What Causes Wars - Essay Example

What Causes War Submitted: What Causes War Introduction Wars are caused due to two main reasons: firstly, war is caused when people who are involved in the process of deciding whether to fight a war or not have realized that costs attached with fighting a war is less than the benefits of having a war (Coyne, 2011, p.34). Secondly, according to Fearon, wars take place when two parties involved in bargaining process fail to reach an agreement that benefits both the side and the agreement cannot be implemented (Goemans, 2000, p.34). Two parties mostly fail to bargain because the agreement made between the two parties cannot be implemented or parties do not have the ability to operate according to the agreement. Second reason for failure to bargain is that resources that parties can take over through a war have higher benefits than the benefits that may be obtained from reaching an agreement (Schultz, 2001, p.55). Thirdly, there may be a difference between the benefits that the leaders foresee and the benefits that the population foresees. Fourthly, information about the advantages and disadvantages of having a war are unclear to both the parties and, lastly, agreement cannot be practiced because other parties involved are against all agreements. A war may end up lasting longer if both the sides fail to reach an agreement or if the sides keep realizing that the cost of war is lower than its benefit. While on the other hand, if a war starts as there is little or unclear information of the strength of the parties, and as the war continues and information becomes clearer, the possibility of reaching an agreement becomes higher and the chances of the war ending soon even increases. Discussion Reasons that lead to failure to bargain between two parties are considered as rational reasons for war, but in general there are various irrational causes of war (Levy, 2010, p.67). These causes have certain amount of rationality as these causes are related to bargaining failures. Religion has been a cause of war for several years, two countries or states having different religious believes fight against each other on the basis of war (Salter, 1932, p.21). In this cause of war, it is thought that there is no material involvement, while the idea behind this cause of war may be to eradicate the existence of the population of one religion or increasing the population of one of the religious party at war. In this cause of war, parties fail to reach an agreement as they believe that they are being directed to fight this war by a higher authority. Leaders in this kind of war fail to reach an agreement as they feel that they are under the control of higher authority and whether to go to war or not is not their decision to make. Revenge is even considered another major cause of wars but revenge is even considered as irrational war because the driver of this war is emotional instability rather than cost and benefits (Sidebottom, 2004, p.100). Parties seek revenge when they are angry or they cannot control their emotions; when parties fight a war on the basis of revenge, they do not take costs and benefit into account. People with different ideologies and people with different ethnic background even go to war to eliminate each other to gain a major portion of the current social cake (Cramer, 2006, p.121). Such wars are irrational and unreasonable but different people with different principles support this cause of war. For example, Hitler had a mission to ensure that his race becomes the supreme one of all. Hitler’s cause of war should be considered as insane as his decision of war was unethical. Various leaders have such insanity and due to the fear of this insanity, leaders of other parties strike back. This fear of insanity becomes a rational and major cause of war. As discussed priory in the text, there are two reasons that lead to war: firstly, the parties involved view that having a war is has more benefits to offer than costs and, secondly, there are certain obstructions that do not allow bargaining to take place successfully. These two reasons are considered as rational reasons for war. According to Fearon, if both the parties involved accept that the cost of war is higher than the benefit of having it, then they can easily reach an agreement to avoid the war and in such scenarios, parties involved can decide to divide resources as these resources will be divided if a war takes place and can enjoy the benefit of not experiencing the cost of having a war. He further states that bargaining becomes difficult as the parties involved might have different viewpoints of the cost and benefits of the war or their commitment level towards accepting and following the agreement is low or the parties may have resources that are indivisible which are expected to be divided due to war or the agents may believe that one of them may have lower amount of benefits from the agreement. Wars may take place due to insufficient or unclear information and due to this lack of information bargaining may fail. For example: There are two countries that are looking at the option of going to a war. Country A believes has unclear idea about the weakness and the strength of Country B. The only cost that both countries may realize due to war is the loss of resources, if country A wins, all the resources are owned by country B and vice-versa. This means that if these counties may have either everything to win or everything to lose. In such cases, countries take the chance of