Causes of War: Power and the Roots of Conflict

by Stephen Van Evera

What causes war? How can military conflicts best be prevented? A prominent political scientist here addresses these questions, offering ideas that will be widely debated. Stephen Van Evera frames five conditions that increase the risk of interstate war: false optimism about the likely outcome of a war, a first-strike advantage, fluctuation in the relative power of states, circumstances that allow nations to parlay one conquest into another, and circumstances that make conquest easy. According to Van Evera, all but one of these conditions―false optimism―rarely occur today, but policymakers often erroneously believe in their existence. He argues that these misperceptions are responsible for many modern wars, and explores both World Wars, the Korean War, and the 1967 Mideast War as test cases. Finally, he assesses the possibility of nuclear war by applying all five hypotheses to its potential onset. Van Evera's book demonstrates that ideas from the Realist paradigm can offer strong explanations for international conflict and valuable prescriptions for its control.

Genres: International Relations, Politics

288 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 1999

Reviews

[Rich · Rating 3 out of 5]

Important read. Complementary, perhaps, to the idea of rationalist explanations of war given that Van Evera seeks to depart from the pure line of logic that Fearon proposed towards perceptions of power. What that means, beyond failures of information, commitment, indivisibility, and time horizons is the material weakness of judgments of perception in power. Said differently, Van Evera makes a cogent argument that the perception of and confidence in the mismeasures of power is much more important than the actual measures themselves. This is a very important insight into the causes of war.

So why not a 4 or 5-star rating? Simply put, I find his arguments resultant from his hypotheses testing (such as it is) as explanatorily deficient on the basis of empirical demonstration. Van Evera does a fine job of crafting a descriptive theory here, despite his oft-repeated suggestion that isn't his purpose, and therefore I find him over-extended on inference. It was only when he came to the conclusion that the advent of nuclear annihilation changes everything regarding the perception of power did I find the work a bit more compelling than confusing (his path to the peak of explanation or inference is like ascending a mountain of switchbacks and study of the trees for the forest while in ascent). Still, the inferential power of the work seems limited, where the description shines. It simply wasn't designed to do otherwise, despite the claims for such.

[Liquidlasagna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Causes of War is a beautifully written and brilliant work that will cast a giant shadow over the study of war for years to come. Not every student of international politics will agree with Van Evera's theories, but each of us will have to confront them.

John J. Mearsheimer