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The Five Reasons Wars Happen

Christopher Blattman | 10.14.22

Whether it is Russian President Vladimir Putin’s threats of nuclear strikes or Chinese belligerence in the Taiwan Strait , the United States seems closer to a great power war than at any time in recent decades. But while the risks are real and the United States must prepare for each of these conflicts, by focusing on the times states fight—and ignoring the times they resolve their conflicts peacefully and prevent escalation—analysts and policymakers risk misjudging our rivals and pursuing the wrong paths to peace.

The fact is that fighting—at all levels from irregular warfare to large-scale combat operations—is ruinous and so nations do their best to avoid open conflict. The costs of war also mean that when they do fight countries have powerful incentives not to escalate and expand those wars—to keep the fighting contained, especially when it could go nuclear. This is one of the most powerful insights from both history and game theory: war is a last resort, and the costlier that war, the harder both sides will work to avoid it.

When analysts forget this fact, not only do they exaggerate the chances of war, they do something much worse: they get the causes all wrong and take the wrong steps to avert the violence.

Imagine intensive care doctors who, deluged with critically ill patients, forgot that humanity’s natural state is good health. That would be demoralizing. But it would also make them terrible at diagnosis and treatment. How could you know what was awry without comparing the healthy to the sick?

And yet, when it comes to war, most of us fall victim to this selection bias, giving most of our attention to the times peace failed. Few write books or news articles about the wars that didn’t happen. Instead, we spend countless hours tracing the threads of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, America’s invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, or the two world wars. When we do, it distorts our diagnosis and our treatments. For if we follow these calamitous events back to their root causes and preceding events, we often find a familiar list: bumbling leaders, ancient hatreds, intransigent ideologies, dire poverty, historic injustices, and a huge supply of weapons and impressionable young men. War seems to be their inevitable result.

Unfortunately, this ignores all the instances conflict was avoided. When social scientists look at these peaceful cases, they see a lot of the same preceding conditions—bumblers, hatreds, injustices, poverty, and armaments. All these so-called causes of war are commonplace. Prolonged violence is not. So these are probably not the chief causes of war.

Take World War I. Historians like to explain how Europe’s shortsighted, warmongering, nationalist leaders naively walked their societies into war. It was all a grand miscalculation, this story goes. The foibles of European leaders surely played a role, but to stop the explanation here is to forget all the world wars avoided up to that point. For decades, the exact same leaders had managed great crises without fighting. In the fifteen years before 1914 alone, innumerable continental wars almost—but never—happened: a British-French standoff in a ruined Egyptian outpost in Sudan in 1898; Russia’s capture of Britain’s far eastern ports in 1900; Austria’s seizure of Bosnia in 1908; two wars between the Balkan states in 1912 and 1913. A continent-consuming war could have been ignited in any one of these corners of the world. But it was not.

Likewise, it’s common to blame the war in Ukraine overwhelmingly on Putin’s obsessions and delusions. These surely played a role, but to stop here is to stop too soon. We must also pay attention to the conflicts that didn’t happen. For years, Russia cowed other neighbors with varying degrees of persuasion and force, from the subjugation of Belarus to “ peacekeeping ” missions in Kazakhstan. Few of these power contests came to blows. To find the real roots of fighting, analysts need to pay attention to these struggles that stay peaceful.

Enemies Prefer to Loathe One Another in Peace

Fighting is simply bargaining through violence. This is what Chinese Communist leader Mao Tse-tung meant in 1938 when he said , “Politics is war without bloodshed, while war is politics with bloodshed.” Mao was echoing the Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz who, a century before, reminded us that war is the continuation of politics by other means.

Of course, one of these means is far, far costlier than the other. Two adversaries have a simple choice: split the contested territory or stake in proportion to their relative strength, or go to war and gamble for the shrunken and damaged remains. It’s almost always better to look for compromise. For every war that ever was, a thousand others have been averted through discussion and concession.

Compromise is the rule because, for the most part, groups behave strategically: like players of poker or chess, they’re trying hard to think ahead, discern their opponents’ strength and plans, and choose their actions based on what they expect their opponents to do. They are not perfect. They make mistakes or lack information. But they have huge incentives to do their best.

This is the essential way to think about warfare: not as some base impulse or inevitability, but as the unusual and errant breakdown of incredibly powerful incentives for peace. Something had to interrupt the normal incentives for compromise, pushing opponents from normal politics, polarized and contentious, to bargaining through bloodshed.

This gives us a fresh perspective on war. If fighting is rare because it is ruinous, then every answer to why we fight is simple: a society or its leaders ignored the costs (or were willing to pay them). And while there is a reason for every war and a war for every reason, there are only so many logical ways societies overlook the costs of war—five, to be exact. From gang wars to ethnic violence, and from civil conflicts to world wars, the same five reasons underlie conflict at every level: war happens when a society or its leader is unaccountable, ideological, uncertain, biased, or unreliable.

Five Reasons for War

Consider Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. What do these five tell us about why peace broke down?

1. Unaccountable. A personalized autocrat , Putin doesn’t have to weigh the interests of his soldiers and citizens. He can pursue whatever course helps him preserve his regime’s control. When leaders go unchecked and are unaccountable to their people, they can ignore the costs of fighting that ordinary people bear. Instead, rulers can pursue their own agendas. That is why dictators are more prone to war .

2. Ideological. Consider Putin again. Most accounts of the current war dwell on his nationalist obsessions and desires for a glorious legacy. What costs and risks he does bear, Putin is willing to pay in pursuit of glory and ideology. This is just one example of intangible and ideological incentives for war that so many leaders possess—God’s glory, freedom, or some nationalist vision.

Societies have ideological incentives too. Unlike the people of Belarus or Kazakhstan, the Ukrainians refused to accept serious restrictions on their sovereignty despite what (at first) seemed to be relative military weakness. Like liberation movements throughout history—including the American revolutionaries—they have been willing to undertake the ruin and risks of fighting partly in pursuit of an ideal.

3. Biased. Most accounts of Russia’s invasion stress Putin’s isolation and insulation from the truth. He and his advisors grossly underestimated the difficulty of war. This is a story of institutional bias—a system that is unwilling to tell its leader bad news. Autocrats are especially prone to this problem, but intelligence failures plague democracies too . Leaders can be psychologically biased as well. Humans have an amazing ability to cling to mistaken beliefs. We can be overconfident, underestimating the ruin of war and overestimating our chances of victory. And we demonize and misjudge our opponents. These misperceptions can carry us to war.

4. Uncertain. Too much focus on bias and misperception obscures the subtler role of uncertainty. In the murky run-up to war, policymakers don’t know their enemy’s strength or resolve. How unified would the West be? How capably would Ukrainians resist? How competent was the Russian military? All these things were fundamentally uncertain, and many experts were genuinely surprised that Russia got a bad draw on all three—most of all, presumably, Putin himself.

But uncertainty doesn’t just mean the costs of war are uncertain, and invasion a gamble. There are genuine strategic impediments to getting good information . You can’t trust your enemy’s demonstrations of resolve, because they have reasons to bluff, hoping to extract a better deal without fighting. Any poker player knows that, amid the uncertainty, the optimal strategy is never to fold all the time. It’s never to call all the time, either. The best strategy is to approach it probabilistically—to occasionally gamble and invade.

5. Unreliable. When a declining power faces a rising one, how can it trust the rising power to commit to peace ? Better to pay the brutal costs of war now, to lock in one’s current advantage. Some scholars argue that such shifts in power, and the commitment problems they create, are at the root of every long war in history —from World War I to the US invasion of Iraq. This is not why Russia invaded Ukraine, of course. Still, it may help to understand the timing. In 2022, Russia had arguably reached peak leverage versus Ukraine. Ukraine was acquiring drones and defensive missiles. And the country was growing more democratic and closer to Europe—to Putin, a dangerous example of freedom nearby. How could Ukraine commit to stop either move? We don’t know what Putin and his commanders debated behind closed doors, but these trends may have presented a now-or-never argument for invasion.

Putting the five together, as with World War I and so many other wars, fallible, biased leaders with nationalist ambitions ignored the costs of war and drove their societies to violent ruin. But the explanation doesn’t end there. There are strategic roots as well. In the case of Russia, as elsewhere, unchecked power, uncertainty, and commitment problems arising from shifting power narrowed the range of viable compromises to the point where Putin’s psychological and institutional failures—his misperceptions and ideology—could lead him to pursue politics by violent means.

The Paths to Peace

If war happens when societies or their leaders overlook its costs, peace is preserved when our institutions make those costs difficult to ignore. Successful, peaceful societies have built themselves some insulation from all five kinds of failure. They have checked the power of autocrats. They have built institutions that reduce uncertainty, promote dialogue, and minimize misperceptions. They have written constitutions and bodies of law that make shifts in power less deadly. They have developed interventions—from sanctions to peacekeeping forces to mediators—that minimize our strategic and human incentives to fight rather than compromise.

It is difficult, however, to expect peace in a world where power in so many countries remains unchecked . Highly centralized power is one of the most dangerous things in the world, because it accentuates all five reasons for war. With unchecked leaders , states are more prone to their idiosyncratic ideologies and biases. In the pursuit of power, autocrats also tend to insulate themselves from critical information. The placing of so much influence in one person’s hands adds to the uncertainty and unpredictability of the situation. Almost by definition, unchecked rulers have trouble making credible commitments.

That is why the real root cause of this current war is surely Putin’s twenty-year concentration of power in himself. And it is why the world’s most worrisome trend may be in China, where a once checked and institutionalized leader has gathered more and more power in his person. There is, admittedly, little a nation can do to alter the concentration of power within its rivals’ political systems. But no solution can be found without a proper diagnosis of the problem.

Christopher Blattman is a professor at the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy. This article draws from his new book, Why We Fight: The Roots of War and the Paths to Peace , published by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.

Image credit: Oles_Navrotskyi , via depositphotos.com

25 Comments

War, in the end, is about Armed Robbery writ large; whether Committing it, Preventing it, or Redressing it. It is all about somebody trying to take somebody else's stuff.

Peace is the time of waiting for war. A time of preparation, or a time of willful ignorance, blind, blinkered and prattling behind secure walls. – Steven Erikson

That is the right reason, I do not know about the others, but I will give you a+ on this one

its beeches thy want Resorces

Wars often come when a group of nations (for example the USSR in the Old Cold War of yesterday and the U.S./the West in New/Reverse Cold War of today) move out smartly to "transform"/to "modernize" both their own states and societies (often leads to civil wars) and other states and societies throughout the world also (often leads to wars between countries).

The enemy of those groups of nations — thus pursuing such "transformative"/such "modernizing" efforts — are, quite understandably, those individuals and groups, and those states and societies who (a) would lose current power, influence, control, safety, privilege, security, etc.; this, (b) if these such "transformative"/these such "modernizing" efforts were to be realized.

From this such perspective, and now discussing only the U.S./the West post-Cold War efforts — to "transform"/to "modernize" the states and societies of the world (to include our own states and societies here in the U.S./the West) — this, so that same might be made to better interact with, better provide for and better benefit from such things as capitalism, globalization and the global economy;

Considering this such U.S./Western post-Cold War "transformative"/"modernizing" effort, note the common factor of "resistance to change" coming from:

a. (Conservative?) Individual and groups — here in the U.S./the West — who want to retain currently threatened (and/or regain recently lost) power, influence, control, etc. And:

b. (Conservative?) states and societies — elsewhere throughout the world — who have this/these exact same ambition(s).

From this such perspective, to note the nexus/the connection/the "common cause" noted here:

"Liberal democratic societies have, in the past few decades, undergone a series of revolutionary changes in their social and political life, which are not to the taste of all their citizens. For many of those, who might be called social conservatives, Russia has become a more agreeable society, at least in principle, than those they live in. Communist Westerners used to speak of the Soviet Union as the pioneer society of a brighter future for all. Now, the rightwing nationalists of Europe and North America admire Russia and its leader for cleaving to the past."

(See "The American Interest" article "The Reality of Russian Soft Power" by John Lloyd and Daria Litinova.)

“Compounding it all, Russia’s dictator has achieved all of this while creating sympathy in elements of the Right that mirrors the sympathy the Soviet Union achieved in elements of the Left. In other words, Putin is expanding Russian power and influence while mounting a cultural critique that resonates with some American audiences, casting himself as a defender of Christian civilization against Islam and the godless, decadent West.”

