e de conflitos permanentes e necessários. De acordo com esta teoria, que teve
início com os preceptistas italianos dos séculos XVI e XVII e chegou ao seu ápice com a doutrina do
Estado-potência no século XIX e princípios do século XX com Hegel, Ranke, Treitschke e Meíneck,
qualquer Estado, independentemente de sua estrutura interna, é condicionado em sua política
externa pela natureza anárquica do sistema internacional. Por isso, tende continuamente a buscar a
consolidação da própria potência, em prejuízo da dos outros Estados, mesmo à custa de violar toda e
qualquer norma moral e jurídica. Conforme esta teoria, a Guerra seria justa, porque necessária.

Um paradigma interpretativo diferente está implícito nas fases 1) e 3), mas especialmente na última
fase. De acordo com esta interpretação, que precede e, em parte, segue a explicitada na teoria da
raison d'État, a Guerra é necessária quando é considerada justa. É interessante, portanto, insistirmos
no estudo da evolução da doutrina do bellum justum.

A primeira distinção entre Guerra justa e Guerra injusta é de Santo Agostinho, mas é com Santo Tomás
que são teorizadas as condições — uma formal e objetiva, as outras duas substanciais, mas subjetivas
— de uma Guerra justa. Elas são: 1) A declaração de Guerra deve ser formulada pela autoridade
legítima. 2) Deve existir uma "justa causa". 3) O beligerante deve possuir uma "justa intenção". Uma
quarta condição especificada na doutrina será a da necessidade, isto é, da impossibilidade de fazer-se
justiça com outros meios. Com o emergir dos Estados-nação cristãos, cada um dos quais invocava a
mesma doutrina, ficou confirmada, na visão de Grócio, a posição escolástica, segundo a qual, diante
de uma única justiça "objetiva", podiam coexistir duas ou mais inocências "subjetivas". Tal visão,
teoricamente, levou a conferir aos Estados neutros determinadas obrigações, que tinham como
conteúdo uma discriminação entre as partes beligerantes.
As tentativas feitas para incorporar a doutrina do bellum justum no direito positivo foram,
infelizmente, inúteis. Assim sendo, a tendência do direito internacional foi a de desenvolver as normas
para o controle das hostilidades, quando fossem iniciadas (jus in bello). O sistema do balance of power
do século XIX foi o quadro político ideal para uma tal concepção realista do aspecto lícito da Guerra.

O que foi dito acima não diminui a grande importância que a doutrina do bellum justum teve a partir
da Idade Média. Tal importância, porém, mostrou, provavelmente, também efeitos negativos no
sentido de que atrasou o desenvolvimento de um sistema de normas jurídicas, capazes de impedir a
atuação desenfreada dos conflitos bélicos. É, porém, indubitável que buscou, sem grande êxito, fazer
derivar as normas do jus in bello das premissas jus ad bellum (uso da força proporcional à injúria
sofrida, direito dos combatentes e dos prisioneiros, etc). É fato que o jus in bello desenvolveu-se
depois separadamente, como consequência da perda da convicção de se poder estabelecer, de forma
concreta, a legitimidade do recurso à Guerra, já então considerado como um fato extrajurídico.

A dissolução do sistema europeu do balance of power, como consequência do primeiro conflito

mundial, atraiu novamente a atenção sobre a necessidade de reconsiderar a possibilidade de um jus
ad bellum. Conforme alguns autores, a Sociedade das Nações, o Pacto Briand-Kellog, as Nações Unidas
foram todos eles mecanismos jurídicos inspirados na doutrina do bellum justum. Segundo outros,
levava em consideração as violações do direito positivo e do direito natural na construção da teoria
do bellum justum, enquanto os mecanismos aos quais fizemos agora referência levariam em
consideração unicamente as violações do direito positivo. O condicional se impõe no que respeita às
Nações, cuja análise deveria ser mais aprofundada. De fato, tanto a Sociedade das Nações, quanto as
Nações Unidas, mesmo consideradas suas diferenças básicas quanto ao problema da legitimidade do
recurso à Guerra — mas, especialmente as Nações Unidas —, superam a doutrina do bellum justum,
ao menos no sentido de vincularem ao consenso da comunidade dos Estados a determinação da
legitimidade dos atos bélicos internacionais.

O pressuposto da doutrina tradicional, ao contrário, tendia a considerar cada Estado habilitado a

decidir sozinho sobre a natureza justa ou injusta de tais atos. É, porém, com o Pacto Briand-Kellog,
que encontrará confirmação mais tarde na Carta de São Francisco, que ocorre uma mudança
fundamental, isto é, a passagem do jus ad bellum, retomado pelo covenant, ao jus contra bellum. Isto
significa, na especificação normativa das Nações Unidas, que é considerada ilícita toda e qualquer
forma de Guerra que não seja a iniciada no quadro dos mecanismos de tutela coletiva ou a admitida
a título provisório de legítima defesa.

Com o nascimento do jus contra bellum, começam também as tentativas para uma definição
concordante dos atos de agressão. Obviamente um estudo mesmo sumário do problema da
legitimidade da Guerra não pode prescindir do exame da teoria leninista que trata da matéria,
segundo a qual somente as Guerras resultantes das lutas de classe podem ser definidas como justas.
Pertencem a esta categoria, por exemplo, as Guerras nacionais revolucionárias contra as potências
imperialistas. A atitude do partido comunista e do proletariado em relação a uma Guerra nunca é,
nem deve ser, determinada por força das razões de oportunidade política. Por exemplo, não se deve
apoiar uma Guerra "justa" que possa dar lugar a consequências reacionárias a nível mundial. Devido
a isto, a importância da doutrina leninista do bellum justum está subordinada, especialmente nas
interpretações sucessivas dos escritores marxistas, a considerações concernentes à praxe política.

Pode-se sustentar que, apesar das indubitáveis diferenças entre as posições do marxismo-leninismo
e as sustentadas pelo pensamento político contemporâneo não comunista, a propósito da liceidade
das Guerras, tanto umas quanto outras evoluíram de preferência em direção ao jus contra bellum.
Acompanharam esta tendência as teorias produzidas recentemente nos Estados de nova formação e
nos Estados em desenvolvimento.

Na base de tudo isto está, certamente, a mudança da natureza da Guerra contemporânea e a

inconcebível potencialidade destrutiva das armas produzidas especificamente pela tecnologia
nuclear. Foi exatamente esta evolução tecnológica que contribuiu para pôr em crise a validade moral
da doutrina do bellum justum, considerada por muitos perigosa, enquanto se desenvolve mais em
torno do conceito do jus ad bellum, do que em torno do de jus contra bellum. Outros, porém,
consideram a doutrina tradicional ainda aplicável na época contemporânea e acham até que ela é
necessária, na medida em que, ainda hoje, a abolição da Guerra é considerada como uma utopia.

O argumento principal, porém, contra a doutrina do bellum justum parece que se refere ao mesmo
pressuposto que lhe dá vida, ou seja, ao fato de que ela postula a liceidade de fazer justiça por si e —
implicitamente — a iliceidade do não recurso às armas, quando exista uma causa justa. O assunto é
bastante complexo e se apoia na problemática da paz e da não-violência. Parece, porém, que se pode
afirmar que, num sistema internacional profundamente mudado e numa situação de tecnologia
destrutiva como a atual, o perigo maior para os Estados deriva, exatamente, da área de "domínio
reservado", que foge ao controle e ao consenso da comunidade internacional. A exigência de
assegurar a justiça não pode, portanto, prescindir da exigência paralela de seguir processos
multilaterais, que encontram substância jurídica, política e moral nas normas das Nações Unidas.

BIBLIOGRAFIA. — R. ARLON, Pace e guerra tra le nazioni (1962), Feltrinelli, Milano 1970; G.
BOUTHOUL, Traité de sociologie: les guerres, élements de polémologie. Payot, Paris 1951; K. VON
CLAUSEWITZ, Delta guerra (publicado depois de 1831), Mondadori, Firenze 1970, 2 vols.; S. A.
COBLENTZ, From arrow to atom bomb, Barues, New York 1953; D. V. EDWARDS, International political
analysis. ibid. 1969; F. FORNARI e AUT. VÁR., Dissacrazione della guerra. Dal pacifismo alla scienza del
conflitti, Feltrinelli, Milano 1969; Satura e orientamenti delle ricerche sulla pace. ao cuidado de li.
GORI. F. Angeli, Milano 1978; H. KAHN, Thinking about the unthinkable, Avon, New York 19662; On
thermonuclear war (1960), ibid. 19692; A. P. SERENI, Diritto internazionale — IV, Giuffrè, Milano 1965;
J. D. SINGER, et alii, Explaining war: Causes and correlates of war. Sage, London 1980; War. in The
international encyclopedia of the social sciences. XVI, Free Press. New York 1968. [UMBERTO GORI]

Essentials of International Relations – MINGST, Karen.

Among the numerous issues engaging the actors in international relations, security issues are the most
salient, the most prevalent, and indeed the most intractable. States exist in an anarchic world. While
there may be formal and informal rules that give rise to a type of international system structure, there
is no international supreme authority, no centralized government empowered to manage or control
the actions of individual elites, sovereign states, or even international intergovernmental
organizations. Within states, individuals have recourse to governments and have protection under
governments. States themselves have some avenues of recourse – international law and international
organizations – but these avenues are weak.

In ancient Greece when Melos was physically surrounded by the fleet of its archenemy Athens, Melos
had few alternatives. It could appeal to a distant ally – another city-state, whose interests may have
been fundamentally different from those of Melos – or it could rely on its own resources – its military
strength and the men and women of Melos. Just as Melos was ultimately responsible for its own
security, so, too, are states in anarchic system. This is similar to the position of each prisoner in the
prisoner’s dilemma game; fearing the worst possible outcome, each player confesses to ensure
himself a better outcome – other states’ amassing more and better armaments than they – choose to
arm. The people of Melos, each prisoner, and states all rely on self-help.

Yet ironically, if a state prepares to protect itself, it takes self-help measures – building a strong
industrial base, constructing armaments, mobilizing a military – then other states become less secure.
Their response is to engage in similar activities, increasing their own level of protection but leading to
greater insecurity on the part of others. This situation is known as the security dilemma: in the absence
of centralized authority, one state’s becoming more secure diminishes another state’s security. As
political scientist John Herz describes, “Striving to attain security from attack, [states] are driven to
acquire more and more power in order to escape the power of others. This, in turn, renders the others
more insecure and compels them to prepare for the worst. Since none can ever feel entirely secure in
such a world of competing units, power competition ensue, and the vicious circle of security and
power accumulation is on.” The security dilemma, then, results in a permanent condition of tension
and power conflicts among states. Thus, it is imperative to examine the ways that the security dilemma
has been managed (short of war) over the decades.

Approaches to Managing Insecurity

There are five approaches to managing insecurity for states. Each approach recognizes the power
disparity between states and s cognizant of the anarchic international environment. Two of these
approaches fall under the liberal theoretical perspective and thus focus largely on multilateral
responses by groups of states acting to coordinate their policies. Two other approaches are realist,
requiring states themselves to maintain an adequate power potential. The final approach we will
consider combines elements of the liberal and realist perspectives.

Liberal Approaches

Liberal approaches to managing the security dilemma call on the international community or
international institutions to coordinate actions in order to manage power.

The Collective Security Ideal Collective security is captured in the old adage “one for all and all for
one”. Based on the proposition that aggressive and unlawful use of force by any state against another
must be stopped, collective security posits that such unlawful aggression will be met by united action:
all (or many) other states will join together against the aggressor. Potential aggressors will know this
fact ahead of time, and thus will choose not to act.

Collective security makes a number of fundamental assumptions. One assumption is that although
wars can occur, they should be prevented, and they are prevented by restraint of military action. In
other words, wars will not occur if all parties exercise restraint. Another assumption is that aggressors
should be stopped. This assumption presumes that the aggressor can be identified easily by other
members of the international community. (In some conflicts, for example, it is difficult to differentiate
between the aggressor and the victim.) Collective security also assumes moral clarity: the aggressor is
morally wrong because all aggressors are morally wrong, and all those who are right must act in unison
to meet the aggression. Finally, collective security assumes that aggressor know that the international
community will act to punish an aggressor.
Of course, the underlying hope of collective security proponents is compatible with the logic of
deterrence (a realist strategy). If all countries know that aggression will be punished by the
international community, then would-be aggressors will refrain from engaging in aggressive activity.
Hence, states will be more secure with the belief that would-be aggressors will be deterred through
the united action of the international community.

Collective security does not always work. In the period between the two world wars, Japan invaded
Manchuria and Italy overran Ethiopia. In neither case did other states act as if it were in their collective
interest to respond. Were Manchuria and Ethiopia really worth a war? In this instance, collective
security did not work because of a lack of commitment on the part of other states and an unwillingness
of the international community to act in concert. In the post-World War II era, collective security could
not work because of fundamental differences in both state interests and ideologies. Agreement
among the most powerful states was virtually impossible. And a collective security response against
one of the Big Five powers themselves – the United States, the Soviet Union, Great Britain France, or
China – was impossible due to the veto power that each held in the U.N. Security Council. Two major
alliance systems – the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Warsaw Pact – arrayed
states in two separate camps. States dared not engage in action against an ally or a foe, even if that
state was an aggressor, for fear of embarking on another world war.

