The invasion of Ukraine may give us some insight into the causes of war, with the help of experts.
I recently shared Jeremy Black’s view of why wars happen.[1] High on his list are two explanations: humans are inherently warlike and we idolize war heroes. But after I wrote about Black, I was urged (by Mark Brady) to read a more classic treatment by Geoffrey Blainey, a prominent Australian historian. He wrote The Causes of War in 1973 and updated it in 1988.[2]
Blainey was not interested in fundamental psychological causes but, rather, in finding specific patterns of how wars get started and how they stop. His book, he said, was based on a study of all international wars since 1700.
Blainey’s most important claim is that war starts when “two nations disagree on their relative strength.”[3] The leaders of each nation weigh their chances of winning or obtaining a goal (which might be maintaining independence). The decision to go to war is based on at least seven factors, he says.
The seven key factors that determine whether or not a country goes to war are as follows (my paraphrase of his list):
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- Leaders’ evaluation of military strength, their own and the enemy’s;
- How leaders think other countries will act;
- Their knowledge about civil stress in their own country and the enemy’s;
- Their and their citizens’ memories of past wars (or forgetfulness about them);
- The nation’s ideology and patriotism;
- Whether a leader thinks the country’s economy can handle war;
- The decision-makers’ personalities and background.[4]
All but two of these depend on subjective judgments, and such judgments can be (and are often) wrong.
The two factors that don’t rely entirely on assessments are the nation’s ideology and patriotism and the leaders’ personalities and background. An attitude of isolation can keep a country out of war (as in the case of the United States—but not for all that many years). And a Winston Churchill is more likely to go to war than a Neville Chamberlain. In any case, these two factors often vary considerably among nations and help determine war or peace.
Blainey seems to be saying that any time two countries differ in their opinion of their relative power there will be war. That would be reading too much into his analysis, because, of course, there have been periods of peace, and some strong countries have made decisions not to go to war (although, when directly provoked, most probably have).
Blainey points out that few historians have studied what keeps nations out of war; that is, the causes of peace. For example, why was Europe relatively peaceful from 1815 to 1870 and again from 1871, after Germany defeated France, until 1914? The answer, he suggests, consists of the same factors that explain war.
One of them may be war-weariness (cause 4, the vivid memory of war years). The more distant the memory of war, the more likely it is. Yet he observes that this does not explain all peaceful periods. Historians have argued that the peace from 1815 to 1870 could be caused by war-weariness following the Napoleonic wars, but “when they come to the second long period of peace they skip it without offering an explanation.”[5]
Indeed, a war ends when the war itself has convinced both or all countries of their relative strength and they substitute diplomacy or submission for fighting.
The lessons for the current war-making are pretty straightforward. Vladimir Putin evaluated (1) Ukraine’s military strength and his own and (2) the likelihood that other countries would challenge him. He thought (3) his citizens were behind him and Ukraine’s might not be fully behind their leaders. (5) It’s been a long time since the last European war; and (6) Putin thought his country could handle the war economically.
As for (4) national ideology, Russia showed amazing resilience in the Second World War, even under devastating Communism; and (7) Putin apparently has a strong desire to rebuild the Russian empire.
But such assessments can be wrong. The reaction of Ukraine and the NATO countries has been something of a surprise to many of us, and perhaps to Putin, too.
NOTES
[1]Jeremy Black, A Short History of War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2021).
[2] Geoffrey Blainey, The Causes of War (New York: The Free Press, 1973, 1988).
[3] Blainey, 293
[4] Blainey, 293,
[5] Blainey, 8.
Map of the 2022 war in Ukraine is by Homoatrox on Wiki Commons.
You may be right, but Putin still had to weigh whether or not the outcome justified his actions. Thank you for Glenn Greenwald’s comment, found at https://www.historyextra.com/period/20th-century/holodomor-soviet-ukraine-history-facts-deaths-genocide-cause/?utm_source=Adestra&utm_medium=Email&utm_content=HEXT&utm_campaign=20220313_HE_hewkly_all_1645670_BBC%20History_Newsletters_12424848. (It is long but gives context.)
If you are the US or any European country, you see no threat to Russia from Ukraine or NATO. The threat Putin sees is not naked aggression, but a threat to his ideal of a Russian imperium, a Russian world, Slavic world. If he can’t have Ukraine, and he knows he can’t occupy a now hostile country, he will destroy it. That destruction began when his hopes of a quick victory and puppet govt collapsed.