(See the “National Review” item entitled: “How Russia Wins” by David French.)

Bottom Line Thought — Based on the Above:

In the final paragraph of our article above, the author states: "That is why the real root cause of this current war is surely Putin’s twenty-year concentration of power in himself."

Based on the information that I provide above — which addresses the "resistance" efforts of entities both here at home and there abroad — might we beg to differ?

From the perspective of wars between nations relating to attempts as "transformation" by one party (and thus not as relates to civil wars which occur with "transformative" attempts in this case) here is my argument above possibly stated another way:

1. In the Old Cold War of yesterday, when the Soviets/the communists sought to "transform the world" — in their case, so that same might be made to better interact with, better provide for and better benefit from such this as socialism and communism:

a. The "root cause" of the conflicts that the U.S. was engaged in back then — for example in places such as Central America —

b. This such "root cause" was OUR determination to stand hard against these such "transformative" efforts and activities — which were taking place, back then, in OUR backyard/in OUR sphere of influence/in OUR neck of the woods.

2. In the New/Reverse Cold War of today, however, when now it is the U.S./the West that seeks to "transform the world" — in our case, so that same might be made to better interact with, better provide for and better benefit from such things as market-democracy:

“The successor to a doctrine of containment must be a strategy of enlargement, enlargement of the world’s free community of market democracies,’ Mr. Lake said in a speech at the School of Advanced International Studies of the Johns Hopkins University.”

(See the September 22, 1993 New York Times article “U.S. Vision of Foreign Policy Reversed” by Thomas L. Friedman.)

a. Now the "root cause" of the conflicts that Russia is engaged in today — for example in places such as Ukraine —

b. This such "root cause" is now RUSSIA'S determination to stand hard against these such "transformative" efforts and activities — which are taking place now in RUSSIA'S backyard/in RUSSIA'S sphere of influence/in RUSSIA's neck of the woods.

(From this such perspective, of course, [a] the current war in Ukraine, this would seem to [b] have little — or indeed nothing — to do with "Putin's twenty-year concentration of power in himself?")

It’s easy to put the whole blame on Putin himself with his unchecked power . But this is a gross simplification of the reality in case of the Ukraine war. NATO expansion everywhere and especially into the very birthplace of Russia was a huge irritator , perceived as unacceptable, threatening, arrogant with no regard to Russia’s interests. Russia’s invasion of Georgia in 2008 was a clear warning, that was completely ignored. Without NATO’s ambitions there would be no war in Ukraine. Or Georgia .

When the Soviet Union installed missles in Cuba , the democratic and presumably the country with all checks and balances in place almost started a nuclear war with the Soviets. It was a reckless gamble that could end the world Why expect anything less from the modern Russia that feels threatened by NATO encroachment?

In the end, whether it's about committing, preventing, or rectifying, war is all about armed robbery. The main plot is around a thief trying to steal from another person.

One of the main causes of war is nationalist garbage. This nationalist site conveniently omits this as they push their preferred chosen nationalist enemy(cold war leftovers in this case) on the reader. What do you expect from OVRA/NKVD reruns?

In addition to the reasons explored to further explain the cause of war, there are also self-defeating schema in thought structures that deteriorate over time. They become compromised by the wear-and-tear grind of life of individuals seeking natural causes and solutions collectively and apart. This is particularly relevant to the matter of war dynamics. When energies used to pursue peace are perceived as exhausted, unspent warfare resources appear more attractive. Particularly in the instances of deteriorating leaders who are compromised by psychopathy, war can quickly become nearly inevitable. Add a number of subordinated population that are unable to resist, and the world can quickly find itself following in the footsteps of leaders marching to their own demise. On the broader sociopolitical battlefield, with democracy trending down and the deterioration in global leadership increasing, the probability of both war and peaceful rewards increase. The questions that arise in my mind point to developing leaps forward to the structures of global leadership, particularly for self-governing populations, leveraging resources that mitigate the frailties of societal and individual human exhaustion, and capping warfare resources at weakened choke points to avoid spillovers of minor conflicts into broader destruction. Technology certainly can be used to mitigate much more than has been realized.

Wow, I could say all those things about the U.S. and its rulers.

We don't have a dictator.

Trump came pretty close to being a dictator, what with the way people were following him blindly, and the ways that all parties, (Both republicans AND democrats) have been acting lately I wouldn't be surprised if a dictator came into power

War happens because humans are predatory animals and preditors kill other preditors every chance they get. The 3 big cats of africa are a prime example. We forget that we are animals that have animal insticts. There will always be war.

The cause of war is fear, Russia feared a anti Russian Army in Ukraine would come to fruitinion in the Ukraine threatening to invade Moscow!

it takes one powerful man in power to start war and millions of innocence people to die, to stop the war . / answer!,to in prison any powerful person who starts the war , and save your family life and millions of lives, / out law war.

The biggest cause of war is the demonstration of weakness among democratic nations facing a well-armed dictator with irrational ambitions. In the case of Russia, the democratic world turned weak on Vladimir Putin at a time when both democratic institutions and peace might have been preserved. Boris Yeltsin, Russia’s first-ever freely elected president, had given the newly democratic Russia a real chance to enter the community of free nations in 1991. But when Putin was elected in 2000, we saw the warning signs of trouble. Putin already was undermining democracy. In Russia’s transition from socialism, he used his old KGP connections to buy up all the political parties (except ironically the Communist Party, which now was tiny and unpopular). He also declared he yearned for the old greater Russia, with those Soviet Union borders. The U.S. and NATO didn’t take Putin’s greater-Russia statements too seriously. After all, once their economy stabilized after the transition from socialism, the Russian people were pleased with their new and free Russia, the removal of the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain, and the new openness to the West. There was no popular call for retaking old territory. But Putin had his own plans, and as Christopher Blattman’s article observes, when you’re dictator (and even with ‘elections’ you are dictator if you own all the political parties) you can go your bloody way. Then came America’s ‘Russian re-set.’ As Putin consolidated his power, and forced the parliament, the Duma, to give him permission to run for several unopposed ‘re-elections,’ the U.S. decided to go gentle on Putin, in hopes he’d abandon his authoritarian course. This was the fatal mistake. When the U.S. should have been publicly encouraging Putin to commit himself to international borders and to democracy in Russia, the U.S. leadership instead was asking what it could do to make Putin happy. Putin saw this as weakness, an opening for his insane territorial desires, which focused mainly on Ukraine. He let a few more years go by, prepared secretly, and then in 2014, he ordered the invasion of Ukraine, killing about 14,000 people and claiming Ukraine’s Crimea for Russia. The U.S. imposed economic sanctions on Russia, but the terrible damage had been done. Because the Free World’s leaders had let down their guard, an awful precedent had been set. A new Russian dictator had murdered to steal territory. To him, the price was low. That told him he could do it again someday. And in 2022, again sensing weakness from the West, Putin invaded Ukraine once more. Not only have tens of thousands of Ukrainians been killed in this new war, but the Russian people themselves are now locked in an even tighter, more brutal dictatorship. Peace through Strength is not just a slogan. It’s as real as War through Weakness. My father, who fought in Europe in World War II, said an American soldier’s first duty was to preserve America’s rights and freedoms, as described in the Constitution. He said an American soldier also has two jobs. A soldier’s first job, he said, is to block the tyrants. Just stand in their way, he said, and most tyrants won’t even try to pass. That’s Peace through Strength. A soldier’s second job, he said, is to fight and win wars. He said that second job won’t have to be done often if we do enough of the first job.

I hope there will be no more wars in the world

This, pandemic of wars will soon make us realize and accept the fact that the global society’s compassion towards its individuals is numbed and will eventually be completely absent as it is transformed into a human super-organism, just as one’s body is not concerned about the millions of cells dying daily in it, unless it affects the body as a whole like the cancer cells where we consider them to be terrorists and actively kill them.

Boghos L. Artinian MD

I hope there is no more war in this world

war it not good for all humans

Ultimately, be it engaging in, averting, or resolving, war can be likened to organized theft. The central theme revolves around a thief attempting to pilfer from someone else.

In the end, whether involving, preventing, or resolving, war can be compared to organized theft. The core idea centers on a thief attempting to steal from someone else.

No nation would wage a war for the independence of another. Boghos L. Artinian

And I will give you one word that sums up and supersedes your Five Reasons: Covetousness James 4:2, ESV, The Holy Bible.

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Causes of War: A Theory Analysis

Kyle Amonson

            “ To expect states of any sort to rest reliably at peace in a condition of anarchy would require the uniform and enduring perfection of all of them ” (Waltz, 2001, pg. 9).

War and conflict has been as much a constant in human history as humans. As Kenneth Waltz states, “there is no peace in a condition of anarchy,” and there will always be a form of anarchy as long as human nature is a variable in our complex domestic and international systems. Many scholars have analyzed the causes of war on a state-by-state-basis, other writers believe that it is possible to provide a wider, more generalized explanation (Baylis et al, 2017, pg. 239).  Additionally, many well-known international relations theorists have applied forms of theoretical framework to understand how and why we create friction in our societies, focusing on a variety of aspects, from international institutions to gender. For neorealist writers such as John Mearsheimer, international politics is not characterized by these constant wars, but nevertheless a relentless security competition, as we will discuss in this essay (Baylis et al, 2017, pg. 242).

There are many immediate contributing factors of war, and this essay will discuss them, but it will initially focus on the generalized explanation of human nature in the pursuit of security as the primary cause of war. This essay will define war in the international and historical sense, then analyze human nature’s role in conflict, followed by human nature’s projection on the nation state and finally conclude with the most frequent manifestations of conflict and conclusion.

Defining War

“War is nothing but a duel on an extensive scale…war therefore is an act of violence intended to compel our opponent to fulfil our will ” (Clausewitz et al, 2008, pg. 12).

In order to understand the causal factors of war we have to define what war is and reverse engineer how and why these parties escalated their relations to a violent level of conflict. War is organized violence among groups; it changes with historical and social context; and, in the minds of those who wage it, it is fought for some purpose, according to some strategy or plan (Baylis et al, 2017, pg. 225). War may seem simple to define yet encompasses a variety of conflicts with many types and forms of war displayed throughout history and modern times. The two most common forms of warfare are high intensity conflict and low intensity conflict. High intensity conflict is defined through concepts consistent with linear warfare, symmetric combat, combined arms maneuver and unified action through multiple domains. This type of warfare is engaged with “near-peer” capable parity between states. Low-intensity conflict is consistent with asymmetric, permissive battlefields, irregular guerilla tactics, counter-insurgency operations and typically involves non-state actors. Within the concept of war as a whole there also exists the concept of “total war,” where a state is fighting for its very existence. Total war is relative to the concept of “limited war,” which is fought for any lesser goal than political existence (Baylis et al, 2017, 228). Additionally war can either be international, involving more than one sovereign state, or a civil war, existing within a state.

Escalating a conflict to a state of war is never a lighthearted decision, regardless of the type and level of violence. By nature, war escalates, each move is checked by a stronger counter-move until one of the combatants is exhausted (Baylis et al, 2017, pg.230). War takes a significant toll on both the economy and the society of the warring nations, often irreparably changing their culture and shaping their politics for years to come. As Clausewitz famously stated:

War is always a serious means for a serious object….Such is War, such the Commander who conducts it; such the theory which rules it. But War is not pastime; no mere passion for venturing and winning; no work of a free enthusiasm: it is a serious means for a serious object (Clausewitz et al, 2008, pg. 30).

Human Nature’s Role

“Wars result from selfishness, from misdirected aggressive impulses, from stupidity. Other causes are secondary…” (Waltz, 2001, pg. 30).

War is a creation of human nature. The psychological variables, feelings, and behavioral traits of humankind are just a few of the wide range of variables that comprise what is the basic human experience. One common trait to all humans in any society is our flaws and the inherent differences established among society that have developed our cultural norms throughout history. While humans are not “hard-wired” for war and destruction, war is a by-product of envy, selfishness, and self-preservation. As Kenneth Waltz stated in his analysis of “the first image” in his book, Man, the State, and War , all “other causes are secondary.” In order for a state to wage war, “the passions which break forth in War must already have a latent existence in the people” (Clausewitz et al, 2008, pg. 33).