Collective security is also likely to be unworkable because of the problematic nature of its
assumptions. Can the aggressor always be easily identified? Clearly not. In 1967 Israel launched an
armed attack against Egypt: this was an act of aggression. The week before, however, Egypt had
blocked Israeli access to the Red Sea. Clearly that, too, was an act of aggression. Twenty years earlier
the state of Israel had been carved out of Arab real estate. That, too, was an act of aggression. Many
centuries before, Arabs had ousted Jews from the territory they inhabited, also an aggressive action.
So who is the aggressor? Furthermore, even if an aggressor can be identified, is that party always
morally wrong? Collective security theorists argue, by definition, yeas. Yet trying to right a previous
wrong is not necessarily wrong; trying to make just prior injustice is not unjust. Like the balance of
power, collective security in practice supports the status quo at a specific point in time.

Arms Control and Disarmament Arms control and general disarmament schemes have been
the hope of many liberals over the years. The logic of this approach to security is straightforward:
fewer weapons means greater security. Be reducing the upward spiral of armaments (arms control)
and by reducing the amount of arms and the types of weapons employed (disarmament), the costs of
the security dilemma are reduced.

During the Cold War, many arms control agreements were negotiated. For example, in the 1972 Treaty
on the Limitation of Antiballistic Missile Systems (ABM treaty), both the United States and the Soviet
Union agreed not to use a ballistic missile defense as a shield against a first strike by the other. The
Strategic Arms Limitation Talks in 1972 and 1979 (SALT I and SALT II, respectively) put ceilings ont the
growth of both Soviet and U.S. strategic weapons. However, due to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan
in 1979, the second SALT treaty was never ratified by the U.S. Senate. The Treaty on the
Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) was negotiated in 1968 at the United Nations in response
to the Cuban missile crisis.

Most of the important arms control agreements negotiated to date, be they bilateral or multilateral,
call for individual states to reduce either the number or the type of armaments already deployed. A
few are designed to halt the spread of particular weapons to states that do not yet have them. At least
one major treaty has utilized formal, multilateral processes to verify whether the terms of the treaty
are being met. Nevertheless, virtually all arms control treaties are fraught with difficulties.
The NPT provides both a positive and a negative example of the impact of such treaties. The NPT spells
out the rules of nuclear proliferation since 1970. In the treaty, signatory countries without nuclear
weapons promise not to transfer the technology to nonnuclear states. Like many of the arms control
treaties, however a number of key nuclear states and threshold nonnuclear states (i.e., states that
probably have or could quickly assemble nuclear weapons) remains outside the treaty, including India,
Israel, Pakistan, and Brazil. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), a U.N.-based agency
established in 1957 to disseminate knowledge about nuclear energy and promote its peaceful uses, is
designated guardian of the treaty. The IAEA created a system of safeguards, including inspection
teams that visit nuclear facilities and report on any movement of nuclear material, in an attempt to
keep nuclear material from being diverted to nonpeaceful purposes and to ensures that states that
signed the NPT are complying. Inspectors for IAEA visited Iraqi sites after the Persian Gulf War, and
North Korean sites in the mid-1990s. their purpose in the first case was to verify that illegal materials
had been destroyed and, in the second case, to confirm the existence of nuclear materials in that
country.

The end of the Cold War and the dismemberment of the Soviet Union have resulted in major new
arms control agreements. More arms control agreements between the United States and Russia and
its successor states are likely, as the latter are forced by economic imperatives to reduce their military
expenditures. Yet the logic of arms control agreements is not impeccable. Arms control does not
eliminate the security dilemma. You can still feel insecure if your enemy has a bigger or better rock
than you do.

Complete disarmament schemes as envisioned by utopian liberal thinkers are unlikely, given how risky
such a scheme would be. Unilateral disarmament would place the state involved in a highly insecure
position. But incremental disarmament, such as represented by the Chemical Weapons Convention
(CWC), which bans the development, production, and stockpiling of chemical weapons, remains a
realistic possibility. Liberals place their faith in international institutions like IAEA to monitor
adherence to such limited disarmament schemes.

Realist Approaches

Realist approaches to managing security place less faith in the international community and more faith
in individual state power.

Balance of Power A balance of power is a particular configuration of the international system.

But theorists use the term in other ways as well. So balance of power may refer to an equilibrium
between any two parties, and balancing power may describe an approach to managing power and
insecurity. The latter usage is relevant here.

Balance-of-power theorists posit that, to manage insecurity, states make rational and calculated
evaluations of the costs and benefits of particular policies that determine the state’s role in a balance
of power. Should we enlarge our power by seeking new allies? Is our enemy (or friend) altering the
balance of power to our detriment? What can we do to make that balance of power shift in our favor?
By either explicitly or implicitly asking and responding to such questions, states minimize their
insecurity by protecting their own interests. All states in the system are continually making choices to
increase their own capabilities and to undermine the capabilities of others, and thereby the balance
of power is maintained. When that balance of power is jeopardized, insecurity leads states to pursue
countervailing policies.

Alliances represent the most important institutional tool for enhancing one’s own power and meeting
the perceived power potential of one’s opponent. If a state is threatening to achieve a dominant
position, the threatened state will join with other against the threat. This is external balancing. Formal
and institutionalized military alliances play a key role in maintaining a balance of power, as the NATO
and Warsaw Pact alliances did in the post-World War II world. States may also engage in internal
balancing, increasing their own military and economic capabilities to counter potential threatening
enemies.

A balance of power operates at both the international and regional levels. At the international level
during the Cold War, for instance, a relative balance of power was maintained between the United
States and the Soviet Union. If one of the superpowers augmented its power through the expansion
of its alliances of through the acquisition of more deadly, more effective armaments, the other
responded in kind. Absolute gains were not as critical as relative gains; no matter how much power
accrued, neither state could afford to fall behind. Gaining allies in the uncommitted part of the Third
World, through foreign aid or military and diplomatic intervention, was one way to ensure that the
power was balanced. To not maintain the power balance was to risky a strategy; national survival was
at stake.

Balances of power among state in specific geographic regions are also a way to manage insecurity. In
South Asia, for example, a balance of power works to maintain peace between India and Pakistan, a
peace made more forceful by the presence of nuclear weapons. In East Asia, Japan’s alliance with the
United States creates a balance of power vis-à-vis China. In the Middle East, the balance of power
between Israel and its Arab neighbors continues. In some regions a complex set of other balances has
developed: between the economically rich, oil-producing states of Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf
and the economically poor states of the core Middle East; between Islamic militants (Iran, Libya),
moderates (Egypt, Tunisia), and conservatives (Saudi Arabia). With the breakup of the Soviet Union,
the newly independent states of central Asia are struggling for place and position within a newly
emerging regional balance of power.

Realist theorists assert that the balance of power is the most important technique for managing
insecurity. It is compatible with the nature of man and that of the state, which is to act to protect self-
interest by maintaining one’s power position relative to others. If a state seeks preponderance
through military acquisitions or offensive actions, then war is acceptable under the balance-of-power
system. But if all states act similarly, the balance can be preserved.

A major limitation of the balance-of-power approach, however, is its inability to manage security
during periods of fundamental change. A balance-of-power approach supports the status quo. When
change occurs, how should other states respond? Fundamental change occurred at the end of the
Cold War, for example, with the dismemberment of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of the
Warsaw Pact alliance. A balance-of-power strategy would have suggested that the United States also
reduce its power potential, particularly its military capability, since the military capability, since the
military of its rival had been impaired. Yet such a rational response is politically difficult to make. Fear
of a resurgence of power from the opponent, fear of a return to the old order, and pressure from
domestic constituencies to maintain defense spending and employment all make dramatic changes in
policy difficult to accommodate.
One outcome of the change brought about by the end of the Cold War has been a reexamination of
the role of NATO, the major Western alliance formed after World War II to counter the threat posed
by the Soviet Union. With the disintegration of the Soviet Union as a state and the end of communist
leadership in it and neighboring states, what role does NATO play now? Should NATO be expanded to
include the states of eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union? Should Russia be asked to join?
Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary have become members, and discussions with other countries
continue. But if all states are included? What is the purpose of the alliance? Who is the enemy? What
balance of power is being preserved or maintained? Realists see NATO expansion as an opportunity
to expand Western influence during an era of Russian weakness. Liberals view the expansion as a way
to support fledgling democracies and identities in eastern Europe and extend mechanisms for conflict
management in the system. But the difficult questions posed by realists and liberals alike remain
unanswered.

Deterrence: Balance of Power Revisited The goal of deterrence theory, like that of the balance
of power, is to prevent the outbreak of war. Deterrence theory posits that war can be prevented by
the threat of the use of force.

The theory as initially developed is based on a number of key assumptions. First and most important
is the realist assumption of the rationality of decision makers. Rational decision makers are assumed
to want to avoid resorting to war in those situations in which the anticipated cost of the aggression is
greater than the gain expected. Second, it is assumed that nuclear weapons pose an unacceptable
level of destruction, and thus that decision makers will not resort to armed aggression. Third, the
theory assumes the existence of alternatives to war that are available to decision makers irrespective
of the situation. Thus, under deterrence, war will not occur and insecurity is reduced, as long as
rational decision makers are in charge, the threat is sufficiently large, and other nonmilitary options
are available.

For deterrence to work, then, states must build up their arsenals in order to present a credible threat.
Information regarding the threat must be conveyed to the opponent. Thus, knowing that an aggressive
action will be countered by a damaging reaction, the opponent will decide, according to deterrence
theorists, not to resort to force and destroy its own society.

The basic ideas of deterrence were developed with respect to conventional arms. The development
and subsequent buildup of nuclear weapons in the second half of the twentieth century, however, has
made deterrence an even more potent approach for managing power. with each superpower having
second-strike capability – the ability to respond and hit the adversary even after the adversary has
launched a first strike – then destruction of both sides is assured. According to deterrence, no rational
decision maker will make the decision to start a nuclear war since his or her own society would be
destroyed in the process. Decision makers thus turn to other alternatives to achieve their goals.

As logical as deterrence sound and as effective as it has proved to be – after all, there was no nuclear
war during the Cold War – the assumptions of the theory are troublesome. Are all top decision makers
rational? Might not one individual or a group risk destruction? Might some states sacrifice a large
number of people, as Adolf Hitler, Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini, and Iraq’s Saddam Hussein were willing
to do? How do states convey to a potential adversary information about their own capability? Why
not choose to bluff or lie to feel more secure? For states without nuclear weapons, or nuclear-
weapons states who are launching an attack against a nonnuclear state, the costs of war may not be
that unacceptable their own society may not be threatened with destruction. In such cases,
deterrence will fail.
Both the balance of power and deterrence rely on the unilateral use of force or the threat of using
force to manage power, whereas liberal approaches depend on collective efforts. Periodically, these
approaches fail. In these situations, when conflict has already broken out, realists and liberals alike
have turned to peacekeeping to manage insecurity.

Peacekeeping: The Stepchild of Liberals and Realists During the Cold War, when collective security
was an impossibility, peacekeeping evolved as a way to limit the scope of conflict and prevent it from
escalating into a Cold War confrontation. Peacekeeping operations fall into two types, or generations.
In first-generation peacekeeping, multilateral institutions such as the United Nations seek to contain
conflicts between two state through third-party military forces. Ad hoc military units, drawn from the
armed forces of nonpermanent members of the U.N. Security Council (often small, neutral members),
have been used to prevent the escalation of conflicts and to keep the warring parties apart until the
dispute can be settled. These troops operate under U.N. auspices, supervising armistices, trying to
maintain cease-fires, and physically interposing themselves in a buffer zone between warring parties.

First-generation peacekeeping efforts are most effective under the following conditions:

 A clear and practicable mandate (purpose) for the operation

 Consent of the parties involved as to the mandate and composition of the force
 Strong financial and logistical support of members of the U.N. Security Council
 Acceptance by troop-contributing countries of the mandate and the risk that it may bring
 An understanding among peacekeepers to resort to the use of force only for self-defense

In the post-Cold War era, U.N. peacekeeping has expanded to address different types of conflicts and
to take on new responsibilities. Whereas first-generation activities primarily address interstate
conflict, second-generation peacekeeping activities respond to civil war and domestic unrest, much of
it stemming from the rise of ethnonationalism. To deal with these new conflicts, second-generation
peacekeepers have taken on a range of both military and nonmilitary functions. Militarily, they have
aided in verification of troop withdrawal (Afghanistan) and have separated warring factions until the
underlying issues could be settled (Bosnia). Sometimes resolving underlying issues has meant
organizing and running national elections, such as in Cambodia and Namibia; sometimes it has
involved implementing human rights agreements, such as in Central America. At other times U.N.
peacekeepers have tried to maintain law and order in failing or disintegrating societies by aiding in
civil administration, policing, and rehabilitating infrastructure, as in Somalia. And peacekeepers have
provide humanitarian aid, supplying food, medicine, and a secure environment in part of an expanded
version of human rights, as followed in several missions in Africa. Second-generation peacekeeping
has vastly expanded in the post-Cold War period. This expansion has creates difficulties for the
international community.

