Knowing The Roots of War

Rudy Rummel has done me the courtesy of publishing this book on his website. The book is the first installment of the legacy of a 50 year career in foreign and defense affairs. In part it represents an effort to repay a country that provided vast opportunity for a boy born in a tiny house without running water nor electricity in the swamplands of North Carolina.

The work described in the book deviated intentionally from the common paradigm of the scientific school engaged in the examination of war. I hope that many of you will find the research of interest. For those with comments, suggestions, even outrage, I promise to answer all communications I receive.

In the Army, the defense industry, at RAND and finally in the Foreign Service I despaired of the biases, irrationalities and career concerns that unduly influenced bureaucratic decision processes. On retiring it was my aim to develop a book around the theme of dysfunctional decision processes and pursue ideas for improving these processes.

My mathematical/scientific background made it painful to write my observations and experiences on decision processes without reference to some objective record of experiences and events in support. I re-read Tuchman "The March of Folly," thought back to the data collection and analysis I had done on the political aspects of warfare as a graduate student at USC and accepted that many of the most important decisions made by bureaucracies involve going to war and that warfare is perhaps the only political process for which there are good data sets covering long periods and many political groups. BINGO! I decided to do a broad survey of the patterns in, trends and results of the efforts to manage political conflicts through the use of warfare.

This book is the result of that decision. Using my data set, which incorporated Wright and Richardson material as well as my own and melding it with descriptions from Kohn's Dictionary of War I assembled a data set of 1029 incidents of the political use of warfare over the six centuries from 1400 to 2000. I used warfare as a tracking mechanism for political affairs, with interest in how effectively it has been used and as end subject for study. I explored the data I gathered relatively theory free.

I had left the academic world despite a couple of rather attractive job offers because of a distaste for the narrowness of perspective of academic reviewers. Starting this work I did some reading, missed in my years abroad, and early on ran across a volume I am sure many of you have seen, "What do we Know About War?" The answer by a practitioner in the foreign affairs field to this rhetorical question inevitably is "Virtually Nothing." A community of very talented, highly trained people, were researching in great depth and precision issues so narrowly defined and so far from the real world as to be discussing triviality (in effect a misuse of what they termed the scientific method). I hoped in this work, apart from substantive results, to demonstrate that with a broader perspective and with a greater flexibility in the use of statistics that pulling together of a mix of traditional reading and statistical examination could produce results and findings that would be of relevance to policy makers. Briefly some of the major substantive findings are as follows.

High on my agenda of research objectives was that of looking at results of decisions to employ warfare as a tool to manage conflicts of interests. I felt comfortable scoring the results achieved by the party firing the first shot in warfare in some 500 incidents since 1800 - did they achieve their objectives that were in conflict, or not? This gave me a very large data set. I coded success and failure, not win or lose which can be quite different. I had another 200 earlier incidents that I scored with a lesser degree of confidence because aims were rather difficult to define in these dynastic wars.

Those who read my book will see that decision results are as bad as Tuchman described and I expected. Over a two hundred year period (when combatants were of roughly similar power levels) success rates, for the party initiating the fighting, have been steadily falling, reaching a level of about 25 percent at the end of the 20th century. Expecting the worse, I still found it shocking that with the loss of life of soldiers, the civilian suffering, the economic costs, the leaders of the world had so consistently failed in their efforts to use warfare to obtain desired results on issues in conflict.

The recent experience on the decision to go war with Iraq - bad intelligence, party interests, ideology rather than dispassionate analysis - seems to typify many of the historical decisions. Unfortunately without systematic data on decisions processes I could not document the distribution of reasons for the bad decisions..

I sought to explore this subject further and found the expected benefits of power advantage, success rates reached about 80 percent when a big power initiated warfare against a small nation. The data seemed to contain yet more information and I made some assumptions about moral values changing over time and found that superior moral positioning also produced better results in going to war, with a good moral position being about as advantageous as a one step advantage on a three point power scale. I am currently struggling with a paper incorporating this information, Paul Kennedy's observations on military over commitment and the cyclical patterns discussed below in an effort to define some of the forces that America must recognize if it is to avoid the fall from power which its great power predecessors have experienced.

In the one area in which I approached my research with a theory in mind, as I expected there were three major revolutionary periods - involving conflict over religious, political and economic systems. The revolutionary eras are separated by periods in which fundamental ideological disputes are rather uncommon. I demonstrate that in the revolutionary periods close to a third of warfare incidents, and these are more intense incidents, involved disputes over the fundamental structure of society compared to about five percent at other times. In summary of a very complex process, a period of relative quiet on the ideological front slowly lead to the evolution of a political theory aimed at reducing the unfairness/inequities in society. After some years of violent struggle aimed at furthering or hindering change in line with the political theory some changes would be accomplished and the long enduring struggle would result in warfare fatigue. The two effects together would lead to another era of relative quiet. After a time mankind in its struggle to ever create a more perfect society would start yet another reformist/revolutionary movement. We are on the threshold of a fourth revolutionary period.

I also examined the use of warfare by Islamic and Christian groups and found some unpleasant (for a Westerner) patterns of "peaceful" Islam if warfare participation rate is the criterion used. Huntington's work and my years in living Muslim countries had set me off on this.

Time trends in the issues in conflict is a another subject investigated. Although there has been a remarkable, and I use the term advisedly, constancy in the rate of warfare initiations for centuries, the issues over which these wars have been fought have changed quite sharply. A subject worthy of some concern is the extent to which warfare issue change in the non-Western World has lagged behind that of the West.

The work published here is primarily an examination of the facts of the use of warfare. However, it is not sensible to ignore the intuitive and the judgmental that emerge from a multi-year immersion in a vast body of systematically coded data. I conclude, rather sadly from my perspective, that warfare may be, usually is, used in an effort to achieve desired political aims, but it is as well an end unto itself used to demonstrate national determination and courage and it is a mechanism to serve personal and party interests as well. In some degree, I believe but cannot prove, that the low success rates I detected as discussed above result from my use of the overt objectives as criteria rather than the difficult to observe covert objectives.

Read the book. The methodology and the conceptual approach offer new horizons for studying the management of political conflict. The present phase in the discipline of rigid hypothesis testing, allegiance to obscure statistics and 95% levels of confidence is past, until broader theories are developed to guide such detailed investigations. For now it would be well to focus on the use of modern computer capabilities and simple statistical processes to enable investigation on an exploratory basis. The computers and iterative statistical work will enable the detection of relationships beyond the reach of the traditionalist's intensive reading and will provide the means for defining precisely the basis for conclusions making it possible to stride forward as the great traditionalists did, but with greater discipline on the detection of patterns and infinitely greater credibility on reporting of those findings.

This collection of papers is about the political environment in which warfare takes place. The analyses presented are feasible because warfare is more consistently tracked over extended periods of history than is any other single category of event.

Warfare does not, of course, spring onto the scene without reason – it is too costly, too dangerous and too risky, quite apart from the social prohibitions normally limiting its use. At least in more modern times, warfare typically erupts when societies are in conflict. Warfare is the ultimate instrument available to social groups to manage conflicts for which non-violent compromises cannot be found. Consequently in this interpretation that approximates reality, the warfare patterns of a time reflect the social conflicts of the time. The religious wars, for example, were not wars engaged in for the sake of warfare, but rather were actions undertaken in an attempt to resolve key conflicting interests. In general warfare will track the most important and intense conflicts of interest of the day.

The consequence is that the attributes of warfare, in particular the issues stated as leading to the warfare, may be employed to track and analyze social trends. It is not necessarily an unbiased track since it is expected that in the usual case it will largely be the most important and intense conflicts that will be manifested in warfare. Nonetheless, because there is a data base available warfare is invaluable as an indicator that may be employed in statistical work to track social events and thinking.

This collection of papers on warfare is also a collection on the major political developments over the past six hundred years. The evolutionary changes in warfare issues reflect the changes in social and political structure. The cycles track mankind’s, at least Western mankind’s, major thinking about structuring society so as to achieve maximum justice and fairness.

I devoted a lifetime, during the years of American supremacy, to foreign and defense affairs related work – as scholar, analyst and practitioner. From early childhood, when my father was stationed on the USS Honolulu in Pearl Harbor at the time of the Japanese attack, warfare has been an integral part of personal and professional life. On retiring from formal employment I undertook to consolidate knowledge and wisdom gained in a fifty year career into a detailed examination of patterns in warfare and violence over an extended period of history. The aims were several fold:

a. to develop as much as proved feasible a general understanding of the causes or Roots of War.

b. to study the results of decisions to undertake warfare to manage conflicts of interest.

c. to demonstrate an improved methodology for the development of this understanding of regularities and patterns in historical events.

This volume of collected papers contributes in significant ways to those three aims. Looking to the third aim first, some 35 years ago I left the academic world in frustration at the lack of reality in what was then being developed as the scientific study of war. In the years since then the rigor and technical skills of the scholars in this field have greatly improved, but the community is locked into a self defeating research paradigm that requires rigor at the expense of relevance. The methodology demonstrated here maintains a type of rigor, or at least of reproducibility, but places great emphasis on relevance. It uses basic statistical analyses, computer driven, to find a mid-ground between the rigorously statistical and the traditionalist.

Most of the papers presented here focus on the first of the aims listed above. Both analyses and conclusions are described in detail. The fundamental conclusions derive in very direct measure from the analyses done on a data base of descriptions of 1029 wars engaged in worldwide since the year 1400. The data base purports to be exhaustive of all wars of consequence that occurred during these years. Exclusive of pre-literate Africa and the Americas it is approximately that. The data in their original form are available from the work of George Kohn and from my work. Those who are interested can obtain a copy of the spreadsheet of coded data directly from me on request.

While most of the final observations made derive from demonstrated patterns and relationships found in objective analyses on this data base there are also important interpretations and use of outside (of the data base) knowledge. The interpretations flow from the data analyses it is true, but are not objective in the sense that they are not readily reproducible by others. I have attempted to carefully separate the interpretations from the objective findings.

With respect to the second aim, in a thirty year career at think tank, university and in the foreign service, I came to accept that in a bureaucracy insulated in the near term from the consequences of its decisions many factors other than the considerations which the bureaucracy is meant to take into account have a powerful effect on the selections of the courses of action. That is somewhat awkwardly phrased, although it is precise enough. In illustrative language, political leaders select courses of action that serve their chances of retaining office, conform to their personal ideology or support their party or factional interests in equal or greater degree than they do to serve the interests of the public they are in principle meant to serve. Bureaucrats perform similarly with retention of office considerations replaced with a more general concern about advancement and/or protection of career. I aimed to better understand war making decisions, consequences and failings.

I study in great depth here the results that political leaders have obtained in their decisions to undertake warfare as a conflict management tool. I accept in principle the Clausewitzian dictum that war can be considered as politics by the most extreme means and strive to determine how successful the decisions to go to war have been. The examination covers both the interim results of wars and the extent to which wars are terminated in a definitive manner.

The specific research work described here took place over approximately a four year period from 1999 through 2003. However, its roots, as opposed to the roots of war, go back to several years in the American defense industry, culminating in 6 very rewarding years at the RAND Corp. and to a stimulating exposure to the academic discipline of international relations at the University of Southern California.

When I set out on this work I had rather modest results in mind. The findings exceeded my expectations and I feel obligated to share and document what I have done. Accomplishing that documentation has been a daunting assignment. These papers contain most of what I have to say. They are written without critiquing from others and inevitably suffer in consequence. There is unevenness and there are gaps and of course redundancies. My efforts to open dialogue with scholars in the field of warfare studies did not prove particularly successful. My age and health dictate that I publish despite the flaws, a few of which I recognize. Offsetting the flaws is the rather large, even massive, development of new understanding and specifications of areas requiring further study about the subject of use of warfare to further national or group interests..

While I am not in any sense someone who might be classified as a pacifist, the fundamental conclusion that is inescapable is that quite in antithesis to the Clausewitzian model of the employment of warfare to manage conflicts, warfare has demonstrably been used, if you will, to mismanage conflicts. Society has need of and opportunity to seek means for better controlling the use of warfare for the practice of initiating warfare is inordinately costly in lives, disruptions and treasure and is shown here to be frequently a failure. It is my observation that this presentation of results provides some background that can lead to better control of warfare. Just as importantly it opens a wide range of ideas and hypotheses for further investigation.

The papers are loosely grouped into two sections. The sections are preceded by a sweeping review of warfare over the years. This review paper sets the tone of the research which aims for the broadest possible analysis and interpretation of all use of organized, political or sanctioned violence.

The first section on Analyses contains four papers on respectively, Management of Warfare, Christianity and Islam in Warfare, Historical Cycles in Warfare and finally an examination of the Trends in Warfare over the centuries.

The second part, Interpretations and conclusions, contains two papers which provide complementary summaries of the relationships developed in the analytic papers of Section 1. These are followed by a paper tracing the statistical cycles through history done in a manner somewhat more along traditional lines than is done in the analytic papers. The final two papers in this section interpret the structure of warfare and explore implications of these findings for society’s management of the instrument of warfare. These two papers, 10 and 11, are those with the most immediate operational implications.

A demi-section contains a paper giving an overview of the data and briefly discussing methodology.

War is one of the great contradictions of human society, sanctioning as it does the taking of normally sacrosanct human lives. It remains as an institution of the modern world despite its contradictions. The interest here is in documenting what we can about the roots (sources) of this institution as it has manifested itself since before the religious wars of Europe and then to apply that learning as we derive lessons for our generation that may help to ameliorate the inevitable threat of violence we will face in future years.

I can find no better way to start this study of the roots of war than to reproduce a conversation between U.S. Secretary of State Kissinger and British Foreign Secretary Callaghan which took place during the mid-1970s in the midst of an immensely frustrating series of negotiations over the ethnic conflict in Cyprus.

Kissinger: You know, one respect in which all the humanitarians and liberals and socialists were wrong in the last century was when they thought that mankind didn’t like war.

Callaghan: I came to that conclusion a few years ago when I saw the position in Northern Ireland, Henry.

Callaghan: There is only, mind you, a handful of people who do for a long period. Most of us like it for a day or two, but there is a handful who like it forever.

Kissinger: That’s right. It doesn’t mean that the humanitarians were wrong; it just means life is harder than we thought.

Callaghan: I don’t know what sort of age we’re passing through or going to pass through, but historians like yourself ought really to give us a rundown on it sometime and tell how you think this next half century is going to look.

Kissinger: I’ll tell you...I’m glad I’m not going to be running part of it. It’s going to be brutal.

Here are two eminent statesmen of our times as they reflect on the reality that they saw as makers of foreign policy. War is largely hated over the long haul, but it is widely loved for its excitement, at least for a short period. Perhaps loved is too strong a term; it cannot be denied, however, that war brings strong, often pleasurable emotions of fear, risk, success, excitement for many members of society. Apart from the substance of the exchanges between Callaghan and Kissinger, they spoke with the emotion of frustration as they were bedeviled by an ethnic conflict with roots which had been growing for centuries. The words spoken in their philosophic dialogue in the midst of shuttle diplomacy in the mid-20th century, certainly just as well characterize the wars of the new millennia.

John Keegan, widely respected as a historian of warfare, writes on the emotions associated with war:

The written history of the world is largely a history of warfare....war antedates the state, diplomacy and strategy...Warfare is almost as old as man himself, and reaches into the most secret places of the human heart, places where self dissolves rational purpose, where pride reigns, where emotion is paramount, where instinct is king. [While] Pacifism has been elevated as an ideal; the lawful bearing of arms... has been accepted as a practical necessity.

Keegan places peace on a rhetorical pedestal, as an ideal. Quincy Wright in the classic Study of War picks up this thought and rather unobtrusively refutes it On hearing of a conflict situation, people instinctively prick up their ears. ...peace is intrinsically less interesting. It is hard to deny that although we almost universally desire in principle to have peace and security, wars recur and ears do prick up when hearing of fighting. Yet the data examined here shows that wars seldom reach satisfactory conclusions.

I am going to turn to fiction for a quote that highlights an important aspect of this study:

Germany and Austria started the war [WWI]. They both lost. World War Two, Japan and Germany took on the whole world, never occurred to them that the rest of the world might be stronger. Particularly true of Japan. Ryan went on. They never really had a plan to defeat us. Hold on that for a moment. The Civil War, started by the South. The South lost. The Franco-Prussian War, started by France, France lost. Almost every war since the Industrial Revolution was initiated by the side which ultimately lost. Q.E.D. going to war is not a rational act. Therefore, the thinking behind it, the why, isn’t necessarily important because it is probably erroneous to begin with.

Despite the immense costs, the immense suffering which it brings, must we consider war an irrational act?

There has been endless speculation as to the root sources of the warfare that has characterized human history. This is a study of that question. It is, I believe, the first effort to use modern computational power to augment a systematic review of the roots of all, repeat all, incidents of significant political violence (war) between the year 1400 and the present.

What are the roots of war, where do its causes reside? I believe answers to this question are best understood by exploring the many different types of events of political violence that take place, not just by examining those that are often formally called wars. In the last six centuries just over 1000 significant incidents of the political use of violence (wars) have taken place. The range of issues over which war is fought is astonishing. I have reproduced a few lines of description from a small number of these wars to illustrate some of the variation.

Franco-Burgundian War, 1464-65, King Louis XI of France’s efforts to increase central authority met with opposition from French nobles, who formed an alliance to fight against Louis. Louis was able to get the lesser nobility and middle classes to his side. Nonetheless his forces were defeated and he had to give back territory to Burgundy.

Polish-Turkish War, 1671-77, Cossacks did not accept Polish rule in the Ukraine. With Tatar and Turkish help they made raids in this region. The Poles pushed back the Cossacks but themselves were forced to withdraw when a large army of Turks attacked. Turkish protection was given to the Ukraine and Podolia ceded to Turkey.

Demerara Uprising, 1823, British plantation owners opposed efforts by missionaries to obtain greater rights for slave laborers in what is now Guyana. Several thousand slaves rioted, raiding and seizing plantations, hoping to gain freedom. Many were killed.

Sioux War, 1876-77, Gold was discovered in a region held as sacred by the Sioux and set aside by the U.S. Government for this tribe. The Army failed in its efforts to keep whites from seeking the gold. Sioux anger grew. Indians raided settlements and refused to go back to the reservations set aside for them. The army moved against them. [Note: It was in this conflict that Custer made his fabled last stand.]

Sino- Vietnamese War, 1979, China had supported North Vietnam against the United States. The Chinese and Vietnamese were, however, traditional enemies. Vietnam began to lean toward the Soviet Union. When the Vietnamese moved into Laos and Cambodia and forced the Chinese of Vietnam to flee, Chinese troops invaded the area of Vietnam bordering China. They seized control of a number of areas. Declaring they had met their objectives Chinese troops withdrew after significant fighting.