Another common trait is the innate need for safety, most easily described through Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Maslow states that “if the physiological needs are relatively well gratified, there then emerges a new set of needs, which we may categorize roughly as the safety set of needs” (Maslow, 1943, pg. 6). Additionally, Liberty Hobbes stated “everyone in a state of nature fears for his safety, and each is out to injure the other before he is injured himself” (Waltz, 2001, pg. 93). In the field of international relations, prominent theoretical frameworks refer to this need for safety among people groups as the concept of security.

Security most closely resonates in the subjective state of mind of the people group in that given state. As stated by Arnold Wolfers "security, in an objective sense, measures the absence of threats to acquire values, in a subjective sense, the absence of fear that such values will be attacked" (Baylis et al., 2017, pg. 240). One can attempt to quantify state power and military capability as it relates to security, but primarily security is a feeling, often felt as a lack of threat-based anxiety on the individual level.

Regardless of the reason for conflict, human’s arrogance that their morality is the ultimate morality has justified conflict since the beginning of time. St. Augustine of Hippo set a precedence of justifying violence in the sake of the common good, a “common good” that is based on societal norms. The commonly accepted just war tradition suggests that any conflict in the name of an end state of peace is acceptable, based on the tenants of jus ad bellum , jus in bello , and jus post bellum , which all encompass varying levels of subjectivity (Baylis at al, 2017, pg. 215).

Human Nature’s Projection as a State

“A nation is secure to the extent to which it is not in danger of having to sacrifice core values if it wished to avoid war, and is able, if challenged, to maintain them by victory in such a war” - Walter Lippman (Baylis et al, 2017, pg. 240).

In order to understand the causes of war we have to first analyze human nature and the common traits of individuals. But individuals do not wage war, states and non-state actors wage war. These groups of individuals, bound by a common idea that compels them to violence, represent the human condition that projects on a state to cause conflict. As stated by Waltz in his second image, “men live in states, so states exist in a world of states,” explaining that states mimic human nature, and the international community subsequently mimics states (Waltz, 2001, p. 20). International relations scholars have applied frameworks to war to assess its root cause and have distilled a variety of conclusions. Realism focuses on ideology based on the pessimistic school of thought that human nature will inevitably lead to war while attempting to develop power to support a state's national interests. Realists believe no one can be trusted to protect your state but yourself, security can only be guaranteed through self-help, and regardless of a state's personal goals, the one common interest is survival. Additionally, neorealists focus on the anarchical concept of states existing in a community lacking central authority, where nationalism and security competition leads to inevitable conflict.

Liberal theorists believe that because of the inherent flaws in human nature that humans project onto states, that states will become less and less relevant, resulting in the increased influence of institutions in conflict. These theorists emphasize the positive consequences of globalization in creating deepening interdependence and spreading prosperity, thereby reinforcing global stability (Baylis et al., 2017, Page 30). Liberal institutionalism focuses on the major role that institutions and non-state actors play in international relations and their capability of mitigating security competition through the concept of collective defense. Marxists point towards conflict generated through social divides and class friction, on a domestic and international scale while constructivists focus on the social and cultural variables.

 A consistent narrative in many major theories is the emphasis of the basic need for security. Clausewitz stated that “as long as the enemy is not defeated, he may defeat me; then I shall no longer be my own master” (Clausewitz et al, 2008, pg. 15-16). This type and level of fear continues the perpetual security competition. Inherent to this competition is that, regardless of the level of state aggression, an increase in security by one state is perceived as a decrease in personal security by another. One example of this in recent history is nuclear proliferation. Our text confirms that the "globalization has also facilitated the proliferation of weapons technologies, including those associated with weapons of mass destruction (WMD)" (Baylis et al, 2017, pg. 250). These WMDs have directly resulted in the continued escalation of security competition, evident in events such as the Cold War. Each increase in capability directly creates a perceived decrease in rival states security climate. This competitive technological cycle has been present ever since the start of conflict as stated by Clausewitz, “the necessity of fighting very soon led men to special inventions to turn the advantage in their own favor” (Clausewitz et al, 2008, pg. 90).

What we have therefore established is a security-based cycle, which is bound to the subjective feeling of safety within the individuals and culture of the represented state. This has effectively continued to affirm conflict as both a form of international relations and a political tool. War will continue to be of the oldest and most common forms of international relations…war is both older than the sovereign state and likely to endure into any globalized future (Baylis et al, 2017, pg. 223).

Similar to Maslow’s hierarchy at the individual level, states feel as though they cannot focus on developing their ideal society until security is assured. Once security has been established, a civil society can begin (Baylis et al., 2017, Page 108).  In addition to this cycle of security competition, and the coinciding arms race, states have historically utilized the theory that they can attain security through offensive action to prevent future conflict. Pre-emptive war is as ingrained in war far as back as Sun Tzu’s ancient military strategies. Around 500 B.C. Sun Tzu stated that “standing on the defensive indicates insufficient strength; attacking, a superabundance of strength” (Tzu, 1910, pg. 68). States would consistently rather conduct conflict away from their civilian populace, on their terms, when conditions permitted.

Manifestations of Conflict

Accepting that human nature’s inherent requirement for safety is projected onto the state, thus driving security competition through weapon development, pre-emptive action and power balancing to ensure a state’s ideological continuance, we can further evaluate the manifestations of this friction. However, the secondary motives are typically very different than the primary pursuit of security. Historically, war has revolved around either a society or people group attempting to apply their beliefs to a fellow society, economic or territorial gain and to obtain independence. We will specifically analyze the variables of economic gain, territorial gain, religious ideals, civil war, revolution and pre-emptive war. 

Territorial and Economic Gain

Historically, the pursuit of territory and resources has been one of the most prominent secondary reasons for conflict. The increase in land and the subsequent resources on that land directly correlates to a state’s power, thus increasing the invading states security. As stated by the Athenians to the Melians in Thucydides History of the Peloponnesian War , “besides extending our empire we should gain in security by your subjection,” demonstrating the belief that an invasion to expand territory and conquer people groups enables security (Thucydides, 1810, p. 389).

A modern example would be Russia, who has engaged in illegal annexations in both Ukraine and Georgia for the simple purpose of expanding territory. Related to this example, Waltz states that:

An explanation may be made in terms of geographic or economic deprecations or in terms of deprivations too vaguely defined to be labeled at all. Thus a nation may argue that it has not attained it “natural” frontiers, that such frontiers are necessary to its security, that war to extend the state to its deserved compass is justified or even necessary (Waltz, 2001, pg. 91).

War has historically decided which ideologies dominated (Baylis et al, 2017, pg. 236). The ideologies that have resulted in some of the greatest levels of conflict are those based in religion. The belief in the promise of a specific afterlife has driven people groups to escalate and justify conflict in the name of their ideologies for thousands of year. The desired end state of many of these groups is the secure establishment of a stable society to institute their religion of choice. Just like a government, they need security for stability. The most well know example of religious conflict are the medieval crusades during the 10 th – 12 th centuries. However, even in modern times religious conflict is still prevalent across the globe.

One prominent example of religious based conflict is the persistence of Islamic extremism in the Middle East through violent non-state actors. Many radical Muslims believe in a society defined by a purified Islam, a return to the Islam “practiced and preached by Mohhammed…in the early 7 th century…which would bring with it the diving blessings these early believers enjoyed” (Suarez, 2013, pg. 14). In modern society, these extremists have demonstrated time and time again their willingness to resort to violence to try to achieve this religious goal.

Civil War and Revolution

Marxists, based on the manifesto of Carl Marx, often focus on the domestic conflicts of civil wars that drive states to violence. While their conclusions mostly revolve around class friction it is common for states to have ideological differences within their territorial borders leading to an attempt to establish a majority or revolution through violence. Another significant example of a revolution is the United States’ own Revolutionary War, establishing independence from Great Britain, based on the concept of “no taxation without representation.” In order for the United States to establish their own democracy and create a stable society, based on their ideals, they needed to escalate conflict to the point of war to gain independence.

Even after a revolution is successful or civil war is resolved the lingering ideology may still exist, dormant, in that society, leading to future conflict. Clausewitz stated “even the final decision of a whole War is not always to be regarded as absolute. The conquered State often sees in it only a passing evil, which may be repaired in after times…(Clausewitz et al, 2008, pg. 20).

Preemptive War

One scenario that prematurely escalates conflict is the act of pre-emptive

war. Though a state may want to remain at peace, it may have to consider undertaking a preventive war; for if it does not strike when the moment is favorable it may be struck later when the advantage has shifted to the other side (Waltz, 2001, p. 21). Sun Tzu stated “he will win who, prepared himself, waits to take the enemy unprepared. He will win who has the military capacity and is not interfered with by the sovereign” (Tzu, 1910, pg. 68). Any military strategist knows that seizing the initiative and maintaining tempo and audacity on the offensive is one of the most significant advantages in battle. Often these strategies are elevated to the level of the state, where to ensure security, a state strikes first.

“The art of war is of vital importance to the State…it is a matter of life and death, a road either to safety or ruin” (Tzu, 1910, pg. 46).

States engage in war to satisfy their human need for safety and security. This allows states to establish stable societies where they can live in status quo with their ideology, religion and culture of choice. The human aspect of society directly reflects in the state and the decisions that state makes. The international body of states, operating with the same human aspects, exists in the anarchic community that exists in constant competition for security through balancing power to ensure their continued existence. Alexander Leighton once said "for world peace we must start on the community level" in that we need to understand regional needs before we can appeal to them in the pursuit of peace (Waltz, 2001, Page 67). On analysis of the inherent flaws in human nature, the only way to effectively target the original source of war is to recognize, target and understand the human nature and needs drive humans to create war. The challenge in addressing this human nature circles us right back to the inherent need for safety. Until individuals can be reasonably assured of their safety and security, without the use of violence, we will continue to escalate conflict to war. Donnelly, M. (Ed.). (2012). Critical conversations about plagiarism (Lenses on composition studies). Anderson, South Carolina: Parlor Press.

Baylis, J., Owens, P., Smith, S. (2017). The globalization of world politics: An introduction       to international relations. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. 7th edition. Print.

Marx, K., Engels, F., & Likes, S. (2012). The communist manifesto (Rethinking the western tradition) (J Isaac, Ed.). New Haven: Yale University Press. eBook.

Maslow, A. H., (1943). A theory of human motivation . Psychological Review , 50(4), 370-396. doi:10.1037/h0054346.

Qutb, Sayyid. (1964). Milestones , 2nd ed . Damascus, Syria: Dar al-Ilm. eBook.

Soto, H. (2000). The mystery of capital: Why capitalism triumphs in the west and fails everywhere else . New York: Basic Books. eBook.

Suarez-Murias, A. (2013). "Jihad is the way and death for the sake of allah is our highest aspiration": A narrative analysis of sayyid qutb's milestones . Retrieved from https://wakespace.lib.wfu.edu/handle/10339/38576.

Thucydides, Smith, W., & Crane, T., Rev. (1805). The history of the peloponessian war: Translated from the greek of thucydides, to which are annexed three preliminary discourses (4 th ed./ed., Wol. 1., il., ill, on the life of thucydides. On his qualifications as a historian. a survey of the history) . London: W. Baynes.

Tzu, S., Evans, M., & Giles, L. (2017). The art of war. (Knicker bocker classics). Laguna Hills: Race Point Publishing.

Von Clausewitz, C., Howard, M., & Paret, P. (2008). On war . Princeton: Princeton University Press. eBook.

Waltz, Kenneth. (2001). Man, the state, and war: A theoretical analysis . New York: Columbia University Press. eBook.

About the Author(s)

Kyle Amonson is an active duty Army Major and graduate student at Royal Military College of Canada. Major Amonson received his undergraduate degree from Virginia Tech and holds a master’s degree in International Relations - International Security from Norwich University. He has deployed in support of various operations throughout Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. Opinions expressed in his articles are those of the author's and not those of the U.S. Department of Defense or U.S. Army.

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Thanks for this blog, I find history quite interesting, besides that I am a history college student and besides this blog I use https://essays.studymoose.com/buy-college-essays to have the best essays, I buy college paper because I find it more convenient that way because I work and don't have enough time for it, but in general I love to write and read something new!

I find this essay rather…

I find this essay rather conflicted (pun intended).