The Causes of War

Although the techniques used to manage insecurity are many, sometimes the approaches fail and
wars do break out. There have been approximately 14,500 armed struggles throughout history, with
about 3.5 billion people dying either as a direct or indirect result. In the contemporary era (since 1816),
there have been between 224 and 559 international, internal, and colonialist wars, depending on how
war is defined.

But while the security dilemma explains why states are insecure, it does not explain why war breaks
out. An analysis of any war – Vietnam, Angola, Cambodia, World War II, or the Franco-Prussian War –
would find a variety of reasons for the outbreak of violence. Kenneth Waltz in Man, the State, and
War posits that the international system is the primary framework of international relations. But that
framework exists all the time, so to explain why sometimes wars occur and sometimes they do not,
we also need to consider the other levels of analysis. Characteristics of individuals, both leaders and
masses, and the internal structure of states are some of the forces that operate within the limitations
of the international system. Waltz finds that all three different levels of analysis can be applied to
explaining the causes of war.

The Individual: Realist and Liberal Interpretations

Both the characteristics of individual leaders and the general attributes of people have been blamed
for war. Some individual leaders are aggressive and bellicose; they use their leadership positions to
further their causes. Thus, according to some realists and liberals, war occurs because of the personal
characteristics of major leaders. It is impossible, however, to prove the veracity of this position. Would
past wars have occurred had different leaders – perhaps more pacifist one – been in power? We can
only speculate.

If it is not the innate character flaws of individuals that cause war, is there a possibility that leaders,
like all individuals, are subject to misperceptions? According to liberals, misperceptions by leaders –
seeing aggressiveness where it may not be intended, imputing the actions of one person to a group –
can lead to the outbreak of war. Historians have typically given a key role to misperceptions. There
are several types of misperceptions that may lead to war. One of the most common is exaggerating
the hostility of the adversary, believing that the adversary is more hostiles than it may actually be or
that the adversary has greater military or economic capability than it actually has. This miscalculation
may lead a state to respond, that is, take actions like building up its own arms which, in turn, may be
viewed as hostile activities by its adversary. Misperceptions thus spiral, potentially leading to war.
Events leading to World War I are often viewed as a conflict spiral, causes by misperceived intentions
and actions of the principal protagonists. We can only speculate.

If not because of the leaders, perhaps characteristics of the masses lead to the outbreak of war. Some
realist thinkers – St. Augustine and Reinhold Niebuhr, for example – take this position. St. Augustine
wrote that every act is an act of self-preservation on the part of individuals. For Niebuhr the link goes
even deeper; the origin of war reside in the depths of the human psyche. This approach is compatible
with that of sociobiologists who study animal behavior. Aggressive behavior is adopted by virtually all
species to ensure survival; it is biologically innate. Yet this view does not explain subtle differences
among species; some do engage in cooperative behavior. And human beings are seen by many as an
infinitely more complex species than animal species. If true, these presumptions lead to two possible
alternative assessments, one pessimistic and the other optimistic. For pessimists, if war is the product
of innate human characteristics or a flawed human nature then there is no reprieve; wars will
inevitably occur all the time. For optimists, if war, or aggression, is innate, the only hope of eliminating
war resides in trying to fundamentally alter human nature.

Yet war does not, in fact, happen all the time; it is the unusual event, not the norm. So characteristics
inherent in all-individuals cannot be the only cause of war. Nor can the explanation be that human
nature has, indeed, been fundamentally changed, since wars do occur. Most experiments aimed at
changing mass behavior have failed miserably, and there is no visible proof that fundamental attitudes
have been altered.

Thus the individual level of analysis is unlikely to provide the only cause of war, or even the primary
one. Individuals, after all, are organized into societies and states.
State and Society: Liberal and Radical Explanations

A second level of explanation suggests that war occurs because of the internal structures of states.
States vary in size, geography, ethnic homogeneity, and economic and political preferences. The
question, then, is how do the characteristics of different states affect the possibility of war? Which
state structures are most correlated with the propensity to go to war?

State and society explanations are among the oldest. Plato, for example, posited that war is less likely
where the population is cohesive and enjoys a moderate level of prosperity. Since the population
would be able to thwart an attack, an enemy is apt to refrain from coercive activity. Many thinkers
during the Enlightenment, including Kant, believed that war was more likely in aristocratic states.

Drawing on the Kantian position, liberals posit that republican regimes (ones with representative
government and separation of powers) are least likely to wage war; that is the basic position of the
theory of the democratic peace. Democracies are pacific because democratic norms and culture
inhibit the leadership from taking actions leading to war. Democratic leaders hear from multiple voices
that tend to restrain decision makers and therefore lessen the chance of war. Such states provide
outlets for individuals to voice opposing viewpoints, and structural mechanisms exist for replacing
war-prone or aggressive rulers. To live in such a state, individuals learn the art of compromise. In the
process, extreme behavior like waging war is curbed, engaged in only periodically and then only if
necessary to make a state's own democracy safe.

Other liberal tenets hold that some types of economic systems are more war prone than others.
Liberal states are also more apt to be capitalist states whose members enjoy relative wealth. Such
societies feel no need to divert the attention of the dissatisfied masses into an external conflict; the
wealthy masses are largely satisfied with the status quo. Furthermore, war interrupts trade, blocks
profits, and causes inflation. Thus, liberal capitalist states are more apt to avoid war and to promote
peace.

But not every theorist sees the liberal state as benign and peace loving. Indeed, radical theorists offer
the most thorough critique of liberalism and its economic counterpart, capitalism. They argue that
capitalist liberal modes of production inevitably lead to conflict between the two major social classes
within the state, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, for both economic dominance and political
leadership. This struggle leads to war, both internally and externally, as the state dominated by the
entrenched bourgeoisie is driven to expand the engine of capitalism at the expense of the proletariat
and for the economic preservation of the bourgeoisie.

In this view, conflict and war are attributed to the internal dynamics of capitalist economic systems.
Capitalist systems stagnate and slowly collapse in the absence of external stimulation. Three different
explanations have been offered for what happens to capitalist states and why they must turn outward.
First, the English economist John Hobson (1858-1940) claimed that the internal demand for goods will
slow down in capitalist countries, leading to pressures for imperialist expansion to find external
markets to sustain economic growth. Second, to Lenin and others, the problem is not one of
underdemand but one of declining rates of return on capital. Capitalist states expand externally to
increase the rates of return on capital investment. Third, Lenin and many twentieth-century radicals
pointed to the need for raw materials to sustain capitalist expansion; external suppliers are needed to
obtain such resources. So according to the radical view, capitalist states inevitably expand, but radical
theorists disagree among themselves on precisely why expansion occurs.

While radical explanations are viable for colonialism and imperialism, the link to war is more tenuous.
One possible link is that capitalist states spend not only for consumer goods but also for the military,
leading inevitably to arms races and eventually war. Another link points to leaders who, in order to
avert domestic economic crises, resort to external conflict.

This is called scapegoating. Such behavior is likely to provide internal cohesion

at least in the short run. For example, there is considerable evidence to

support the notion that the Argentinian military used the FaIIdandiMalvinas

conflict in 1982to rally the population around theflag and draw attention

away from -the country's economic contraction. Still another link suggests

that the masses may push a ruling elite toward war. This View is clearly at

odds. with the liberal belief that the masses are basically peace loving. Adherents

point to the Spanish-American warof 1898 as an example where

the public might have pushed the leaders into aggressive action.

Those who argue. that contests over the structure of states are a basic

cause of war have identified another explanation for the outbreak of some

wars. Numerous civil wars have been fought over what groups, what ideologies,

and which leaders should control the government of the state. The

United States's own civil war (1861-65) between the North and the South,

Russia's civil war (1917-19) between liberal and socialist forces, China's

civil war (1927,...49) between nationalist and communist forces, and the

civil wars in Vietnam, Korea, the Sudan, and Chad-eachpitting North

versus South-are poignant illustrations. In many of these cases, the struggle

among competing economic systems and among groups vying for scarce

resources within the state illustrates further the proposition that internal

structures are responsible for the outbreak of war. The United States's civil

war was not just over which region should control policy but over a belief

by those in the South that the government inequitably and unfairly allocated

economic resources. China's civil war pitted a wealthy landed elite

supportive of the nationalist cause against an exploited peasantry struggling,

often unsuccessfully, for survival. And the ongoing Sudanese civil

war pits an economically depressed south against a northern government

that poured economic resources into the region of the capital. Yet in virtually

every case, neither characteristics of the state nor the state structures
were solely responsible for the outbreak of war. State structure is embedded

in the characteristics of the international system.

The International System: Realist and Radical Interpretations

To realists, the anarchical international system is governed only by a weak

oYerarching rule of law, which is easily dispensed with when states deter-

Encyclopedia of the Social Behavioral Sciences

War: Anthropological Aspects

Sun-tzu, the famous Chinese military expert, began his book The Art of War with the words ‘Warfare
is the greatest affair of state, the basis of life and death, the Way (Tao) to survival or extinction. It must
be thoroughly pondered and analyzed.’ These words, 2,500 years later, still hold true: war has grown
more deadly, and more damaging to human existence.

In the twentieth century alone, over 250 formally declared wars took over one 100 million lives.
Undeclared wars, including political repression, communal violence, and tribal genocide took millions
more; for example between 50–100 million tribal people have been killed by forces and citizens of
states in the twentieth century. If we expand the definition of war to include such conflicts as ‘the war
on drugs’ and gang warfare, casualties figures rise, though accurate statistics are not available on
these forms of violence.

As we enter the third millennium, one-third of the world’s countries are engaged in some form of
political violence. Whether these conflicts are called war or not often depends more on political
rhetoric than on an accepted definition of the term. In addition, approximately two thirds of the
world’s security forces use human rights abuses to control their populations. The victims tend to label
this violence war or dirty war, while the state tends to classify this as defense or counterinsurgency.

The world has not always been characterized by such high levels of violent warfare. Wars today are
longer in duration, more deadly, and kill higher numbers of civilians than wars of preceding centuries.
The reasons behind war and the ways in which it is waged change across cultures and time. The
changing characteristics of war demonstrate that organized violence is not a fixed and eternal fact of
biology, nor an inescapable feature of a Freudian psyche, but a human practice guided by norms of
behavior and codes of conduct situated in cultural values.

1. Defining War

Neither the two world wars nor the several hundred local and regional wars since 1900 have brought
us closer to a shared understanding of war. Most scholars accept a basic definition of war as the
deployment of violence to force opponents to comply with one’s will.

War is organized, group-level, armed aggression rooted in hierarchies of dominance which assume
winners and losers in a contest over resources, people, and power. Yet war is defined differently by
the winners and the losers, by historical perspective, by soldiers and pacifists—and in each case the
definitions are more politically charged than factually correct.
For example, freedom fighter, terrorist, insurgent, rebel, traitor, and soldier are all terms variously
applied to the same actors by different groups seeking to maximize their own political and moral
justifications.

Governments define war in their own interests, and militaries are loath to admit strategies that entail
civilian casualties, torture, and human rights abuses.

The most basic understanding of war is affected by differential and biased reporting; for example,
casualty statistics for World War Two vary by millions, depending on the nationality and viewpoint of
the researcher. Controlling the definitions of war are integral to the waging of war (Sluka 1992).

The ethnographic study of war and peace has added a new dimension in the understanding of political
violence. This academic research has demonstrated that war is a far more complex reality than
classical definitions positing a violent contest between two or more armed forces seeking a military,
and thus political, victory (Warren 1993, Nordstrom and Robben 1995). Soldiers often battle unarmed
civilians and not each other—evident from the ethnic cleansing of the Yugoslav forces in Bosnia and
Kosovo or the two million deaths in Sudan’s civil war. Paramilitaries, private militias, death squads,
and roving bands of armed predatory gangs patrol warzones. Some operate at the behest of state
forces while others are independent of all sovereign or rebel control. Mercenary forces are a global
phenomenon today, and range from informal groups such as the Yugoslav mercenaries fighting in
Central Africa to the formal Executive Outcome organization, comprised of former apartheid South
African soldiers, who broker with governments as well as rebel groups. Battlezones are also home to
looters, sex workers, criminals, and profiteers. Warzones are a bazaar of international arms and
supplies merchants who reap billions of dollars yearly worldwide.

International nongovernmental organizations are found in all warzones today, providing services
ranging from conflict resolution to humanitarian and development aid. Finally, the fronts of wars are
home to the inhabitants. Regardless of formal military regulations mandating the legal role of women,
children, and the aged in war, all of these people fight for survival when they find themselves on the
frontlines. Armed or unarmed, women defend homes and towns, children are forced to take up arms
and fight, and the aged battle forced sieges. The unscrupulous sell out their neighbors for a few coins,
and the altruistic set up medical clinics, schools and trade routes to provide critical resources under
bombardment

2. The Development of War

War is a fairly recent invention, in terms of the anthropological expanse of human existence. Humans,
as a species, have lived 90 percent of their history without war. Social hierarchies and concepts of
ownership appear necessary for the advent of war. The earliest form of human organization was the
band: fluid egalitarian groups of nomads. The archeological record indicates that while interpersonal
violence was known in bands—determined by puncture and crushing wounds from weapons—it was
limited. It did not reach the level of formalized intergroup violence among contending warriors.