Rwandan Ethnic violence, 1990-94, Seeking of power in a newly established state overlaid with the enduring ethnic hostility between the dominant Tutsi and Hutu tribes resulted in the genocidal killing of close to a million persons in a period of a few months.

These descriptions of war derive from several sources; however, the basic sources for the data on war are George Kohn’s Dictionary of Wars which provides coverage back to Greek times and the author’s own collection covering the time period 1750 to 1960.

In the above examples, the slave uprising over human rights is least like what we usually think of as a traditional war. It is nonetheless one of the cases in which society’s prohibition against the taking of human life was set aside; it is further an example of uprisings/repressions sparked by application of unequal rights under the law. It involved the use of violence to achieve, broadly defined, political objectives.

The fight over gold on Sioux lands is more formalized in a military sense, but also derived, as have many wars, from the initiatives of private citizens. Ethnic and power balance issues prevailed in the Sino-Vietnamese conflict. In Rwanda long enduring tribal hostilities produced a horror perhaps as bad as that of Hitlerian Germany. This more recent conflict carries many of the features of other modern conflicts.

Historians tell us reams about battles, kings and presidents, give us dates and describe in depth the disputes that required war for their resolution. The above are but a few examples to illustrate the breadth and complexity of information available. As these cases demonstrate conflicts often involve ethnic or religious antagonisms. Disputes over territory, over discrimination, over the right to rule occur from the earliest to the most recent wars. The summaries also show the need for a broad definition of war if we are to encompass the various social forces that underlie human conflicts. Slave uprisings, civil rebellions, interstate conflicts, even acts of terrorism occur and recur and are sanctioned as promotive of group interests, however mistakenly.

A war as the term is used here is any more or less continuous, significant use of sanctioned violence intended to contribute to the achievement of group political aims.

This definition is very broad, but it does exclude criminal violence and incidents so small as to involve very few casualties. There was more or less a lower limit of 25 to 50 casualties. When in doubt, I tended to include the incident in the data set.

I sidled into the research reported on here, following a rather indirect path. From early in the 1960s I was immersed in bureaucratic decision making in foreign affairs, although usually not over life and death matters of war. This book emerged because of a deep anger and frustration with the decision processes I saw and participated in during those years. It was with a re-reading of Barbara Tuchman’s The March of Folly that I recognized that the patterns in bureaucratic decision making which I had observed characterized at least certain events in the history of major political affairs. I looked for other cases of Folly and found a surprising abundance.

With many listings of wars, their causes and their results available an opportunity existed for a systematic examination of results from decisions to undertake war -- clearly a critical area of decision making. With prior experience in the study of war using statistical techniques it was natural to meld the two interests into the study reported on here.

The summary descriptions of wars, their aims and consequences which I quote above are derived from extended research by historians who are tasked with surveying as much relevant material as possible and as a requirement of their profession of making some sensible description of it all – even when sensible seems reachable only with imaginative stretching of the facts. My life experience is that often it all does not really make much sense. Tuchman’s term Folly better fits the processes I had observed. Decision maker Folly seemed to offer the element needed to expand the mechanistic conclusions I had reached in earlier research on warfare. Research which I had originally aimed at decision making in bureaucracy grew into this extended study of the roots of war, including decisions to undertake it.

If we look at retrospective accountings of how decisions to enter war were made, there is ample evidence of much confusion, the civil side of the so called fog of war, both in how such decisions were made and what outcomes were expected. While the title, Knowing The Roots of War, does much to define the aims of this work, I find that the following quotes capture the essence of a basic concern here, further defining the aims. The quotes may be truly called well said. K. J. Holsti quotes from German leaders:

After the armies of Imperial Germany invaded Belgium in August 1914, launching one of the most destructive and futile armed conflicts in history, Prince von Bulow asked the German chancellor why all the diplomatic steps taken to avoid the war had failed. At last I (Bulow) said to him:’Well, tell me, at least, how it all happened.’ He raised his long, thin arms to heaven and answered in a dull exhausted voice: ‘Oh if I only knew.’

Robert McNamara in a volume titled In Retrospect details with indescribable sadness how he participated in America’s disastrous involvement in war in Vietnam.

When John F. Kennedy became president, we faced a complex and growing crisis in Southeast Asia with sparse knowledge, scant experience, and simplistic assumptions. As time passed, we came to recognize [the situation] was far more complicated than we had initially perceived...We remained divided over how to deal with it.

In an earlier century, as the American nation saw escalating civil conflict over slavery and local rights, President Lincoln wrote I sometimes think...that our present difficulties might be settled without the shedding of blood. In looking ahead to that conflict realistically Robert E Lee saw a terrible reality of limited Southern capacity and wrote to a cousin grimly, I prefer annihilation to submission.

Bruce Catton writes further that these ...two men had the terrible capacity to make men love them...Robert E. Lee and Abraham Lincoln....These two would be followed to the bitterest end. He goes on to say, The secession of the cotton states might have ended as a political-pressure play. [But it did not] ...because the only logic that prevailed now was the rough logic of chaos itself. It was that America stumbled into the bloodiest conflict of its history. The Union was maintained and slavery abolished, the price was high.

On December 8, 1941, Prince Konoe, a former prime minister of Japan, heard on the radio of the attack on Pearl Harbor. While most Japanese were reveling in the news of the successful attack, Konoe was despondent. A colleague reports that when he met Konoe, the latter’s voice was filled with dread and sadness. ‘It is a terrible thing that has happened. I know that a tragic defeat awaits us at the end. I can feel it. Our luck will not last more than two or three months at best.’

The premier Japanese naval strategist, responsible for planning the attack on Pearl Harbor, Yamamoto, is quoted as saying:

We can run wild for months to a year but after that the oil wells of Texas and the factories of Detroit [would mean defeat].

These are not distorted nor merely self serving descriptions, I suspect. As a mid-level analyst at RAND I saw, personally, some of McNamara’s frustration and anger. At the time, I had thoughts similar to those attributed above to the Secretary of Defense.

In a Clausewitzian model, as groups pursue their political and other interests, war is an instrument which can be used to further those interests. Machiavelli, Clausewitz and presumably those who would label themselves today as realists would explain such violent pursuit of political interests ideally as rational, presumably even carefully reasoned matters. Tuchman explores much less reasoned and rational processes in decisions to go to war; decisions such as those remembered by the participants quoted above. It may be that a reasoned model is one that we must discard if we are to comprehend the roots of war.

Japanese leaders other than Prince Konoe and Admiral Yamamoto must have realized, at least in the abstract, that American power was very likely too great for Japan to overcome; they went ahead with Pearl Harbor anyway. America did not know why nor how in Vietnam; America went ahead anyway. Catton asserts that events seemed to have taken on a momentum of their own as the Civil War evolved.

The memories cited in these cases, small in number though they are, convey much about war that needs to be understood. World War I touted as the war to end all wars brought destruction, defeat for the Germans and it brought on World War II. It was destructive and futile and was re-fought within a generation because it left more conflicts than it resolved. The Japanese lost devastatingly in that follow-on war, although many positive things came from the settlement of that war. This war resolved conflicts and even produced benefits for the losing aggressors (for those who survived). But clearly the Japanese and the German leaders did not intend to rebuild their countries in the mode that actually followed on the war. America accomplished little of what it aimed for in Vietnam and the war produced a repressive and archaic regime for Vietnam. Overall world system change, which the Vietnam war probably contributed to, did ultimately more or less resolve the issues in conflict. That, however, was not the valuation made at the time of American withdrawal. The Civil War preserved the Union and it abolished slavery on the North American continent. It found a solution to the conflict through near annihilation of the youth of the South.

This hallowed institution, of making war to find favorable resolution of conflict, is often strangely irrational in both its inception and its conduct. This study indicates that far more often than not that the sacrifices in treasure and lives that were demanded of the people did not lead to the favorable outcomes that were sought when they entered upon their political conflicts. If this is rational decision making, it surely is as well poorly informed. Apparently we must accept that wars are entered with hope rather than conviction as to consequences.

Yet, a scholar and leader as thoughtful as Henry Kissinger has said that it is historical fact that almost all significant changes in history have involved violence and upheaval, an observation rather similar to that made by Keegan. It is difficult to ignore that wars -- American Revolution, the Civil War, the NATO intervention in Bosnia to cite a very small number-- have been apparently necessary steps along the road to reform and Yes, to progress. It requires only a cursory review to find many wars that lead to needed changes.

Still and all, most would agree that war, as a process, is despicable and the practitioners of war often behave in inhuman ways. Leaders have sought war as a means to resolve disputes in their favor. The German Chancellor did not understand what went wrong. Prince Konoe knew the weaknesses of Japan, but his views did not prevail. McNamara made repeated pleas for better information on which to make decisions. The decisions had to be made anyway. Perhaps Robert Lee saw the future more clearly than others, but he lead his men into fields of slaughter for four years, almost accomplishing the annihilation he preferred. His vision of the future South did not prevail.

The managers (political and military leaders) historically have failed to foresee the actual consequences of alternative courses of action, they have failed to foresee how to efficiently manage the use of violence. Nonetheless, fighting for one’s people is widely glorified and be-ribboned chests proudly occupy our TV screens. So many of the folk heros from various societies wear the accouterments of the warrior, from club, to the chain mail of Beowulf, to the night vision goggles of today’s special forces.

Here is a human institution that from the record very often fails to meet the standards of functionality and rationality that we seek in our institutions. It must be considered one of the great contradictions in human society which places so much emphasis on rational decision making. Thousands of studies aside, the use of political violence is more widespread, but no better done, in the world today than at any time in history. This work records some additional learning about patterns in war, especially with respect to its management and roots.

Some 600,000 killed in the 1860s, 8 million or more died after August 1914, upwards of 40 million were butchered in World War II, and in Vietnam after American intervention some unknown millions perished. In each case the party deciding to fire the first shot did not achieve its aims in undertaking the war. Millions died in the failed efforts. These wars, as Kissinger implies more generally, did bring unprecedented and unforeseen change. Slavery was abolished, communism derailed, Hitlerian ethnic cleansing finally stopped. In many ways these consequences are the antithesis of the instigators’ aims. War often seems more a product of desperation than the pursuit of a rational purpose. Not infrequently it is a last lashing out in a darkness of vision. Yet, few will deny the social value of abolishing slavery; no one can decry the necessity of terminating the Nazi effort to cleanse Europe of the ethnic groups they feared and detested.

It is satisfying to be against war and to focus one’s analysis on its prevention. But, if we are to study society as it is, hopefully to produce evidence that has a systematic empirical base, we must examine wars not as undifferentiated; all are perhaps undesired, but some produce better consequences than others. Harking back to medieval thinking we may even differentiate some as more nearly just.

There are wars that society condemns. But, other wars are associated with needed changes and are deemed heroic. Periodically in history social systems became so distorted that the injustice and inequality perpetrated on the weak by the strong virtually demanded changes. And it was only through violence that the grip of the privileged classes could be broken.

The most profound cases of such constructive violence are those associated with the great revolutionary movements in society. The Church in the fifteenth century had become unacceptably corrupt, straying far from its appointed rounds as human shepherd. A hundred years of religious wars later a new, better balanced, more equitable and effective system came into being. Could the reforms have been accomplished through good will and good analysis, without the brutal violence? Probably not.

A century and a half after the religious wars wrought their changes, the monarchical system of divine right which was in good measure established to create order out of the chaos of the religious wars had become inefficient, corrupt, out of keeping with the economic systems of the day. The American colonies successfully, though violently, sought a system based on a theory that government derived from the will of the people, not from a divine delegation to an often corrupt dynasty. Soon thereafter France lopped off the head of a King Louis and over time instituted a political form which accepted Rousseau’s fundamental principle that the right to govern derived from the will of the people. Monarchies gradually disappeared and a better form of government more attuned to the times evolved. Could it have been done by telling the kings and their hangers-on that they were archaic and had to step aside for the welfare of the majority? Probably not.

Will there always be inequities which can only be corrected (in part) by violently forcing the haves to share with the have nots? As a realist I must give the undesired answer of Probably Yes. Perhaps war remains as a valued human institution because often when looking back those who survived see that their war ended with desirable, if not fully foreseen, consequences. Given this history, perhaps it would be unwise to universally condemn war, despite the emotional appeal of shouting a resounding condemnation.

There is as well much violence that leads to little of benefit. The youth who straps explosives to his body and dismembers other young in a disco, is eulogized as a warrior of the faith – so apparently it is for some not so young who drive aircraft, passengers, crews and themselves into the offices of those having nothing to do with war. Iran sent the flower of its youth to death in Iraq. These events happen, conflicts remain and it is difficult to see benefits materializing. Hutus and Tutsis butcher demonically and perhaps stop through sheer exhaustion with little resolution. Equally, we cannot eulogize war.

Human society requires beliefs, reasons for being, requires symbols which creates islands for self identification. Many are sincere in their adherence to their basic beliefs. Violence is promoted with a moral rationale made, but society often does not benefit. False prophets lead followers to disaster.

Others, power hungry seeking to become historical figures or simply seeking to become wealthy have corrupted these human belief systems and used them as the springboards to reach their aims. Saddam Hussein sought some concept of glory in invading Iran in part in response to fear of the Shi’ite revolution of Khomeni. He sought plunder in Kuwait. He found defeat and little glory. If there was a redeeming purpose here it has not been brought to the attention of the West. The perception is simply that of the use of violence to further the aims of a highly repressive and brutal regime. Hitler, Bin Ladin, and similar figures have sought niches in history and appealed to beliefs that would mobilize their people – they produced wars with little in the way of redeeming benefits.

Wars produce change; sometimes they produce needed change. Wars are heroic; the great commoner historian, Studs Terkel, essayed an entire volume about World War II entitled The Good War. There are nonetheless wars, to use a commonplace, that seem to have no redeeming social value. It is in this morass of good, evil, inefficiency that I seek knowledge and comprehension

We can neither condone nor wholly condemn war if we are constrained to judge the use of violence by consequences from the actual events, for war has as an end product produced good and bad as well as the death and destruction accompanying its execution. Moreover, as students seeking to understand what is, we can not fully condemn war when society accepts its use and applauds at least some of its results. Brutality and death are there; but it must be acknowledged that changes highly desired by society are on occasion there as well. Exploitation is there. As faulty as the institution is, society has maintained it, kept it alive and well. It is, I believe, necessary to step back and look dispassionately at the institution.

There are volumes written on the laws of war. In the 20^th century rules were established prohibiting use of gas weapons in war, prohibition on the use of land mines is now being pursued, prisoners must, by international agreement, be treated with humaneness. We now have an international war crimes tribunal. Millions of men and women serve in war making organizations. And they are in many cases honored as among the bravest and most admired members of society. Vast industrial enterprises seek the most effective and efficient killing tools that can be invented. War is proscribed except under certain conditions, but use of political violence remains as an unquestioned tradition.

The political leaders of our states, our nations, our ethnic groups presume that when the circumstances are correct, war making is to be pursued and to be sanctioned. War making is defined variously and its sanctioning is based as much on the power of one’s position as it is on any set of rules. It cannot be avoided that in World War I, in Vietnam, in the American Civil War, that in some measure the war was pursued because war making was a tradition that people accepted as valid and moral. The street celebrations that accompanied the decisions to go to war in World War I are widely recounted. War is an excitement in a sometimes dull existence; it is in the minds of many, perhaps even a majority, a personification of the national greatness – at least at its inception.

That is, I suggest it is not just conflicts that lead to war. It is a result of a tradition that asserts that war is an accepted alternative to resolve conflict favorably and that its conduct is a heroic assertion of the national essence. This tradition is maintained despite the vast uncertainties associated with whether pursuit of war will produce results that are better than compromise and perhaps even than surrender, when power differentials are great. Keegan, Callaghan, Wright are among the thousands who have seen the importance of the war making tradition in producing war.

In what must be considered as a classic conversation, Richard Holbrooke quotes Izetbegovic of Bosnia and Milosovic of Yugoslavia at a dinner party held during the Dayton peace negotiations in 1995. Holbrooke’s wife assigned the role of ameliorating the hostility between these two leaders of the Balkans asked them:

How did the war start? Did you know that your initial disagreements would lead to this terrible conflict?

I did not think the fighting would be so serious, Said Izetbegovic. Milosovic nodded in agreement and added. I never thought it would go on so long.

Holbrooke writes, It was a striking conversation. They both professed surprise at the dimensions of what they had unleashed. Yet neither man had made a serious effort to stop the war until forced to do so by the United States.

If there is one most important finding in this work it is that repeatedly wars are started with the most limited understanding of the probable consequences. Just as repeatedly wars once started are not easily stopped by the leaders initiating them. This tradition of seeking a solution through a contest of relative abilities to administer violence when no other solution offers much appeal is a root cause of war. Izetbegovic and Milosovic are only two among many, many leaders of our political processes who have not foreseen what they were about to wrought. Here is certainly a clue as to how we might contain violence and destruction even without totally exorcizing it.

In this volume I seek to understand and specify in ordinary language the causes, the roots, of the use of violence. I seek also to take a step toward understanding the accomplishments and failures in war. I do not mean to undertake the traditional investigation of whether this or that strategy or this or that general showed greater ability to win either battles or wars. Rather, I seek to start a process of understanding in Clausewitzian terms of whether the resort to war has historically been a useful adjunct to political aims. Can we understand the role of tradition, as opposed to hope, in using war to manage specific conflicts of interests?

As this is written terrorists kill indiscriminately and ineffectually, the West responds to violence with violence, without necessarily a good comprehension of longer term consequences. Will this war on terrorism produce unseen consequences as has been so common in the past? The thought of nuclear terrorism is appalling, but the tradition of turning to violence when all else fails is as old as mankind. Robert Lee’s statement of his preference of annihilation over surrender may have had an element of rhetoric; history suggests that other such extreme statements also hold elements of truth. Will we see more of the suicide wars with the use of weapons of today? I see no hope to abolish this war tradition. But, it does seem within the realm of the achievable to contain and control the use of that tradition. Much of the waste of human life and well being may plausibly be said to relate to ignorance of the consequences of the use of the tool and ignorance of how to use it. I seek here to reduce the scope of our ignorance.

At the end of the 20^th century the West had seen an unprecedented period of peace at home. Yes, after centuries of deadly internecine warfare there was a bright spot for the West in the final fifty years of the century as peace prevailed in large measure within the borders of its homeland. This Pax rooted in a fear of nuclear holocaust and sustained by the military and economic dominance of America may, or may not, be an enduring state

The Rest of the world saw quite a different end of the century picture. In the last decade of the century there were almost four new wars started in the average year and up to 30 to 35 wars, as broadly defined here, were on-going at some time during some years. With the exception of the years during which World War II raged, worldwide violence was more widespread in the 1990s than at any time during the past six hundred years.