Firstly, if Capt. Amonson is going to use the structure of Maslow’s “Hierarchy of Needs” to explore human motivations that drive war, it should be used in its entirety.  Although basic needs (i.e. access to resources and security) are important, the human needs to belong, for self-esteem, and for self-actualization should not be discounted.   In fact, the drive to satisfy these more advanced or higher needs is invariably found in war, and these motivations tend to attract more support for war among a population than appeal to basic needs.  Despite the economic and security rationales behind the German war effort in the Second World War (creating a fully self-sufficient/autarkic and secure German Empire in Eurasia), Germany fought the war on a primarily ideological basis and regarded both the final victory and final solution as the actualization of Germany as a nation.  During the American Civil War, the abolition of slavery became the “Higher Object” that motivated the United States to fight for total victory and overcome a lack of morale, poor tactical leadership, and both confusion and dissension regarding the aims of the war as well as the war itself.  Even during the Second World War, when the rather obvious need to survive should have been the prime mover, the Allied states motivated their populations by appeals to these higher needs (e.g. Churchill’s rousing speeches, Stalin’s “Great Patriotic War”, the American “Why We Fight”).  In addition, the Western Allies glossed over their differences with the Soviet Union and Soviet collaboration with Germany for the first two years of the war, despite the basic necessity of cooperating with rivals and adversaries in the interests of security.  In addition, one cannot dismiss the romance of war for individuals who had not served or for those who had and were exhilarated by it (e.g. Churchill, again): military service fulfilled many men’s needs for belonging, self-esteem, and self-actualization.  Rather than see Maslow’s hierarchy as a pyramid, perhaps a more dynamic perspective is required...

Secondly, the historical references in this essay are rather cursory.  Russia did not invade Georgia or Ukraine for territorial expansion, and Georgia was invaded as part of a counteroffensive against a Georgian attack on South Ossetia.  In both cases, Russia wanted people not territory, and additionally it sought to prevent the incorporation of either country into Western security (NATO) or supranational (EU) structures.  I find it curious that Capt. Amonson refers to the Crusades in the 10th to 12th Centuries, but not the Muslim Conquests of the 7th to 8th Centuries, which ended six-hundred or more years of Christianity, twelve-hundred years of Judaism, and millennia of other Mediterranean and Near Eastern belief systems. The Mediterranean was the center of the West and of Christendom until the Muslim Conquest, with the northern coast of Africa, Egypt, the Levant, and Mesopotamia as integral as Iberia, Italy, Greece, and Anatolia; and Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem as integral as Rome and Constantinople. 

Thirdly, there should be a distinction made between ‘power to’ and ‘power over’.  There is a difference between waging a war in self-defense (e.g. against external invasion or internal oppression) or self-determination (e.g. independence, freedom), and waging a war to impose oneself on others, whether foreign or domestic.  The contemporary popular narrative of Islamism is curious in this regard as Muslims are perceived as victims of Christian European empires, when in fact Muslim empires were fierce competitors for superiority if not supremacy, and only ceased being a state threat to the West in the early 20th Century.  Both secular Arab Nationalism and Islamism are in fact responses not to oppression by the West, but to the loss of empire.  In Northern Ireland, the Catholic Republicans included: separatist supremacists who wanted a united Ireland where Protestant Unionists were subject to tyranny of the majority; separatist egalitarians, who wanted a united Ireland with equal treatment for all; and integrationist egalitarians, who wanted equal treatment whether in a united Ireland or as part of the UK.  Eventually, the “Troubles” came to an end after some thirty years due to appeal to the integrationist egalitarians, who were the vast majority of Catholic Republicans, who had campaigned unsuccessfully for equal treatment prior to the “Troubles”, and whose verifiable oppression had driven the formation of non-state militant organizations (e.g. the PIRA, INLA, etc.).  Yet Muslims are not and have not been subject to verifiable oppression by the West, and in fact it is Westerners themselves who are integrationist and egalitarian.  At best Islamists want to be separate but equal; at worst they want to be supreme (i.e. ‘power over’). 

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World War I

By: History.com Editors

Updated: August 11, 2023 | Original: October 29, 2009

World War I, also known as the Great War, started in 1914 after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria. His murder catapulted into a war across Europe that lasted until 1918. During the four-year conflict, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire (the Central Powers) fought against Great Britain, France, Russia, Italy, Romania, Canada, Japan and the United States (the Allied Powers). Thanks to new military technologies and the horrors of trench warfare, World War I saw unprecedented levels of carnage and destruction. By the time the war was over and the Allied Powers had won, more than 16 million people—soldiers and civilians alike—were dead.

Archduke Franz Ferdinand

Tensions had been brewing throughout Europe—especially in the troubled Balkan region of southeast Europe—for years before World War I actually broke out.

A number of alliances involving European powers, the Ottoman Empire , Russia and other parties had existed for years, but political instability in the Balkans (particularly Bosnia, Serbia and Herzegovina) threatened to destroy these agreements.

The spark that ignited World War I was struck in Sarajevo, Bosnia, where Archduke Franz Ferdinand —heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire—was shot to death along with his wife, Sophie, by the Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip on June 28, 1914. Princip and other nationalists were struggling to end Austro-Hungarian rule over Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The assassination of Franz Ferdinand set off a rapidly escalating chain of events: Austria-Hungary , like many countries around the world, blamed the Serbian government for the attack and hoped to use the incident as justification for settling the question of Serbian nationalism once and for all.

Kaiser Wilhelm II

Because mighty Russia supported Serbia, Austria-Hungary waited to declare war until its leaders received assurance from German leader Kaiser Wilhelm II that Germany would support their cause. Austro-Hungarian leaders feared that a Russian intervention would involve Russia’s ally, France, and possibly Great Britain as well.

On July 5, Kaiser Wilhelm secretly pledged his support, giving Austria-Hungary a so-called carte blanche, or “blank check” assurance of Germany’s backing in the case of war. The Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary then sent an ultimatum to Serbia, with such harsh terms as to make it almost impossible to accept.

World War I Begins

Convinced that Austria-Hungary was readying for war, the Serbian government ordered the Serbian army to mobilize and appealed to Russia for assistance. On July 28, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, and the tenuous peace between Europe’s great powers quickly collapsed.

Within a week, Russia, Belgium, France, Great Britain and Serbia had lined up against Austria-Hungary and Germany, and World War I had begun.

The Western Front

According to an aggressive military strategy known as the Schlieffen Plan (named for its mastermind, German Field Marshal Alfred von Schlieffen ), Germany began fighting World War I on two fronts, invading France through neutral Belgium in the west and confronting Russia in the east.

On August 4, 1914, German troops crossed the border into Belgium. In the first battle of World War I, the Germans assaulted the heavily fortified city of Liege , using the most powerful weapons in their arsenal—enormous siege cannons—to capture the city by August 15. The Germans left death and destruction in their wake as they advanced through Belgium toward France, shooting civilians and executing a Belgian priest they had accused of inciting civilian resistance. 

First Battle of the Marne

In the First Battle of the Marne , fought from September 6-9, 1914, French and British forces confronted the invading German army, which had by then penetrated deep into northeastern France, within 30 miles of Paris. The Allied troops checked the German advance and mounted a successful counterattack, driving the Germans back to the north of the Aisne River.

The defeat meant the end of German plans for a quick victory in France. Both sides dug into trenches , and the Western Front was the setting for a hellish war of attrition that would last more than three years.

Particularly long and costly battles in this campaign were fought at Verdun (February-December 1916) and the Battle of the Somme (July-November 1916). German and French troops suffered close to a million casualties in the Battle of Verdun alone.

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World War I Books and Art

The bloodshed on the battlefields of the Western Front, and the difficulties its soldiers had for years after the fighting had ended, inspired such works of art as “ All Quiet on the Western Front ” by Erich Maria Remarque and “ In Flanders Fields ” by Canadian doctor Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae . In the latter poem, McCrae writes from the perspective of the fallen soldiers:

Published in 1915, the poem inspired the use of the poppy as a symbol of remembrance.

Visual artists like Otto Dix of Germany and British painters Wyndham Lewis, Paul Nash and David Bomberg used their firsthand experience as soldiers in World War I to create their art, capturing the anguish of trench warfare and exploring the themes of technology, violence and landscapes decimated by war.

The Eastern Front

On the Eastern Front of World War I, Russian forces invaded the German-held regions of East Prussia and Poland but were stopped short by German and Austrian forces at the Battle of Tannenberg in late August 1914.

Despite that victory, Russia’s assault forced Germany to move two corps from the Western Front to the Eastern, contributing to the German loss in the Battle of the Marne.

Combined with the fierce Allied resistance in France, the ability of Russia’s huge war machine to mobilize relatively quickly in the east ensured a longer, more grueling conflict instead of the quick victory Germany had hoped to win under the Schlieffen Plan .

Russian Revolution

From 1914 to 1916, Russia’s army mounted several offensives on World War I’s Eastern Front but was unable to break through German lines.

Defeat on the battlefield, combined with economic instability and the scarcity of food and other essentials, led to mounting discontent among the bulk of Russia’s population, especially the poverty-stricken workers and peasants. This increased hostility was directed toward the imperial regime of Czar Nicholas II and his unpopular German-born wife, Alexandra.

Russia’s simmering instability exploded in the Russian Revolution of 1917, spearheaded by Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks , which ended czarist rule and brought a halt to Russian participation in World War I.

Russia reached an armistice with the Central Powers in early December 1917, freeing German troops to face the remaining Allies on the Western Front.

America Enters World War I

At the outbreak of fighting in 1914, the United States remained on the sidelines of World War I, adopting the policy of neutrality favored by President Woodrow Wilson while continuing to engage in commerce and shipping with European countries on both sides of the conflict.

Neutrality, however, it was increasingly difficult to maintain in the face of Germany’s unchecked submarine aggression against neutral ships, including those carrying passengers. In 1915, Germany declared the waters surrounding the British Isles to be a war zone, and German U-boats sunk several commercial and passenger vessels, including some U.S. ships.

Widespread protest over the sinking by U-boat of the British ocean liner Lusitania —traveling from New York to Liverpool, England with hundreds of American passengers onboard—in May 1915 helped turn the tide of American public opinion against Germany. In February 1917, Congress passed a $250 million arms appropriations bill intended to make the United States ready for war.

Germany sunk four more U.S. merchant ships the following month, and on April 2 Woodrow Wilson appeared before Congress and called for a declaration of war against Germany.

Gallipoli Campaign

With World War I having effectively settled into a stalemate in Europe, the Allies attempted to score a victory against the Ottoman Empire, which entered the conflict on the side of the Central Powers in late 1914.

After a failed attack on the Dardanelles (the strait linking the Sea of Marmara with the Aegean Sea), Allied forces led by Britain launched a large-scale land invasion of the Gallipoli Peninsula in April 1915. The invasion also proved a dismal failure, and in January 1916 Allied forces staged a full retreat from the shores of the peninsula after suffering 250,000 casualties.

Did you know? The young Winston Churchill, then first lord of the British Admiralty, resigned his command after the failed Gallipoli campaign in 1916, accepting a commission with an infantry battalion in France.

British-led forces also combated the Ottoman Turks in Egypt and Mesopotamia , while in northern Italy, Austrian and Italian troops faced off in a series of 12 battles along the Isonzo River, located at the border between the two nations.

Battle of the Isonzo

The First Battle of the Isonzo took place in the late spring of 1915, soon after Italy’s entrance into the war on the Allied side. In the Twelfth Battle of the Isonzo, also known as the Battle of Caporetto (October 1917), German reinforcements helped Austria-Hungary win a decisive victory.

After Caporetto, Italy’s allies jumped in to offer increased assistance. British and French—and later, American—troops arrived in the region, and the Allies began to take back the Italian Front.

World War I at Sea

In the years before World War I, the superiority of Britain’s Royal Navy was unchallenged by any other nation’s fleet, but the Imperial German Navy had made substantial strides in closing the gap between the two naval powers. Germany’s strength on the high seas was also aided by its lethal fleet of U-boat submarines.

After the Battle of Dogger Bank in January 1915, in which the British mounted a surprise attack on German ships in the North Sea, the German navy chose not to confront Britain’s mighty Royal Navy in a major battle for more than a year, preferring to rest the bulk of its naval strategy on its U-boats.

The biggest naval engagement of World War I, the Battle of Jutland (May 1916) left British naval superiority on the North Sea intact, and Germany would make no further attempts to break an Allied naval blockade for the remainder of the war.

World War I Planes

World War I was the first major conflict to harness the power of planes. Though not as impactful as the British Royal Navy or Germany’s U-boats, the use of planes in World War I presaged their later, pivotal role in military conflicts around the globe.