The first indications of organized warfare occur as

ownership of animals, goods, and property create

divisions within societies. With the historical development

of tribal societies and protostates comes a

differentiation in power, and the emergence of organized

intergroup violence (Ferguson and Whitehead

1992). These societies did not have standing armies

and military institutions separate from general society;

warrior status tended to be open to all able-bodied

men, and, less commonly, to women. The early years

of tribal war were not necessarily a dangerously lethal

activity. For many tribal groups, preparations for war

constituted an elaborate ritual process. The rules of

engagement were often well delineated: contending

factions would meet in full battle regalia and hurl

challenges and possibly weapons. Casualties generally

brought a halt to the aggressions. Here, it is the display

and enactment of power, and not violence, that defines

war. Among some communities—the archeological

record suggests these were later developments—

fighting was much more lethal, though the intent was

seldom, if ever, genocide. The goal was to force

surrender and extend control over people, property, or

territory.

Formalized military institutions and standing armies

develop with the rise of the ‘state’ as a form of

political, economic, and social organization. The term

state here is used in its anthropological sense—

originating some 8,000 years ago, and not in the

political science definition as developing in the mid

1600s. (The latter, the modern state, will be considered

in the next section.) Chiefdoms are replaced by royal

families or governing bodies. Social, gender, and often

ethnic inequality is codified in laws of land ownership,

labor rights, and inheritance. Dispute resolution becomes

formalized into judicial systems, and the legitimate

use of force is restricted to state leaders and

institutions. Contemporary warfare—fought among

contenders for power, privilege, and gain—emerges.

3. The Changing Nature of War

Contemporary warfare itself has changed dramatically

over time and circumstance, giving lie to any notion

that war is a ‘natural’ social phenomenon or a fixed

product of overarching political organization (van

Creveld 1991). The era of the modern state provides a

good illustration (Holsti 1996). In Europe, the end of

the Thirty Years War (from 1618 to 1648) coincided

with the beginning of the modern state (marked by the

Treaty of Westphalia). The Thirty Years War depopulated

a large part of Central Europe. It was known for

its sheer brutality: writers of the time speak of the

wanton killing, torture, plunder, and destruction of

anyone and anything who found themselves in the

path of the aggressors. The levels of violence are

attributed to the enduring impact of religious wars and

the Inquisition, to the transformations wrought by

urbanization and early industrialization, and to the

upheavals marking the shift from kingly rule to the

modern state.

Over the following two centuries the nihilism

characterizing the Thirty Years War gave way to what

has been called the gentlemen’s war of the Enlightenment

period. Formal warfare during this era often,

though certainly not always, followed strict rules of

conduct and engagement: soldiers fought soldiers in

hand to hand combat on battlegrounds apart from

human habitation. This was not a new era of war for

humankind: Buddhist and Hindu scriptures 2,000

years BCE outlined similar ‘gentlemen’s wars’ in Asia.

While military texts tend to focus on these formal

military engagements between two contending armies,

another form of warfare developed during this period:

colonial repression of conquered peoples. In many

ways these actions presaged the dirty war of contemporary

times—wars that brutally targeted unarmed

people in attempts to instill political acquiescence.

The colonial encounter gave rise to another distinct

form of war: the guerrilla war, the mainstay of wars

for independence worldwide. Guerrilla warfare was

developed by nonstate actors challenging financially

and technologically superior state forces. Classical

guerrilla philosophy—institutionalized in the midtwentieth

century by military strategists such as Mao

Zedong, Che Guevara, and Ho Chi Minh—postulates

that guerrilla forces, by definition, have the support of

the broad population, and it is this that gives them

indefatigable strength, crucial resources, and moral

political superiority. While in many cases this has

proven true, it is by no means always so. Guerrilla

groups such as the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia,

Renamo in Mozambique, and the Contras in Nicaragua

demonstrated that nonstate forces can also use

repressive tactics in an effort to control populations.

4. The Twentieth Century

The twentieth century was characterized by sophisticated

and far reaching developments in the international

laws and institutions governing war and

protecting peace. Despite these, this period was the

bloodiest in human history. Overall, wars in the

twentieth century were longer in duration, more lethal

in the cost to human lives, and more destructive to

societal systems than in preceding times. Simply

pointing out that this era saw the advent of world war,

high-tech and nuclear war, and modern paramilitary

warfare does not convey the changes in the philosophy

and conduct of war that occurred during this time

(Keane 1996). The most dramatic example concerns

the ethics of who may and may not be targeted in war.

Over 80 percent of the casualties in World War One

were soldiers. With the advances in modern technology

and the idea that a country’s citizens were now

part of the war effort (given their role in producing the

means of war), noncombatant casualties rise to 50

percent of all war-related deaths in World War Two.

This trend escalates rapidly in the last half of the

twentieth century: in the Vietnam war, more than 80

percent of all casualties were noncombatants, and at

the start of the twenty-first century, civilians account

for 90 percent of all war-related deaths worldwide.

Not only has the line between combatant and noncombatant

grown indistinct, the line between gender

and age in soldiering has too. Women die in equal

numbers to men, and more children are killed in war

today than soldiers. The use of child soldiers has

grown in recent years: at present over three hundred

thousand exist worldwide. This serious rise in civilian

casualties parallels an increase in the number and

sophistication of international organizations (such as

the United Nations and the Organization of African

States) and international legal bodies (such as the

International Court of Justice and the War Crimes

Tribunals) seeking to control destructive wars. Today

there are 70,000 protocols protecting human rights.

5. Theorizing War

As the predominate means of waging war changes

through time, so too do the definitions and theories of

war (Simons 1999). In premodern times many, including

early Christian and Buddhist societies, saw

war as inescapable at times, but not as honorable; the

post-war period was crafted as one of atonement. The

notion of the honorable war develops in the west with

the rise of the ‘gentleman’s war’ of the modern state.

Carl von Clausewitz, the famous Prussian military

expert, codifies war as ‘an extension of politics,’

placing war directly in the rational politics of Enlightenment

philosophy. Warfare, as rational, became

justified—the most dangerous examples of this were

seen in colonial conquests, often rationalized under

the rubric of the ‘evolution of civilization’ by scholars.

These Enlightenment philosophies wed with the

functionalist and structuralist schools in the early

1900s. Here, theoreticians investigated the ‘functions’

of war, and placed the causes of war in competition

over scarce resources, overpopulation, and the increasing

complexity of societies. At the same time,

psychological and sociobiological theories were popular.

These postulated aggression and self-interest as

inherent to humans, and therefore as serving an

evolutionary purpose. The fact that not all societies

engage in war, and that the majority of the people in

any society at war do not choose to fight was not

addressed by these theories. Political theory within

these schools was shaped by the advent of the world

wars. After World War One, functionalist theories

take an idealist cast that postulates the progress of

civilization as one that will finally eschew war. In the

wake of the vast destruction of World War Two,

realist theory replaces idealism as the dominate theory

in the social and political sciences. Here, war is seen as

a natural effect of competition among sovereign states.

In both schools the solution lies in creating strong

state and international institutions to wage, and ideally

to control, war.

As the period of the World Wars gave way to wars

for independence, regional wars, and the Cold War,

theories of war underwent another revolution. Critical

to this shift is the fact that researchers around the

world began to experience political violence directly,

whether by intention or by accident. The reigning

functionalist theories did not fit their observations

(Foster and Rubinstein 1986). Clearly, the advent of

nuclear war gave lie to ideals of ‘victory’ in war—for

the first time all sides to a conflict could perish. Wars

such as those fought by the USA in Vietnam and by

the USSR in Afghanistan laid to rest old notions of the

gentleman’s war. Dirty wars such as those in Argentina,

and genocides such as those conducted by the

Nazis in World War Two and the Khmer Rouge in

Cambodia challenged notions of the inherent functionality

or rationality of war. The increases in

noncombatant deaths undermined the claims of

sociobiology—it became hard to argue that noncombatant

deaths, widespread torture, systematic sexual

violence, and the death of children were biologically or

socially productive acts (Enloe 2000). Scholars also

began to question Clausewitz’s ‘truism’ that war is

(predominately) an extension of politics. Certainly it is

political, but the recognition of the vast sums of

money made in wildcatting valuable resources in

warzones and in selling war supplies worldwide made

it necessary to integrate economics with politics in the

war equation (Kaldor 1999). The rise of religious,

ethnic, and identity factors in contemporary conflicts

rendered it necessary to add social and cultural factors

in with the politico-economic ones (Rupesinghe and

Rubio Correa 1994). And studies of peaceful societies

such as the Semai and the Quakers demonstrated that

war is not inevitable, nor basic, to the human condition

(Gregor 1996).

6. The Future of War

The dawn of the third millennium is marked by vast

differences in war. While the superpowers spend

trillions of dollars on high technology earth and space

based weapons systems, the vast majority of today’s

war casualties are killed by small arms wielded by

nonspecialists. The greatest dangers are the most

accessible: there are estimated to be 500 million to one

billion firearms in use today in the world; a lively

international black-market sells every conceivable

implement of war from AK47s to nuclear materials;

recipes for chemical weapons can be found in basic

texts; and computer specialists can wreck nationwide

havoc by disrupting a country’s basic infrastructural

support systems. All of these facets of the war industry

are set in global interactions (Castells 1998). Our

theories of war must be revised to address these

dynamics defining the contemporary world. Theories

of war in the near future will in all likelihood address

the complexities of war systems that spend billions on

technological defenses (at the end of the twentieth

century military spending worldwide reached 780

billion US dollars per year) while killing with inexpensive

conventional weapons—and will delve into

the cultural factors and economic gains as well as the

political quests that underlie these realities. In the long

term, we should be prepared for the possibility that

war, as we know it, may not define future conflict.

While employing violence in the pursuit of dominance

may continue to fuel war, violence may shift from

physical killing to a different order of threat and

inequality, and dominance might be reckoned along

such nonmilitary factors as economics, environmental

control, social viability, or a set of factors as yet

unrecognized. War has not always been a part of the

human condition, and perhaps future changes in

sociopolitical organization and ethical systems will

render war altogether obsolete. Effective research into

the causes, solutions and future of war will hone

combinations of theoretical inquiry with ethnography—

helpingtoerasearbitrarydistinctionsbetween

theory and data (Nordstrom 1997). The greatest

advances will be in rethinking the very meanings of

violence and aggression, going beyond simple biological

and rudimentary social explanations to explore

the complex interactions of violence and power,

economics, survival, and identity both within and

across local, regional, and transnational populations.

See also: Conflict and War, Archaeology of; First

World War, The; Military and Politics; Military

Geography; Military History; National Security Studies

and War Potential of Nations; Second World War,

The; Tribe; War: Causes and Patterns; War, Sociology

of; Warfare in History

Bibliography

Castells M 1998 End of Millennium. Blackwell, London

Enloe C H 2000 Maneuers: the International Politics of

Militarizing Women’s Lies. University of California Press,

Berkeley, CA

Ferguson R B, Whitehead N L (eds.) 1992 War in the Tribal

Zone: Expanding States and Indigenous Warfare. School of

American Research Press, Santa Fe, NM

Foster M L, Rubinstein R A (eds.) 1986 Peace and War: Cross-

Cultural Perspecties. Transaction Books, Oxford, UK

Gregor T (ed.) 1996 A Natural History of Peace. Vanderbilt

University Press, Nashville, TN

HolstiK J 1996 The State, War, and the State of War. Cambridge

University Press, Cambridge, UK

Kaldor M 1999 New and Old Wars: Organized Violence in a

Global Era. Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA

Keane J 1996 Reflections on Violence. Verso, London

Nordstrom C 1997 A Different Kind of War Story. University of

Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia

Nordstrom C, Robben A C G M (eds.) 1995 Fieldwork Under

Fire: Contemporary Studies of Violence and Surial. University

of California Press, Berkeley, CA

Rupesinghe K, Rubio Correa M 1994 The Culture of Violence.

United Nations University Press, Tokyo

Simons A 1999 War: back to the future. Annual Reiews in

Anthropology 28: 73–108

Sluka J 1992 The anthropology of conflict. In: Nordstrom C,

Martin J (eds.) The Paths to Domination, Resistance

and Terror. University of California Press, Berkeley, CA,

pp. 18–36

van CreveldM1991 The Transformation of War. The Free Press,

New York

Warren K B (ed.) 1993 The Violence Within: Cultural and

Political Opposition in Diided Nations. Westview Press,

Boulder, CO

C. R. Nordstrom

War: Causes and Patterns

War involves large-scale organized violence between

states or other political units. Although the conduct of

war has changed in important ways over the millennia,

war itself has been a recurrent phenomenon in international

politics. It is one of the primary sources of

change in international systems and an important

factor in the evolution of the social and political

organization of societies. Theorizing about the causes

of war goes back to Thucydides’ History of the

Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta, but

scholars are far from agreement on what causes war.