In today’s world, the killing power of weapons is such that a few fanatics can cause immense numbers of casualties. With the recent rise of ethnic and religious violence there is a sharply enhanced potential for fanatics to seek to become the great martyr. We all live with this threat. Leaders be they dictators, democrats, revolutionaries, terrorists, all accept violence as the ultimate means for management of the key issues in conflict.

In rational terms it is suggested that some containment of the propensity to kill when all else looks unpromising should be possible, for the killing, in retrospect, has proved to be equally unpromising. This promise of possible means for containing violence by rational argument regarding its risks is set against the uncertainty of the systems that will be established in this new millennia. We are entering an era of great change with many new social forces which must be slowly comprehended and then addressed by the world’s leaders. The Cold War, which as understanding developed ultimately provided a kind of perverse stability to the system, is gone. There is no life or death ideology at issue among the major powers, a situation looked forward to for decades but one which on arrival has been found to create forces that propel centrifugally toward a highly fragmented and threatening power structure. This process of political fragmentation is accompanied, seemingly opposed by, global integration in multiple fields, a trend which is taking place at an unprecedented rate and perhaps on an unmanageable scale – trade, investment, media, migration, terrorism, humanitarian institutions.

The very basis for world order, the sovereign state, or better the sovereign nation-state, is, it appears, losing its conceptual sovereign legitimacy as borders are penetrated by multiple interactions outside of government institutions. Military forces, however, remain tied to the nation-state, or even to smaller units. Nationalism remains one of the fundamental integrative and conflictual forces of the world. We suddenly found, it had been there but unfound, on September 11, 2001 that a multi-national terrorist organization threatened us (the world). Of course, many have found the multi-national corporation and defined it as threat. In Afghanistan at war we found multi-national humanitarian, NGOs voicing their view of the war. Although the Taliban tried to keep the CNN, BBC, NHK, all but Al Jeezera, out of its territory, the multinational media operated in Pakistan, Iran, Uzbekistan and in the areas of Afghanistan not under Taliban control. Eventually the efforts at isolation failed as globalization had to be acknowledged even by this fanatical group seeking to go back 10 or 12 centuries.

A complexity that is essentially beyond current understanding prevails in this First War of the New Millennia as it has been called. We are destined to learn by the costly process of error and correction.

In this war America with varying support from others seeks to destroy terrorist capability with military might and makes efforts as well to win the difficult propaganda war. Will it maintain the moral high ground it started with? Do America’s leaders even accept that maintenance of moral supremacy, or at least equality, in the eyes of others is important to this most powerful of nations? For that matter, is it (moral posture) that important? The terrorist organization which is said to spread across 60 nations, seeks the moral ground of Islamic Jihad, will it prosper? The humanitarian organizations sought to portray a massive famine as at least threatening in the Afghan phase of that war. They sought to define their moral superiority as the true friends of humanity.

Another powerful part of the new globalization, the media, continuously seeks to portray a new crisis, new excitement, a new failure of the politicians with a cadre of often sadly ignorant anchor persons and reporters. Here at least one can discern a clear need as we enter a still uncertain new system. The media which seeks to be ever present, somewhat all knowing, should consider itself to have an obligation to be far better informed and educated and less pontifical. The urge to create a sense of omni-knowledge is in need of being tempered. There is every reason to believe that in Afghanistan, in Iraq the media dis-informed at a rate all too close to that at which it informed.

The East-West conflict provided a stable base for comprehending events. What new systems of thought will evolve to guide us in a period of ethnic terrorism? There are many questions and not so many answers. The fight against Islamic extremism, terrorism to many, is truly a base war for a new era. If the West prevails, multi-national terror will be suppressed, for a time only perhaps. If the West does not prevail, the next years are likely to see a new, perhaps more bitter resurgent Islamic/Christian struggle -- potentially a monumental conflict that could endure for decades. Much will depend on occupancy of the moral peaks, of which there are many, or few, depending on the observer. It is here that the international media is most flawed. Most of its agents know little of Islam, for they are largely Western. The media giants seldom have the courage to acknowledge the deficiencies for the competition for prominence is profound. Rather than reporting reality we find this major institution of the new globe reporting opinion on events seen through distorted and fogged lenses.

The end of the Cold War has released micro disputes -- ethnic, regional, religious -- in unprecedented measure. It has not lead to peace nor stability. The process of globalization itself seems to threaten new meta-disputes if the many demonstrations such as in Seattle, Davos and elsewhere are an indication of trends. Will, as has characterized past periods, the demonstrators on the left reach some unholy means of cooperating with the holier than though fundamentalists on the right? Will those demonstrators be supremely confident on watching BBC, CNN and others that they know the truth of which they shout?

Although under threat, the world’s political processes are as yet largely built around the internal needs of the sovereign state. Even the great nations with their vast obligations and interests throughout the world normally bring to power leaders who, if they have management skills at all, are skilled at managing the process of power acquisition in a domestic setting. As an American living abroad I often wince at the arrogance of statements by American leaders who clearly are aiming their words at a domestic audience, but who convey a message that is heard throughout the world. With democratic systems prevailing new, inexperienced leaders come to power every few years. Again and again a new leader must learn, after coming to power, about foreign affairs where decisions, interpretations and processes are usually far removed from that leader’s life experiences. The mistakes these leaders make while learning can be enormously costly if they involve war.

The constraining force of the cold war which kept some of the ethnic and other hostilities in check is gone. The result is a flowering of ethnic conflicts in Africa, the Balkans and perhaps the Middle East and South Asia. A former secretary of state notes that in the cold war, the superpowers had tacitly cooperated to contain conflicts, and this stabilizing influence is now largely gone. The system changed.

We have just exited a time period that is commonly referred to as the Cold War. In the vernacular of the time, the term Cold War is not meant to refer to an incident of actual fighting but to a long term conflict of interests between political groups which held sharply opposing and enduring ideas as to the most just structure for human society. Individual political interests motivated various groups during the years of the Cold War, but overarching the individual group motivations was the prevailing concern about whether socialist or capitalist principles should prevail. During this time certain regularized responses to crises and conflicts came to be expected; there were prevailing thought patterns and expectations that produced a kind of predictability.

One is not likely to be able to easily comprehend violence in its many forms without some appreciation of the prevailing systems of thought of a particular time. The Cold War endured with events again and again interpreted within the context of the Iron Curtain analogy that Winston Churchill put into our vocabulary.

There were other earlier periods in which enduring but different thought patterns guided the responses of leaders. Just over a century ago, there was the era of colonial expansion. European nations went to what in retrospect seems foolish lengths to acquire colonies that often could not possibly be construed as useful either economically or strategically. Such pursuits evolved from the prevailing thought patterns of the times, not from rational analysis. Before that era, the Eurocentric observers referred to the struggle over ideas of the French and American revolutions. For several decades European monarchs interpreted events with a fearful looking over the shoulder at the pursuing monstrous concept of government responsible to the people.

In each of these eras, leaders, and informed publics, saw many events as evolving from a fixed set of underlying forces. Until the end of the Cold War it would have been almost impossible to conceive of Russia’s predecessor the Soviet Union as an ally of the premier capitalist country. Yet since 1990, Russia and America have found several realms of cooperation. The guiding ideas changed. In order to better comprehend how conflict patterns recur and evolve, I shall refer to time periods of relatively stable driving concepts as systems, systems of thought.

Henry Kissinger is unusual in our times as having experience as renowned scholar and as a very highly respected foreign policy decision maker. He described these systems in the following terms.

International systems live precariously. Every ‘world order’ expresses an aspiration to permanence, the very term has a ring of eternity about it. Yet the elements which comprise it are in constant flux; indeed with each century the duration of international systems has been shrinking. The order that grew out of the peace of Westphalia lasted 150 years; the international system created by the Congress of Vienna maintained itself for a hundred years; the international order characterized by the Cold War ended after forty years...Never before have the components of world order, their capacity to interact and their goals all changed quite so rapidly, so deeply, or so globally.

He concludes regarding the uncertainty which must be faced in the new millennia by asserting,

Thus, in effect, none of the most important countries which must build a new world order have had any experience with the multistate system that is emerging. [balancing] balance-of-power systems with global democratic opinion and the exploding technology of the contemporary period.

Generally accepted systems (of thought) characterize international affairs. Such acceptance of a presumed regularity of behavior by the many actors on the scene helps policy makers to comprehend events. Currently we are in a transition period in which the rules for the new system are still evolving, giving greater than usual scope for misunderstandings of intentions. I will emphasize what I believe is a critical conclusion of Kissinger:

The wisdom derived from participation in past systems will often not be applicable to the still evolving system of the 21^st century. And by implication we must set much of that wisdom aside in looking forward.

It is with in-depth, systematic study such as this that we may hope to better understand the experiential wisdom developed in the past and be better prepared to develop a new wisdom base in the future.

It is often helpful to place a work into a niche so that readers may better comprehend its purposes. I will contrast this work with that of John Keegan who has written a widely acknowledged, sweeping history of the soldier’s war, essentially from the beginning of time (A History of Warfare). This work covers the politician’s war over a lesser, but still extended, period of time.

Keegan wrote as the traditional British scholar. He read, read and read, found the true relevant patterns and placed his conclusions on paper, an exercise that has been done for many decades. Such is a respected exercise with a vaunted reputation for intellectual excellence. In undertaking and preparing for this work I have read extensively, but less than some. I have, on the other hand, counted much more. In a somewhat more serious vein, this work is a very conscious effort to blend the strengths of the traditionalists with those of the modern counters.

The conclusions presented in this work represent a first with both the favorable and unfavorable consequences of that position. The results derive from a first, a statistical examination of all 1029 incidents of use of political violence in the years from 1400 to the present in all parts of the world. The systematic, quantitative examination and use of modern data processing are important parts of what I have done. This new computational power is employed flexibly to enable extension of the capability to comprehend patterns and regularities similar to, but far more rigorously than, the methods of the classical scholar. This is as well at least a near first.

I uncovered the recurring patterns of behavior through examination of historical events. I used counting to find those relationships and patterns. Consequently, I can say with some accuracy how often certain patterns prevailed, under what conditions, in what time periods and perhaps just as importantly when and where they did not prevail. Modern computers and basic spreadsheets enable this controlled seeking of patterns that supplemented human abilities to find the thread of regularity. At the same time it provided important controls against the researcher seeing the sought.

The approach to this tour through historical records is an evolution of the traditionalist’s approach to development of political theory, as adapted given modern data recording and processing tools. It bridges, as my career bridged, three somewhat distinct schools of foreign affairs – the practitioner, the traditional scholar and the quantitatively oriented scholar. It develops strengths from each and extends the scope of each. The statistical tools I employ are those most interested layman will comprehend readily enough, making the results of the investigation available to the community at large.

This paper is the core of the study of Knowing the Roots of war. It evolved from the original subject of investigation – the study of the making of foreign affairs decisions in government. Pursuing that aim I found patterns in these data that on first discovery were extremely hard to believe.

Across all time periods, in all types of governments, for any power relationships other than big/small, the party making the decision to go to war, that is firing the first shot in a war, has for two hundred years had less than a fifty-fifty success rate, often much less, in achieving its objectives in firing that first shot. Time-after-time, year-after-year, conflict after conflict, political leaders took decisions to initiate wars in which they failed to achieve their objectives. Based on a listing of 500 incidents of warfare that took place in a two century interval this provides a hard to dispute validation of Barbara Tuchman’s statement in the first paragraphs of The March of Folly.

A phenomenon noticeable throughout history regardless of place or period is the pursuit by governments of policies contrary to their own interests. Mankind, it seems, makes a poorer performance of government than of almost any other human activity. In this sphere, wisdom...is less operative and more frustrated than it should be. Why do holders of high office so often act contrary to the way reason points and enlightened self-interest suggests? Why does intelligent mental process seem so often not to function?

Why did successive ministries of George III insist on coercing rather than conciliating the American colonies though repeatedly advised by many counselors that the harm done must be greater than any possible gain? Why did Charles XII and Napoleon and successively Hitler invade Russia despite the disasters incurred by each predecessor?

Former Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara makes a saddened assertion in his memoirs of the Vietnam War build-up that is strangely similar to Tuchman’s:

Readers must wonder by now...how presumably intelligent, hardworking and experienced officials-both civilian and military-failed to address systematically and thoroughly questions whose answers so deeply affected the lives of our citizens and the welfare of our nation.

There is perhaps no better way of stating the results found here than to assert that Folly Marches Onward.

The very first computer runs on the data collected here forced open new vistas in my investigation of bureaucratic decision-making. It forced me to stop and think back on the wars of my era. World War II, the Falklands, Korean Peninsula, First Gulf War, the Suez war -- we find that there are so many cases in which those who started the fighting did not find success. The data are not here to examine details of the decision processes that lead to such unsuccessful use of violence, although the quotes given in the opening paper on warfare do provide provocative evidence in a few specific cases of how poorly made were decisions that lead to the deaths of millions. Here is truly a subject that demands scholarly investigation.

The data I do have show that wars are commonly started that do not produce intended results, as often as three cases in four the initiator of violence fails. Digging further it is also shown that wars do not normally resolve the conflicts that brought on the violence. The prospects for re-fighting a war within a generational time period are very high. Wars are often even fought for a third time.

Extending the data some, I was able to produce indirect evidence as to a possible partial explanation for this pattern of failed decisions. It is not the direct evidence used in determining success rates, Rather, I used indirect indications to suggest that attaining the moral high ground is extremely important in the successful use of violence and that perhaps being attacked tends to give one an initial position on a moral peak, relative to the aggressor/initiator, accounting for some of the poor performance shown by aggressors.

I also looked at what I termed the suicide war, in which there was no expectation of successful resolution of conflict, rather the aggressor group had accepted that it would be better to die fighting than to submit. After a brief review I put this aside as a special case on which I had very limited evidence, but which is especially worrisome in light of the events of Sept. 11, 2001. In some measure such feelings of hopelessness are probably also a factor more generally in the poor success rate syndrome.

Because these results are so important let me review the main conclusions before proceeding to develop the details:

a. In several hundred violent incidents over the past two hundred years the party deciding to undertake the use of violence (firing the first shot) succeeded in its aims less than half the time; since 1950 that success rate has fallen to less than 30 percent.

b. Wars are fought a second time in half or more of incidents and frequently are fought a third time.

c. Provocative evidence was found that suggests that the relative moral position of the combatants is very important in determining success. This may account in part for the poor success rates for aggressors.

The results of the search for patterns in management of the war instrument are overwhelming in their implications. Leaders from throughout the world, for two centuries or more, have decided to send their people to the killing fields, uselessly!

I could have just devoted a few pages to delineating the frequencies of success and failure under differing circumstances and in discussing how often war participants return to the killing fields after a few years. I choose not to do that. Doing it would have deprived the reader of the sense of excitement I felt in looking for the truth and would as well likely have reduced the credibility of my findings.

For this paper, I am going to take you down the main thoroughfares that were explored in my research. I believe it will help you to understand, help you to see how regular the patterns are under so many varied conditions. While it will take a bit of your time to wend down these roads, some with dead ends rather than enlightenment, I believe most of you will enjoy the journey. I certainly did.

I had started this work in frustration with the processes of decision making that I had experienced in the Federal foreign affairs bureaucracy. My experiences in decision making were largely unrelated to decisions of whether to make war or not. Quite honestly, despite involvement with providing advice on the enemy’s strength in the Vietnam conflict, I had thought of my frustration with bureaucracy as having little to do with decisions as critically important as going to war. In researching bureaucratic decision making, I idly picked up an old copy of The March of folly. Although it had not so struck me when I first read it nearly 20 years earlier, on rereading I found a deep empathy with Barbara Tuchman’s railings against the folly of leaders in their decision making, especially decisions relating to the use of violence. I had somewhat, and mistakenly, scoffed at the work on first reading.

The rereading sent me back to reviewing writings on decision making in foreign affairs. I came across analyses done by Graham Allison and Morton Halperin and published in World Politics. They described a world of decision making in key foreign policy areas that was so very much like what I was trying to describe from my own experiences in the field of international economic assistance.

Allison and Halperin scoff at the ideal, that decisions are made from a focus on the interests and goals of a nation, the alternative courses of actions available and the costs and benefits of each alternative. Rather they list five propositions about how decisions actually tend to be made, such as, decisions in this model reflect compromise from a need to gain adherence...are rarely tailored to facilitate monitoring...and most tellingly are made because there comes an unavoidable deadline and ...often derive from interests of junior players committed to a specific solution and in search of a problem.

Historian A.J.P. Taylor writing on the same subject states that leaders use the past to prop up their own prejudices and John Fairbank argues that Americans tend to use history as a grab bag from which each advocate pulls out a lesson.

Robert Jervis continues along similar lines stating somewhat like McNamara that decision-makers use models of behavior derived from recent dramatic events to guide their judgements and consequently fail to apply fully their intelligence to some of the most important questions they face.

Former Secretary of State and scholar, Henry Kissinger decries the extreme difficulty of rational decision making in the face of multiple crises...[abstractly it was] an ideal time to review the situation... [there were, however] two obstacles... The summer of 1974 was replete with crises...May, the Syrian shuttle...June Presidential trips to Middle East and the Soviet Union...July...Cyprus, August unraveling of Nixon presidency, afterward the transition, Cyprus, detente, trade bill...stalemate in Middle East and culminating tragedy in Indochina.

My thinking on the bureaucratic decision processes which I observed as a participant in foreign economic areas reflected many of the factors that others, such as the above, have described in the area of decisions on the use of violence. I concluded this subject was a fruitful one for investigation.

To my frustration I cannot share with you, the reader, much about decisions processes directly in this record of incidents of violence. I am only able to look at the results of those decisions. Those results which presumably come from faulty decision processes are alarming. I believe these findings will be provocative to scholar and practitioner alike.

In this exercise I was interested in the political management, not the military management, of the use of violence. The data set I had available for these reviews was massive in scale, although not originally developed for the purposes to which I put it. Uncertainty levels are greater than perhaps usual, but the relationships are very strong and the uncertainty levels are not such as to threaten in anyway the conclusions.

1) how often and under what conditions did decisions to initiate violence lead to successful achievement of objectives?

2) were wars brought to a conclusion by successful resolution of the issues at hand?

Let us take that first road together. As an initial step, I had examined outcomes in all non-civil fights that took place in the second half of the 20^th century, about 50 in number. I felt the examination of results in this most recent time period would likely produce the most relevant findings. In these conflicts, the initiator of the fighting was coded as winning or not winning. Not winning is not quite the same as losing – failing to achieve objectives such as acquiring control of territory (not winning) can and frequently does occur without losing. Such outcomes were coded as not winning. I have interpreted not winning as failure since the apparent reasons for undertaking violence were not realized. This assumption leads to a very important consequence, which is that of the potential for there being a difference between failing and losing, although in practice they are often the same. Nonetheless, the results I discuss here are of failure to reach objectives, not of losing.