At the dawn of World War I, aviation was a relatively new field; the Wright brothers took their first sustained flight just eleven years before, in 1903. Aircraft were initially used primarily for reconnaissance missions. During the First Battle of the Marne, information passed from pilots allowed the allies to exploit weak spots in the German lines, helping the Allies to push Germany out of France.

The first machine guns were successfully mounted on planes in June of 1912 in the United States, but were imperfect; if timed incorrectly, a bullet could easily destroy the propeller of the plane it came from. The Morane-Saulnier L, a French plane, provided a solution: The propeller was armored with deflector wedges that prevented bullets from hitting it. The Morane-Saulnier Type L was used by the French, the British Royal Flying Corps (part of the Army), the British Royal Navy Air Service and the Imperial Russian Air Service. The British Bristol Type 22 was another popular model used for both reconnaissance work and as a fighter plane.

Dutch inventor Anthony Fokker improved upon the French deflector system in 1915. His “interrupter” synchronized the firing of the guns with the plane’s propeller to avoid collisions. Though his most popular plane during WWI was the single-seat Fokker Eindecker, Fokker created over 40 kinds of airplanes for the Germans.

The Allies debuted the Handley-Page HP O/400, the first two-engine bomber, in 1915. As aerial technology progressed, long-range heavy bombers like Germany’s Gotha G.V. (first introduced in 1917) were used to strike cities like London. Their speed and maneuverability proved to be far deadlier than Germany’s earlier Zeppelin raids.

By the war’s end, the Allies were producing five times more aircraft than the Germans. On April 1, 1918, the British created the Royal Air Force, or RAF, the first air force to be a separate military branch independent from the navy or army. 

Second Battle of the Marne

With Germany able to build up its strength on the Western Front after the armistice with Russia, Allied troops struggled to hold off another German offensive until promised reinforcements from the United States were able to arrive.

On July 15, 1918, German troops launched what would become the last German offensive of the war, attacking French forces (joined by 85,000 American troops as well as some of the British Expeditionary Force) in the Second Battle of the Marne . The Allies successfully pushed back the German offensive and launched their own counteroffensive just three days later.

After suffering massive casualties, Germany was forced to call off a planned offensive further north, in the Flanders region stretching between France and Belgium, which was envisioned as Germany’s best hope of victory.

The Second Battle of the Marne turned the tide of war decisively towards the Allies, who were able to regain much of France and Belgium in the months that followed.

The Harlem Hellfighters and Other All-Black Regiments

By the time World War I began, there were four all-Black regiments in the U.S. military: the 24th and 25th Infantry and the 9th and 10th Cavalry. All four regiments comprised of celebrated soldiers who fought in the Spanish-American War and American-Indian Wars , and served in the American territories. But they were not deployed for overseas combat in World War I. 

Blacks serving alongside white soldiers on the front lines in Europe was inconceivable to the U.S. military. Instead, the first African American troops sent overseas served in segregated labor battalions, restricted to menial roles in the Army and Navy, and shutout of the Marines, entirely. Their duties mostly included unloading ships, transporting materials from train depots, bases and ports, digging trenches, cooking and maintenance, removing barbed wire and inoperable equipment, and burying soldiers.

Facing criticism from the Black community and civil rights organizations for its quotas and treatment of African American soldiers in the war effort, the military formed two Black combat units in 1917, the 92nd and 93rd Divisions . Trained separately and inadequately in the United States, the divisions fared differently in the war. The 92nd faced criticism for their performance in the Meuse-Argonne campaign in September 1918. The 93rd Division, however, had more success. 

With dwindling armies, France asked America for reinforcements, and General John Pershing , commander of the American Expeditionary Forces, sent regiments in the 93 Division to over, since France had experience fighting alongside Black soldiers from their Senegalese French Colonial army. The 93 Division’s 369 regiment, nicknamed the Harlem Hellfighters , fought so gallantly, with a total of 191 days on the front lines, longer than any AEF regiment, that France awarded them the Croix de Guerre for their heroism. More than 350,000 African American soldiers would serve in World War I in various capacities.

Toward Armistice

By the fall of 1918, the Central Powers were unraveling on all fronts.

Despite the Turkish victory at Gallipoli, later defeats by invading forces and an Arab revolt that destroyed the Ottoman economy and devastated its land, and the Turks signed a treaty with the Allies in late October 1918.

Austria-Hungary, dissolving from within due to growing nationalist movements among its diverse population, reached an armistice on November 4. Facing dwindling resources on the battlefield, discontent on the homefront and the surrender of its allies, Germany was finally forced to seek an armistice on November 11, 1918, ending World War I.

Treaty of Versailles

At the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, Allied leaders stated their desire to build a post-war world that would safeguard itself against future conflicts of such a devastating scale.

Some hopeful participants had even begun calling World War I “the War to End All Wars.” But the Treaty of Versailles , signed on June 28, 1919, would not achieve that lofty goal.

Saddled with war guilt, heavy reparations and denied entrance into the League of Nations , Germany felt tricked into signing the treaty, having believed any peace would be a “peace without victory,” as put forward by President Wilson in his famous Fourteen Points speech of January 1918.

As the years passed, hatred of the Versailles treaty and its authors settled into a smoldering resentment in Germany that would, two decades later, be counted among the causes of World War II .

World War I Casualties

World War I took the lives of more than 9 million soldiers; 21 million more were wounded. Civilian casualties numbered close to 10 million. The two nations most affected were Germany and France, each of which sent some 80 percent of their male populations between the ages of 15 and 49 into battle.

The political disruption surrounding World War I also contributed to the fall of four venerable imperial dynasties: Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia and Turkey.

Legacy of World War I

World War I brought about massive social upheaval, as millions of women entered the workforce to replace men who went to war and those who never came back. The first global war also helped to spread one of the world’s deadliest global pandemics, the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918, which killed an estimated 20 to 50 million people.

World War I has also been referred to as “the first modern war.” Many of the technologies now associated with military conflict—machine guns, tanks , aerial combat and radio communications—were introduced on a massive scale during World War I.

The severe effects that chemical weapons such as mustard gas and phosgene had on soldiers and civilians during World War I galvanized public and military attitudes against their continued use. The Geneva Convention agreements, signed in 1925, restricted the use of chemical and biological agents in warfare and remain in effect today.

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The panel included moderator Melani Cammett, (clockwise from upper left), F. Gregory Gause, Adel Hamaizia, Dahlia Scheindlin, and Peter Krause.

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Looking at causes, measuring effects of Israel-Hamas war

Experts examine shifts in geopolitics, global economy resulting from conflict

Harvard Correspondent

Fallout from the Israel-Hamas war is being felt throughout the Middle East and the world. Some of the conflict’s causes and effects — from its impact on regional alliances to the global economy — were the topic Wednesday when the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs convened “The War in Israel/Palestine: Geopolitical Dimensions.”

Moderated by Melani Cammett , director of the Weatherhead and Clarence Dillon Professor of International Affairs, the virtual panel drew scholars studying different aspects of the war, which has been raging since Oct. 7, when Hamas terrorists killed 1,200 people and took 253 hostages during an attack on Israel. Since then, an estimated 28,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza by the Israeli offensive.

“The enormous violence with which [the conflict] began and the enormous media attention gives the sense that something big is changing,” said F. Gregory Gause , professor of international affairs and John H. Lindsey ’44 Chair of the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University.

However, despite “the enormous human suffering and loss,” Gause believes the war “will end up changing very little” of the current underlying geopolitics of the region.

“The key geopolitical fact that defined the region before Oct. 7 is the role of Iranian actors” in countries that are either weakened or at war, such as Yemen, he pointed out. Noting the unchanged status quo around the Iranian nuclear program, he put forward the theory that, if anything, Iran’s role has been heightened. “Nothing about this conflict changes that,” he said.

Mideast experts say Iran has a long history of training and arming various proxy militias in countries throughout the region, including in Gaza and the West Bank.  

Dahlia Scheindlin , a public opinion expert and political analyst from Tel Aviv University, said the conflict has affected some of Israel’s ties in the region as well as with the U.S.

She pointed to Israel’s agreements with its neighbors Egypt and Jordan. “Obviously these aren’t warm relationships, which is why they are under threat.”

However, she noted, a bigger shift might be between the U.S. and Israel on the war. She recalled that while the U.S. had responded to Oct. 7 with a “bear hug,” the strong and seemingly unconditional support that “comes from a very, very deep and personal place from Biden,” now “We do see some reservations.”

Noting internal pressure from progressive Democrats and the necessity of having to woo both those voters and the Arab American vote during this election year, Biden has put “policy behind its statements,” including the sanctioning of settlers accused of anti-Palestinian violence. “This brings us to the point where the U.S. is finally considering ways in which it can use its considerable leverage,” Scheindlin said.

While the geopolitics remain somewhat in flux, Adel Hamaizia, a research fellow in the Middle East Initiative of the Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs , noted the economic impact of the conflict in the region and around the world has been crystal clear.

The International Monetary Fund recently downgraded its forecast for growth in the entire Middle East-North Africa (MENA) region. Predicting a region-wide 0.5 percent drop, “It truly is dire,” he said. He blamed this contraction on several factors, including a reduction in oil production and a serious decline in tourism, notably in countries such as Egypt and Jordan “where tourism is a lifeline.”

In addition, the Iran-backed Houthi attacks on shipping are having a disruptive impact. Calling the aggression in the Red Sea “a major maritime chokehold,” Hamaizia said roughly 30 percent of global shipping has been affected, resulting in a 43 percent drop through the Suez Canal and a 60 percent increase around Cape of Good Hope, a longer and vastly more expensive route.

The Houthi attacks, which first targeted Israeli-connected ships and then expanded to include assets from the U.S. and Europe, are expected to increase if Israel’s invasion of Rafah, in Gaza, goes forward, he said, and includes threats to undersea cables.

Experts say destruction of the cables in the Red Sea could disrupt virtually all data and financial communications between Europe and Asia.

Peter Krause , a political science professor at Boston College, says he has taken an “inside-out” perspective of the war and its causes. He dismissed the popular argument that the Oct. 7 attack was an attempt to disrupt the normalization of relations between Saudi Arabia, the U.S., and Israel.

“No doubt Hamas doesn’t want this,” he said. “But the evidence I’ve seen does not support this claim.”

He noted the preparation for the surprise attack began two years ago, and there was no mention of the normalization of relations in Hamas’ 16-page document justifying its assault. “Granted, this is a public relations document,” he said. “But it is a curious omission.”

Instead, Krause argued violation of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third-holiest site in Islam located on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, was the “most common motivation named by Palestinians.” Krause named “the increasing numbers of Jewish visitors and a growing movement to build a third Jewish temple” on the site as key drivers of the attack.

“Hamas is first and foremost a Palestinian nationalist organization,” he said. “But their Islamist orientation drives much of their international alliances and strategy.”

For that reason, he warned that more violence may occur when Ramadan and Passover come in near proximity this spring — and in the future. “Even though this round of conflict will end without anything like a Hamas victory on the ground, it is a model of transnational mobilization and conflict that Hamas and its allies will attempt to build on,” he said.

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Russia is trying to exploit America's divisions over the war in Gaza

Russia is seeking to exploit America’s divisive debate over Israel’s offensive in Gaza through overt and covert propaganda, with the aim of aggravating political tensions in the U.S. and tarnishing Washington’s global image, according to two sources familiar with U.S. intelligence on the matter.

In its ongoing information war against the United States, Russia has shifted its focus in recent months to the Israel-Hamas conflict , seeking to inflame existing divisions in the West and to portray Washington as fueling the violence, the sources said.

The effort includes artificial intelligence, fake social media accounts, a long-standing tactic used by Moscow, as well as a spike in propaganda from Russian state media. The sources declined to share examples of Russian-generated bots on social media to avoid revealing U.S. intelligence-gathering methods.

Russia has repeatedly denied accusations it spreads disinformation abroad. A spokesperson for the Russian Embassy did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The campaign is the   latest example of Russia’s bid to seize on existing political rifts in America and other NATO countries, according to the sources and independent researchers.

“It’s an opportunity, again, to undermine the West,” said Bret Schafer, who tracks Russian and other propaganda at the German Marshall Fund of the United States’ Alliance for Securing Democracy.

