Why Nations Fight

Download or read book Why Nations Fight written by Richard Ned Lebow and published by . This book was released on 2014-05-14 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Four generic motives have historically led states to initiate war: fear, interest, standing and revenge. Using an original dataset, Richard Ned Lebow examines the distribution of wars across three and a half centuries and argues that, contrary to conventional wisdom, only a minority of these were motivated by security or material interest. Instead, the majority are the result of a quest for standing, and for revenge an attempt to get even with states who had previously made successful territorial grabs. Lebow maintains that today none of these motives are effectively served by war it is increasingly counterproductive and that there is growing recognition of this political reality. His analysis allows for more fine-grained and persuasive forecasts about the future of war as well as highlighting areas of uncertainty.