The party that fired first, declared war with no previous hostilities or undertook an act of very strong provocation was coded as the initiator. I excluded civil conflicts because I often did not see a reliable way of deciding whether a participant won, or not, in such conflicts. The question of win/not win seemed less murky when the participants were from clearly identifiable, separate political groups. Where feasible I also coded whether the attacked party achieved its apparent objectives or not, on the same grounds as used for the initiating party.

The results from the first step I took of looking at the wars that had occurred since 1939, were startling. The party firing the first shot – the direct initiator -- failed to win in over 70 percent of incidents. I had expected a good deal of decision maker Folly but nothing like this. It was clear that I needed to look much more closely at this pattern of the initiator losing with such a high frequency to see if there were intervening variables that were creating some sort of a spurious relationship.

The data were sitting there on my computer available to be sliced up in any reasonable way that I saw fit. I did not feel the earliest incidents in the data base, those before 1800, would tell me much of value on the management of use of violence in the modern world. To expand the analysis, I undertook to code the outcome of all non-civil wars since 1800. I split the data into four half century intervals. Examination of these four intervals did begin to show somewhat of a change in the relationship. The initiator still failed to win as often as not, but did noticeably better in the first part of the 19^th Century when prevailing values on international conflict were somewhat different than is true today. From 1800 to 1850 the initiator won, on its own terms, in just over half of the incidents recorded. This was still not a very good record, for it is hard to accept that the leadership apparatus of a political group could undertake to kill and to have its group members killed without a better judgement as to whether there would be success or not. I still needed to look further. Moreover, I was most interested in the more current events for which results from initiating fighting seemed to be even worse.

Examining the data case by case showed a considerable number of instances in which relatively backward, technologically, groups were attacking more advanced groups – American Indians against settlers of Western origin and African tribes against British, French and Germans. I thought that perhaps these events were biasing the results, for seldom did these tribal groups succeed in their desperate attempts to halt penetration of their lands by the people of Western heritage. They were initiators in many cases that had failed. (I will come back to this type of war under the label suicide war later)

Splitting the data into Western (a term used as broader than European) and Non-Western groups softens the results somewhat but leave them unchanged in my mind. Leaders have started wars, for whatever reason, that they have had a high rate of not winning.

In this sample, the Western nations when they initiated fighting had a success record of 52 win/48 not win – a rate that is still low in my view given the costs and risks involved. Western nations that were attacked, often this involved attacks by less developed societies, won almost 80 percent of the time. Interestingly, Non-Western groups, that were almost sure to lose if they initiated the attack, had an almost 50/50 chance of winning when they were attacked. This pattern of high rates of win by the injured party remains throughout almost all of the cases examined. This is a pattern I later examined under the concept of holding the moral high ground.

One further test I did along this line was to look at 72 cases of Western against Western (this was presumed to control for modernity differences) and I found that the attacker reached its goals in 11 of 34 cases (32 percent of the time) while the attacked party was not defeated in 29 of 38 cases (76 percent of the time). While the power difference of Western compared to non-Western during this time, helped to explain the pattern of Western successes against non-Western groups there was still a puzzling pattern of the very high rate of not winning when Western attacked other Western.

I undertook to code once again all of the incidents that occurred during the 19^th and 20^th Centuries. In this effort I added power ranking using a three point scale based on my judgement as to whether the group was a big power, middle power or small power. Finally, a part of the data began to better fit my preconceptions. When there was a two step power difference, small-big, or big-small, the big power won 60 to 80 percent of the time, regardless of which party initiated the fighting. I expected even larger margins of success, but 80% did seem more plausible than the earlier numbers I had examined.

However, the pattern of initiator very frequently failing to reach its goals still held for the cases that I had coded as having a one step or zero step power differential, in both the 19^th and 20^th centuries. The following two tables record the findings that I developed.

While in the 19^th century the attacker won less often than the attacked party, the difference was generally not very great except when power levels were similar. In all combinations the attacking party does much worse relative to the attacked party in the 20^th century than in the 19^th century. Something clearly has changed. My belief is that with the spread of representative government, the need to mobilize the will of the people has become more important. If another party initiates warfare, it seems likely that a greater will to resist will emerge. I suspect as well the moral high ground factor is involved. The break-up of colonial relationships results in the higher success rates for the weaker power that are shown in 20^th century data. Refer to the section below on the moral high ground for some further exploration of this subject.

There is also a different world value system in which aggressive war is constrained by the legal authority of the UN.

An unweighted average for both centuries and for all zero or one step power difference combinations gives the result in the table which follows.

For 535 combatants (there is some redundancy in the rows in the tables), over 230 wars, during a two century period, excluding big power/small power fights, the initiating party failed to win two thirds of the time, while the attacked party won in over 60 percent of the incidents. This is a remarkable finding in my judgement. It needs to be verified with further research. However, I am convinced that the pattern shown is essentially that which will come from any further investigations of these or other data.

Nonetheless, coding of some of the cases is difficult. I felt it useful to go back and do the same exercise for the 18^th century data even though the political systems are less relevant for modern circumstances. The results are in the following table. Coding of win/not win was even more difficult for the complex dynastic wars of Europe in the 18^th century. Nonetheless, results tend to track along the same pattern as for the 19^th and 20^th centuries. For zero or one step power differences, about two thirds of the time the party starting the fighting does not win its objectives. For the attacked party win rates are lower in this earlier time period primarily because of a greater prevalence of wars being terminated with no clear result. As in the data presented above, for cases of two step power difference (big/small) the big power wins about 80 percent of the time, regardless of which party initiated the fighting.

If one assumes that undertaking fighting was, or should have been, done with the expectation of achieving objectives (winning in these terms), the decision making apparatus has failed miserably. Given the costs of wars in lives and treasure, win rates of 70 to 80 percent would seemingly be the lower edge of what would be classed as good performance by leaders. If one is not reasonably certain of achieving objectives, the logical choice seemingly would be to never start the fight.

Except for the separation out by large power differences between the combatants these results seem to hold in all conditions. Moreover, the indication is for the initiator to do significantly worse in the later time periods – especially in the second half of the 20^th Century.

To further explore this question, I speculated that more stable and stronger governments make better decisions. To determine if this were true, I looked at results for monarchies, democracies, dictatorships. Let me note an important consideration here. To develop rigorous definitions of democracy, monarchy, etc. over this time period, the coding would have taken far more time than a single researcher could reasonably devote to the task. I have a sound knowledge of politics and history and knew I could code many cases from on-hand knowledge. I chose to do that. It means on the one hand exploring subjects that would otherwise be beyond the resources of an individual researcher and on the other hand of getting some erroneous classifications. I think that on the order of 90 percent of my classifications are correct. This rate of errors, if attained as I believe it was, would have had no effect on the patterns of trends and relationships shown here.

The tables generated from this data set and shown below demonstrate the expected pattern that democracies produce better leadership results than do either monarchies or dictatorships. In the 19^th century, probably due to greater legitimacy of kingdoms at that time, monarchies do better than dictatorships. I show separate tables for the 19^th and 20^th Centuries, the patterns are quite similar with respect to the types of government involved. Democracies produce the best results, but they are not particularly good results for the 20^th century. Of considerable interest is the lower rates of success for all types of government for the 20^th century, compared to the 19^th. Again, I think it may relate to the rise in representative government and that in such “people’s governments” it is easier to mobilize a war effort if the other party is the attacker. Many ascribe such thinking to Franklin Roosevelt who needed aggressive actions by an Axis Power to bring America into World War II on the best possible public attitude terms, into a war that he was convinced had to be fought.

*the results for this time period are influenced by a high frequency of wars against groups that were technologically less advanced, especially for the major democracies, the US and the UK.

As a special case, I examined separately the small sample of events after 1984. During these years there were no incidents involving monarchies. Dictatorships fail to win 7 out of 7 of the wars they were involved in, while democracies win 8 of 9 of their wars. But, this is a very small sample.

Part of the pattern initially observed can be statistically explained by a knowledge of political form. Democracies do better, but not all that great. Democracies appear to be not all that peaceable, despite some claims. Democracies start just under half of the wars they fight. Dictators start about 60 percent of wars they engage in. This is a surprisingly small difference.

He who makes the decision to fire the first shot is likely to fail to achieve apparent objectives unless possessing an over whelming power advantage. He who is attacked has a good win rate (up to 70%).

As my overall study of violence progressed it was increasingly clear that a major component underlying patterns in warfare was human basic beliefs. This should not be surprising since killing and risking being killed involve both the universal sanctions against taking of human life and the universal wish to protect one’s own life. Initially I had related the starting of wars to the belief, or moral, structure of the conflict, but I had not posited the same relationship for the rate of success in warfare

When the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington happened and the prospect for conflict between Islam and Christianity was discussed people began to talk of relative moral position as very important in achieving success. I had, previously, vaguely thought that in part the poor success rates of the parties initiating conflicts as shown here might be attributed to the moral opprobrium attached to being classed as the aggressor. It struck me, after September 11, that some of the data I had available should make it possible to examine at least roughly how important holding other aspects of the moral high ground has been.

With the data I had readily available on a spreadsheet, it was not difficult to go back and sort information into win and not win categories. What I needed was some index that would allow me to specify the moral position of the combatants. Somewhat through the back door I was able to make such classifications in a manner I believe to be satisfactory for preliminary investigation. The classification derived from the different systemic values between the 19^th and 20^th centuries.

Balance of power politics was still widely practiced and a relatively acceptable behavior for nations in the 19^th century. It was the right of monarchies to pursue their interests by means of force. K. J. Holsti notes [In the European tradition] War... was highly institutionalized. It was recognized as a legitimate form of statecraft, to be used at the decision of dynast...to advance state interests, including the honor and prestige of the monarch. Changes were beginning to be felt following the American and French revolutions. But, changing systemic views largely awaited the 20^th century [in modern times] Quincy Wright observes War has tended...to be regarded as more abnormal and more in need of rational justification. Thus, I accepted a presumption that it was morally more acceptable to initiate war in the 19^th century than it has become in the 20^th.

And it was not only with respect to the right to wage war for reasons of power and prestige that changes were occurring. In the 20^th century the spread of representative governments brought with it the belief in rights of national self determination, of greater racial equality and eventually a proclamation of universal human rights.

We are familiar enough with current moral values, but perhaps have forgotten some of our university history lessons on attitudes that were common in the 19^th century. The following quote from the 19^th century German philosopher Treitschke eloquently describes widely held feelings of this time regarding the rights of people and nations:

All great nations in the fullness of their strength have desired to set their mark upon barbarian lands. All over the globe today we see the peoples of Europe creating a mighty aristocracy of the white races. Those who take no share in this great rivalry will play a pitiable part in time to come. The colonizing impulse has become a vital question for a great nation...The consequences of the last half century have been appalling for in them England has conquered the world... It is the short-sightedness of the opponents of our colonial policy which prevents them from understanding that the whole position of Germany depends upon the number of German speaking millions in the future.

Such a view is difficult to reconcile with the values on issues of human rights, racial equality, national self determination and some equality of opportunity which are features of the 20^th century belief landscape. Even the noted realist Henry Kissinger observes, After a series of ups and downs, the Western Hemisphere seems on the verge of turning into a key element of a new and humane global order. A group of democratic nations has pledged itself to popular governments, market economies, and hemisphere-wide free trade.

These changes of course did not occur over night and do not coincide precisely with the turns of the centuries. But breaking the data into two parts on a century basis is convenient and proved a reasonable division based on change in values. If my assumptions regarding the effect of moral high ground on aggressor success rates is valid, I would expect relationships regarding issues in war to be different between the two centuries. The next step was to look at these relationships over time.

All were coded as either a yes or a no. I considered the first two of these variables as indicative of pursuit of traditional power politics and the final three as representative of concerns closer to the humanitarian focus of the 20^th century.

Assuming that being the aggressor gave one a moral disadvantage, I thought it possible that presence of one or more of these factors could either further degrade the moral position of the aggressor, or possibly be offsetting factors, depending on the issues. I made the following presumptions:

1. Pursuit of power politics would not be particularly disadvantageous to an aggressor

1. Pursuit of power politics would put an aggressor in an even more disadvantageous position

2. Pursuit of humanitarian issues would offer compensating moral value that would in some measure offset the disadvantage of being an aggressor.

To make a preliminary test on these presumptions I combined variables a) and b) into a single index of power (realpolitik) politics and variables c), d) and e) into a second, humanitarian index. I then examined the success rates for initiators in the two centuries.

The results are as expected. Being an aggressor should have been a minor disadvantage in an era when power politics was considered acceptable. Moreover, prevalent beliefs regarding racial inferiority of non-Western peoples should have meant that there was little advantage for an aggressor to pursue humanitarian issues of national self determination, racial equality of opportunity and so forth. The data show just such results in terms of success rates:

humanitarian objectives offer a large advantage, partly offsetting the aggression effect

With respect to realpolitik, aggressors should find relatively little disadvantage in pursuit of power politics in the 19^th century and experience major disadvantages in the 20^th century. The statistical results are consistent with expectations.

an aggressor pursuing power politics does well compared to other periods, winning almost forty percent of the time

Although the data employed here do not directly reflect the moral base of the combatants I believe the patterns of the relationships do give a good indication of the importance of a moral base in war. In today’s world the aggressors, all other things equal, have done very poorly. Today, a group starting war over power issues has done even more poorly and has almost always failed. In the 20^th century moral correctness is derived from humanitarian factors. An aggressor, when fighting over issues with a humanitarian base, has had almost a 35 percentage point advantage over the aggressor not pursuing such factors. Again for the 20^th century the aggressor undertaking a contest over power issues has lost about 35 percentage points in success rate. These percentages represent huge differences in success rates. I feel one must be cautious in accepting these relationships because the implications are of such a powerful effect. On the other hand, when I coded these data I had no expectation of using them in this way, consequently I believe it is very unlikely that any bias was introduced in the coding.

I am inferring relationships using the 20^th century data. However, by looking at the relationships between success rates and the same war issues for the 19^th century, I can test to see if the moral base assumptions that I make are consistent for the systemic views held in the earlier time. The examination of results for the 19^th century tends to validate the interpretation that the shown empirical relationships derive from relative moral positions of the combatants. With the acceptance of a belief in racial superiority of the European that was widespread in the 19^th century, the humanitarian issues recorded here as reasons for fighting did not give the initiating party the needed moral advantage. Consequently the aggressor had only a 40/60 chance of winning regardless of humanitarian issues. At the same time, the aggressor did not incur much additional moral burden in wars fought over power issues. The relationships shown are consistent with the interpretation and are sharply different for the two centuries.

A fundamental question the answer to which will determine much about our future in the 21^st century is that of what will be the moral basis for warfare mobilization in the coming years? Will Islamic fundamentalism or Christian human rights, or neither prevail?

It was also possible to use the data I had developed to roughly explore possible interaction between relative power levels and moral positions of the combatants. I had previously shown the effects of relative power on success rates. In the following table I make an effort to see how great the effect is of the moral position (as I interpret these data) compared to the power position.

	19^th century	20^th century
	Start Fight, % Win	Start Fight, % Win
Power-same	39	19
Power, 1 step advantage	64	33
Power, 2 step advantage	82	57
Realist Issues- Low	38	55
Realist Issues-High	45	18
Humanitarian Issues-Low	40	13
Humanitarian Issues-High	41	46

Each power step advantage averaged giving about a 20 percentage points increase in expected win rate. Overall win rates were, as noted, lower in the 20^th century for the aggressor, but the power step differential is similar. As expected neither the realist/power issues nor the humanitarian issues were strongly related to success rates in the 19^th century. However, in the 20^th century pursuit of realist/power issues by the aggressor had a negative effect of 30 or more percentage points on success rate, while pursuit of humanitarian issues produced a positive 30 percentage points.

These numbers seem rather large to me and on the grounds of common sense I would treat them with caution. Unfortunately the sample sizes are not such that I can do power differential and issue variations together. If I make a linear arithmetic interpretation in the 20^th century, to fight over humanitarian issues is worth 1 to 1.5 steps in power difference, while to pursue power politics results in a similar virtual loss in power position.

The conclusions I reach seem valid as to the direction of the effect, but because of the very strong effect and the practical importance of the relationships further investigation is certainly required. Nonetheless, as a war manager, there is very plausible evidence that maintenance of the best possible moral position can be extremely important in improving the probability of success.

The above reflections are based on the assumption of a rational effort by the war initiator to achieve certain objectives. The events of September 11, 2001 brought an abrupt message that rational pursuits are not always the case. On that date a group of 19 persons took over 4 airliners with the intent of flying them into American institutional targets at the expense of their own lives. Clearly this is a political use of violence that is not rational in the everyday use of the word rational. Such suicidal acts do not meet the requirement assumed here of rational decision-making and need to be treated separately.

The suicide war appears to have been a response that has characterized a few societies that felt themselves confronted by an apparently invincible enemy whom they see as bringing alien and unacceptable beliefs. Perhaps in a misguided sense of frustration, the American right in the early years after World War II were confronted with a perceived Communist monolith whose image of power and achievement was epitomized in Khrushchev’s famous battle epithet in the 1950s that We will bury you. Better Dead than Red became the battle cry of hopelessness, as we all know today a misguided battle cry.

Allan Eckert in his magnificently documented series on the early American frontier describes discussions during Shawnee Indian council meetings in which leaders openly expressed their feelings of hopelessness.

The Shawnee chief asked, Shall we now kill all our women and children and then fight them [the settlers] until we ourselves are dead? The debate continued and a few years later the tribe split with some moving beyond the settler’s reach but there were large numbers Remaining to fight until the last man of them should die... Many of this tribe which had been dominant could not accept the loss of their prestige and way of life – better dead than white, to paraphrase.

Japan was believed to have contemplated something close to a fight to the death toward the end of World War II, based in part on behavior shown against the American forces in the Pacific islands. The Britannica indicates that a Southern African tribe, the Xhosa, near the end of the 19^th century after repeated defeats by Western settlers undertook the destruction of their own cattle and crops, reducing their own number drastically.

There is reason to suggest that such a view of the world is part of what motivates the fringe elements of Islamic society today. Commandeering commercial airliners to use them as suicide bombs against a few civilian targets is meaningless in terms of achieving political aims. This is a pursuit that apparently emanates from a vision of ultimate despair.

I do not know of any studies of such group use of violence, but clearly to the extent it characterizes human behavior it leads to conclusions different from those discussed earlier regarding success factors in warfare.

Leaders have frequently brought their people into unsuccessful wars. Did they bring them out successfully when things went wrong? There is a common observation in military and diplomatic history that leaders have not necessarily been good at concluding wars. Henry Kissinger observes as an example, But, like other conquerors before him, Hitler did not know how to end the war he had so recklessly started.