The information offensive is also a way for Russia to divert attention from its invasion of Ukraine and portray itself as a champion of the Palestinians, Schafer said. “They have pivoted away from trying to message around their own war to focusing on this one,” he said. 

Writing about pro-Palestinian protests at American college campuses, the Russian-state run Sputnik recently  suggested  “the threat of deadly police violence against demonstrators looms over the current protests” and reminded readers that four students were killed during the Vietnam era in an anti-war protest at Ohio’s Kent State University.  

Another headline from Sputnik’s Facebook account  questioned how politicians were responding to the campus protests: "‘Land of the Free’? How US Lawmakers Restrict Students’ Right to Peaceful Protest: US lawmakers have once again demonstrated where their sympathies lie in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by cracking down on student protests against the bloodbath in the Gaza Strip.”

In the first seven weeks after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel, posts on Facebook from Russian state media, pro-Russian commentators and Russian diplomats increased dramatically — by 400 percent, according to the Alliance for Securing Democracy. 

Some of the posts describe dark conspiracies involving Ukraine. Russia’s RT outlet, in an Arabic language post , alleged that Ukrainian mercenaries were fighting with Israeli forces in Gaza. Pravda  quoted  Dmitry Medvedev, a former Russian president and prime minister, alleging that Hamas militants were using NATO weapons that had been provided to Ukraine.

Moscow is targeting Europe as well in this effort. In November, France accused a Russian-linked network of bots of stoking antisemitism by amplifying images of Stars of David graffiti on buildings in Paris with 2,589 posts on the X social media platform. 

“This new operation of Russian digital interference against France testifies to the persistence of an opportunistic and irresponsible strategy aimed at exploiting international crises," the French foreign ministry  said , "to sow confusion and create tensions in the public debate in France and in Europe."

Discrediting American democracy

A favorite theme of Russian information operations is to paint America as a failing democratic state, according to U.S. officials and researchers.

At an event last week in Washington , Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said Russia works to denigrate America’s standing in the world, to undermine democratic institutions and processes and to exploit social, political and economic divisions “in our culture and in our society.” 

Haines added that the Russians “are quite sophisticated” and are using artificial intelligence tools in their information operations.

U.S. officials and experts say it’s important not to overstate the effect of the propaganda effort on the intense debate over Israel’s campaign in Gaza, or to imply that demonstrations in the U.S. on either side of the issue are being orchestrated in any way by Moscow.

“I think it would be entirely inaccurate to say that the protests that are happening on college campuses, the divisiveness of the debate in Congress and among the public is a result of anything that Russians have done or could do,” Schafer said. “I think it would all be there regardless of whether there were Russian bots and Russian state media messaging.”

Emerson Brooking, a senior fellow at the Digital Forensic Research Lab of the Atlantic Council, a think tank, said reports on propaganda efforts by foreign actors over protest movements needed to be treated with caution. 

Allegations of foreign influence “can often be used to delegitimize large and authentic democratic movements in the United States,” Brooking said, adding that some critics of the Black Lives Matter protests tried that tactic citing foreign adversaries’ information operations.

Russia’s bid to amplify divisions over Gaza is also designed to attract more readers to other pro-Russian propaganda content on social media, with the aim of shaping attitudes on the war in Ukraine, experts said.

Russia is also spreading disinformation to damage President Joe Biden and his fellow Democrats in advance of the U.S. election, using fake online accounts and bots, NBC News has reported .

The attacks on Biden are part of a continuing effort by Moscow to undercut American military aid to Ukraine and U.S. support for NATO, experts said.

Russia is also waging a similar campaign in Europe to undermine support for Ukraine. France, Germany and Poland have accused Russia of launching a barrage of propaganda to try to shape the outcome of the European parliamentary elections in June.

Dan De Luce is a reporter for the NBC News Investigative Unit. 

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Pete McCloskey, Republican Who Tried to Unseat Nixon, Is Dead at 96

An antiwar California congressman, he defeated Shirley Temple Black in a special election before launching a long-shot bid for the 1972 G.O.P. nomination.

By Robert D. McFadden

Pete McCloskey, a California congressman who raised a flag of rebellion against President Richard M. Nixon’s war policies in Vietnam with a spirited but futile race for the Republican presidential nomination in 1972, died on Wednesday at his home in Winters, Calif., west of Sacramento. He was 96.

His death was announced in a statement released on Wednesday by a family spokesman, Lee Houskeeper.

Mr. McCloskey, who represented an area south of San Francisco for 15 years, from late 1967 to early 1983, was a liberal Republican who admired President John F. Kennedy, voted for environmental causes with Democrats and believed that the Republican Party had veered too far to the right.

In July 1971, with the nation divided over the war and Nixon heavily favored for re-election, Mr. McCloskey, a 43-year-old Korean War hero and two-term congressman best known for defeating Shirley Temple Black in a special election, launched his quixotic quest for the Republican nomination.

He had no money, party support or realistic prospects. But he had gone to Vietnam three times, and in campaign appearances he vividly portrayed the war’s “cruelty and futility,” as he put it, evoking cluster bombs that killed or maimed anyone within 25 acres, and napalm strikes that burned all within 150 feet at 2,000 degrees. Tens of thousands of Vietnamese and Americans were dying in a war that could not be won, he argued.

“To talk, as the president does, of winding down the war while he is expanding the use of air power is a deliberate deception,” Mr. McCloskey said. “I’ll probably get licked, but I can’t keep quiet.”

There were comparisons to the 1968 antiwar campaign of Senator Eugene J. McCarthy, whose success in the New Hampshire primary contributed to President Lyndon B. Johnson’s withdrawal from the race. But Mr. McCloskey won only 20 percent in New Hampshire and gave up, though his name appeared on ballots in other states. Nixon went on to win the presidency in a landslide, defeating Senator George McGovern , before resigning in disgrace in 1974 in the wake of the Watergate scandal.

While his presidential run brought him national prominence, Mr. McCloskey was known in later years for environmental legislation. His bills included the Endangered Species Act of 1973, which has become a shield for the habitats of birds, alligators and other species. He was co-chairman of the first Earth Day, in 1970, and received awards for environmental service.

He also wrote books, including “Truth and Untruth: Political Deceit in America” (1972). After leaving Congress, he practiced law in Redwood City, Calif., bought a farm in Yolo County and lectured at colleges and universities in the San Francisco peninsula area.

Paul Norton McCloskey Jr. was born in Loma Linda, Calif., on Sept. 29, 1927, to Paul N. and Vera McNabb McCloskey. His father and grandfather were lawyers and Republicans. Pete, as he was known, attended a military academy in San Marino, graduated from South Pasadena High School in 1945, joined the Navy and attended Occidental College and the California Institute of Technology under a Navy program. He graduated from Stanford University with a bachelor’s degree in 1950.

He and Caroline Wadsworth were married in 1949 and had four children. The marriage ended in divorce. He later married Helen Hooper. He is survived by his wife; his children, Nancy, Peter, John and Kathleen McCloskey; and numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

A square-jawed man with a military bearing, Mr. McCloskey joined the Marines in 1950, when the Korean War broke out. The next year, he was wounded leading a rifle platoon in a bayonet charge to capture a strategic hill, an exploit detailed in his 1992 book, “The Taking of Hill 610: And Other Essays on Friendship.” He won the Navy Cross, two Purple Hearts and the Silver Star and served for many years as a Marine reserve officer.

After earning a law degree at Stanford in 1953, Mr. McCloskey was a deputy district attorney in Alameda County until 1954. He practiced general and environmental law in Palo Alto from 1955 to 1967, and lectured on legal ethics at the Santa Clara and Stanford law schools.

In 1963, Charles Daly, a Marine buddy then on the White House staff, put Mr. McCloskey on a list of lawyers invited to a White House conference on civil rights. President Kennedy’s address to the gathering inspired him to enter politics, Mr. McCloskey said.

His chance came in 1967. He was elected to Congress from San Mateo County to fill a vacancy created by the death of Representative J. Arthur Younger, upsetting Ms. Black and other candidates. He went to Washington as a fiscal conservative but as a liberal on racial, antiwar, environmental and other issues. He was the first House member to call for Nixon’s impeachment in the Watergate scandal.

He was re-elected seven times, but was not a candidate in 1982. Instead, he lost a crowded primary race for the United States Senate to the mayor of San Diego and a future California governor, Pete Wilson. Mr. Wilson went on to win the Senate seat in the general election, defeating the Democrat Jerry Brown.

In 1987, Mr. McCloskey was sued for libel by the television evangelist Pat Robertson , then running for the Republican presidential nomination. After Mr. Robertson claimed that he had been a combat Marine in the Korean War, Mr. McCloskey, who had been in his unit, contended that Mr. Robertson’s father, U.S. Senator A. Willis Robertson, a Virginia Democrat, had used his influence to keep his son out of combat.

With many other former Marine officers willing to testify that Mr. Robertson had avoided combat duty, Mr. Robertson dropped his $35 million suit in 1988 and agreed to pay Mr. McCloskey’s court costs, saying he could not pursue the suit and run for president at the same time.

But it was a clear victory for Mr. McCloskey, who said he had unmasked Mr. Robertson as “the fraud he is.” (Mr. Robertson, who quit the presidential race, did serve in Korea, but chiefly as a supply officer far from combat duty.)

Attempting a political comeback in 2006, Mr. McCloskey lost a primary fight against Representative Richard W. Pombo, a seven-term Republican who opposed environmental reforms. Mr. McCloskey, ever the maverick, endorsed the Democrat, Jerry McNerney, in the general election, and Mr. Pombo lost. The next year, at age 79, Mr. McCloskey switched his affiliation to the Democratic Party.

“The new brand of Republicanism,” which he described as hostile to progressive causes, had finally led him to abandon the party he joined in 1948, Mr. McCloskey wrote in a letter to The Tracy Press, a California weekly whose articles and editorials were widely discussed in news and opinion forums in the state.

Mr. McCloskey had lived for many years in Woodside and had a home in Portola Valley, both in the Bay Area, as well as a farm in Rumsey, northwest of Sacramento. He was a trustee for the Monterey Institute of International Studies and led efforts to help veterans of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars receive college educations on their return from duty.

Mr. McCloskey and Helen McCloskey are the subjects of a documentary film, “Helen and the Bear,” released recently by his niece Alix Blair, a filmmaker.

“Just as he lived his life with courage, action, and compassion,” Ms. Blair said in the family statement, “Pete brought those qualities to their marriage. The film is a celebration of his openheartedness.”

Robert D. McFadden is a Times reporter who writes advance obituaries of notable people. More about Robert D. McFadden

Two Main Causes of Wars Essay

Introduction, territorial causes of war, economic causes of war, works cited.

The term war can be used to refer to the situation whereby one or two sides have a conflicting struggle which involves the political, religious, or economic struggle between countries, individuals, or between some groups respectively. Thus war may be seen as a hostile interaction between two parties who have more than one differing policy. Wars can be regarded as being civil or proxy respectively depending on the occurrence of that war about the territory of origin.

A civil war can be regarded as a war that arises as a dispute between the parties who exist in the same country. At the same time, the war which occurs when some third party uses the other parties to fight so that that third party gets some gains in the form of economics, religion, and nationalism is referred to as the proxy wars. Wars have been in existence since the medieval period, thus they can not be seen as a new thing at all.

For instance, wars have existed since the time of the civilization revolution and even the wars are constantly recorded in the holy books such as the bible and the Koran respectively. From other perspectives, the wars can be seen as the cultural practices which have evolved as a result of the repetition occurrence between some communities as a result of hatred. Wars at the same time are a universal issue.

Wars have dates back to the ancient time wars such as those of Israelites- Amalekites war and the Israel-Meadinites wars to the common wars which occurs between two or more states or two different empires. Consequently, wars may occur in different settings such as the land, air, and the sea. The wars have taken different forms in nature which are aimed at arming the involved enemies.

The forms which have been used include the use of the militaries to attack the opposite enemies, use of the economical embargos, movement restrictions, or the use of the genocides to harm the enemy nation. Wars have been explained by the use of many theories but the causes of wars can be categorized as being material causes or being ideological causes. The material causes include the economic cause and the territory causes.