going for winning all rather than saving all. Due to such circumstances the possibility of reaching an agreement becomes low. In certain cases, both countries may believe that they can benefit from the war and if both countries believe that the probability of them winning the war is high, then the chances of reaching agreement becomes lower. In other words, if both countries become greedy, then reaching an agreement is difficult. According to Waltz when one the armed forces of one country become irrational and they start preparing for war, the opposite forces even equip themselves to counter the opponents irrational behaviour, this means that the fear that irrational opponents will attack becomes a rational reason for getting ready for war (Nünlist, 2010, p. 22). This fear may even persuade the rational actors to attack first as they might fear that irrational agents are planning an attack. Commitment is one of the main problems that cause failure to reach a mutually beneficial agreement (Johnson, 2003, p.176). Only those agreements are highly productive and can counter war that automatically become self enforceable. An agreement has the ability to become self enforce able if the agents involved are of equal strength and have equally quality or quantity of resources as in this case both agents do not find each other attractive (Maoz, 2004, p.61). Another way through which agreements become self-enforceable if one of the agent transfers certain amount of resources to the other agent, in this case one of the opponent becomes weaker and becomes unattractive to the opposing agent. Hobbes stated that an individual should keep fighting and keep capturing resources until he finds an opponent of his own size (Hobbes, 2003, p.20). But the problem is that agents that might think of giving up certain amount of resources in order to avoid war, may interpret that the opponent might become greedy and might ask for more. In many cases the resources of each party involved are hard to divide due to which bargaining even fails. According to Fearon, all resources may not be dividable but other resources available may be dividable and these resources can be utilized to reach an agreement. Communication gap has even been a significant factor of failure to reach an agreement and have been a cause of war (Klein, 2003, p.132). These gaps have been minimized but previously these gaps played a significant role. Failure to reach an agreement between two countries that are looking at war as an option is even caused due to difference between the interest, view point of the leaders of the countries and the general population. According to Morelli and Jackson, that leader representing nations might believe that the outcome of the war will be of higher benefit to them and the general population might believe that the war will cause higher problems, in such cases reaching an agreement becomes impossible (Lupo, 2003, p. 179). In certain cases, more than two countries are involved in the bargaining process, the chances of not reaching an agreement through bargaining even deteriorate if all the countries do not accept the agreement. For example: three super powers are negotiating, if two super powers join each other, they can easily win a war against the country which is not a part of the coalition (Collier, 2007, p.263). Though bargaining and reaching an agreement and abiding by the agreement takes place if the two parties who have formed a coalition agree to fairly divide the resources captured from the country that is not part of the coalition. Conclusion It is quite clear that if war is to take place, then leaders and countries have to consider that the costs of going to a war are fewer than the benefits that can be obtained from it and secondly there should be existence of obstacles to reach a mutually beneficial agreement. Wars take place when there are problems with the leaders of a country or due to reasons related to ethnicity and religion. Though wars caused due to ethnicity and religious reasons are irrational wars, but these wars are even caused due to failure to reach a mutually beneficial agreement through bargaining. The rational reasons of war are the failure to bargain. Failure to bargain takes place when the information available to decision makers is unclear. When information is unclear, fear plays its part and persuades a leader to go to a war to save his own resources. Greed even becomes a cause as the greed to acquire more resources from a weaker opponent may make leaders fight a war. If an agreement is reached, the agreement should have the ability to become self enforceable so no war takes place and countries should be committed towards fulfilling the agreement. Bargaining has even failed as the resources that can are divided due to war are hard to divide, but these are alternatives to compensate for indivisible resources. Agreements even fail when leaders are biased and according to their view, a war is highly beneficial of the country and their view might be conflicting with the general populations view. Reference List COYNE, C. J., & MATHERS, R. L. (2011). The handbook on the political economy of war. Cheltenham, Glos, UK, Edward Elgar. CRAMER, C. (2006). Civil war is not a stupid thing: accounting for violence in developing countries. London, Hurst & Co. COLLIER, P. (2007). The bottom billion: why the poorest countries are failing and what can be done about it. Oxford, Oxford University Press. GOEMANS, H. E. 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