Causes of War

Causes of War

Causes of War

Introduction

For centuries, war existed in various forms, war between states, ethnic groups and tribes. In the twentieth century, war includes organized violence between social groups and contemporary civil wars, terrorism and insurgencies. War has been the most destructive behavior of mankind. People around the world would like to see an end to war, if not even just the reduction of the atrocities of war. For this purpose however, it is important to explore general causes of war. Causes of war is the domain that is usually explored either on the back of the assumption that war emerges as a result of multiple causes or mono cause. Thus there normally exists multi and mono-causal explanation of the causes of war. This assignment is primarily undertaken to appraise both the approaches, as facilitated by the comprehensive evaluation of various texts, research articles and studies, to understand causes of war so that credible school of thought could be poinpointed which will have produce substantial findings in further relevant studies. This study will draw on the causes of World War I in such a context that it could be applied in general to all the wars and conflicts so as to understand with orientation to one of the greatest wars in history, the approach that fits best to understand effectively the causes of war.

It was said that the four main causes of World War I are militarism, alliance, imperialism, and nationalism. This advocates multi-causal explanation to understand causes of war. The interpretation behind the causes of World War 1 has continuously been seen as changing with significant amount of argumentative discussion and heated debates being undertaken by researchers and scholars serving the relevant arena. The transition in the historical opinion pertaining to the causes behind the war, the entry of America in the scenario and the striking of peace is absolute, manifesting in the ideas and attitudes that emerged following publication of collection of documents, opening of the archives in addition to the access to memoirs and personal papers (Blainey, 1973). Although, now it could be noticed that general agreement exists on the causes that led towards the outbreak of war and entry of America in the scenario, the role of America in peace-making is still highly debatable (Hoffman, 1986). This is not just the case of World War 1, rather all the war and conflicts situations come attached with such assumptions and interpretations that denote an enormous range of possible causes that are accredited as behind the occurrence of that particular confrontation. This practice is important to be studied particularly considering that the choice of the possible cause to develop one's view as to what might have triggered war, depends highly on an individual's psychological interests and their preconceptions. This leads to a haphazard way of contributing to the knowledge base not only on micro level but on macro level as well, thereby making it imperative for the factors to be quantified so as to pass judgments ...