1. Patterns of Warfare

The current international system represents the most

recent stage in the evolution and globalization of the

system that originated in Europe about five centuries

ago. Warfare in this system has historically been

dominated by the ‘great powers,’ though the frequency

of wars between these leading states has

steadily declined, while their severity has increased.

The period since 1945 has been characterized by both

the longest period of great power peace in the last half

millennium and a dramatic shift in the concentration

of war from Europe to other regional subsystems and

from international wars to internal wars, many of

which have been intractable ethnonational or religious

‘identity wars.’ These recent trends have led some to

argue that we have reached a turning point in the

history of warfare. Some argue that major war between

advanced industrial states has become obsolete, while

others argue that traditional wars over power or

ideology will give way to a ‘clash of civilizations’

defined in terms of religious or cultural identity

(Huntington 1996). These arguments reflect different

theoretical perspectives on the causes of war.

2. Theoretical Approaches

Carl von Clausewitz (1976) wrote in his influential

book On War that war is a ‘continuation of politics by

other means,’ suggesting that war is an instrument of

policy for advancing state interests. This implies that

war ultimately involves a political decision by state

political leaders, so to understand war one must

understand why political leaders choose war rather

than other strategies to achieve their ends. Technically,

we must understand the joint decisions by rival states,

because one side can usually avoid war if it is willing to

make enough concessions.

2.1 The ‘Levels of Analysis’ Framework

Scholars previously emphasized monocausal explanations

that identified a single primary cause of war,

but political scientists have moved away from such

explanations. Although they prefer parsimonious explanations

that explain as much as possible with as

little theoretical apparatus as possible, they generally

recognize that there are many possible causes of war

and that there is no single factor that is either necessary

or sufficient for war. One analytic framework that they

have found useful for categorizing the many possible

causes of war is based on patterns of causation located

at different ‘levels of analysis’: international system,

nation-state, and individual. The first focuses on

threats and opportunities to states that originate in

their external environment and that affect the

‘national interests’ of the state as a whole. The second

emphasizes the internal sources of foreign policy

decision making that derive from either governmental

structures or processes or from societal influences

outside of the government. The third emphasizes the

distinctive role of key individual decision makers in

the processes leading to war.

2.2 Systemic-level Theories of War

Systemic-level causes of war include the anarchic

structure of the international system (defined as the

absence of a legitimate authority to regulate disputes

and enforce agreements), the distribution of military

and economic power among the leading states in the

system, patterns of military alliances and international

trade, and other variables deriving from the external

environment of states. The leading systemic-level

approach is ‘realist theory,’ which begins with the

assumption of the primary role of sovereign states who

act rationally to advance their security, power, and

wealth in an anarchic international system. Given

uncertainties regarding the current and future intentions

of the adversary, political leaders focus on shortterm

security needs, adopt worst-case thinking, engage

in a struggle for power, and utilize coercive threats to

advance their interests, influence the adversary, and

maintain their reputations.

At a very general level, realist theory posits two

distinct paths to war. In one, the direct conflict of

interests between states leads at least one side to prefer

war to any feasible compromise. In the second, states

prefer peace to war but are driven by the structure of

the situation and by uncertainty regarding the intentions

of others to take actions to protect themselves

through armaments, alliances, and deterrent threats.

These actions are often perceived as threatening by

others (the ‘security dilemma’) and often lead to

counteractions and conflict spirals which sometimes

escalate to war.

The leading realist theory is balance of power

theory. Although there are several versions of balance

of power theory, most posit that the primary goal of

states is to avoid hegemony, to prevent any single state

from achieving a position from which it can dominate

over others. This leads to the instrumental goal of

maintaining a balance of power through the internal

mobilization of military power, external alliances

against potential aggressors, or the use of force if

necessary. The theory predicts that this balancing

mechanism almost always works successfully to avoid

hegemony, either because potential hegemons are

deterred by their anticipation of a military coalition

against them or because they are defeated in war after

deterrence fails.

Another theory that gives primary emphasis to the

systemic-level sources of war, but that is associated

with a liberal perspective that downplays the conflictual

consequences of anarchy, emphasizes the

potential for cooperation among states, and includes

some domestic factors as well, is the liberal economic

theory of war. The core of the theory, which originates

with Immanuel Kant’s Eternal Peace (17951977), is

that trade promotes peace. Trade leads to economic

benefits, but the economic interdependence generated

by trade leaves states vulnerable to any disruption

through war, and the fear of economic disruption and

the loss of the gains from trade deter political leaders

from taking actions that are likely to lead to war.

Realists challenge this view and argue that because

trade and interdependence are usually asymmetrical

they often contribute to conflict rather than deter it,

either because states may be tempted to exploit their

trading partner’s vulnerabilities or because domestic

groups vulnerable to external economic developments

demand protectionist measures, which can lead to

retaliatory actions, conflict spirals, and war.

2.3 National-level Theories of War

Systemic-level theories, with their emphasis on the

external forces that shape state decisions for war, posit

that states in similar situations behave in similar ways.

The implication is that factors internal to states have

little impact on foreign policy decisions. There is

substantial evidence, however, that decisions for war

are often influenced by internal political and economic

structures, political cultures and ideologies, and domestic

political processes, and over the last decade

international relations theorists have been giving more

attention to domestic factors.

Regime type is particularly important, based on

evidence that democratic regimes behave differently in

important respects than do authoritarian regimes.

Although democracies get involved in wars as frequently

as do authoritarian states, frequently fight

imperial wars, and once involved in war often adopt a

crusading spirit and fight particularly destructive wars,

it is striking that democracies rarely if ever go to war

with each other. This ‘interdemocratic peace’ is based

on standard definitions of democracy (fair, competitive

elections and constitutional transfers of executive

power) and war (which is often distinguished from

lesser conflicts by the threshold of a minimum of 1,000

battle-related deaths).

There are several interrelated explanations for

interdemocratic peace. To be valid these explanations

must account not only for the near absence of war

between democracies but also for the fact that

democracies get involved in wars just about as much as

other states do. One model emphasizes the institutional

constraints on democratic leaders—checks

and balances, the dispersion of power, and the need

for public debate—that enable governmental or societal

groups to block attempts by political leaders to

take the country into war. Related to this ‘institutional

model’ is the ‘political culture model,’ which suggests

that the norms of peaceful conflict resolution that have

evolved within democratic societies are extended to

relations between democratic states, and that these

norms facilitate negotiated settlements.

Authoritarian leaders face fewer institutional or

cultural constraints, and they often attempt to exploit

the conciliatory tendencies of democracies. This

undermines democratic political leaders’ expectations

that their conciliatory negotiating strategies will be

reciprocated, reduces the internal constraints on their

use of force, and provides incentives for democratic

regimes to resort to force against authoritarian regimes

both to protect themselves and sometimes to facilitate

democratic transitions.

The institutional model of interdemocratic peace

assumes that political leaders are more inclined to war

than are their peoples, but this assumption does not

always hold. Jingoistic public opinion, often exacerbated

by the media, can force political leaders into

wars that they would prefer to avoid or preclude them

from making the concessions that might prevent war.

There is a strong tendency for the use of force against

external adversaries to generate a temporary boost in

domestic support for political leaders in the form of a

‘rally round the flag’ effect. Political leaders anticipate

this, and are sometimes tempted to undertake risky

foreign ventures in an attempt to distract attention

from domestic problems or to blame other states or

groups for those problems. Many contemporary

ethnic wars result in part from political leaders

manipulating images of ethnic rivals and mobilizing

their domestic publics against those rivals in order to

serve their own narrow political interests. External

scapegoating can backfire, however, if it results in a

military defeat.

2.4 Individual-level Theories of War

Whereas systemic and national-level theories

emphasize the role of international and domestic

forces that lead to war and suggest that individual

political leaders have little impact, other theories

give significant causal weight to individuals, their

beliefs about the world and specific adversaries, the

psychological processes through which they acquire

information and make decisions, and their personalities

and emotional states. Some theories emphasize

cognitive limitations and affective variables that impact

most people in similar ways and result in standard

patterns of deviations from ideal-type models of

rational decision making. Other theories emphasize

the variations among political leaders in the way they

define state interests, perceive threats to those interests,

assess the intentions of adversaries, evaluate the

merits of alternative strategies to achieve those interests,

use the lessons of history to shape current policies,

and respond to the pressures and uncertainties of

foreign policy crises. Misperceptions of the intentions

and capabilities of adversaries and third states can be

a particularly important cause of war.

3. Conclusion

Although the levels-of-analysis framework initially led

scholars to focus on the question of which level of

analysis was most important in the causes of war, and

thus to emphasize single-level explanations, attention

has recently shifted to the question of how variables

at different levels interact in the processes leading to

war.

See also: Alliances: Political; Balance of Power:

Political; Cold War, The; Conflict and War, Archaeology

of; Conflict Sociology; Deterrence; Foreign

Policy Analysis; Imperialism: Political Aspects; Internal

Warfare: Civil War, Insurgency, and Regional

Conflict; Military and Politics; Military Geography;

Military History; Military Sociology; National Security

Studies and War Potential of Nations; Peace;

Peace Movements; RealismNeorealism; War: Anthropological

Aspects; War Crimes Tribunals; War,

Sociology of; Warfare in History

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Ray J L1995 Democracy and International Conflict. University of

South Carolina Press, Columbia, SC

Thucydides 1954 History of The Peloponnesian War. In: The

Landmark Thucydides, ed. and trans. StrasslerR B. Free Press,

New York

Van Evera S 1999 Causes of War. Cornell University Press,

Ithaca, NY

Vasquez J A 1993 The War Puzzle. Cambridge University Press,

Cambridge, UK

Waltz K N 1959 Man, the State, and War. Columbia University

Press, New York

J. S. Levy

War Crimes Tribunals

From Nuremberg to The Hague and Kigali, the latter

half of the twentieth century witnessed the beginnings

of an international framework for the prosecution and

punishment of war crimes. Yet progress in this area

has been sporadic and discontinuous, often seeming to

reveal as much or more about what does not work as

about what does. Contemporary efforts to establish a

permanent international criminal court usually are

traced to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

adopted by the United Nations General Assembly a

half-century ago. These efforts continued through a

summer of 1998 meeting of more than 100 nations in

Rome that led to a tentative treaty to establish a

permanent international criminal court (ICC). Continuing

efforts include war crime tribunal activity in

relation to the wars in Rwanda and the former

Yugoslavia and ongoing efforts to ratify and implement

the treaty for a permanent court through the

United Nations. Although there is much anecdotal

and growing empirical evidence of the need for a

permanent institution to deal with war crimes, there is

a lack of social science analysis and a resulting

knowledge base that could help to broaden the

foundation of support for an international criminal

court by the public. The agenda of such a court

increasingly is recognized as not only involving righting

wrongs of the past but also preventing war crimes

in the future.

War, Sociology of

The sociology of war is a central topic in both political

and historical sociology, since war is one of the most

important policies states can pursue, and the outcomes

of wars have often shaped both the formation and the

dissolution of states. The literature on war is thus

concerned with both its causes and its consequences.

Studies of the causes of war can be divided into

three broad categories. The first type takes the system

as a whole as the unit of analysis and focuses on how

characteristics of the interstate system affect the

frequency of war. Debates focus on characteristics of

the interstate system that are thought to increase or

decrease war, such as global economic cycles, balances

of power, and the increasing role of transnational

organizations such as the United Nations. States are

the unit of analysis in the second type, which explores

the relationships among political, economic, and

cultural features of particular states and their propensity

to initiate wars. Social scientists disagree about

the effects of political systems (democracy vs. autocracy)

and economic systems (capitalist, socialist, or

other) within states on war. The third type analyses

war as an outcome of choices made by individual and

small-group decision making. There is also no consensus

on which model of individual decision making

is most appropriate for the study of war. Is the

decision to go to war based on a rational calculation of

economic costs and benefits, or is it an irrational

outcome of distortion in decision making in small

groups and bureaucracies?

Theories of the consequences of war tend to focus

either on its role in state formation, or on its causal

impact on internal revolts and revolutions. Historical

sociologists have shown that the frequency, duration,

and timing of medieval and early modern warfare were

the most important determinants of the size and

structure of states (Tilly 1975, 1990, Ertman 1997).

However, just as war can make states, it can break

them too. For example, Skocpol (1979) argues that

costly warfare often leads to fiscal crises and state

breakdown, facilitating revolutions.

1. Causes of War: The Interstate System

Most studies of war that take the interstate system as

the unit of analysis begin with assumptions from the

‘realist’ paradigm. States are seen as unitary actors,

and their actions are explained in terms of structural

characteristics of the system. The most important

feature of the interstate system is that it is anarchic.

Unlike politics within states, relations between states

take place in a Hobbesian ‘state of nature.’ Since an

anarchic system is one in which all states constantly

face actual or potential threats, their main goal is

security. Security can only be achieved in such a

system by maintaining power. In realist theories, the

distribution of power in the interstate system is the

main determinant of the frequency of war.