Another means for approaching much the same question, about the rates of success obtained in political management of use of violence, is that of examining the question of whether wars are successfully concluded, or not. To explore this subject, I looked at whether there is repetitive fighting over similar issues between the same combatants.

In this search I coded all conflicts that were started during the 20^th century, about 245 conflicts. For each conflict, I coded two variables: a) was there an earlier war between the same combatants over the same or very similar issues (within the prior 25 years) and b) was there a war over the same or very similar issues within the 25 years following the end of the fighting.

I was able to make an acceptable coding of results for over 200 of the wars of the 20^th century. Of these, 50 percent were followed by another similar war within 25 years of termination. Some 55 percent had been preceded in the prior 25 years by a similar war. The unit of analysis is different from the prior discussion regarding an initiator achieving objectives. In that analysis the unit was the combatant. Here I look at the war (all combatants) rather than at particular participants. The data show that in the 20^th century, somewhat more than half the time a war has to be re-fought, presumably because no satisfactory conclusion was reached with a single fight.

Even more than one re-fight seems to have been necessary in many cases. For wars that had been preceded by a prior war (25 year time limit) over similar issues, another war followed 63% of the time. That is, something like a third of cases involve three or more successive wars, perhaps still with no resolution of the conflict leading to the war.

Logically, one might expect that the political relationships between the participants would influence continuity in the conflict. Thus, I would expect that wars between sovereign nations would be more likely to lead to acceptable resolution of issues in conflict than is likely to be the case in civil wars. This prediction is born out, although the pattern is not as strong as I had expected. Just under half of wars between sovereign nations involved a further conflict within the 25 years following the war. In contrast roughly 60 percent of civil conflicts were followed by further fighting.

Continuity of conflict remains a strong factor in war results. For sovereign participants, if a war had not been preceded by an earlier session of violence, 71 percent of the time no further fighting erupted. When a war between sovereign participants had been preceded by an earlier fight, the percentages reversed themselves and 70 percent of the time another fight ensued. In Civil conflict, continuity was more pronounced with over half of wars followed by more fighting even without a pre-war.

I have examined the data many different ways and the conclusions are always fundamentally that leaders who decided to start wars in most circumstances (except when there were large power differences) did not very often achieve the group’s objectives. In an effort to better understand this pattern I have looked at:

a. Time differences – initiator does better but still poorly in the 19^th Century.

b. Form of government differences – democracies do better, but the advantage is not great.

c. Possible differences between revolutionary and status quo eras (see paper 5 on cycles for definition of these eras) – no discernable differences.

d. Power difference – two step difference on my scale – big-small or small-big – is an important factor in success with big winning 70 to 85 percent of the time, regardless of which side initiates the fighting. One step power differences may be worth 20 percentage points in success rates in war.

e. The data show that virtually the only way other than a preponderance of power to have a high win rate is to get the other party to do the attacking.

By examining the data along these several dimensions, I believe that I have conclusively shown that under a wide variety of circumstances the party deciding to initiate violence is likely to fail to win considerably more than half the time. In the process, I found that democracies do better, but their advantage over others seems to be declining as we enter the modern era. I found that success rates in the 20^th century are below those in the 19^th century for reasons that I cannot definitively explain but strongly suspect relate to the change in values about national self determination and human rights and the morality of warfare itself.

In the 20^th century, the party deciding on violence as a solution, assumed to be cast as the aggressor, can improve its win rates if pursuing humanitarian objectives – presumably thereby gaining a better moral position. In contrast if the initiator/aggressor is seeking power advantages or territory, the success rate is one in five or less. Thus, I postulate that the moral high ground is a key factor in improving success rates.

a. In the 20^th century about 56 percent of 200 plus incidents of violence were followed by a similar violent incident (combatants and issues same or similar) within 25 years of termination.

c. For sovereign nations fighting a first war, there was not a follow-up war just over 70 percent of the time.

d. For either sovereign or civil conflicts that were preceded by an earlier war, a follow-on (third) conflict occurred about 70 percent of the time.

That is, for most types of war a re-fight within the course of the next generation is very likely. Only the fights among sovereign nations without a history of prior enduring conflict can be expected to end definitively.

We have pursued our objective over hill, through valley and perhaps through intellectual swamps. Relations in the hills have been compared to those in the valleys, figuratively, and contrasted with those in the swamps. Always the patterns lead on to an identical conclusion. The instrument of warfare has been selected with consistent inefficiency and failure.

On completing much of the work on incidents of violence in this research, I read a copy of Samuel Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations in which he discusses the violent propensities of Islamic culture. After living and working in three fundamentally Islamic nations – Afghanistan, Jordan and Egypt – I had in undertaking this work mixed views as to whether attribution of violent propensities to Islam could be supported. In an effort to cast further light on whether Islam is a relatively violence prone faith, this chapter gives a detailed exploration of the patterns in and frequency of wars involving nations and groups that are predominantly either Western Christian or Islamic.

At the end of the 20^th century the adherents of the two major missionary religions of the World, Christianity and Islam, represent almost half of the world’s population. A quick look at the 1000 plus incidents of violence contained in this data set showed almost 900 (88 percent) involved either a Christian or Islamic group, or both. Clearly if there was a more violence prone religion it must be one of these two. I decided to undertake a searching look at the participation of adherents of these religions in warfare with two ideas in mind. One was to test as possible Huntington’s assertions regarding the militancy of Islam. The other thought was to further demonstrate the utility of the method employed here as a useful tool for extending and supplementing scholarly work done along more traditional lines such as that of Huntington.

The two religions derive from common roots and have historically had a long and often contentious common border, although today both have spread to regions which are not densely occupied by the other. Islam eventually expanded eastward into Asia and the Far East away from the European base of Christianity. Christianity once it had safely converted Europe had its greatest impact Westward into North and South America. The major additional thrust of Christianity along the Northern rim of Asia was in its Orthodox form. The interest here is primarily in Western Christianity.

Dating from the times of the original Arabic invasions into North Africa and into Spain, from Christianity’s counter moves during the 11^th and 12^th centuries in the Crusades, from the expansion of Turkish Islam into the Balkans and Eastern Europe and finally Western Christianity’s expansionist drive during the so called colonial era, conflict between Christian and Muslim has been a recurring feature of Western European history. Both distrust and dislike have been bred as the result of the centuries of dispute over land and faith.

Today a fundamentalism is resurgent in Islam bringing with it a militancy that the West views with concern, distaste and some fear. Some in the West, Samuel Huntington in his respected book The Clash of Civilizations for example, attribute a current propensity for violence as a part of the heritage of Islam.

Huntington states Muslim bellicosity and violence are late-twentieth-century facts which neither Muslims nor non-Muslims can deny. In another place he states even more strongly, Islam’s border are bloody, and so are its innards, indicating wars both with non-Muslims and with other Muslim groups.

I had been assigned by the U.S. Government to three countries that are predominantly Muslim – Jordan, Afghanistan and Egypt. I have lived for over 20 years in the Philippines with its significant Muslim population in the south and worked extensively in Malaysia. I worked with and socialized with many Muslims and considered them as friends and respected colleagues. Huntington statements both touched responsive chords and raised hackles because of the ostensible ethnocentrism that was implied. With data readily available, I undertook to examine the pattern of conflicts as related to religious groups. Huntington did aver that the causes of the bellicosity of Islam might be time dependent rather than enduring, although he seems to have leaned strongly toward the latter explanation.

I decided as a first step to examine Islamic and Christian violence in more recent times. Insofar as possible, all violent incidents that were initiated in the 20^th Century were examined and a count made of:

I subdivided the counts into three time periods. The results are shown in the tables below.

TIME INTERVAL	Christian/Not Muslim*	Muslim/Not Christian	Christian & Muslim
1900 to 1939	46	6	16
1940 to 1969	34	16	17
1970 to End	36	27	16

TIME INTERVAL	Christian/Not Muslim*	Muslim/Not Christian	Christian & Muslim
1900 to 1939	1.15	0.15	0.40
1940 to 1969	1.13	0.53	0.57
1970 to End	1.20	0.90	0.53

*Wars coded as Christian/Not Muslim could involve Christian only groups or Christian and other groups

Christian group involvement in wars seems to be rather stable during the 20^th Century, up perhaps slightly in the second half of the century. Muslim involvement in wars shows quite a different pattern. Before mid-century there were very few Muslim only wars and a not very high frequency of wars involving both Muslims and Christians. Muslim wars which did not involve Christians more than tripled during the mid-years of the century and almost doubled again during the final thirty years before the end of the century. Even so in terms of total wars Christian groups were involved more frequently than Muslim groups, possibly contradicting the assertion of Bloody Islam.

For 1990 I counted about 35 primarily Islamic states and roughly 58 predominantly Christian states. I checked on relative population figures and got a ratio of about 1.7 for Christians to Muslims in current times. The two approaches each gave a ratio of Christians to Muslims in the world of about 1.7. I decided to correct Muslim relative participation rates in war by multiplying by 1.7 to approximate the rate that might have been expected to occur if Islam were as populous as Christianity.

After experiencing lower participation in war rates than Christian groups in the first two thirds of the last century, Muslim groups had population corrected participation rates roughly one third higher than Christian groups in the last third of the century.

The above analysis presumes the war as a unit of analysis. Thus, a war involving five Christian nations is counted only once as would be a war with two or more Muslim nations/groups. Another method for looking at relative participation rates would be to sum all identifiable groups involved in fighting. I made another count to see if the trends looked different using this as the unit of analysis.

The trends are the same for either way of looking at the data. Islamic Group participation in wars is very much higher toward the end of the 20^th Century than it was in the early part of the Century.

Huntington’s assertion that Islam is involved in more wars (when Christian groups are used as the standard) in the latter part of the 20^th Century is tentatively supported. Given the much lower participation rates in the early part of the century it seems fair to say that this has not demonstrated that propensity to violence is an enduring characteristic of Islamic society, despite what some call its militant heritage. Even for the most recent data, given the periodicities in social conflict demonstrated elsewhere, the high rate of participation in violence may only be a phase through which Islam is passing because of its resurgence of fundamentalism. Perhaps it resembles in some ways the Protestant reformation 600 years earlier with its intense violence. It seemed that further exploration was justified.

Moreover, one could argue with some forcefulness that the end of the century war involvement of Muslims derived in no small measure from distortions imposed on Muslim communities in the years of European (Christian) colonialism. It was clear that a longer term look was needed, in the event that the late 20^th century situation was not representative of long term patterns.

In the first instance, insofar as the data available for this research is concerned, both religions appear rather warlike. Together the adherents of these two religions represent just under half of the world’s population, just under 30 percent are Christian and some 17 percent or so are Muslim. Of the 1000 plus wars recorded between 1400 and 2000, 88 percent have involved either a predominantly Christian, or a predominantly Islamic group or nation. Over the entire 600 years, the rate of participation by Western Christian groups is more than twice that of Muslim groups, although if an indicative correction is made to account for population differences the Western Christian frequency of involvement in warfare is reduced to about a third higher than that of the Islamic groups of the world.

Of the 300 plus wars in which Islamic groups participated, 119 involved a fight with a group from Western Christendom, 50 saw an Islamic group fighting an Orthodox Christianity group and 109 involved fights between two or more Islamic groups. Over the entire time period Muslims fought other Muslims in 35 percent of wars, or roughly the same rate at which they fought Western Christian groups, 39 percent of wars. There were fights with Orthodox groups in just under a quarter of wars. Totals in these counts can exceed a 100 percent since a war will often involve several groups fighting one another.

Thus over the full time period studied, from 1400 to the present, Islamic groups were involved in a significant share of incidents of political violence. However, Western Christian groups participated in wars at a rate at least a third and probably more above that of the Islamic groups. Fighting between the two groups was common, but more so for Islam. Just under forty percent of wars involving Islam, involved a fight with Western Christendom, while Western Christendom fought less than 20 percent of its wars with Islamic participation. Presuming that Muslims see all Christians as more or less the same, another quarter of the wars of Islam were with Orthodox groups for a total of wars with Christian groups of near 65 percent..

Of particular importance in deciding which of these presumptions – long term propensity to violence or a time specific propensity – is most nearly descriptive of intrinsic tendencies, is that the policy responses to Islam will be different dependent on which pattern is deemed more valid. If Islam has a continuing pattern of a higher tendency to resort to violence, then others, must be prepared to fight for inevitably that fighting will be necessary. Conciliatory moves may do little to assuage conflicts in such a case. On the other hand, if the current surge in Islamic participation in violence is cyclical in nature and related to resurgent fundamentalism and perhaps as well to a search for stability in new political entities freed from colonial rule, then non-military responses can be much more appropriate.

The data I present elsewhere on cyclical tendencies in the intensity of commitment to meta-ideological truths provide the basis for suggesting that the current fundamentalist urge in Islam could be the cause of the current wave of violence. I present, with partial validation, a theory or concept of surge and counter surge in reform/revolutionary beliefs with a half cycle currently in the range of 25 to 35 years. These two observations would support an assumption of decline in Islamic militancy within the next two or three decades.

Accepting that conclusion, patience in waiting for a more conciliatory Islam and avoiding in the meantime violent conflict as much as possible in the expectation of changing attitudes in the not too distant future would make sense. This is a very important conclusion if accepted. In some ways this would be the antithesis of the lessons learned at Munich by Chamberlain and company. I would like to re-iterate that one time lessons derived from behavior in single events devoid of context are as likely to be wrong as otherwise.

Apart from this patience, moves that might hurry along the demise of the more strident fundamentalism would be well worth considering. Assuming as seems rather clear that a good part of the surge in fundamentalism derives from resentment at recent European/Christian domination and perceived bias against Islam, then as second and in some cases third generation leaders come onto the Islamic scene, it becomes important to create a better image of the West in their minds. Respect is of course always part of that. Support of Muslims in Kosovo is very functional in this sense, apart from having a good moral base as well.

The issue of the intrinsic propensity to violence in Islamic culture is of both academic and policy interest.

In the short run study of the 20^th century Islam proved violent, over the long term 600 year period Christianity proved more violent. Are there other sub-divisions of these periods in which there is a propensity for violence, or non-violence by one or the other of these two cultures? I looked at six intervals of 100 years each to see if results would vary. For this exercise, I expanded the coding by including Asian or Other groups. Others would be any group not meeting the conditions of Islamic, Christian or Asian. These were primarily American Indian or African groups.

As is the usual case in exploratory research, I answered the question(s) that I had in mind and found several unexpected relationships and patterns that answered unasked questions. The table below shows the initial findings from this exploration.

Years	Muslim	West Christian	Orthodox Christian	Muslim vs Muslim	Muslim vs West Christian	Muslim vs Orthodox Christian	Asian	Other	total wars
1400-1499	38	88	15	14	15	10	30	1	135
1500-1599	44	79	14	13	20	5	35	7	126
1600-1699	38	97	17	13	15	8	30	19	135
1700-1799	33	85	19	15	13	6	37	24	126
1800-1899	55	216	32	13	28	22	39	78	259
1900-1999	97	133	45	40	28	20	49	39	248
total	305	698	142	108	119	71	220	168	1029

Going beyond the question of the warlike tendencies of Islam and Christianity, the table shows some important other patterns. For the 400 years from 1400 to 1799, examined on a century by century basis, there was a remarkably constant level of warfare, with regional, religious group participation also relatively constant. Muslim groups were involved in about 0.4 wars per year, Western Christian group in almost 0.90 wars per year with Orthodox Christians adding another 0.15 wars per year. Muslims shared their fighting more or less equally between other Muslims and Western Christian groups, each at about 0.15 per year. Asian nations were involved in 30 to 35 wars per century over this entire time period.

Some may ask is an understanding of historical patterns at all relevant in grasping the meaning of current patterns? I would suggest that the answer to this question is emphatically yes and refer the reader to recent events in India involving disputes between Hindu and Muslim over a temple/mosque site that dates back 500 years, to the Serb/Muslim conflict in Kosovo the resurgence of which is said to relate to a battle that took place in the 14^th century and of course to the crusades of nearly a thousand years ago which are still vividly remembered in Arab culture.

Even with some rough correction for population differences the Western Christian participation rate in wars until quite recently is clearly above that of Muslims, suggesting that if there is a greater propensity to warfare associated with religion in these cases, the warlikeness laurel wreath would go to the Christians. This emphasizes that Islam, at least in most of these 600 years, was not a relatively warlike culture, about 60 percent of wars in which Muslims participated involved them fighting either Western or Orthodox Christians – around 15 to 20 percent of the greater number of wars with Christian involvement saw Christians fighting Muslims. Thus, absent some significant bias in these data, Islam was relatively (compared to Christians) peaceful for four hundred years from 1400 to 1800. And during this time period there was a remarkable stability in overall warfare levels and distribution of participation.

The 19^th century saw a major change in this pattern of stability. The number of wars doubled in the 19^th century compared to the 18^th century. Western Christian participation already high at over 60 percent of wars before 1800 went up to close to 85 percent during the 19^th century. There was a rise in Muslim wars, but only in proportion to the increase in wars overall, and most of the increase in Muslim wars was in wars with Western Christendom. A tripling of participation rate from the Other Groups category also occurred during this century.

One continuing pattern remains. Western Christendom was fighting in many more wars than were the Muslims. The intra-Islam conflict remained at pre 19^th century rates of 13 to 15 conflicts per century. The increase in Muslim participation in wars was more than accounted for by the increase in conflicts with Christendom. Thus, for five hundred years I cannot find the evidence of a bloody Islam as suggested by Huntington.

With the advent of the 20^th century still more changes took place. Western Christian participation in wars by number [WWI and WWII were massive although counting only as one war each in this coding] fell by almost 50 percent while the Muslim rate of participation in wars almost doubled. The fall in the West’s participation in wars would be significant but somewhat less if the two world wars were counted as multiple wars which in many senses they were. Intra-Muslim warfare more than doubled. Still Muslim participation in wars remained below that of Western Christian groups, even when wars as massive as WWI and WWII are counted as single events.

Looking within the 20^th century we do see some support for Huntington’s conclusions (see the table below). There is a trend over the century with Western Christendom involving itself in fewer and fewer wars, while Islam is increasing its participation rate steadily. Finally in the last quarter of the century Muslim rates surpass those of Western Christendom, by a substantial margin. Muslim versus Western Christendom wars, however, fall to about half of the traditional rate. Intra-Muslim conflict rates double over the traditional rates of 10 to 12 percent before 1800 and quadruple or more over the rates shown in the 19^th century. The trend for lower rates of participation in war for Western Christendom is steady throughout the century and the upward trend for Islam is similarly steady throughout the century. Civil wars related to finding stable political patterns in states created in colonial years and newly freed may well account for much of the increase violence.

