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Journal of Interdisciplinary History 32.1 (2001) 103-105



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Book Review

Why Nations Go to War

Why Wars Happen


Why Nations Go to War. By John G. Stoessinger (New York, Bedford St. Martin's, 2000; 8th ed.) 286 pp. $31.95

Why Wars Happen. By Jeremy Black (New York, New York University Press, 1998) 272 pp. $30.00

These two books attempt to take a new look at the age-old problem of war, thus adding to the already robust literature about its causes. Stoessinger seeks to understand warfare in the twentieth-century. Black argues, however, that to approach the question of why wars happen by emphasizing twentieth-century--and even nineteenth- century--conflicts, "limits the basis for theoretical and general reflections" and truncates the search for continuities and changes from the past (10).

Now in its eighth edition, Stoessinger's book focuses on leaders' personalities and misperceptions. "[L]ess impressed by the role of abstract forces" and economic factors, Stoessinger argues that "the personalities of leaders . . . have often been decisive" (254). In each case study--including World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the wars between India and Pakistan, the wars between Israel and the Arabs, Saddam Hussein's Iraqi wars in the Persian Gulf, and the wars in former Yugoslavia--he examines the leading personalities of the states involved and the manner in which they perceived one another. He concludes that the single most important precipitating factor in the outbreak of war is misperception. "Such distortion may manifest itself in four different ways: in a leader's image of himself; a leader's view of his adversary's character; a leader's view of his adversary's intentions toward himself; and finally, a leader's view of his adversary's capabilities and power" (255). Stoessinger notes that, regardless of personality, most leaders on the brink of war expect victory after a brief, decisive campaign. This "recurring optimism," which assumes a "powerful emotional momentum of its own," is a cause of war in its own right (255).

Complicating this common faith among all leaders in short, decisive war is Stoessinger's concept of the "war lover," a leader "who launches aggressive war against another nation and will do so again and again until he is brought down" (260). Blinded by hubris, war lovers feel invincible and underestimate their adversaries. Although he includes Saddam Hussein and Slobodan Milosevic in this group, it is apparent that Stoessinger developed the war lover concept for Adolf Hitler. The entire book is permeated by references back to the German dictator, and an epilogue even describes the author's own experiences as a young Jew in 1938 fleeing from Austria.

The book's great strength, highly readable case studies about twentieth-century wars, is also its main weakness. At times, the narrative takes priority over the underlying analytical framework; leaders' misperceptions can get lost in the larger story of each war. To some extent, this flaw is a natural consequence of providing background information [End Page 103] about each war to readers unfamiliar with the basic history of these conflicts. However, by choosing case studies that span decades--especially Vietnam and the Arab--Israeli and Indo-Pakistani conflicts--he complicates his ability to isolate the variables central to his argument. Nonetheless, as its many editions prove, the book is an extremely useful introductory text.

In the trade-off between narrative and analytical frameworks, Black would side with Stoessinger. Black approaches the question of what causes war from a historian's perspective. As such, he has no use for the models of political science, which, to him, are "of debatable value" (25). Instead, he argues for archival research, because it allows scholars to "glimpse the hesitations of the past, the choice between possible steps whose impact could not be assessed" (25). Although these archives are "exceedingly bulky" and offer "fragmentary and peripheral" reflections, they focus on the most important source for understanding the causes of war, namely, diplomats and political actors; "it was their job and their interest...

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