At the same time, the ideological causes include religious causes and nationalism causes. (Blainey, Geoffery, 55-60). Some of the commonly reported wars which have occurred in world history include the American civil war which occurred as a result of the human rights discriminations, the Gulf war, Israel Arab war, Pakistan India war, Burundi Rwanda war, Congo war, Chinese Tibet war, French revolution war, Spanish tribal wars, Sudan war, and the Sierra Leone wars respectively. This paper tries to analyze the material causes of wars about the historical and current trends of occurrence of these wars respectively. At the same time, this paper will try to evaluate the effects of these wars on the present society.

The most appealing cause of wars is the generally referred material cause which has been seen to bring a lot of impact to the rise of countries against others leading to the sufferings of the individuals who can be regarded as being innocent. The territorial effects have consequently led to the establishment of regional and international conflicts respectively. Some of the recorded wars which have started as a result of the territorial conflicts include the Gulf war, Israel Arab war, Pakistan India war, Burundi Rwanda war, and the Chinese Tibet wars respectively. All of this has occurred by the use of the military invasion respectively.

The Gulf war which can be seen as one of the wars which were caused by the territorial conflict which has been catalyzed by the international and regional factors respectively. Kuwait and Iraq are generally neighboring countries that were the former British colonies (Angelo M.Codevilla, 70-73). At the same time, these two countries were controlled by the Ottoman Empire during ancient times. This war dates back as earlier as the year 1991.

When Kuwait was guaranteed independence by Britain Iraq refused to accept arguing that Kuwait was generally part of the Iraq territory. Moreover, Iraq argued that they were in the same territory while they were under the Ottoman Empire’s rule. These arguments triggered the attacks by Iraq. Thus this claim which shared the history of the colonial period triggered the territorial Gulf war. The dispute was based on the Rumalia oilfield which Iraq claimed that it belonged to her. Moreover, Iraq claimed that Kuwait was stealing their oil by using the drilling technology from their side which was consequently denied by Kuwait.

About these claims, Iraq had demanded to be paid compensation worth billions of money. After Kuwait refused to comply with the demands of Iraq, the Gulf war broke out respectively in the year of 1991. At the same time, the conflict on the ownership of the Bubiyan and the Warbah island was another cause that can be seen as the territorial clause of the gulf war. Iraq wanted to possess these two islands so that it can use them for the transportation of its oil products to the Persian Gulf (Barzilai Gad, 44-49).

Thus Iraq decided to put pressure on the islands with the help of the military forces. Further, the Arab community tried to prevent the straggle but failed. As a result, the Arab league stated to act as the mediator to end the crisis which was found to be a useless effort since Kuwait was unwilling to give the islands to Iraq respectively but instead it gave Iraq some loans. But following this sequence of events, Iraq was still not willing to leave the islands and this made it attack Kuwait in 1990.

Another war that has been established as a result of the territorial problem is the India-Pakistan war. This war as arose as a result of the territorial dispute between these two countries regarding the state dispute of Kashmir (Fry, Douglas, 80-92). Kashmir is on the border between Pakistan and India. Jammu Kashmir territory backs back to the time of the independence of India in the year 1947 when the Muslim community demanded their state which they are given.

However, this territorial dispute has been catalyzed by the presence of an ideological and religious difference between India and Pakistan. Pakistan is a Muslim-dominated country while India can be regarded as a Hindu-dominated country respectively.

India and Pakistan had engaged in the war in the year 1947-1948 for the first time respectively. But in the year 1965, the second war erupted. The stability in this border is in jeopardy as the presence of the militia group who are constantly acting as the terrorist groups and they have constantly attacked India, for example, they attacked the Indian parliament, they have at the same time constantly attacked the railway department of India and even the recent terrorist activity in Mumbai was well organized by the Muslim extremist from Pakistan.

The Israel Arab dispute is a major territorial dispute which has been established in the Middle East respectively. This dispute has been attributed as the result of the dispute over the Gaza strip which every side argues belongs to their territory respectively.

The war was triggered as earlier as the year 1945 after the creation of the Republic of Israel by the United Nation resolution. Palestine had constantly argued that Israel’s land belonged to them but at the same time Israel has no option but to resist the attacks. This war has led to many casualties when compared with other wars. The worst fought war between Israel and Palestine occurred in the year 1967 whereby the fighting was known as the six-day independence war. Moreover, some factors such as the involvement of other counties in this crisis such as the United States of America have increased the tension between these two forces respectively.

Another war that can be categorized as being caused by the material cause is the Congo war which is generally regarded as the second African war respectively (Barkeley, Bill.50-57). This war arose as a result of the conflict which was based on who was supposed to control the natural resources in the Republic of Congo. The natural resources included the minerals and the forest resources respectively which were concentrated in the Eastern Congo.

Most of the resources have been fully exploited by the Uganda and Rwanda armies. Some of the political analysts have consequently said concluded that the main cause of this war was the great competition between the Kabila supporters in the year 1999 for the natural resources which catalyzed the outbreak of this war which has been generally regarded as the worst recorded war in the African history (Clarke, John. F, 72-79).

This war is even taking place up to date and it has led to much killing of people and loss of properties which has consequently reduced the economic growth of the region. Moreover, it has led to an increase in the number of refugees in the region. Consequently, this war has been marked by the greatest number of women raped casualties in the region. The effect of this war covers even the wildlife sector for most of the wildlife was either killed or displaced.

The Sudanese war can be regarded as a war that has been caused by economic forces. The Sudanese war started in the years 1983which has been regarded as a continuation of the civil war which occurred in the year 1955 t0 1972 respectively. This war has been triggered by the differences which have currently occurred between the south and the north over the control of the resources. This has led to a large movement of refugees into neighboring countries such as Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia, and Uganda. The conflict is accelerated more by the presence of some divisions between the Muslim Arabs and the Christian Africans.

In conclusion, it may be seen that wars are caused due to several factors which include material and ideological causes. The material causes of war are the most pronounced since ancient times up to date. But the effects of the wars are just similar which includes the loss of life, properties, and the general economic slowdown in the involved region respectively. However, the occurrence of wars can be prevented by the use of the international community.

Angelo Codevilla and Paul Seabury, War: Ends and Means (Potomac Books, Revised second edition by Angelo Codevilla, 2006, pp. 70-73.

Barzilai Gad, Wars, Internal Conflicts and Political Order: A Jewish Democracy in the Middle East (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996, pp. 44-49.

Blainey, Geoffrey, Causes of wars , New York: New York press, pp. 55-60.

Berkeley, Bill. The Graves Are Not Yet Full: Race, Tribe, and Power in the Heart of Africa Basic Books.2001, pp. 50-57.

Clark, John F. (2002) The African Stakes in the Congo War New York: Palgrave McMillan. 2002, pp. 72-79

Fry, Douglas P. The Human Potential for Peace : An Anthropological Challenge to Assumptions about War and Violence , Oxford University Press. 2005, pp. 80-92.

Gat, Azar, War in Human Civilization , Oxford University Press. 2006, pp. 48-57.

Kelly, Raymond C. Warless Societies and the Origin of War , University of Michigan Press. 2000, pp. 17-25.

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IvyPanda. (2021, November 15). Two Main Causes of Wars. https://ivypanda.com/essays/two-main-causes-of-wars/

"Two Main Causes of Wars." IvyPanda , 15 Nov. 2021, ivypanda.com/essays/two-main-causes-of-wars/.

IvyPanda . (2021) 'Two Main Causes of Wars'. 15 November.

IvyPanda . 2021. "Two Main Causes of Wars." November 15, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/two-main-causes-of-wars/.

1. IvyPanda . "Two Main Causes of Wars." November 15, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/two-main-causes-of-wars/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Two Main Causes of Wars." November 15, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/two-main-causes-of-wars/.

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Israel’s war on Gaza updates: Full Rafah attack a ‘humanitarian nightmare’

Truce and captive-exchange talks continue as Israel ups the ante after surrounding Rafah with tanks and troops and captures key crossings for aid distribution.

This live page is now closed. You can continue to follow our coverage of the war in Gaza here.

• A full-scale invasion of Rafah by Israeli forces would be “a strategic mistake, a political calamity, and a humanitarian nightmare”, the UN chief warns.
• Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says a ceasefire proposal agreed on by Hamas “falls far short” of Israel’s demands, but a delegation has arrived in Cairo for further talks.
• Israel’s seizure and closure of the Rafah crossing in Gaza raises concerns that already-scarce supplies will be further depleted and lead to a “catastrophic” disaster.
• At least 34,789 people have been killed and 78,204 wounded in Israeli attacks on Gaza since October 7. The death toll in Israel from Hamas’s October 7 attacks stands at 1,139 with dozens of people still held captive.

Thanks for joining us

The live page is now closed. Follow along with our coverage of the Israeli war on Gaza here.

To learn more about Israel’s seizure of the Rafah crossing, you can read our coverage here .

You can also read about the developments surrounding a potential ceasefire deal between Hamas and Israel.

Here’s what happened today

We will soon be closing this live page. Here’s a recap of the day’s main developments:

• A delegation of officials arrived in Cairo to resume ceasefire talks after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that a proposal previously agreed to by Hamas “falls far short” of Israel’s expectations.
• A Hamas spokesperson said that “the ball is now in Netanyahu’s court” and that the US must exert greater pressure on Israel to bring the war to an end.
• Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant has insisted that Israel will “deepen” its push into Rafah if negotiations fail.
• Israel seized the Rafah crossing on the border with Egypt, sparking fears that an already inadequate flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza could be further reduced and aid officials have continued to warn against an Israeli incursion into Rafah.
• Jordan said that Israeli settlers attacked an aid convoy at the Beit Hanoon crossing (known as Erez to Israelis) in northern Gaza, continuing a trend of Israeli protesters blocking humanitarian aid from entering Gaza with little pushback from Israeli authorities.

Hundreds march in New York City against Israeli incursion into Rafah

Reporting from New York City

We are right here in downtown New York City where hundreds of people gathered in Union Square to demand an end to the war. To demand an end to the incursion in Rafah, in southern Gaza.

Hundreds of people have started marching all around this area.

We’ve already seen at least four people being arrested.

The police are saying that people need to be marching where people are marching right now, if not, they will be detained. They cannot block the road.

There has been a lot of tension… As I said, four people have been arrested and this just adds up to what we have been seeing in this city in the past few days.

University campuses with encampments and students being evicted, suspended, expelled, arrested in many cases.

WATCH: ‘Absolutely devastating’ – Israel cuts off main entry point for Gaza aid

The Israeli army has seized and closed the Rafah border crossing between the Gaza Strip and Egypt, which has functioned as the main method that humanitarian aid enters the Strip for the duration of the war.

As a result, Gaza has been effectively cut off from humanitarian aid.

Watch our video to learn more:

UN humanitarian chief says situation in Gaza at ‘critical juncture’

UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths has said that the war on Gaza has reached a “critical juncture” and that Israel’s evacuation order for Rafah will result in “more death and displacement”. He reiterated that civilians who choose to stay in Rafah must still be protected.

“The decisions that are made today and their consequences in human suffering will be remembered by the generation that follows us,” Griffiths said in a statement. “Let us be ready for their reproaches.”

The conflict in Gaza is at another critical juncture.   The decisions that are made today and their consequences in human suffering will be remembered by the generation that follows us. Let us be ready for their reproaches. pic.twitter.com/4eO37sDGGZ — Martin Griffiths (@UNReliefChief) May 7, 2024

US Congresswoman calls on Biden to ‘use his power’ to stop Rafah assault

US Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley has called on President Biden to use his leverage with Israel to stop an assault on Rafah, where Israel had previously instructed displaced Palestinians to seek shelter. Palestinian sheltering there have nowhere left to go and humanitarian officials have warned that an Israeli assault would be a disaster for civilians.

“Israeli forces are attacking Rafah, the final place of refuge in the Gaza Strip,” Pressley said in a social media post.

“Over 1.4M Palestinians are sheltering there & are facing more death & destruction. @POTUS called an Israeli invasion of Rafah “a red line” & must use his power to stop this attack. #CeasefireNOW”.

Israeli forces are attacking Rafah, the final place of refuge in the Gaza Strip.   Over 1.4M Palestinians are sheltering there & are facing more death & destruction.   @POTUS called an Israeli invasion of Rafah “a red line” & must use his power to stop this attack. #CeasefireNOW https://t.co/45YNbv3wpC — Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley (@RepPressley) May 7, 2024

Columbia Law School defends students after conservative judges say they will not hire former students

Columbia Law School has said that graduates are “consistently sought out”, after a Monday letter from 13 conservative federal judges said they would not hire former Columbia students due to pro-Palestine protests on campus over the last several weeks.

