Since many people are involved, a war may acquire a life of its own from the confluence of many different motivations.
a. Ancient Jewish commentary: An interpretation of the ancient Jewish commentary (BeReshit Rabbah) on the fight between Cain and Abel in Genesis 4 (Parashot BeReshit XXII:7) states that there are three universal reasons for wars: A) Economics, B) Power and C) Religion. In Why Nations Go to War, by John G. Stoessinger, the author points out that both sides will claim that morality justifies their fight. He also states that the rationale for beginning a war depends on an overly optimistic assessment of the outcome of hostilities (casualties and costs), and on misperceptions of the enemy intentions.
b. Psychoanalytic psychology: Dutch psychoanalyst Joost Meerloo held that, "War is often...a mass discharge of accumulated internal rage (where)...the inner fears of mankind are discharged in mass destruction." Thus war can sometimes be a means by which man's own frustration at his inability to master his own self is expressed and temporarily relieved via his unleashing of destructive behavior upon others. In this destructive scenario, these others are made to serve as the scapegoat of man's own unspoken and subconscious frustrations and fears. Other psychoanalysts have argued that human beings are inherently violent. This aggressiveness is fueled by displacement and projection where a person transfers his or her grievances into bias and hatred against other races, religions, nations or ideologies. By this theory, the nation state preserves order in the local society while creating an outlet for aggression through warfare. If war is innate to human nature, as is presupposed and predetermined by many psychological theories, then there is little hope of ever escaping it. Despite Fornari's theory that man's altruistic desire for self-sacrifice for a noble cause is a contributing factor towards war, in history only a tiny fraction of wars have originated from a desire for war from the general populace. Far more often the general population has been reluctantly drawn into war by its rulers. One psychological theory that looks at the leaders is advanced by Maurice Walsh. He argues that the general populace is more neutral towards war and that wars only occur when leaders with a psychologically abnormal disregard for human life are placed into power. War is caused by leaders that seek war such as Napoleon and Hitler. Such leaders most often come to power in times of crisis when the populace opts for a decisive leader, who then leads the nation to war.
c. Evolutionary: Several theories concern the evolutionary origins of warfare. There are two main schools: One sees organized warfare as emerging only in the Mesolithic, as a result of the emergence of complex social organization, higher population density and political organization and competition over resources. The other school tends to see human warfare simply as an extension of animal behavior, such as territoriality and sexual competition. This school argues that since organized warlike behavior patterns are also found in many other primate species such as chimpanzee as well as in many ant species, this suggests that between group conflict is a general feature of animal social behavior. Others argue that while war may be a natural phenomenon, the development of technology and complex social organization has accelerated the scale of warfare to exceptional levels among modern humans, starting at some point in the Mesolithic, and escalating with the development of weaponry and large-scale state formations. One line of evidence for violent conflict among the ancestors of humans is sexual dimorphism. In species that have high levels of male competition over females, males tend to be larger and stronger than females. Humans have considerable sexual dimorphism, although lower than our nearest primate relatives. The strength difference is greater for upper-body strength than for lower
-body strength. Men are in general terms also larger, faster, and more aggressive. Their skeleton, especially in the vulnerable face, is more robust. This suggests that male competition has been an important factor in human evolution. Ashley Montagu strongly denied universalistic instinctual arguments, arguing that social factors and childhood socialization are important in determining the nature and presence of warfare. Thus, he argues, while human aggression may be a universal occurrence, warfare is not, and would appear to have been a historical invention, associated with certain types of human societies. Bobbi S. Low also observed correlation between warfare and education, but noted that societies where warfare is commonplace encourage their children to be more aggressive, suggesting an opposite causality.
Titany answered the question on December 7, 2021 at 10:33