Years	Muslim	West Christian	Orthodox Christian	Muslim vs Muslim	Muslim vs West Christian	Muslim vs Orthodox Christian
1400-499	29	66	11	10	11	7
1500-599	35	63	11	10	16	4
1600-699	28	72	10	10	11	6
1700-799	26	68	15	12	10	5
1800-849	20	83	15	6	9	8
1850-899	22	84	10	4	12	9
1900-949	31	67	30	9	17	9
1950-974	41	54	8	15	9	7
1975-999	47	38	15	25	7	10

Is Huntington’s description of bloody Islam born out? In the short run, literally yes, although mildly so. And it is only when accompanied by a fall in Western war participation rates that Islam becomes relatively bloody. Thus, Islam’s relative bloodiness might be thought of as much a result of Christian fatigue with wars and the consequent decline in the West’s war participation rate as from Islam’s bloodiness.

It is widely acknowledged that there is a fundamentalist surge in Islamic beliefs in the late 20^th century. I argue that the relative warlikeness characteristic of the current situation is not likely to be sustained, but rather seems likely to return to traditional levels. In particular it seems difficult to argue that intra-Islam conflict will be sustained at current levels. In some measure, as in the Christian religious wars, the conservatives and reformers will tire of the battle and compromises on both sides will slowly bring them closer together. And one can argue that the West’s recent peacefulness may also be transitory. So, I suggest a rejection of Huntington’s implications of a sustained violent propensity in Islam.

The fall in Christendom’s participation in wars is a phenomenon worth understanding for both Christians and non-Christians. For half a millennia or longer, more than half of wars involved at least one Christian group. For a period of over a century (the 19th) this participation rate approached 85 percent. While the number of wars has been growing the predominant war makers of the past appear to be closing up shop. Moreover, within Western Christendom the locus of war making is shifting significantly. At the end of the 19^th century, 75 percent of the wars recorded involved at least one participant with a heritage of Western Christendom. Of these, almost 90 percent were from Europe or North America. By the end of the last century, Christendom’s overall participation rate was down to 37 percent. If we look only at North America or Europe, the participation rate was a very low 20 percent (see the next table).

years	Total Wars	Total Involving West Christian	Involving Europe/North America	Involving Latin America
1870-1900	84	63	56	7
1970-2000	101	37	20	17

It was not possible to record issues leading to war on a participant by participant basis with the information available for this research. Thus, the issues cited are recorded by war if the issue is attributed as a factor in deciding to fight for any of the participants in that war. Two groups fighting one another may well have different aims and/or different sources of tension. For example, group A may have undertaken a fight in retaliation for terrorist raids on its people while Group B will be fighting for political independence. Thus, in this work citations of variations in issues for different categories of war can describe how certain types of wars differed but cannot ascertain the views of the individual combatants involved. Nonetheless, certain inferences can be made about the views of individual combatants by comparing wars of different types.

For example, religious friction is cited as an issue involved in wars for 55 to 60 percent of wars involving Islamic groups, regardless of the opposition. In contrast, in wars involving Western Christian groups, but no Islamic nations, religious issues occur only about 19 percent of the time. The contrast undoubtedly reflects the all encompassing nature of Islam since it represents both a religion and rules which are meant to apply to virtually all phases of life. In contrast, Western Christendom has for several centuries espoused separation of Church and State, in greater or lesser degree. In another difference, while political philosophy was seldom listed as an issue in fights involving Islamic groups, this was an issue in which Christian groups found great importance (23% of wars).

Apart from these differences the patterns in the politics of warfare are not greatly different between the Islamic and the Christian nations. Each fight about half of their wars as sovereign affairs. About half of wars are civil. The non-religious issues such as economic discrimination, trade, race and strategic power concerns occur some what more often in the Western wars, but the differences are not pronounced.

Looking at the full time period can demonstrate fundamental differences in the two cultures and help demonstrate long standing patterns of conflict. However, even the most rigid of belief systems show changes over time. Changes in beliefs will be reflected in different patterns in warfare. Another factor is also important. Rulers who have much to say about the when and the why of war are, more often than not, persons with the capability to acquire power that at least has a large secular element. The motivations of rulers do not commonly reflect those of the true believer segment of society. Consequently their motivations and therefore the factors in warfare are more likely to reflect the times in which they rule.

Examining the 19^th and 20^th centuries we see major shifts in the patterns of Islamic and Christian wars, pattern shifts beyond simply in the changing frequency of participation already noted. In the 19^th century wars between Western Christian and Islamic groups (at 32 in number) represented 57 percent of Islam’s wars, but only 15 percent of the wars engaged in by Western Christendom.

The 20^th century saw a very sharp change in both Christian and Islamic warfare rates. Islam’s number of wars almost doubled. However, the increase in Islam’s apparent warlikeness was not aimed at Western Christendom. In the 19^th century there were 32 wars involving direct fighting between Islamic and Western Christian groups, this number fell very slightly to 29 in the 20^th century. That is, the expansion in fighting by Islamic groups was directed at groups other than those of Western Christendom.

In the 19^th century there were only 13 wars in which Islamic groups fought other Islamic groups. This number tripled to 41 in the 20^th century. In the 20^th century Islamic groups have fought one another more often than they have engaged a Western Christian group. Islamic wars that did not involve any Christian group increased almost nine fold from 6 in the 19^th century to 53 in the 20^th century – strongly influenced by the instability exhibited in the newly independent nations of Asia.

The Islamic pattern of religious issues as central in warfare remains at about the 60 percent level in the 20^th century. Western Christianity was involved in wars, almost all with Islam, in which religion was an issue in only 10 percent of cases by the 20^th century. What may be ans important precursor of change in Islam is that political philosophy is cited as an issue in 20 percent of the wars of Islam by the 20^th century. This is up from only 4 percent a century earlier, which may be indicative of some secularization taking place in the Islamic world.

Between the wars of the 19^th and 20^th centuries there were major changes in the political structures of those involved. While Turkey’s eastern Mediterranean and Balkan empires were breaking up in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries, Western Christendom was maintaining and expanding its position in North Africa and Asia, with break-up not occurring in large measure until the second half of the 20^th century. These trends were reflected in the warfare of Islamic nations. In the 19^th century 57 percent of the wars involving Islamic participants were at least partly sovereign in nature and only 16 percent involved purely civil war. In the 20^th century, the numbers were reversed at 32 and 60 percent, respectively. In the West civil wars were even more common in the 20^th century reaching 77 percent of conflicts involving the West outside of their disputes with Islam. The structures of societies were clearly changing.

While the 19^th century saw the West repeatedly engaged in wars with the aim of gaining political control, this type of conflict had almost disappeared by the mid 20^th century. Also by the 20^th century trade issues, which had been meaningful earlier, were almost gone in wars between the West and Islam. Strategic power issues remain steady, although at a rather low level.

This section is written from a perspective that derives from a Western Christian heritage, although I have lived in two Arab countries and in Afghanistan and worked extensively in Malaysia. Clearly Islam is not a homogeneous grouping. There are major ethnic and racial differences within the Islamic community, probably more so than in Christianity. Even more there are very large differences in level of development and in attitudes toward modernity. Yemen (Arab) and Afghanistan (mixed but heavily Pashtun) are poor, rather isolated and often radically conservative. Indonesia, the largest Islamic country by population, is Malay and very liberal by Islamic standards. Pakistan and Iran are among the next largest Islamic countries in population and are clearly not part, geographically nor culturally, of the Arab heartland where Islam originated.

The prevalent recent interface between Western Christendom and Islam is around the Mediterranean where Arabs prevail – in recent centuries the interface with Turkish Islam has been with Eastern, Orthodox Christianity. Often it is the Arab that the West thinks of when forming a mental image of Islam. The Arabs control oil, recently shed Western colonialism, are in conflict with Israel and are seen as the major terrorists of the world (even though Osama Bin Ladin was protected by the Afghan Taliban, he is a Saudi Arab by birth).

Arabs represent about 23 percent of Islam in terms of population. It is instructive to examine their participation in violence if one wishes to look at Bloody Islam to use Huntington’s term. Over the entire time period Arabic groups were involved in only 4 percent of all violent conflicts; that participation did increase to 10 percent in 20^th century wars. Arabic groups also increased their participation rates in wars involving Islam against Islam, from 16 percent in the 19^th century to 29 percent in the 20^th century. That is Arabs participated in wars involving Islamic groups at a rate about in proportion to their share of the population. In wars in which Islamic and Western Christian groups fight, Arabic participation has fallen dramatically in the 20^th century from close to 70 percent in earlier years to a lower but still substantial 27 percent. Arab groups in the 20^th century fight other Islamic groups just under half of the time they fight – this is a tripling over earlier years.

In terms of issues, Arab groups are involved in fights related to religion almost 70 percent of the time in recent years – high even by the standards of Islam. Oil clearly shows in the data with strategic issues rising from 10 percent in earlier years to 35 percent in the 20^th century. Arabic wars of recent times relate to religious tensions and to oil.

These numbers on Arabic participation in violence involving Islamic nations and groups tend to emphasize the extent of diversity in the Islamic community. In most recent times, Arabic groups have greatly increased their involvement in fights with other Islamic groups. And despite the frequent expressions of animosity on both sides of the cultural divide, with the disappearance of European colonialism in Arabic areas, the number of fights between Arab and Western Christendom has fallen slightly. The focus of Arab violence has moved sharply away from the West. Will this trend be sustained as the Islamic fundamentalists attempt to build conflict with the West – perhaps to reduce intra-Islamic conflict by focusing on the external enemy?

Over the long term Islamic groups have participated in war at a rate somewhat below that of Western Christian groups. It must be accepted that part of this difference could be related to a bias in the data toward events recorded in Western languages. I have, however, no firm basis for asserting there is a bias, nor if there is one to give a firm estimate of its magnitude. I would think that some very small, largely internal conflicts which are recorded for Western Europe would, because of both language differences and lesser familiarity with local history, be under reported for Islamic societies. In looking at the rates of very small incidents recorded for Western Cultures it would appear that the bias, if present, should be somewhat less than 10 percent, although that is a crude estimate.

Islamic participation in warfare increased dramatically after the middle of the 20^th century to the point that Islamic involvement rates, corrected for population, exceeded those of Western groups by a substantial margin. Consequently there is some basis for considering Islam to be rather militant at the current time. However, it might be equally valid given the existing patterns to say on a relative basis that the West has become more peaceful or perhaps less militant, rather than focusing on an increased militancy for Islam. There has been no increase, in fact a very small decrease, in Islamic wars with the West during the past century. It is also reasonable to suppose, given the cyclical patterns seen in the data on violence overall, that the militancy may well erode with the maturation of the next generation.

The detailed look at the more recent violence suggests many changes over time. Changes have occurred in rates of participation in violence, in targets groups in violence and in issues. In addition there have been changes in sub-groups with Turkish Islam bowing out of much of the violence, with Arabs and Asian Islam increasing their proportions. And of course the West has sharply reduced its participation in violence.

Saddam, Nasser, Osama Bin Ladin, Qaddafi, Arafat are names associated with hostility toward the West and with Islamic militancy. All are Arabic. Moreover, with relative peace and tolerance established between Turkish Muslims and the West, the threatening Muslim group that borders the West and controls a large portion of the West’s oil sources is that of the Arabs. It is possible that the perceptions in the West of Islamic militancy are most related to the Arabs.

Again, in the recent past Arabic participation in Muslim violence has surged. But fights between Arabs and the West declined very marginally from the 19^th to the 20^th centuries. Most Arabic fighting does not involve direct confrontation with the West, unless one wishes to count Israel as part of the West. Thus, it would appear to be at least questionable to associate active militancy toward the West (as opposed to rhetorical militancy) with Arabic groups.

In terms of issues worth fighting for, the striking feature of Islam is the prevalence of religious beliefs as an indicated basis for warfare. It is probably here that real and apparent militancy prevails. A primary conclusion from an examination of trends in warfare is that ethnic/religious hostility is at an unusually high level at the start of the 21^st century. Such hostility tends to be both brutal and enduring. Jews and Arabs, Indonesians and Timorese, Pakistanis and Indians, Sudan Muslims and Christians, and ethnic cleansing in the Balkans, all engender images of inhumanity quite inconsistent with the fundamental values of all religions, including Islam. But, in the above list of conflict pairs there are no dyads that are directed at the West. And it is not at all evident that Islam shows more brutality than is the case for its opponents.

Although my personal inclination would be to think of Islam, with its adherence to Jihad, as being more warlike than Christianity, the objective data provides no support for that inclination. Quite to the contrary to the extent that these data are at all representative of real world events, prior to the middle of the 20^th century, Islam participated in far fewer wars than did Western Christendom. This is a fact that is not easily brushed aside. I tend to conclude given the general changes over relatively short periods of time in the politics of conflict that we cannot speak of Bloody Islam -- based on an objective review of all data on violent conflicts.

A major objective in undertaking this research was to determine if a cyclical pattern in the intensity of violence in the world system, detected in previous research with less adequate data, would be shown in an examination using these more complete records. I expected not only to find a long term cyclical pattern in the intensity of violence, but I expected it to be related (causally) to the rise (and fall) of ideologies that strove to define the correct social/moral structure for all society. I shall call these sweeping ideologies by the term meta to differentiate them from beliefs that are not meant to apply universally. The latter belief types I will refer to later using the term micro or we/they.

In previous work I had observed that the overall violence level in the world system had consistently been at its highest during those times when revolutionary ideologies were having their strongest effect on the belief structures of society. Each of these periods of intense violence was characterized by disputes over an ideology that was meant both to apply universally and to bring about a re-ordering of society at large into a more just form.

I had posited from the earlier research that the struggle between conservative and reformer over the extent to which the then current meta-ideology was to prevail, created violence and chaos levels that brought about a conservative backlash. Thus, the meta-ideology effectively contained the seeds of its own destruction in that the disruptions caused in the existing order by believers seeking to force reform, created the conditions of uncertainty and fear that promoted increased support for a return to the greater security that is associated with promotion of the status quo. The consequence was that the reform periods characterized by high violence levels were followed by periods of relative quiet on both the ideological and the violence fronts.

I found the expected patterns in these data which cover both a much longer period and a greater breadth than the materials I had worked with before. The first step in determining the regularity of rise and fall in intensity and revolutionary fervor for this investigation was to divide the 600 years for which I had data into seven sub-intervals using known occasions of meta-ideology surge and retreat. The intervals are:

Status Quo 1 – 1400 to 1520, prior to Martin Luther’s open break with the Church.

Revolutionary 1 – 1521 to 1650, from Luther’s open break with the Church through the Treaty of Westphalia, aimed at ending the religious strife.

Status Quo 2 – 1651 to 1775, post Westphalia until the forceful promulgations of concepts of representative government that were behind the American and French Revolutions.

Revolutionary 2 – 1776 to 1850, from Rousseau and Paine through the final gasps of revolutions spawned by their thoughts in 1848-49.

Status Quo 3 – 1851 to 1913, post republican strife, until the start of the violent struggles over Marxist-Leninist concepts of a more equitable and allegedly more efficient economic structure.

Revolutionary 3 – 1914 to 1989, the Communist/Capitalist struggle which I have chosen to end with the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Status Quo 4 – a rump session beyond the cold war until the end of the data in 1999/2000.

Revo Periods -- The three revolutionary eras (REVO 1,2,3) are those in which I expect to find surges in the intensity of violence, a greater prevalence of ideological disputes being cited as reasons for war and a greater prevalence of incidents of civil conflicts. To test this expectation, I made simple summations from the descriptions of all the war/violence incidents, including in a time period all the incidents of violence that started during the specified years.

To create an index of the intensity of warfare during a time interval, I computed for each incident a composite intensity measure by multiplying the duration of the conflict times the number of groups participating and multiplying that result times the square of the casualty index. This index of intensity, on a per war basis, was summed over all incidents starting during the time period. Because I was interested in the intensity of overall conflict in the system, not the intensity of violence in individual wars, I divided this sum by the number of years in the interval to obtain an indication of average intensity of violence on-going throughout the interval. This index provided a measure of the relative levels and the extent of violence found on a per year basis throughout the world system.

To obtain measures of ideological ferment, for each interval, I summed the number of citations of ideological disputes and the number of civil war fights and divided these sums by the total number of wars initiated during the time period. These calculations provided indexes of the relative prevalence of each of these two issues in the wars that took place during each of the intervals studied.

The patterns shown in the data are as expected. Figure 1 shows that the three revolutionary time periods (REVO 1,2,3) all exhibit an upsurge in the average of the composite intensity of violence index compared to the status quo (S Q 1,2,3) eras that preceded them. Each revolutionary era is moreover followed by a time period with lesser levels of violence (S Q 2,3,4). Even more indicative of the change in human belief structure that occurs in a periodic pattern are the indications of meta-ideology dispute prevalence during the revolutionary time periods (see Figure 2). During the three revolutionary eras (REVO 1,2,3) almost thirty percent of wars were said to have meta-ideological disputes as one of the issues in conflict in the war. In contrast in the first three status quo intervals (S Q 1,2,3) meta-ideological issues occurred in an average of only 6 percent of wars, a difference of 5 to 1 in relative prevalence. Also reflecting the ideological conflicts, civil wars were 50 to 60 percent more prevalent in REVO 1,2 and 3 than in S Q 1,2 and 3 (see Figure 3).

As a further check on the validity of my interpretation, I took these three indicators – intensity of violence, frequency of civil wars and frequency of ideological disputes -- of revolutionary intensity, normalized them, and computed an average for the normalized values of the three over each full time period. The results are shown in Figure 4 which clearly shows that the index of the reform oriented variables taken together shows much higher values in the three

periods which I defined from outside sources as revolutionary. The average level of this composite indicator is more than twice as high during the revolutionary eras than it is during the status quo years. The index has an average value of 1.4 in Revo eras compared to just under 0.6 for the S Q years.

As expected, there are three periods of relatively intense violence and during these periods the conflicts center on meta-ideology and form of government. Equally importantly there are extended periods alternating with the revolutionary eras in which violence is lower and in which ideological and civil conflicts are relatively rare.

Since these data cover virtually all known incidents of sanctioned violence there is a conclusive demonstration that periodically violence levels in the world system have surged. These surges are concurrent with known upswings in meta-ideologies advocating fundamental reform. The posited surges in reform ideologies which define the dates specified for each era came from outside data. Confirmatory evidence for the postulated relationships between system violence and ideology was, however, found from within the data set. That is, historical references were used to define start and end dates for the revolutionary periods. But, the citations of issues in conflict from the descriptions of violent incidents in this data set are used to show that ideological disputes characterized the specified revolutionary eras.

As a constraint on the interpretation of this representation of the world conflict system, prior to about 1650 the ideologies depicted here are derived from Western thinking and tend to impact primarily on Western groups. In the years after about 1700 the ideas remain Western derived, but have impact more or less throughout the world as Western influence spread across most of the globe.