The letter called the campus, where administrators have called in police to clear out antiwar demonstrations in solidarity with Gaza, an “incubator of bigotry”.

Law Dean Gillian Lester said in a statement today that Columbia law students were “consistently sought out by leading employers in the private and public sectors, including the judiciary”.

UN chief Guterres continues to appeal for ceasefire

Al Jazeera correspondent Kristen Saloomey has said that UN chief Antonio Guterres has called for an immediate ceasefire three times in less than 24 hours, appealing to allies of Israel to use whatever leverage they have to stop an invasion of Rafah from going forward.

“It’s noteworthy that the United Nations has refused to assist any evacuation of displaced people in Rafah to another area, to allow for such a military operation,” said Saloomey.

“The UN has said that there are too many people in Rafah, that moving them would be too dangerous, and that there’s no place safe for them to go given the areas that they’re being directed to are already overcrowded and lacking water and toilets and other essentials that people would need.”

EU foreign policy chief says Rafah invasion will lead to ‘devastation’

Josep Borrell says on X that “a ground operation in Rafah is materialising”, as the Israeli army continues to bomb the city in southern Gaza, adding that any invasion “which can only cause further unacceptable devastating humanitarian consequences”.

“Immediate ceasefire & unconditional liberation of all hostages are urgent. While famine is unfolding in Gaza, Israel must ensure humanitarian access”, Borrell added.

US indefinitely delayed report on whether Israel violating international law: Report

The US news outlet Politico has reported that the Biden administration has indefinitely delayed the release of a State Department report on whether Israel is violating international law in Gaza. The administration gave no reason for the last-minute change.

“The State Department was supposed to issue the report today,” reads the article, which cites three Senate aides and one House aide. “If it had concluded there was a violation, the U.S. would be expected to stop sending Israel military aid.”

The reporting comes as Israel pushes forward with military operations in Rafah, where the international community and the Biden administration have warned that an Israeli incursion could have disastrous impacts on hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians who sought refuge there under Israeli instruction.

‘The goal is to destroy Gaza’: Why Israel rejects a truce with Hamas

For many analysts, the Israeli government’s message is clear: there will be no permanent ceasefire, and the devastating war on Gaza will continue.

“The last couple of days have proved that Israel was not really negotiating in good faith. The moment that Hamas agreed to a deal, Israel was willing to blow that up by commencing their assault on Rafah,” said Omar Rahman, an expert on Israel-Palestine with the Middle East Council for Global Affairs, a think tank in Doha, Qatar.

Read the full analysis here .

Israel takes control of Rafah crossing, Gaza’s lifeline: What’s going on?

The Israeli military has  seized control  of the Gaza Strip side of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, moving forward with an offensive in the southern city as prospects for a  ceasefire deal  with Hamas hang in the balance.

The Rafah crossing is crucial for both aid and those able to flee into Egypt. The Israeli military said it seized the Rafah crossing after receiving intelligence it is “being used for terrorist purposes”.

Read the full story here .

LISTEN: The movement to break Israel’s siege on Gaza

As aid barely trickles into Gaza, a group of activists are trying to take matters into their own hands.

The Freedom Flotilla movement plans to set sail to Gaza carrying more than 5,000 tonnes of aid on a mission that means taking on great personal risk for its volunteers.

The Take  looks into their years-long struggle to break Israel’s siege on Gaza.

MSF relocating staff to Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis

Doctors Without Borders, known by its French initials MSF, says it has begun discharging patients from Rafah Indonesian Field Hospital and is suspending its activities at Shaboura Clinic given the escalation in Rafah.

It said in a statement it will be handing over its activities at Al-Helal Al-Emairati Maternity Hospital to the Ministry of Health on Wednesday and will relocate its staff to Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis “to continue to support maternity care in a safer area”.

“This movement was planned before the recent evacuation orders. Additionally, MSF is considering establishing two new field hospitals in the Middle Area/Deir Al-Balah,” its statement read.

Blocking Gaza aid violates UN court orders: Rights group

By preventing the transfer of much-needed humanitarian aid into Gaza, Israel is violating orders handed down by the International Court of Justice (ICJ), Human Rights Watch says.

“Despite children dying from starvation and famine in Gaza, the Israeli authorities are still blocking aid critical for the survival of Gaza’s population in defiance of the World Court,” said Omar Shakir, a director at Human Rights Watch.

“With each day that Israeli authorities block life-saving aid, more Palestinians are at risk of dying.”

The ICJ has twice ordered Israel to do more to allow aid into Gaza. The closure of land crossings into Gaza is “unacceptable”, the White House said earlier.

UNRWA HQ attacked in East Jerusalem

The head of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini, says a group of Israeli protesters have attacked the agency’s headquarters in occupied East Jerusalem after calls for protests against UNRWA by an Israeli municipal official.

“This protest called by an elected member of the Jerusalem municipality is nothing less than harassment, intimidation, vandalism & damage to UN property,” Lazzarini said in a social media post.

“It took place today at the UNRWA Headquarters in East Jerusalem under the watch of the Israeli Police. This has nothing to do with freedom of expression. Host countries, in this case Israel, are expected to protect United Nations premises, operations and staff at all times.”

This protest called by an elected member of the Jerusalem municipality is nothing less than harassment, intimidation, vandalism & damage to UN property. It took place today at the @UNRWA Headquarters in East Jerusalem under the watch of the Israeli Police. This has nothing to… pic.twitter.com/QyrNKBTwp4 — Philippe Lazzarini (@UNLazzarini) May 7, 2024

Report for US lawmakers on Israel’s actions in Gaza expected soon

A report by the Biden administration to US lawmakers on whether Israel is violating international humanitarian law or obstructing aid deliveries in Gaza is expected soon.

Washington’s provision of military assistance to Prime Minister Netanyahu’s government has prompted protests across the US demanding that universities and President Biden withdraw support for Israel, including sending weaponry.

“I’ve had a lot of conversations … with folks in the administration, really urging them to make sure that this report is credible, that it’s seen to be based on facts and law and not based on what they would wish it would be,” Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen told reporters.

News reports suggest that the Biden’s administration has held up certain arms shipments to Israel in an apparent “political message” to Israel.

US completes construction of aid pier: Pentagon

The US military completed construction of its Gaza aid pier, but weather conditions mean it’s currently unsafe to move the two-part facility into place, the Pentagon says.

“As of today, the construction of the two portions of the JLOTS – the floating pier and the Trident pier – are complete and awaiting final movement offshore,” Deputy Pentagon press secretary Sabrina Singh told journalists, using an acronym for Joint Logistics Over-the-Shore – the official name for the pier capability.

Aid groups warn the $320m pier is far less effective than land routes that Israel continues to heavily restrict with truckloads of aid for Gaza waiting to get in.

Aid trucks head for al-Awja crossing

The Sinai Organization for Human Rights publishes a video showing a large number of aid trucks on the road heading to Egypt’s al-Awja crossing with Israel south of Rafah. It is known as the Nitzana crossing to Israelis.

Egyptian authorities moved aid trucks from their waiting spots near the Rafah crossing to outer areas with the start of the Israeli military operation in the Philadelphi Corridor.

بالفيديو: رصدت مؤسسة سيناء تكدس مئات الشاحنات المحملة بالمساعدات الانسانية والاغاثية على الطريق المؤدي إلى معبر العوجة – نيتسانا الحدودي، جنوب رفح. ويأتي هذا التكدس في منطقة العوجة بعد قيام السلطات المصرية بنقل سيارات المساعدات من أماكن انتظارها بالقرب من معبر رفح الى مناطق أبعد… pic.twitter.com/I7cGIRAjWl — Sinai for Human Rights (@Sinaifhr) May 7, 2024

PM Netanyahu ‘stands to pay a very, very significant personal price’

Ori Goldberg, an Israeli political commentator, says the current ceasefire proposal on the table has been agreed by both sides, but Israeli officials are backtracking to stall for time.

“Based on Israel’s record in these affairs in past wars, this is last-minute posturing. This is an attempt to appear tough and also an attempt to appease Netanyahu’s base, the right-wing elements inside Israel,” he told Al Jazeera.

But the fact that an Israeli delegation is now in Cairo for talks shows it has “little manoeuvrability left”.

“I think it’s been made very clear to Netanyahu that he stands to pay a very, very significant personal price if something doesn’t happen very soon,” said Goldberg. “The Israeli-American relationship is probably the worst its ever been.

“There is no victory in this [for Israel]. None of the goals set out have been met. The management of the war has been catastrophic to say the least.”

Columbia pro-Palestine protesters say member was run down by pro-Israel driver

The activist group Columbia University Apartheid Divest says a pro-Israel driver ran into a pro-Palestine demonstration in New York City earlier today.

A statement from CAUD says the driver was a relative of Meir Kahane, the far-right Jewish radical who advocated violent attacks against Arabs and remains a major influence on the Israeli far-right.

“One member of CAUD’s de-escalation team was struck and has since been hospitalized,” the news release reads, stating that it is the second time their group has been assaulted by pro-Israel individuals in one week and the fourth time this year their members have been hospitalised in such attacks.

PRESS RELEASE: Zionist Driver Runs Down Peaceful Pro-Palestinian Demonstration in Manhattan Street. Columbia University students picketed outside of trustee homes in protest of Columbia’s complicity in genocide. pic.twitter.com/7UUwIKGEhL — CU Apartheid Divest (@ColumbiaBDS) May 7, 2024

Red Cross chief says Rafah escalation puts ‘many lives at risk’

Secretary-General and CEO of International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies Jagan Chapagian has said on X that any disruption to the operations of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt will hamper the delivery of life-saving aid to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in need.

“The Rafah border crossing serves as a vital lifeline,” he said in his post. “There is a lack of food, drinking water, sanitation, health care, and safety”.

Earlier today, the Israeli military seized and closed the border crossing, effectively cutting off the entry of aid to Gaza.

“I urgently appeal to all parties for the safe release of all the hostages, for the protection of civilians, healthcare workers, and facilities, as well as unhindered access for organizations like [the Palestine Red Crescent Society] in the entire Gaza Strip, to save lives and alleviate suffering”, he said.

I am deeply concerned by the escalation of hostilities in Rafah, putting many lives at risk. The Rafah border crossing serves as a vital lifeline, and any threat to its operations will hamper the delivery of life-saving humanitarian aid into Gaza. With over a million people,… — Jagan Chapagain (@jagan_chapagain) May 7, 2024

US: Israel will open Rafah crossing for fuel deliveries on Wednesday

State Department spokesman Matthew Miller says “Hamas did not accept a ceasefire proposal.”

“Hamas responded and in its response made several suggestions. It’s not the same as accepting,” Miller told reporters in Washington, DC.

He said Israel told the US it will open the crucial Karem Abu Salem (Kerem Shalom) crossing in Rafah on Wednesday. “Israel has committed to reopen Kerem Shalom tomorrow. We’re working to make sure that actually happens so humanitarian assistance can continue to come through.”

Miller suggested Israeli ground forces taking over the crossing and massing near Rafah doesn’t mean a large-scale attack is imminent.

“It is not our assessment that a major military operation has begun at this point. But that can obviously change at any moment, and we’ll continue to make clear that’s not one we can support.”

Small protest held in Tel Aviv against invasion of Rafah

A handful of Israeli protesters gathered in Tel Aviv in opposition to the invasion of Rafah, calling for an end to the war.

Video shared by Israeli photojournalist Oren Ziv shows a crowd of demonstrators with signs reading “Stop the war”, “freedom, equality, return”, and “Biden, you can stop the war, don’t choose the wrong side of history.”

Now in Tel Aviv: protest against the war, against the invasion to Rafah pic.twitter.com/aAMBeosjK6 — Oren Ziv (@OrenZiv_) May 7, 2024

Rafah closure makes ‘catastrophic situation far worse’: WHO

Richard Brennan, regional emergency director for the eastern Mediterranean for the World Health Organization, says the impact of the Rafah crossing now being closed “makes a disastrous, catastrophic situation far worse”.

Aid has already “fallen well short of what’s required” over the last few months and food, essential water supplies and sanitation equipment “are now far less accessible to the people of Gaza”, Brennan said.

“Today, we were expecting to evacuate 140 [critically ill] patients, but now that life line is closed off to patients,” he said, noting the movement of humanitarian personnel is also now paused.