Book Review - An Introduction to the Causes of War: Patterns of Interstate Conflict from World War I to Iraq
An Introduction to the Causes of War: Patterns of Interstate Conflict from World War I to Iraq
Written by: Greg Cashman and Leonard C. Robinson,
Lanham, Maryland, Rowman & Littlefield, 2007,
ISBN: 978-1538127780, 423pp.
Reviewed by: Dr Gregory P. Gilbert, Senior Research Officer, Sea Power Centre – Australia
The majority of people who contribute to Australia’s defence are more involved with their day to day activities than with the international relations theory and practice that underpins their activities. For the military professional, however, it is important to understand conflict and its causes not just at the tactical or operational levels but also at the national and international strategic level. An Introduction to the Causes of War is a good guide for the understanding of international relations theory and the causes of interstate conflict.
Greg Cashman and Leonard C. Robinson are academics in the Department of Political Science at the Salisbury University in the United States. An Introduction to the Causes of War is a comprehensive update to Greg Cashman’s 1993 work entitled What Causes War? Although designed as an undergraduate textbook, and a lengthy academic work, it has value for the international relations and military communities.
The introductory chapter, which sets out recent theories on the causes of war, is not for the faint-hearted. It provides detailed explanations of the causes of war at the individual, sub-state, nation-state and international levels, as well as considering multilevel analysis. The discussion ranges from the personalities, perceptions, beliefs and psychological makeup of leaders, to the international balance of power represented as unipolar, bipolar or multipolar systems, with many fundamental theories of interstate conflict in between. The comprehensive glossary at the end of the book is useful for those who are unfamiliar with the terminology. Despite being a hard read, the introductory chapter provides the necessary background and sets the scene for the case studies that are the heart of the book. The reader is advised to read the introduction quickly at first, and then to return to it as needed to consolidate their theoretical knowledge.
An Introduction to the Causes of War provides detailed analysis of six case studies on the causes of interstate war. An additional case study is available on the associated web site. Each case study provides invaluable insight into the complex multilevel processes that causes disputes to escalate into full-scale wars. The case studies are the essence of the book and are well focussed. However, the authors’ tendency to apply scientific methodology to complex human processes associated with the causes present the reader with an unrealistic degree of authority. The authors’ arguments are developed and portrayed in accompanying charts that are suggestive of the complex logic diagrams of systems engineering, with the implied concrete go/no-go associations between clearly defined functions. In reality, the causes of war are not as clear cut as suggested by these structuralist constructs.
The authors conclude that most wars are due to multiple factors interacting with one another. Interstate conflict is not the result of a single causal factor. Their case studies show that factors vary from case to case, and are found at different levels of analysis (from individual to international). The authors do, nevertheless, identify certain ‘repeated dangerous patterns of interaction between causal factors’. In wars of rivalry between relatively equal states, the dangerous patterns identified include: conflict spirals, enduring rivalry, territorial disputes, domestic political environments, as well as perceptions and misconceptions. For wars of inequality, such as between the United States and Iraq before the Iraq War 2003, the authors suggest that the determining factors for the cause of war are found at the sub-state and individual level. This is an interesting result, as it has strong similarities with the causes of other asymmetric wars (or major power–minor power wars) that lie outside the case studies set out in An Introduction to the Causes of War.
This leads to the main criticism of this book, being that by limiting the case studies to interstate conflicts it leaves the reader wanting to know how the latest international relations theories on the causes of war deal with other asymmetric conflicts between states and non-state actors. The authors of An Introduction to the Causes of War acknowledge that there are relatively few choices possible for 20th and 21st century interstate wars, whereas the number of recent asymmetric conflicts far outnumbers the interstate wars. A number of questions present themselves. Are the theories of interstate conflict applicable to asymmetric wars? What causes asymmetric wars, and how could we avoid them in future? While we cannot ignore the possibility of interstate war, a detailed study of the causes of asymmetric wars would perhaps be more relevant in today’s environment. One can only hope that Cashman and Robinson will continue their case studies with another volume covering the patterns of asymmetric conflict from (for example) the North West Frontier War 1898 to the ‘War on Terror’.