Status Quo Periods -- Of course, the upsurge in intensity of violence during the revolutionary periods means that things are, relatively, more peaceful during the non-revolutionary or status quo periods. In order to build a theory of the oscillation in conflict and violence it is necessary to understand what types of conflict characterize these less violent periods – for there are no periods in which conflict and violence are absent.

The downward surge in the intensity of violence is demonstrated in the charts on intensity shown earlier. Following the three revolutionary eras specified, the down surge in violence is accompanied by a sharp decline in citations of meta-ideological issues in wars – by 84, 59 and 70 percent in S Q 2, 3 and 4 respectively. These are times characterized by few disputes over the fundamental shape society should assume.

For another explicit change expected in the status quo periods, it is among the big powers that overall ideological forces are formed and promulgated, thus I expect the big powers to be less involved in conflicts during status quo eras. This is the case. With basic beliefs no longer as driving issues, big power participation rates in wars are about 30 percent less in the status quo eras. This is an important finding -- that of meta-ideological quietude at the big power level. I will return to this relationship later.

Other issues characterize the conflicts leading to war during these time periods. The following table shows the percentage change in frequency of certain issues from the Revolutionary era preceding each of the Status Quo eras.

A Fundamental Finding -- The issues shown during the status quo eras are not meta-ideology issues, but are rather issues of cultural difference, or what might be termed micro-ideology issues. This is important as a conclusion, for it leaves war as idea/belief based even in the status quo periods, just as in the revolutionary eras. But, in the absence of disputes over definitions of systems of universal justice the wars were derived from beliefs with a less embracing coverage. I shall refer to these as micro or we/they beliefs. Periods of relatively intense violence derive their violence from meta-ideologies advocating overall reform and engage the major powers. Violence in the eras of less intense overall system violence derives from ideas of in-group vs out-group and engage the lesser powers predominantly.

Status Quo Years	Frequency of Race as Issue	Frequency of Discrimination as Issue	Frequency of Terror as Issue	Relative Participation of Big Powers
2. 1651 to 1775	up 136%	up 200%	up 40%	up 13%
3. 1851 to 1913	up 47 %	up 20%	up 55%	down 27%
4. after 1989	up 39%	up100%	up 15%	down 37%

To use a term cited by Henry Kissinger in his memoirs when referring to the end of the 20^th century and one popularized by Samuel Huntington, these eras following reformist periods show a high frequency of issues that appear to be associated with fault line conflicts -- issues such as race, discrimination and terrorism. I did not start with this concept in undertaking this research so that the variables which I coded do not cover these types of issues as fully as might be the case, nonetheless terror, race and discrimination are attributes we see in today’s conflicts, which both Kissinger and Huntington refer to by the term fault line.. If we ignore the first revolutionary time period in which the West was struggling with the form of its fundamental religion, Christianity, we also find that religion is a relatively common issue in conflict in the years that I call status quo.

Another Fundamental – Power issues, issues which are deemed by realist purists to be rather ideology free, are present throughout the 600 hundred year interval. They occur somewhat more often in revolutionary periods when the big powers are apt to feel threatened ideologically, but also can found for both the lesser powers and the big powers when undue disruptions are threatened during the status quo years. But, compared to the frequencies of 20 to 40 percent for the major belief related factors cited as underlying conflict, the power issues seem to run in the frequency range of 10 percent low and 16 or 17 percent high. That is belief related issues are cited as major factors in war more than twice as often as are power issues.

The argument is made here that it is not coldly rational balancing of power that drives the conflicts that cannot be resolved through peaceful means. Mankind exhibits a universal behavior of seeking beliefs and ideas that justify existence, which are set out to define morality and which define group membership and allegiance. Understanding and managing violence requires perhaps more balancing of beliefs than of power. In the following sections I will layout a theory of how these ideas vary over time and cause the oscillation in levels of warfare and the distribution of conflict factors over time.

The above work is what might be termed an examination of the facts of the history of political violence. The data used are on the objective end of the scale and the relationships presented are reproducible by others given the data. The next sections derive from those facts, but the interpretation extends beyond the facts. I will refer to reviews of the major political theories found in Western thinking during these years to develop support for the concept of warfare which I am putting forward. I used these reviews of Western thinking in a selective, although in a very careful manner, but did not attempt to create a systematically recorded set of data. Thus, in measure, I remove my bean hat, give up counting and place a chapeau aimed at scholarly interpretation of history, ala the traditional traditionalist.

Contingent on the validity of these data, it can be stated factually that a long term cycle in intensity of violence exists in the history of the West. The period of the cycle has been shortening as technological change has accelerated. The cycle appeared to be about 150 years in length five centuries ago and may be as short as 75 years more recently.

Second the upside of the cycle can be related to known periods in which reformist concepts (concepts believed in fervidly enough to be called ideologies) were widely held. This again is a statement, although not grounded in the data collected, which reflects almost universally accepted descriptions of historical patterns, consequently it can also be safely termed fact.

The downside is causally related to the chaos of the upside. Conservative reactions (backlash) against extended chaos of reformist periods are widely accepted in the historical literature. I will seek to provide concrete support of the conscious development of conservative ideologies to counter the perceived chaos of the revolutionary periods.

Underlying these words is an apparent presumption that the cycle of rise and fall in violence intensity relates to rise and fall in basic beliefs about overall social order in the World – perhaps more precisely to social order in the West. In an effort to clarify, at least for American audiences, the direction of the above arguments I will refer to the U.S. civil rights movement that became strong in the 1960s. There was following World War II a slow realization of the obvious, to almost all of right and left, racial injustice and discrimination in American society. In this case the basic belief in equality of opportunity and treatment was part of society’s dogma regarding what would be judged a fair and just society, it only took the extension of the dogma to cover the black citizen in America to create a perceived need for reform. During the 1950s and 60s a public receptiveness developed for those advocating reform and reform movements gained momentum. There was a shift in the population’s attitudes with people moving more to the reformist end of the scale of public values.

Progress was made on what came to be called the civil rights movement with legislative actions and changes in public attitudes. But many opposed the reforms which were taking place. With the need for reform being encased in dogma, the conflict between the reformists and the conservatives became intense, resulting in some violence and much unrest. Many changes were nonetheless instituted over a decade or two. Then the momentum began to fade. The conservatives began to argue 1) that progress had been made reducing the need for further reform and 2) that the chaos and occasional violence associated with the struggle for still more change was intolerable. There was as well resentment from the white majority against the privileges being accorded the black community, many members of which did not behave well in terms of white cultural norms. Some reversals occurred, but largely the movement simply weakened and the advances made were sustained in large measure. The movement’s institutions remained, but stabilization of the new order became the priority of the day.

In a much more delimited and thereby comprehensible microcosm, this American social conflict situation contains the majority of the elements of the theory which will be put forth as explaining the rise and fall of violence in the overall Western belief system. I will now apply these elements to the larger picture.

I have empirically demonstrated that over a very long interval of history there are extended and continuous intervals in which warfare is more intense and widespread. These are periods in which issues of meta-ideology are most prevalent. Between these intervals in which there are revolutions in values, there are times in which warfare is at significantly lower intensity levels, in which there is little evidence of dispute over the fundamental shape of society. The patterns suggest that periods of intense political violence have derived in significant measure from ideas and beliefs that have been promulgated in order to create a more just human environment. The patterns further suggest that there is an orderly oscillation in warfare intensity that is continuing today. There is, I believe, a near universal regularity in human behavior which will explain this pattern.

As many have observed man has a fundamental ambivalence in values. He wishes to do what is good given social values and he wishes to serve self. These two values are commonly in opposition to one another within one individual. Abstractly, the opposing values can be thought of as running along a single scale with one end labeled serving self and the other serving public values, such that an increase/emphasis of one implies a reduced priority for the other..

It is acknowledged that there are many variations in both self and public values. For example, on the self end of the scale the often related values of security and low risk which some prefer will produce somewhat different behavior from that shown if the self values tend to rate excitement or power highly. On the public or altruistic end of the scale one of the more obvious variations will be between those who place high priority on secular considerations such as adequate welfare and those who lean toward spiritual values such as conformance to a religious dogma.

However, for simplicity the formulation specified here focuses on a single scale. Much can be captured in explaining broad trends in violence levels with the specification of a simple, single axis value system, emphasizing at one end public values and at the other self or selfish values.

Within a population there will be a distribution of intrinsic values, with some members of the population leaning more to self and some more to public. One would expect a heavier concentration in the center of the scale at which point something close to equal concern is given to self and public values. The tendency to weight self and public values in certain proportions is intrinsic to individuals and can be thought of as being maintained over the long term. However, if these values are only considered as enduring, a model for static behavior in society results. In order to explain the cyclical variations that are shown in the data examined here, another element has to be added to the model to get dynamic behavior.

The individuals in society are presumed to be ambivalent, that is to have both elements of self and selfless (public) in their value system. In making their decisions, all other things being equal, they have an intrinsic level of weighting which they give to the opposing needs on the one hand of supporting public objectives of justice and equity and on the other of serving self. A particular individual can give a greater weighting to his selfish needs than to his public values, or conversely.

In practice the weightings which are assigned depend not only on an individual’s intrinsic leanings. There are extrinsic factors which are defined by the current situation which influence a shift in weights at a particular time. Thus, a time of perceived threat to self, will cause people to shift their weights thereby giving greater attention to self serving and to lessening their concern about furthering the public good. In contrast, when self is not perceived as at risk and when there are perceived injustices of great importance, the weightings can be expected to shift toward concern with serving public values while at the same time downplaying the self, at least relatively. Such a shifting of opinion from a reformist leaning to greater preference for support of the status quo occurred in the American civil rights case as progress threatened some of the majority with loss of position and as perceptions of chaos and some violence created feelings of insecurity.

In the model that I am positing as a means for explaining the causes of the observed cyclical patterns in warfare there are: a) an intrinsic distribution of individuals along the scale of selfish to selfless and b) a time specific induced shift in that distribution that relates to situational factors. Consequent to this positing is a conclusion that the commitment to the time specific value mix of self and public is dynamic – changing with the situation.

The model further presumes an antithetical relationship between the public and the self. There are always the activists seeking a better world and always the selfish seeking reinforcement of the system that they benefit from. Two situational factors, one internal and one external to the system of violence and conflict, appear to influence the views of the middle – whether they will lean toward the committed reformists or the committed conservatives.

For the purposes of illustration of the arguments being made here, let us presume an initial situation of stability in the societal reward system. Thus we enter our model at a time in which society leans toward traditional views. In such a time, there is little threat either of loss of position or loss of life. In this time, the inevitable imperfections of the traditional rules that give advantage to some more than others remain in place. The consequence over time is commonly that them that has gets, since them that has, have understood those rules better. Later we will add a presumption of technology change to reinforce this tendency.

b) there is a growing gap between the rewards taken by them that has and the rewards taken by them that has not.

With the members of society feeling secure and perceiving a growing gap in allocation of rewards, the articulate members of society leaning toward the public end of the value scale find a receptive audience, in the middle, when they advocate their ideas of the reforms needed to reduce the gap in rewards, a gap which they persuasively define as unjust.

That is, a period of perceived security resulting from stability and of lack of change in the societal system (religious, political and economic) provides the fertile ground for the seeds of reform and thus forms the basis for its own demise by fueling reform inclinations.

When such a status quo period has endured for some time, society’s values will have shifted perceptibly toward the reformists. Society begins to respond positively to those advocating changes that purportedly will reduce the perceived (growing) inequities and injustices. New ideas are advocated by the reformists and find a sympathetic ear from those in the great middle. As a consequence, changes that are aimed at benefitting the has nots are undertaken -- following that period of stability.

A reformist era then emerges But, the advocated changes deviate from tradition and commonly will if carried out result in some, usually the then current haves, losing rewards so that others may gain them. The diehards on the self oriented end of the scale oppose the proposed changes and their opposition grows as the reformists become more and more radical as their ideas are accepted by the large middle. The traditionalists and the haves continue to oppose, violently in the extreme case, the reformists.

Three results ensue in the standard case. 1) Tensions and violence cause perceptions of insecurity. 2) Reform efforts have some successes and perceptions emerge that meaningful correction of injustices and inequities have been accomplished. 3) The reform successes are achieved at the expense of many which causes rising resentment. As time progresses, the mass of opinion – responding to 1) the insecurity, 2) the perceptions of reduced injustice and 3) the resentment at relative losses in favor of the has nots -- shifts away from a current concern with public (reform) values and towards a nostalgic view focused on the good old days of stability. Thus, the stage is set for the classic conservative backlash.

Over the period of reformist primacy, the very successes of the reformist and the methods pursued to beat back the traditionalists create the fertile ground for the seeds of conservatism, again the tendencies of the time provide the impetus for its demise.

We have then the central elements of the model. As specified it does seem to have a flaw. The dynamics of the reformist (revolutionary) eras provide a plausible and satisfying explanation for creating the conservative backlash which is a well recognized response to a period of reform. While there is plausibility to the them that has gets assertion as a destabilizing force in stable periods, in a well designed societal system one might expect that the has elements would not have a blatant relative growth in rewards and cause the perceived gap to grow rapidly – perhaps even evolutionary reform would be adequate to sustain a modest leaning of society toward maintenance of tradition. I believe the model can be strengthened by adding another element (technological progression) that I will describe later.

The above refers to the underlying, objective conditions. Such changes in conditions are not sufficient to bring change in my observation. There must be a Burke, a Paine, a Luther (an intellectual if you will) to coalesce the receptive public opinion to a point that action will occur. Intellectuals make opinion, but they also react to public leanings. While they are the catalysts for change they are also captives of the system, responding to the changing objective conditions and seeking to mold public opinion, but also being molded by that opinion. A Rousseau, a Marx cannot “sell” their prescriptions for a more just society until the market is ready for their ideas. The influence of the intellectual must be added to the above summary, as the catalyst that creates action from the public potential that is described.

The intellectuals are ever seeking furtherance of their ideas and personal recognition as thoughtful idealists. The ideas of the reformists are formed and prevail when injustices are most pronounced and when relative stability has created feelings of security. The ideas of the conservative are formed and prevail when injustices are perceived to have been reduced and when the chaos of reform has created insecurity.

These forces define the internal dynamics of the cyclical process. There is an external factor that intervenes to shorten the status quo period. In the modern materialist world, a great portion of the rewards in society come from the economic sector. Spiritual and government efficiency are factors of importance, but it is the weekly paycheck that determines the amount of food, education, medical care and recreation that can be bought. The paycheck tends to over ride other considerations for many people. It may well be, I believe is, that the change in technology that is reflected in the economic sector injects a destabilizing force that brings forward the shift toward public reformist values.

Looking at the two most recent eras, such an explanation seems satisfying. In the industrial revolution that swept the world of the 19^th century, the owners of capital gained huge rewards. While owners’ earnings soared with enhanced production technology, the existing systems for determining the share of the economic output that would go to labor were designed to work with an earlier technology in which the rural sector dominated and it was largely craftsmen who worked off the farm. The consequence was a vast gap in well being between robber baron and industrial worker, a situation which provided a huge impetus in support of a socialized economy to assure a more just distribution of rewards.

In the 19^th century situation described by the above parameters, the need for change was within a national economic system. As the 21^st century emerges, new technology emerging even more rapidly appears to be creating sets of them that has across a nation and leaving members of other nations to be largely has nots. The contemporary turmoil about globalization and north- south wealth may well be the precursors for the new revolutionary ideology that will evolve and be accepted by many, while being opposed by the traditionalists, thus providing the force for a new revolutionary era of intense violence.

I have described a system that powerfully influences violence levels and one that derives from very fundamental beliefs about the correct order for mankind, more or less as a whole. Thus, it involves strongly held beliefs which do not change rapidly

Perhaps the recent more rapid rate of technological change is shortening the cycle. If so, the current status quo period should endure for something on the order of 50 years or less and can be expected to emerge into a time of intense violence by mid-century or earlier.

The earlier discussion focused on the unchanging or cyclical consequence of an internal dynamics that continually generates countervailing forces. An external force of technology development was brought in that tends to prevent continuation of the status quo since economic change is likely to produce benefits that will not be equally shared. This will further fuel desire for reform. But, technological/economic change is progressive, not cyclical. I believe apart from its destabilizing effect new technology influences life values in ways that are progressive such as increasing the value put on human life as medical and income factors reduce life’s insecurity. Or, in another case, religion’s influence on society is undercut when the fear of early death tomorrow is reduced with better health technology. As a greater and greater proportion of society achieves significant education and surplus wealth, the requirement for a more representative form of government increases.

The result from these technological developments is a progressive change in human values that is change, to use a math term, which is monotonic, more or less constantly progressing upward. It brings changes in emphases in political and social philosophy. This progression is plausibly noted in the evolution of issues fought over during the revolutionary eras from the central concept of religion, through the primary political value of form of government to finally the least rigidly held belief of the form to be taken by the economy. If there is progression perhaps these issues have now been in a sense solved. However, the cyclical tendency seems to still prevail and is laid on top of the progressive tendency to give an upward moving overall posture.

In this section I review the development of the intellectual forces that have characterized the three cycles observed during these years.

SQ 1 -- The first 120 years of these data precede the initial revolutionary period, that of the Protestant reformation. No effort was made to examine data that antedates this time period to determine if a pre-occurring revolution might be present. Within that constraint of data, the theory would predict that there should have been an extended period in which meta issues were at a minimum – which is true within the data. Issues associated with meta-ideology occurred in only 5.5 percent of the 157 wars recorded during this time period compared to 18.2 percent in the following revolutionary era’s 181 wars. That is, meta-conflict issues occurred at a rate of only 30 percent of the rate demonstrated in the following revolutionary time period. The only time period with a lower level of conflicts over basic philosophy, was that of SQ 2 following the religious wars, at 2.6 percent. Violence was also at a relatively low level in SQ 1 , which again provides support for the theory from within the data set. The relationships exhibited from within the data set are entirely consistent with the theory developed here.

Stepping outside the data, we should expect to see an increase in the perceived injustices (in this case within the Church) within the system. The late medieval Catholic Church faced a complex and often contradictory set of needs. Over the centuries, the church, particularly in the office of the Papacy, had become deeply involved in the political life of Western Europe. The resulting intrigues and political manipulations, combined with the church's increasing power and wealth, contributed to the erosion of the church’s spiritual role. Abuses such as the sale of indulgences (or spiritual privileges) and relics and the spiritual and moral corruption of the clergy, exploited the pious and further undermined the church's spiritual authority.