Although all realist theories agree on the importance

of power distribution in determining war, they

disagree about which types of power distributions

make war more likely. Balance-of-power theories

(Morgenthau 1967) suggest that an equal distribution

of power in the system facilitates peace and that

unequal power distributions lead to war. They argue

that parity deters all states from aggression and that

an unequal power distribution will generally result in

the strong using force against the weak. When one

state begins to gain a preponderance of power in the

system, a coalition of weaker states will form to

maintain their security by blocking the further expansion

of the powerful state. The coalitions that

formed against Louis XIV, Napoleon and Hitler seem

to fit this pattern.

Hegemonic stability theory (Gilpin 1981) suggests

exactly the opposite, that unequal power in the system

produces peace and that parity results in war. When

one state has hegemony in the world system, it has

both the incentive and the means to maintain order in

the system. It is not necessary for the most powerful

state to fight wars, since their objectives can be

achieved in less costly ways, and it is not rational for

other states to challenge a hegemon with overwhelming

power. For example, the periods of British and US

hegemony were relatively peaceful and World Wars I

and II occurred during intervening periods in which

power was more equally distributed.Arelated attempt

to explain great-power war is power transition theory

(Organski 1968). Power transition theory suggests that

differential rates of economic growth create situations

in which rising states rapidly catch up with the

hegemonic state in the system, and that this change in

relative power leads to war.

Debates about power transitions and hegemonic

stability are of much more than theoretical interest in

the contemporary world. Although the demise of the

USSR has left the USA as an unchallenged military

hegemon, its economic superiority is being challenged

by the European Union and emerging Asian states

(Japan in the short run, perhaps China in the long

run). If power transition and hegemonic stability

theories are correct, this shift of economic power could

lead to great power wars in the near future.

Another ongoing debate about systemic causes of

war concerns the effects of long cycles of economic

expansion and contraction. Some scholars argue that

economic contraction will increase war, since the increased

scarcity of resources will lead to more conflict.

Others have suggested the opposite: major wars will

be more frequent during periods of economic expansion

because only then will states have the resources

necessary to fight. Goldstein’s (1988) research suggests

that economic expansion tends to increase the severity

of great-power wars but that economic cycles have no

effect on the frequency of war.

One significant change in the last half of the

twentieth century which will require substantial

revisions in realist systemic theories of war is the

development and increasing power of transnational

organizations (such as the United Nations), since their

assumption that the interstate system is anarchical

may no longer be valid. If the military power of the

United Nations continues to grow, it could become

more and more effective at preventing wars and

suppressing them quickly when they do start. Of

course, it remains to be seen whether powerful existing

states will choose to cede more power to such

institutions.

Theoretical debates about the systemic causes of

war have not been resolved, in part because the results

of empirical research have been inconclusive. Each

theory can point to specific cases that seem to fit its

predictions, but each must also admit to many cases

that it cannot explain. Part of the problem is that

systemic theories have not incorporated causal factors

at lower levels of analysis, such as internal economic

and political characteristics of states. Since the effects

of system-level factors on war are not direct but are

always mediated by the internal political economy of

states and the decisions made by individual leaders,

complete theories of the causes of war must include

these factors as well.

2. Causes of War: Capitalism and Democracy

One of the longest and most heated debates about the

causes of war concerns the effects of capitalism.

Beginning with Adam Smith ([1776]1976), liberal

economists have argued that capitalism promotes

peace. Marxists (Lenin [1917]1939), on the other hand,

suggest that capitalism leads to frequent imperialist

wars.

The Smithian liberal argument suggests that since

capitalism has both increased the benefits of peace (by

increasing productivity and trade) and the costs of war

(by producing new and better instruments of destruction),

it is no longer rational for states to wage

war. The long period of relative peace that followed

the triumph of capitalism in the nineteenth century

and the two world wars that came after the rise of

protectionist barriers to free trade are often cited in

support of liberal economic theories (but the same

facts can be explained by hegemonic stability theory as

a consequence of the rise and decline of British

hegemony).

In contrast, Marxists (Lenin [1917]1939) argue that

economic problems inherent in advanced capitalist

economies create incentives for war. First, the high

productivity of industrial capitalism coupled with a

limited home market due to the poverty of the working

class result in a chronic problem of ‘underconsumption.’

Capitalists will thus seek imperial expansion to

control new markets for their goods. Second, capitalists

will fight imperialist wars to gain access to more

raw materials and to find more profitable outlets for

their capital. These pressures will lead first to wars

between powerful capitalist states and weaker peripheral

states, and next to wars between great powers

over which of them will get to exploit the periphery.

With the increasing globalization of economics, and

the transitions of more states to capitalist economies,

the debates about the effects of capitalism, trade, and

imperialism on war become increasingly significant. If

Adam Smith is right, our future is likely to be more

peaceful than our past; but if Marxist theorists are

right, we may see economically based warfare on an

unprecedented scale.

The form of government in a country may also

determine how often it initiates wars. Kant

([1795]1949) argued that democratic states (with constitutions

and separation of powers) will initiate wars

less often than autocratic states. This conclusion

follows from a simple analysis of who pays the costs of

war and who gets the benefits. Since citizens are

required to pay for war with high taxes and their lives,

they will rarely support war initiation. Rulers of states,

on the other hand, have much to gain from war and

can pass on most of the costs to their subjects.

Therefore, when decisions about war are made only by

rulers (in autocracies), war will be frequent, and when

citizens have more control of the decision (in democracies),

peace will generally be the result.

Empirical research indicates that democratic states

are less likely than nondemocratic states to initiate

wars, but the relationship is not strong (Kiser et al.

1995). Perhaps one reason for the weakness of the

relationship is that the assumption that citizens will

oppose war initiation is not always correct. Many

historical examples indicate that in at least some

conditions citizens will support war even though it is

not in their economic interests to do so, due to

nationalism, religion, ethnicity, or other cultural factors.

Perhaps the most interesting current debate about

democracy and war surrounds the proposition that

democratic states never fight each other. There is

clearly a strong empirical generalization to be explained,

since all agree that democratic states rarely fight

each other—depending on exactly how ‘democracy’

and ‘war’ are defined, some argue they never do

(Weart 1998). However, scholars disagree about the

causal mechanism responsible for this association.

Some stress the role of political culture, arguing that

the norms of toleration and mutual accommodation

that prevent conflicts within democracies from escalating

to violence have the same effect in limiting violent

conflicts between democracies. These states consider

each other part of the same ‘ingroup’ sharing the same

values, and are thus very unlikely to fight. In contrast,

others suggest that ‘democratic peace’ could be the

result of rational self-interest. Democratic politicians

may simply fear the negative impact that losing a war

might have on their prospects for re-election. Further

research, probably at the level of detailed case studies

that can reveal precise causal mechanisms, will be

necessary to resolve this debate.

3. Causes of War: Decision Making

Few theories of war focus on the individual level of

analysis; their assumptions about individual decision

making are usually implicit or undeveloped. Notable

exceptions include rational choice theories (Bueno de

Mesquita 1981, Bueno de Mesquita and Lalman 1992)

and arguments about organizational and small group

decision making (Allison 1971).

Bueno de Mesquita begins by assuming that the

decision to initiate war is made by a single dominant

ruler who is a rational expected-utility maximizer.

Rulers calculate the costs and benefits of initiating

war, and the probability of victory, so wars will be

initiated only when rulers expect a net gain from them.

These assumptions generate several counterintuitive

propositions. For example, common sense might

suggest that states would fight their enemies and not

their allies, but Bueno de Mesquita (1981) argues that

war will be more common between allies than between

enemies. Wars between allies are caused by actual or

anticipated policy changes that threaten the existing

relationship. The interventions of the USA in Latin

America and of the USSR in Eastern Europe since

World War II illustrate the process. Other counterintuitive

propositions suggest that under some conditions

a state may rationally choose to attack the

stronger of two allied states instead of the weaker, and

under some conditions it is rational for a state with no

allies to initiate war against a stronger state with

allies.

Other analyses of the decision to initiate war focus

on how the social features of the decision-making

process lead to deviations from rational choice.

Allison (1971) argues that standard operating procedures

and repertoires within states tend to limit the

flexibility of decisions and make it difficult to respond

adequately to novel situations. Others focus on the

small groups within states (such as executives and their

cabinet advisers) that actually make decisions about

war. The cohesiveness of these small groups often

leads to a striving for unanimity that prevents a full

debate about options and produces a premature

consensus. In spite of these promising studies, work on

the deviations from rational choice is just beginning,

and we are still far short of the general microlevel

theoretical model of the decision to initiate war.

4. Consequences of War: State Formation and Bureaucratization

How and to what extent does war affect the formation

and the structure of states? Tilly (1975, 1990) argues

that ‘war made states’ in the early modern era. Warfare

(along with the repayment of debts from past wars)

cost far more than any other state policies in early

modern Europe. Moreover, the timing and the nature

of war shaped the structures of these developing states.

One of the most interesting ongoing debates concerns

whether war facilitates or hinders bureaucratization.

Weber ([1922]1978) argued that states involved in

military competition with other states (e.g., Western

Europe) would be more likely to bureaucratize than

those that were more isolated (e.g., China, Japan).

Although he does not use this terminology, he basically

argues that states not facing the threat of war

would be satisfied with existing administrative arrangements,

whereas those competing militarily would be

forced to adopt the more efficient bureaucratic form.

In contrast to this, Levi (1988) views war as a

consistent impediment to bureaucratization. She

argues that war raises the discount rates of rulers,

causing them to pursue policies that provide immediate

gains even if they are costly in the long term. Thus,

rulers facing war would be unlikely to pay the high

start-up costs of bureaucratization, but would instead

do things like selling offices which would make

bureaucracy much more difficult to implement.

Ertman (1997) suggests a related argument in which

the timing of war is important. When states experienced

early sustained warfare (prior to about 1450)

they developed patrimonial administrations (due to

lack of trained personnel and the dominance of

‘cultural models’ derived from feudal and Catholic

institutions). These institutions were very difficult to

bureaucratize due to the power of entrenched officials

to block reform. Ertman argues that states that were

able to avoid frequent war until later were able to

develop more bureaucratic administrations.

Finally, wars that result in severe losses may

facilitate bureaucratic reforms. One of the main

barriers to bureaucratization is the entrenched officials

in the state administration who have both the incentives

and the power to block reform (Ertman 1997).

These officials will not be dislodged by most wars, but

their power will be broken by a severe loss at war,

especially one that results in foreign occupation.

5. Consequences of War: Revolt and Revolution

Since the classic work of Simmel ([1908]1955, pp. 98–9)

and Coser (1956, pp. 19, 95), the conventional wisdom

has been that wars decrease the probability of revolts

by increasing the internal cohesion of societies (the

‘ingroup–outgroup’ or ‘conflict–cohesion’ hypothesis).

However, the results of empirical tests of the relationship

between revolt and war have been mixed, at

best.

In contrast to the ‘conflict–cohesion’ hypothesis,

historical sociologists focusing on the early modern

period (Tilly 1975, p. 74) argue that fighting wars

increased the likelihood of revolts. Tilly argues that

since subjects had few institutionalized mechanisms

available to stop rulers from initiating wars contrary

to their interests, the only option they had to try to

limit war was revolt. In addition, Tilly (1975, p. 74)

notes that since participating in wars weakens rulers, it

increases the likelihood of a revolt.

Theda Skocpol (1979) has made the most compelling

argument that war is a primary cause of major

‘social revolutions.’ Her argument about the origins of

the French, Russian, and Chinese revolutions stresses

the importance of factors that weaken the state,

making it more vulnerable to overthrow. The main

factor that tends to weaken states is war, especially in

the context of strong peasant communities and an

alienated dominant class. This work has been the

primary inspiration for the development of a ‘statecentered’

approach to historical sociology.

6. Conclusion

This short summary has only been able to scratch the

surface of the voluminous literature on war. Future

research should attempt to link the several topics

discussed here, by bringing together the micro and

macro causes of war, and by tying the causes more

closely to the consequences of war. The increasing

development of technologies of mass destruction and

the rise of transnational political units will also

challenge existing theoretical frameworks. Like most

of sociology, the sociology of war is still in its infancy.

See also: Conflict and War, Archaeology of; Conflict:

Anthropological Aspects; Conflict Sociology; Geopolitics;

Military Geography; Military History; National

Security Studies and War Potential of Nations;

Peace; Peacemaking in History; War: Anthropological

Aspects; War: Causes and Patterns

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E. Kiser

Warfare in History

This article divides the history of warfare into five

periods: the classical era (including the wars of Greece

and Rome); the Middle Ages (roughly fromAD500 to

the Turkish conquest of Byzantium in 1453); the age of

gunpowder (from 1453 to the American and French

Revolutions beginning in 1776); the ‘long nineteenth

century’ (from 1776 to 1918); and finally the contemporary

period (covering World War II and the

Cold War). Each of these periods will be defined by

changes in three dimensions. First and most obviously,

each period is associated with a general group of

military technologies. Second, each period also involves

a shift in the nature of military organization.

Finally, this periodization demonstrates changes in

the reasons why people have gone to war.