So, what is the cause of THIS war? On one side the failure of US and European powers to understand what Putin’s ideal is and how they threaten him by offering Ukraine NATO membership or western protection. On the Russian side the belief that physical conquest is a legitimate way to destroy threats and an unshakable belief that the West wants to destroy or emasculate Russia.
The Russian view you cite is the view of Russian leaders, not Russians in general. The Russian siloviki are not normal people; they are closer to a criminal gang. One of my former Russian students just emailed me expressing dismay and says Russians she knows are horrified and devastated that Russia has started this. I never met any Russian who thought the West was a threat; but I met normal people, not the authoritarian leadership.
Wallace, Putin made miscalculations of the sort Blainey describes. The U.S. and NATO failed to understand his goals and (I would say) also failed to show any strength as a counterweight to his goals.
This may be a naive question, but what leads Putin to think that the U.S. wants to destroy Russia?
This is a question for economics, rather than historians. Jack Hirshleifer modeled anarchic situations in “Anarchy and its Breakdown” (JPE 1995 vol. 103 no. 1). Groups in anarchic relations have two options for harvesting resources: produce them or try to seize them from each other. Each group makes a tradeoff on their expected strength vs. other groups’ expected strength, and balances that with expected gains from fighting or just producing. The theory nicely describes relations among nation-states.
BTW, Schalin’s shameful and despicable apologetics for Putin’s aggression are nonsense. Russia was not under any threat.
Russia never asked for and certainly never applied for NATO membership. A friend of mine who worked in the NATO office in Moscow told me that when NATO officials there floated the idea of Russian membership, Russian officials dismissed it out of hand.
Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has nothing to do with “strategic responses to neighbors’ actions.” Putin has always lamented the end of the USSR, and speaks of restoring the boundaries of the old Soviet empire. The independence of the Ukrainians is an obvious threat to his dictatorship, because if they are able to establish a free, democratic, economically successful country, his own people will start thinking perhaps they could as well. Putin’s regime could not survive that.
“NATO’s constant pushing” is a red herring. Never mind that it is none of Russia’s business whether other countries join NATO, NATO forces have shrunk over the years, no NATO country was at all interested in invading Russia, and there was no prospect of Ukraine joining NATO. Unfortunately for Ukraine, they gave up their nuclear weapons in exchange for worthless security guarantees from Russia and the U.S.
Russia is a belligerent authoritarian state run by a KGB officer who longs to restore Soviet borders. It was not threatened.
Schalin’s “very real strategic reasons” are Kremlin propaganda. Shameful.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/04/ex-nato-head-says-putin-wanted-to-join-alliance-early-on-in-his-rule
I agree with Mr. Schalin that this seven-factor list is woefully incomplete. The most obvious omission is the perceived payoff. The list includes costs but not payoff.
There are other omitted factors well. For example, democracies are far less likely to initiate war than autocracies. Perhaps that comes under the rubric of “the decision makers’ personalities and background,” but the nature of the system is at least as fundamental, since it shapes the kind of people who rise to leadership positions. Biden would never have become president in Russia nor Putin in the U.S.
Does “the nation’s ideology and patriotism” include religion? Would a Muslim Europe have gone on the Crusades? Of course not. One could argue that “ideology” includes religious influences, but that is not the normal sense in which we use the word “ideology.”
I’m also uncomfortable with the word “patriotism” because it encompasses too much. Some patriots will defend their own country zealously, but in the absence of aggression from outside think their country does better in time of peace. Other kinds of “patriots” are more nationalistic or even jingoistic.
I could go on, but this post already is too long. The bottom line is that I think Blainey’s list is, at most, a starting point.
Rob: Blainey uses the term “nationalism.” I considered patriotism a synonym (and—as a good history student— I was trying to avoid plagiarizing his language, while getting his points across).
There seems to be some big element missing in the Blainey analysis: a valid underlying reason for the war. The personality of the ruler doesn’t quite do it; there may be some possible advantage in the future for the attacking country. In the case of Ukraine, there are very real strategic reasons why Russia attacked that are not explained in those seven bullet points. NATO has constantly pushed toward the borders of Russia, despite assurances it would not do so. (Also, Russia asked to join NATO back in the 1990s and was rebuffed.) Putin drew the line at Georgia and Ukraine, understandably so, and NATO ignored that line, leading to war in both cases. Those seven reasons don’t seem to include such strategic responses to neighbors’ actions.