Why Nations Fight Past and Future Motives for War [Paperback]

An explanation of the frequency of war and its specific causes and consequences, first published in 2010.Richard Ned Lebow provides an analysis of the historical causes and consequences of war. He argues that war should become less frequent in the future because territorial conquest has become more difficult and costly, reducing the incentive to make war for material rewards.Richard Ned Lebow provides an analysis of the historical causes and consequences of war. He argues that war should become less frequent in the future because territorial conquest has become more difficult and costly, reducing the incentive to make war for material rewards.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.Part I. Introduction: 1. Introduction; 2. Theories of war; Part II. War in the Past: 3. Theory and propositions; 4. Data set and findings; Part III. War in the Future: 5. Interest and security; 6. Standing and revenge; Part IV. Conclusion: 7. Conclusion; Appendix: data set.Richard Ned Lebow makes an extremely successful attempt at broaching lucidly the main theories of war, and offers a most fascinating and convincing way of bringing them up to date. He strongly renews a classical field of IR studies by considel3.