1. The Classical Period

1.1 Technology

The Classical period deserves consideration on its own

merits and in the context of an historical debate over

the influence of Greco-Roman warfare on later European

patterns. In the field of technology, some

historians argue that the Greeks and Romans began a

pattern of using superior technology to compensate

for having to fight wars against numerically superior

enemies. The Persian Wars of the fifth century BC

demonstrated the need for Greek city-states to combat

the much larger armies of Persian kings Darius and

Xerxes. Needing to slow the Persians, Spartan general

Leonidas threw his much smaller force into a mountain

pass near Thermopylae in 480 BC knowing that it

would be destroyed to a man. Aware that his army

would not return, Leonidas took with him only those

men who had children to succeed them, an important

consideration because the army and the citizenry were

closely linked.

To avoid future Thermoplyaes, the Greeks developed

both offensive and defensive technologies. Eventually,

the typical Greek soldier wore nearly seventy

pounds of armor and carried spears and swords that

were superior to Persian weapons. These technological

solutions helped the Greeks win, but the unity that the

Greek city-states showed against Persia soon devolved

into internecine wars. During the most famous of

these wars, the Peloponnesian War (431–04 BC),

technology again proved critical. In this case,

Athenian naval vessels attempted to balance the

superior land power of their enemy, Sparta. Defensive

technologies evolved in counterpoint as Athens, Syracuse,

and other city-states built protective walls strong

enough to defy even determined sieges.

The Romans also leaned heavily on technology to

defeat more numerous enemies, though many Roman

military technologies were not necessarily weapons

systems. Building upon the Roman genius for engineering,

Roman armies assisted in the construction

of a system of roads (even today the Roman roads are

roughly contiguous with the European highway system)

that permitted the legions to move quickly from

one point in the empire to another. The Romans also

depended upon defensive works such as trenches and

walls (Hadrian’s Wall in the UK is the most famous

example) to contain their enemies rather than fight

them. Some historians argue that the Classical tradition

bequeathed to later Western militaries the

importance of looking for technological solutions to

military problems.

1.2 Organization

The Greeks based their military upon the hoplite

system. Hoplites (named for their shield, the hoplon)

were citizens of the republic and rough social equals.

Thus, Greek warfare had no concept directly analogous

to the modern division of officers and enlisted

men. Greek generals (such as they were) received their

appointment by yearly election. Municipal assemblies

also voted on when and where the city-state would go

to war. As citizens, hoplites participated fully in these

elections.

As nonprofessionals, the hoplites needed a fairly

simple tactical system because so little time could be

devoted to formal training. The result was a dense

concentration called a phalanx. A hoplite’s shield

protected his own left side and his neighbor’s right

side. Thus the phalanx could only succeed when every

hoplite stood his ground, lest the gap between himself

and his neighbor be exploited. Once broken apart, a

phalanx soon dissolved, resulting in many casualties

by trampling.

The Romans trained and organized much more

formally than the Greeks. Groups of about 120 men

formed ‘maniples,’ thirty-five of which were then used

to form legions of approximately 4,000 infantry and

300 cavalry (the exact sizes of maniples and legions

varied significantly over time). This system foreshadowed

the modern creation of platoons, companies,

and brigades. The Romans used professional

gladiators (named for their short, thrusting sword, the

gladius) and evolved a concept of officers (usually

wealthier citizens) and ‘other ranks.’ Increased sophistication

and professional training allowed the Romans

to develop a military that used various weapons,

including soft iron javelins called pila. The soft iron

bent on impact so that enemies could not throw them

back. If victorious, however, Roman smiths could

recover the pila after the battle and reshape them. The

Roman system gave the legions flexibility, endurance,

and striking power that few militaries could match.

The Greek and Roman systems of warfare mirrored

their societies. Both preferred service by citizens,

perhaps another legacy to modern nation-states. The

Roman system extended citizenship to conquered

people, but the effectiveness of its army noticeably

declined as more non-Roman militia entered the

Roman military. The citizen model was less prevalent

in the armies of autocrats such as Alexander the Great.

The Romans also gradually separated wealth from

military service by introducing regular pay and even

retirement benefits.

1.3 Purposes

Among the legacies left by the Greeks and Romans to

later styles of warfare is the concept of pitched battle.

The Greeks especially tended to favor violent, but

short, battles intended to solve disputes in a single

afternoon. The bloody nature of Greek warfare

appalled many of their opponents, including the

Persians, who disliked a style of warfare that left even

the winners with high casualties. Despite its violence,

Greek warfare did follow certain understood rules,

including safe passage for heralds and ambassadors

and amnesty for temples and other religious sites.

Roman warfare followed a similar pattern. Wars

were generally fought with the single goal of annihilating

the enemy. The Roman sack of Carthage in 146

BC is the most famous, but hardly the only example.

Roman armies typically pursued retreating enemies

with cavalry and often treated prisoners severely. In

one case, Julius Caesar kept an opposing general on

display in Rome for six years before executing him.

The Roman preference for fast, deadly, decisive battles

differed significantly from other cultures. The Aztecs,

for example, believed that the purpose of warfare was

to capture prisoners for later sacrifice.

2. The Middle Ages

2.1 Technology

The most important Medieval technology, odd though

it may seem, was not a weapon, but the stirrup. The

stirrup changed the traditional relationship between

cavalry and infantry. With stirrups allowing riders to

grasp lances and shields firmly and with newer, more

durable horseshoes allowing horses to run faster and

farther, cavalry came to the forefront for most of this

period. The Mongols proved to be the most successful

of the horse-based military systems of the Asian

steppes; by the late thirteenth century they controlled

an empire that stretched from China to modern-day

Ukraine. Their military relied almost exclusively on

cavalry.

In Western Europe, cavalry proved to be no less

important. For the aristocrats who could afford the

extensive support systems that accompanied cavalry,

horses meant power. The European aristocracy, as

well as its Japanese counterpart, depended upon

horses, armor, and swords for offensive power and

increasingly larger castles for defensive power. The

victory of mounted Norman knights over Anglo-

Saxon infantry at the Battle of Hastings in 1066

underscored the value of cavalry. The Catholic Church

even tried to ban weapons (such as the crossbow) that

threatened the knight’s status, though the church

permitted the use of such weapons on infidels.

Technological changes also helped to end the period

of dominance by the mounted knight. The Hundred

Years War marks an important turning point. At the

battles of Crecy (1346), Poitiers (1356), and Agincourt

(1415), skilled English archers devastated French

knights with the Welsh longbow, a weapon capable of

rapidly delivering arrows powerful enough to penetrate

armor at ranges up to 400 yards. Lacking

effective missile weapons themselves, the French

knights suffered terribly. At Crecy, the longbows

allowed the English to defeat a French force three

times its size, further underscoring the Western pattern

of looking to technology to compensate for smaller

numbers.

2.2 Organization

Military training and military service was concentrated

in a relatively small group of wealthy aristocrats.

In most Eurasian systems, peasants and serfs

were not expected to engage in actual fighting, though

they might participate in ancillary operations, particularly

as archers or pikemen supporting the cavalry.

The challenge to kings and other rulers, then, was to

maintain the loyalty and fealty of their aristocratic

vassals. In the Third Crusade (1189–92), for example,

Frederick I of Germany, Philip II of France, and

Richard I of England spent considerable time keeping

their unruly knights and barons in check. Powerful,

aristocratic military orders, relatively independent of

royal authority such as the Knights Templars and the

Teutonic Knights emerged from the Crusades as well.

In Japan a similar system developed, though loyalty

was ordinarily based more on personal than contractual

allegiances. The Japanese samurai class

emerged in the twelfth century, replacing the conscript

armies that had existed previously. The samurai also

came to dominate Japanese politics, supplanting the

traditional Japanese aristocracy. The failure of

Mongol invasions of Japan in 1274 and 1281 removed

any serious outside threat to the home islands, leaving

the small samurai class in near-complete charge of

military affairs. Civil wars and power struggles did

occur, but they rarely drew Japanese peasants into the

fighting.

In the Islamic world, the Abbasid Caliphate began

in the ninth century to use slave soldiers called

mamluks. Originally from the steppes of Asia Minor,

the mamluks soon translated their military dominance

into political dominance in Egypt and elsewhere in the

Middle East. They were the only major Islamic force

that proved capable of resisting the Mongols, defeating

them in 1260 at the Battle of Ain Jalut in modernday

Israel. The mamluks, the samurai, the Mongols,

and the European aristocracy, though different in

many ways, shared a near-monopoly over military

force in their societies, which were arranged in feudal,

or at least fief-based, political systems. All of these

systems were prone to succession crises and internal

strife. None proved to be militarily superior to any

other.

2.3 Purposes

Generally speaking, the motivations and purposes for

warfare in this period were either religious, feudal, or

both. The Islamic empires acquired tremendous territory,

in part through military conquest, without

significant technological advantages over their opponents.

They did so by wedding religious ideology to

their military forces. Under the reigns of Caliphs

Umar (634–44) and Uthman (644–56), Muslim armies

conquered Spain, North Africa, Persia, and the Indus

River valley. Their fleets conquered Cyprus and raided

Sicily and Rhodes. Qur’an readers accompanied

Muslim armies, converting many men who may have

joined more for plunder than for religion.

The Crusades (1095–1291) also reflect a religious

basis for warfare in this period. In the eleventh century,

the success of the Seljuk Turks against the Byzantines

led Pope Urban II to call the First Crusade (1095–99)

to defend Christianity against the incursions of Islam.

The Crusades perfectly show the interplay of religion

and feudal obligation. The Pope acted both as a

religious leader and (more controversially) as a noble

in his own right. The First Crusade (also known as the

‘Peasants’ Crusade’) demonstrated that only knights

could be relied upon to form the center of Christian

armies. The peasant armies were too large to feed and

too unsophisticated to stand up to the Turks. Of the

30,000 non-nobles who fought in the First Crusade,

25,000 died. Sending young nobles off to the Middle

East also served a political purpose for the Pope,

removing warriors and weapons from the constant

internal struggles of feudal Europe. Thus by the

fifteenth century similar and roughly coequal military

systems existed in Western Europe, the Islamic Empires,

the Asian steppes, and Japan.

3. The Gunpowder Age

3.1 Technology

The Turkish capture of Constantinople in 1453 involved

70 heavy artillery pieces, including a 19-ton

piece that fired a 1,500-pound projectile more than a

mile. The appearance of these weapons was not new.

Knowledge of gunpowder had moved from China to

the Middle East to Europe. At the Battle of Crecy

(1346) the English introduced very primitive gunpowder

weapons to European warfare. Nevertheless,

the dramatic Turkish success at a place Europeans

considered sacred marked a watershed in military

technology. Ironically, the Islamic empires subsequently

proved slower to adopt gunpowder weapons

than did their European adversaries. By the end of the

eighteenth century, Europeans were the clear masters

of gunpowder warfare on land and at sea.

Early small arms, like the arquebus, were clumsy,

unreliable, and often more dangerous to the shooter

than to his intended victim. Until the widespread

adoption of the rifle in the nineteenth century the

common command given to musketeers was ‘level’

rather than ‘aim’ since one could not expect to hit a

specific target at any significant distance. Large artillery

was even more dangerous to their users and so

large that pieces often had to be cast at the siege site.

By the sixteenth century Europeans had standardized

ammunition sizes, developed training systems for

musketeers, and invented more reliable firing systems

for small arms. These changes made both large and

small arms more mobile and effective.

Europeans developed gunpowder weapons much

more quickly than any other society in this period. The

simple availability of raw materials and craftsmen

were important prerequisites; men who could cast

church bells were in special demand as they could

easily cast cannon as well. European nobles also had

ample motivation to acquire new weapons for their

struggles with other nobles. Finally, the European

system proved more amenable to allowing private

enterprises to develop and sell new weapons. The

mamluks and the samurai showed a particular dislike

for guns as they tended to undermine the military

monopoly that kept them in power.

3.2 Organization

Guns threatened the very existence of a horse-based

nobility whose expertise was in swords and lances. The

age of the knight, already waning, came to an end.

Non-noble musketeers replaced them. Because small

arms were so inefficient when used singly, musketeers

had to be arranged in lines and taught to fire and load

their weapons in uson. Armies thus became much

larger and more disciplined. Aristocrats who remained

in military service became the backbone of an officer

class that led armies mostly constituted of peasants.

Holland’s Maurice of Orange (1567–1625) and

Sweden’s Gustavus Adolphus (1594–1632) deserve

much of the credit for forming and training the new

armies. They introduced regular drill and other reforms

that eventually led to the classic European

linear infantry formations (initially as many as 10 men

deep, later two or three deep) that permitted one line

to fire, then move to the back. This system maintained

a near-continuous rate of fire, but required intense

training (the first drill manuals appeared in 1607) and

discipline in order to assure the safe and effective

operation of guns. Every officer, furthermore, feared

the specter of mutiny. Intense discipline, therefore,

characterized most European armies; in many cases,

the men feared their officers more than they feared the

enemy.

Many European nations also developed powerful

sail-based navies in this period. England’s Henry VIII,

excommunicated from the Catholic Church in 1534,

sold Church lands to finance the construction of a

fleet. Future monarchs continued to build upon

Britain’s command of the seas, introducing men-ofwar

in the seventeenth century that were durable

enough to carry large cannon. England’s HMS Victory,

launched in 1759, was built from 2,000 oak trees,

27 miles of rope, and four acres of sails. It had 104

guns capable of firing 1,100 pounds of iron every 90

seconds. Seapower became critical to acquiring colonies,

protecting merchant marines, and projecting

power. Britain dominated the ‘Great Age of Sail,’ but

Portugal, Spain, Holland, France, and others used

naval vessels to increase their wealth and status.

3.3 Purposes

Three purposes dominated warfare: religion; dynastic

ambition; and imperialism. The Thirty Years’ War

(1618–48) demonstrated the interplay of the first two.

Lutheran-Catholic-Calvinist antagonisms partially explain

the bloody nature of the war; Germany proportionately

lost more people in the Thirty Years’ War

than in World War II. Religion, however, did not

always determine the allegiances of the participants.

Catholic France and Catholic Spain, for example,

consistently fought one another for control of Italy

and Flanders. Gunpowder weapons also led to a

concentration of power as wealthy kings, in command

of increasingly larger and more disciplined armies (not

to mention artillery able to destroy castles), could

compel their restless vassals to accept their rule.

The growth of monarchy meant that warfare often

followed the dynastic goals of kings. Louis XIV in

France, Peter the Great in Russia, and Frederick the

Great in Prussia all used gunpowder-based armies to

extend their power inside their kingdoms and enforce

their will outside. Often, dynastic wars spilled over

into the empires Europeans were in the process of

building with those same gunpowder weapons. In the

Seven Years’ War (1756–63), Britain seized France’s

Canadian and Indian colonies.

Finally, of course, Europeans translated their gunpowder

weapon advantages into overseas empires. In

this period, their greatest military advantage over non-

Europeans was in areas accessible to their great

warships. Navies allowed Europeans to enforce their

will along the coastlines of Africa and Asia. On land,

guns helped to make the Spanish, French, and British

empires in the Americas possible. In Asia, ‘gunpowder

empires’ such as the Ottomans and the Mughals also

concentrated political power. Japan, after an initial

period of experimentation with guns, effectively

banned gunpowder weapons in 1587 because of the

threat they posed to samurai dominance.

4. The Long Nineteenth Century, 1776–1918

4.1 Technology

This period, dominated by nationalism and industrialization,

marked a tremendous advance in military

technologies. Many existing technologies became

much more sophisticated. Smoothbore muskets gave

way in the nineteenth century to rifles, which have a

groove cut in their barrels. Rifling and the conical

bullet vastly increased the range and accuracy of small

arms fire. After the American Civil War (1861–65)

various forms of repeating rifles and machine guns

emerged. Artillery also became more deadly. By 1918

the Germans had developed a gun (albeit an inaccurate

one) with a range of 80 miles. Naval vessels became

more deadly as well. Iron and steel replaced wood as

the primary construction material and oil replaced

coal as the main fuel. HMS Dreadnought, launched in

1906, revolutionized warfare by carrying ten 12-inch

guns. Dreadnought set off a naval arms race that

helped to cause World War I. Winston Churchill

noted the importance of Dreadnought-class ships to

his nation thus: ‘the Admiralty asked for six, the

Cabinet proposed four, and we compromised on

eight.’

This period also introduced many new types of

weapons systems, including (in rough chronological

order), submarines, airplanes, poison gas, and tanks.

By the end of this period air forces had developed all

major roles for airpower in use today except midair

refueling. These technologies brought war directly to

civilians as never before. Many important communications

technologies such as telegraphs (first used in

the Crimean War, 1854–56), railroads, and radio

changed the nature of military command and control.

Advances in medical technology reduced the number

of men who died of wounds and disease.

These technological changes affected Western and

Westernized societies (including the USA and, after

1853, Japan) the most. Warfare between them, therefore,

reached unprecedented levels of violence. Westernized

societies also had tremendous advantages

against non-westernized societies. European imperialists

were thus able to use new military technologies

to move inland in Africa and Asia. Most visibly,

Japan, which Westernized very quickly after 1853,

easily defeated China, which did not, in the Sino-

Japanese War of 1894–95.

4.2 Organization

The most obvious change in the organization of armies

and navies in this period was the increasing connection

between military service and nationalism. National

volunteers and conscripts replaced mercenaries, once

common in Europe. Between 1776 and 1783, the

American colonies used a militia with both local and

national roots to defeat a British army partly dependent

upon mercenaries. This contrast partially

explains the fame of George Washington’s crossing of

the Delaware River in 1776: his national army captured

1,000 Hessian mercenaries in British service.

The American experience, though, is minor compared

to the French Revolution. The logic of the

Revolution and the wars that followed implied that

national armies must be populated by national soldiers.

The leee en masse of 1793 established the

principle that citizens of all ages, male and female,

bore some responsibility for national defense. Napoleon

extended this principle and most European armies

soon copied the French pattern. Nationalism inspired

zeal and a willingness to endure. In 1814 Prussia

created the Landwehr as a permanent peacetime militia

and by the end of the nineteenth century most

European nations had introduced national conscription.

The militaries of states that were not also nations

(Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire) declined as a

result.

The two most important military reforms of this

period were Napoleon’s corps system and the Prussian

General Staff. A Napoleonic corps was large enough

to operate independently since it contained formations

of cavalry, artillery, and infantry that could act in

concert. This system, however, depended on capable

officers. Napoleon therefore introduced a professional

officer corps open to talent in place of the aristocratic

officer corps upon which Europe had come to depend.

Later in the century, Prussia developed a General Staff

system to plan wars. Detailed Prussian planning led to

victory in the Wars of German Unification (1864

against Denmark, 1866 against Austria, and 1870–71

against France). These successes led all major Western

militaries to copy the general staff idea.

4.3 Purposes

Military historians sometimes speak of a continuum

between ‘limited’ and ‘total’ wars. Because warfare in

this period tended to be tied to national goals and

national identity, this period represented a general

shift toward totality. The Wars of the French Revolution,

the American Civil War, and World War I

stand as cases in point. In these wars and others, huge

proportions of national income were dedicated to

prosecuting wars and fundamental social, political,

economic, and cultural patterns were forever altered.

The increased suffering (and intentional targeting) of

civilians also led to totality.

Advanced technologies also made imperialism

(often as an extension of nationalism) cheaper and

easier for the Europeans. European militaries moved

inland with steam-powered ships and railroads. Machine

guns, furthermore, made military contests with

natives one-sided. By 1912, the Vickers-Maxim gun

could fire 250 rounds per minute. As poet Halaire

Belloc noted in a turn-of-the-century (twentieth century)

poem, ‘Whatever happens, we have gotThe

Maxim Gun, and they have not.’ Nevertheless, isolated

cases such as the Boer Wars (1899–1902) demonstrated

that modern weapons in the hands of skilled

practitioners could make imperialism extremely

bloody and costly. The Boers, white settlers in South

Africa of Dutch ancestry, resisted the British with

breech-loading guns and smokeless powder. It took

the British empire more than two and a half years and

almost 500,000 men to subdue less than 90,000 loosely

organized Boers. The Boer Wars provided a taste of

the changes to come in European military dominance

after World War II.

World War I caused 20,000,000 deaths, destroyed

four empires, and left in place the conditions for

World War II. Only wars fought by national armies

could have been so destructive. Warfare in this period

combined the productive capacity of industrialization

with the inspiration of nationalism. This combination,

when matched with the classical legacy for pitched

battle, produced a level of carnage that continues to

baffle historians today.

5. The Contemporary Period, 1918–2000

5.1 Technology

Although this period has much in common with the

previous period, one specific technology divides it

from all that had come before. Atomic weapons have

changed the very definition of warfare. Some scholars

have argued that in the atomic age ‘strategy,’ as the

term was commonly understood before 1945, has no

real meaning because atomic weapons do not permit a

society to apply a level of force proportionate to

desired political ends. In effect, a society only has the

military option of obliterating one’s enemy and, in the

process, taking the risk that a similar fate might befall

your own society. Atomic weapons created the post-

World War II superpower system that so informed not

only the Cold War but dozens of regional conflicts as

well. The challenge of fighting wars ‘under the nuclear

umbrella’ led to American defeat in Vietnam, Soviet

defeat in Afghanistan, and ‘war by proxy’ as the

superpowers tried to fight each other through client

states in areas as diverse as Southeast Asia, the Middle

East, sub-Saharan Africa, and Latin America.

Of course, more than just atomic weapons are

important to this period. World War II saw the

development of effective long-range bombers and

aircraft carriers, capable of bringing war directly into

an enemy’s homeland. Radar and sonar provided new

technologies to deal with enemy air and submarine

attacks. By the end of the war, jet aircraft and rockets

were operational, though neither proved decisive.

More sophisticated transport planes and landing craft

allowed for airborne and amphibious warfare to come

into maturity as well.

Since World War II, electronics and computers have

revolutionized warfare yet again. Cruise missiles and

other ‘smart’ weapons ideally provide more accurate

delivery of weapons and, hopefully, fewer civilian

casualties as a result. Satellites, helicopters, sophisticated

avionics, and stealth technology once again

have provided an upper hand to advanced societies,

though the Vietnam and Afghanistan cases prove that

a technological advantage is not always enough to

ensure victory. Nevertheless, today Western societies

still depend upon their technological advantages—

much as the ancient Greeks did—to compensate for

the smaller numbers of soldiers that they can place on

the battlefield.

5.2 Organization

Initially, the organization of World War II armies was

designed to avoid the totality of World War I. The

German blitzkrieg system attempted to win ‘lightning’

victories that would not drain German manpower in

the trenches. The Japanese, too, hoped to destroy the

American fleet at Pearl Harbor and force the USA into

a negotiated settlement. Nevertheless, totality soon

emerged as the Axis powers sought to annihilate, not

defeat, their enemies. More than ever before, entire

societies became mobilized. Women participated directly

and indirectly in numbers and ways never before

envisioned. The pattern of increasing female participation

has continued into the post-war period. The

USA armed forces used 35,000 women in the Persian

Gulf War, many of them at or very near the front lines.

The totality of World War II ruined Europe and

Japan as first-rate military powers. The end of European

hegemony also meant the virtual end of imperialism.

Many militaries resorted to guerilla warfare to

try to defeat more technologically sophisticated enemies.

Fighting underneath the ‘technology threshold’

has proven difficult for more advanced military systems.

The Americans had great difficulty with the

Vietnamese but few battlefield problems with the

Iraqis in 1991 because the latter’s military was much

more like their own that the former’s.

Since the end of the Cold War, the general trend has

been to much smaller, but more sophisticated, militaries.

Virtually all European states have eliminated or

greatly reduced conscription. The USA abandoned

conscription during the Cold War (in 1973) partially

as a result of Vietnam War protest, but also to

acknowledge that sophisticated weapons systems require

dedicated professional volunteers to operate

them.

5.3 Purposes

World War II was a contest of three ideologies:

democratic capitalism, fascism, and communism. As a

result, armies became politicized as never before.

Young German males often left Hitler Youth organizations

and entered directly into the Wehrmacht. In

the Soviet Union, political commissars (including

Nikita Khrushchev) served with Soviet military units

and had as much decision-making authority as generals.

Ideology created what John Dower called a ‘war

without mercy.’ Though he was referring to the Pacific

War between the USA and Japan, the same phrase

could be applied equally to the war between Germany

and the Soviet Union as well. The Holocaust and the

German siege of Stalingrad, among other episodes,

show the cost of the war to civilians. The former killed

6,000,000 Jews and other targets of the Nazi state. In

the latter, Joseph Stalin refused to order the evacuation

of the city even in its most dire moments. In the

end, only nine Stalingrad children were reunited with

both biological parents.

The Cold War interacted with the general decline of

European hegemony to impact regional conflicts.

Throughout the Third World, nationalist movements

and civil wars became arenas where the superpowers

armed clients but, conversely, often went to great

lengths to reduce global tensions. In 1956 and 1973,

for example, the superpowers brokered truces in the

Arab–Israeli wars rather than risk a USA–Soviet

confrontation. Regional wars like the Iran–Iraq War

(1980–88) also became entangled with the Cold War;

the weapons that the superpowers made available

lengthened wars that had little relation to the global

capitalist–communist struggle.

The end of the Cold War raises as many questions as

it provides answers. The Persian Gulf War seemed to

set the model for American hegemony as the lone

remaining superpower. After building a coalition

based around itself, the USA operated in the Gulf

without the fears of Soviet response that had haunted

Korea and Vietnam. The NATO air war over Kosovo,

however, suggested that Russia (and perhaps China)

could not be ignored. Multipolarity appears to be

every bit as dangerous as bipolarity. The Western

powers continue to look toward technological solutions

(especially airplanes and cruise missiles) to solve

military problems, suggesting that in some ways we

have not come so far from the Greeks after all.

See also: Arms Control; Contemporary History; First

World War, The; Folklore; Geopolitics; History of

Technology; Home in Anthropology; Imperialism,

History of; International Relations, History of; Military

Geography; Military History; National Security

Studies and War Potential of Nations; Peace; Peacemaking

in History; Revolutions, History of; Sacrifice;

Second World War, The; Violence, History of; War:

Anthropological Aspects; War: Causes and Patterns;

War, Sociology of

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