William Langer in his massive An Encyclopedia of World History provided a good overview of the prevailing historical views of this era as he wrote of [The Popes] living in splendor and luxury while using their position either to aggrandize their families or to strengthen the temporal position of the Church.” He states, “Of religious leadership there was almost none... Pius II and Sixtus IV, mid to late 15^th century, were noted for their nepotism. Innocent VIII, 1484 to 1492, was the first pope to recognize his children and was reputed to be indolent and altogether corrupt... Langer calls Alexander VI, 1492-1503 ruthless and thoroughly immoral. The Britannica tracks the same events and behavior and notes that Even from a Renaissance viewpoint, his [Alexander VI] relentless pursuit of political goals and unremitting efforts to aggrandize his family were seen as excessive. In September 1493 Alexander created his teenaged son Cesare a cardinal. His son Juan was made duke of Gandía (Spain) and was married to Maria Enriquez, the cousin of King Ferdinand IV of Castile; Alexander VI holds a high place on the list of the so-called bad popes.

In this atmosphere, by the end of the 15th century many held that reform from within Roman Catholicism had been tried and the reformists had failed.

Barbara Tuchman, describes Alexander VI, 1492-1503, in the following devastating terms after 35 years as Cardinal and Vice-Chancellor, his character, habits, principles, or lack of them, uses of power, methods of enrichment, mistresses and seven children were well enough known to his colleagues...[and when he was elevated to the Papacy one remarked] Flee, we are in the hands of a wolf.

The corruption of the Church was further highlighted in the eyes of many non-Italian Europeans by a growing nationalism. There were slow changes in economic technology and structure away from feudalism which produced the beginnings of a significant middle class. Along these lines Langer indicates that the Reformation came not only from the corruption and worldliness of church, but also from the dislike of foreigners by both the Germans and the English. He notes furthermore that the growth of the middle class and of a nascent capitalist economy gave power to people who viewed Roman Catholicism as a restraint on their development. Thus, we have a feature that seems to be part of the move toward revolution, which is of technical and thereby economic change creating new economic classes seeking change to accommodate their new positions.

The distaste for the papacy increased at a time of rising nationalist spirits. The popes, who had long intervened in the politics of Germany, France, and England, faced setbacks when the monarchies in each country acquired new power. In Bohemia, Jan Hus criticized the luxury loving clergy and used nationalism to argue against the Pope’s use of warfare. The sovereigns found a need to assert this power against the papacy and, in most cases, against local clerical representatives of the church.

Although there are ancillary conditions cited -- nationalism and economic change -- the fundamental sources of the Reformation springs from the abuse of privilege within the Church.

In this section I am striving to produce enough evidence to support the plausibility of the explanation offered for the rise and fall in violence. I have made a brief commentary on an extraordinarily complex subject in order to demonstrate the plausibility of the explanation I have offered. More detailed investigations by others will reinforce the validity of the conclusions made here.

In its fundamentals, I have produced evidence for increasing real injustice in part related to technological change as well as evidence of increasing perception of injustices. These are the conditions which, in this exposition, create the drive for fundamental (meta) reform.

REVO 1-- In this period we should expect to see the presence of intense and extended violence as reformists attempt to change the structure of society. Late in the period we would expect signs of revulsion against the chaos and violence that always accompany such efforts to undertake fundamental change.. We also expect to find that reforms of significant dimensions occur. Consequent to these latter two conditions we expect, of course, forces leading to the demise of the revolutionary period.

Addressing the most fundamental of human beliefs the religious reformers, Luther, Calvin, as well as Wycliffe and Hus, helped to bring about changes that were aimed at ameliorating if not eliminating abuses by the church. But, they put many of their ideas for change in absolutist form, leaving little room for compromise. The true believers on either side were willing to fight to impose their views of truth and the more cynical among the leaders would promote the side that favored their position, with violence when believed useful. Consequently there was a period of over a century in which there were repeated and devastating wars in much of Europe. These were wars in which there was conflicts over the position of Church and of religious beliefs in life and state.

Changes did take place. Most prominently a competing Protestant version of Christianity came into being. Still in its infancy, it had acquired none of the barnacles of Roman Catholicism, producing a less corrupt institution with fewer material benefits for its leaders. The threat the Protestant’s brought from the outside as well as perceived needs for change from inside, brought about important reforms from within Roman Catholicism.

In reaction to internal demands for reform and the pressure induced by the growing number of Protestant successes, Paul III convened the Council of Trent in 1545. The Council’s reform recommendations were far reaching. Its conclusions regretted the corruption of the clergy and attempted to limit luxurious living by the clergy and to control the appointment of relatives to Church offices The financial abuses that had been so flagrant in the Church at all levels were brought under better control. New religious orders and other groups were founded to effect a religious renewal, the Jesuits for example.

The reforms in the Church went far to meeting the criticisms which had been primary factors in the rise of the Protestant groups. Between the internal reforms of Roman Catholicism and the alternatives developed by Luther, Calvin and others, the years of the 16^th century saw a reduction in criticism of the Church’s privileged position. We do find as predicted clear evidence of reform that reduced the perceived inequities and injustices.

There was also produced a period of vicious warfare that evolved from the needs of the true believers and of the monarchs to establish either supremacy of one of the religious factions or to create a new atmosphere in which tolerance of religion would be present. It took a century of destruction to finally lay this issue aside. The vicious disruptions of life and welfare that were part of the religious wars are widely acknowledged.

The armies of both sides plundered, leaving whole regions ravaged. To quote Langer the result was Terrible conditions in Germany. Irreparable losses of men and wealth. Destruction of towns and trade. Reduction of population; increase of poverty, retrogradation in all ranks. By 1648 most belligerents were exhausted. Since 1644, representatives of the powers had been talking about terms. Finally in the Treaty of Westphalia, religious tensions in Europe were largely brought under control.

The decades of warfare produced an intense revulsion against the violence that threatened life and status. Appeals for peace met with highly receptive audiences. Again the conditions that are suggested by our theory of cycles in fundamental beliefs are supported.

SQ 2 – The time was now ripe for a conservative reaction, which is what took place in Europe of the 17^th century.

Langer wrote The religious wars also engendered a luxuriant growth of political ideas that in the end provided a strong theoretical basis for the reassertion of royal authority. The Britannica noted the same point, The bitter experience of civil war and its attendant anarchy in France had turned Bodin's attention to the problem of how to secure order and authority in a state. Bodin thought that the secret lay in recognition of the sovereignty of the state. According to him, supreme power is the distinctive mark of the state. This power is unique, absolute in that no limits of time or competence can be placed upon it, and self-subsisting in that it does not depend for its validity on the consent of the subject. Bodin assumed that governments command by divine right because government is instituted by providence for the well-being of humanity.

Of course, the theory of divine and natural law appealed to by Bodin carried the obligation of the sovereign to govern in a just manner. Bodin indicates, the right to rule is subject to principles such as enforcement of the Ten Commandments and protection of the rights of liberty and property of the governed. Nonetheless, The needs of the political situation forced Bodin to give his sovereign virtually unlimited authority.

Thomas Hobbes in England came to similar conclusions in his analysis of requirements for peace and security. In Hobbes’ concept the citizenry must grant authority to a central figure in order to guarantee its own security, a concept brought to the forefront because of the past century of insecurity. Once the sovereign is established, its power, responsible only to God, is absolute.

A set of intellectuals developed a theory that was consciously and explicitly derived to prevent further depredations as seen in the religious wars. For perhaps a century its offerings survived.

As this period of stability moves to its conclusion we should find some evidence of an increasing perception of corruption and injustice in this system. I argue that as a stable system consolidates, society begins to once again note the inequalities that are present and growing.

The weight of evidence appears to be that the [French] monarchy was by the late 1780s doomed to destruction, both from its inability to carry on the absolutist, administrative work formerly accomplished by men like Colbert and by the nature of its critics' desires; the gap separating the Roman Catholic traditionalism of the monarchy and the neoclassical ambitions of nascent public opinion was too wide.

Langer describes the British situation in a pithy commentary on George III, blindly following the traditions of 18^th century England, He built up in Parliament...by the usual means of patronage and bribery a party of King’s friends. Barbara Tuchman provides a devastating critique of the British King’s and Parliament’s abilities to manage the relationship, admittedly a difficult one, with the American colonies. Revenues were a major issue. But, incompetency seems more at fault. George III said to his prime minister that one certainly cannot seriously think that a private gentlemen ...is to stand in the way of an eldest son of an Earl [for government office]. She describes the parliamentarians as venal, narrow-minded, self-righteous and pedantic.

In France Louis XIV bequeathed not national unity but an enlivened and embittered dissent ... [with] a disordered and impoverished state. The monarchs of the day with their petulance, frequent incompetence and almost universal greed destroyed the concept of kingly divinity. At the end of the 18^th century, an aging Louis and the heirs came increasingly under the influence of their mistresses which brought heavy expenditures and a rampant growth in luxurious living at the top. In Spain and Portugal the monarchies produced an equal number of incompetents. Maria I became insane and her son as regent undertook a drastic repression of all revolutionary thought in 1792.

Thomas Paine wrote, ...monarchy, the enemy of mankind and the source of misery, would be abolished. Eliminate the ambitions of kings, and peace would result. Thus, after a century the institution which was to create stability was seen as a major source of social injustice and inequity.

Again economic change seems to have accelerated the process of dissatisfaction with a system increasingly out of keeping with the times. There were the beginnings of the industrial age which created a need for government of a nature unlike that required to manage an uneducated peasantry. There are among the historians of the time the inevitable references to the rising middle class as a factor in discontent with government.

During the years of the second Status Quo period, from 1648 to 1775, we have the essential elements of the theory of rise and fall. The era commenced with a conscious effort by political philosophers to develop a theory, divine right of kings, of government which would produce stability. This characterized the beginning of the epoch. By the latter years, there were increasingly perceptions of injustice, inefficiency and corruption in that ruling system. In the background, economic relations were changing as steam power began to have its influence and the markets developed by empires resulted in the rapid growth of towns and cities.

Revo 2 – To support the concepts offered here we must find at the start of the second revolutionary epoch pronouncement of political concepts which are meant to correct the patent evils of the now discredited monarchies and to replace them with systems of government more in keeping with the economic and social systems of the times. As the epoch evolves we must find recorded an increasing distaste with the violence which has already been shown to exist in the data analyses in the first part of this paper.

The fundamental shift in the political concepts is that the King, having failed his obligations of effective and fair government, is to be shorn of his divine right to office and must recognize that his continuation in office is the result of the social contract with the people. Thinkers argued that sovereignty or divine (more commonly termed natural) will resides with the people.

Man is born free," wrote Rousseau in the Contract Sociale, "yet he is everywhere in chains. And in Émile: God makes all things good; man meddles with them and they become evil. He further wrote that Those who are associated in it take collectively the name of people, and severally are called citizens, as sharing in the sovereign power, and subjects, as being under the laws of the state. He promulgated and promoted the revolutionary concept that the people had an “inalienable” right to have a say in their government.

Paine in a book published in the late 18^th century spoke out effectively in favor of republicanism as against monarchy. In a pamphlet he began as a defense of the French Revolution he evolved an analysis of the basic reasons for discontent in European society and a remedy for the evils of arbitrary government, poverty, illiteracy, unemployment, and war. To the ruling class Paine's proposals spelled bloody revolution and the British government ordered the book banned and the publisher jailed. Paine himself was indicted for treason, and an order went out for his arrest. As noted, he called the monarch, the enemy of mankind and the source of misery...

Obviously, carrying these theories into the realm of reality would require the disenfranchisement of many privileged persons. The true believers in the changes needed to bring a just order were opposed by the many advocates of the status quo. Once again there began the struggle to determine through might who would be judged to be right. Between 1775 and 1848, warfare and unrest reached a level not seen since the peace settlement reached in 1648 in Westphalia.

Exhaustion after the Napoleonic Wars early in that period provoked the initial steps toward the conservative backlash. The Wars had proved a catastrophe for nations such as Denmark, both economically and politically. Copenhagen, the capital and the country's commercial and administrative center, had been devastated by the bombardment of 1807, and Norway had been lost in 1814. Trade had been seriously affected by the blockade of England. Also in Scandinavia the Swedish army unable to defend Finland allowed the Russians to advance as far as Umeå in Sweden. In March 1809 Gustav IV was deposed. Spain suffered widespread devastation as armies fought back and forth across its land. England avoided land battles on its territory but incurred huge and destabilizing economic costs. More than anything, a widespread longing for a quick and cheap peace brought the men of 1809 to power. The revulsion against and fear of instability was widespread as predicted.

The surviving traditional regimes set out to maintain political stability in Europe, relying on what was known as the Concert of Europe. But, the changes that were on-going were too powerful to readily resist. Kings and princes saw themselves severely threatened by the revolutionary thoughts of the people’s will.

De Tocqueville noted in 1835 The spell of royalty is broken, but it has not been succeeded by the majesty of the laws. The people have learned to despise all authority.... Meanwhile The new industrialization had brought bitter industrial relationships, cyclical and technological unemployment and the growth of towns, along with the general increase in prosperity. Protest against... the [accompanying] squalor took many forms.... Revolutions occurred in 1830.

Burckhardt wrote of the period, In Western Europe...politics developed into a general radicalism, namely a way of thinking that attributed all evils to existing political conditions...find salvation in demolishing and rebuilding structure from the foundation....Then came the February Revolution of 1848. In the midst of the general upheaval, it caused a sudden clearing of the horizon....for the June days in Paris almost at once restored the monarchist... party to power.

Slowly the warfare and the threat of demise of the established monarchies brought on a new system designed to promote stability. Fundamental to that new system was the co-opting of the nationalism released by the French revolutionary processes.

Conservatism, historically, has been a response to the principles and activities stemming from the French Revolution. All conservative theorists reject the idea of violent change and uphold the need for order and continuity. Edmund Burke accurately predicted the terrorism and violence of the French revolution. In his reaction against the French revolution he nonetheless built on its ideas of nationhood, but he drafted the ideas for the conservative cause. He noted that a country is not a mere physical locality, but a community in time into which men are born, and only within the existing constitution and by the consent of its representatives can changes legitimately be made.

A need existed to develop a new derivation of a state that would promote stability based on political concepts that incorporated the philosophies that had deposed the divine kings.

SQ 3 – Social theorists used nationalism and the social contract to construct concepts of the State that required the blind obedience of the people in a manner rather analogous to the thoughts of Bodin and others about requirement for obedience to the divine king.

Political theory of the time advocated that states and nations should coincide, a theory which produced modern nationalism. There was A temporary alliance of democracy and nationalism...created. The counter reaction to chaos of the first half of the 19^th century was that of the appeal to national identity as the basis for forming a strong state to which the people owed allegiance in much the same sense that they owed allegiance to king under the principle of divine right. To thinkers such as Hegel, there was the divine principle of the state... There was a difference, however, that probably evolved from the need to accommodate the growing middle class. While the people owed unswerving allegiance to the nation state, the state’s right to rule increasingly reflected the sovereignty of the nation (the people) not divine will. This was a principle widely accepted by the later part of the century.

After the 1848 attempts at revolution, nationalism as a conservative line of thinking became particularly strong in Germany and Italy. German nationalism began to stress instinct against reason; the power of historical tradition against rational attempts at progress and a more just order; the historical differences between nations rather than their common aspirations. The French Revolution, liberalism, and equality were regarded as a brief aberration, against which the eternal foundations of societal order would prevail.

Despite the defeat of the revolutions, important reforms resulted from the 1848 uprisings. Manorialism was permanently abolished throughout Germany and the Habsburg lands, giving peasants new rights. Democracy ruled in France, even under the new empire and despite considerable manipulation universal manhood suffrage had been permanently installed. Prussia, again in conservative hands, nevertheless established a parliament, based on a limited vote, as a gesture to liberal opinion. The Habsburg monarchy installed a rationalized bureaucratic structure to replace localized landlord rule.

These appeals to each nation’s unique and historical attributes provided a basis for internal stability, especially if they were tempered with a leavening of ideas of government deriving raison d’etre from the people. Thus, although in Spain particularly the monarchy tottered and France continued to find unrest, much of Europe showed a peacefulness that had been unknown for more than half a century. The drive for empire also released appeals for aggrandizement to be directed outward and there were many small wars against non-European peoples while the continent experienced what many felt to be an unparalleled and enduring sense of peace and security.

The conservative forces, determined to limit further change, now held wide sway. The stage was set for the next reformist moves. With religion no longer at wide issue and few expressing strong opposition to the rhetoric of some degree of representative government and many concessions made to this fundamental concept from the American/French revolutions, it was perhaps inevitable that the industrial evolution that occurred in this century would bring forward the issue of equity in the distribution of the rewards of this new industrial base.

The solution to one set of needs, for stability, seems to form the basis for the next set of problems. National unification and the obligation of the citizenry to the preservation and even the glorification of the nation formed the basis for a new unrest. The wars of Napoleon based on vast conscript armies caused a backlash, referring back to good old times of more limited wars with smaller armies. The forces of popular identification with the glory of the state were not so easily contained. This was particularly true in Germany, located as it was with little in the way of natural barriers to invasion from either the east or the west. Hegel and Nietzsche idealized the German nation and characterized the state as the embodiment of the nation asserting that the state is the end and the individual as subordinate to, as Hegel put it the march of God in the world.

Roots of Revo 3 -- Economic and technical change were rapid in the 19^th century and the owners of the new enterprises were capturing most of the increased benefits of greater productivity for themselves. One of the most eloquent of those criticizing conspicuous consumption in the face of the deprivation faced by the working class was the American academic Thorsten Veblen. While he wrote profoundly of the disparities and the apparent exploitation by the owners of capital, it was, of course, Marx who articulated reform concepts which captured the imagination of millions.

Once again we see many streams of thought expressing increasing perceptions of inequities and growing inequities in an era of relatively unchanging rules of the game. The capitalists of the period captured a vast share of the growing production base and it was only as the era came toward its close that there seemed to be some evidence of labor improving its position. With the stability and security felt after 40 or 50 years of very low, or distantly located violence, there was a receptive audience for appeals to reform the system to correct the massive injustices that many perceived to exist.

Revo 3 -- These times are recent enough, the social systems similar enough to today, so that we can empathize more readily with the views of the leaders of the time than most of us can with those of earlier times. The conservative forces building on nationalism politically and on the clear advances made in productivity on the economic side allied themselves to maintain whatever vestiges of the old system that had survived. Not unlike the violent collapse of the French monarchy, the remaining vestiges of inherited privilege fell under the violence of the unintended, but probably inevitable given the tensions of the day, World War, referred to at the time as the Great War.

In Spain, Germany, Austria-Hungary, throughout Europe the old system tottered and collapsed over the years following the war. At the far Eastern edge of Europe, a virulent and deceptively virile form of Marxism gained a national basis and a clear kind of international credibility. Once again the era of conservatism, with its appeal to nationalism and retention of much of traditional privilege of aristocracy and of the support for the rights of owners of capital to run enterprises as they saw fit, contained seeds which lead to its demise. Wealth begat wealth and the reforms that might have come as labor became more skilled and demands for labor grew and as unions matured did not occur and bring rapid welfare improvements for the workers commensurate with the gains accruing to owners. Inability and unwillingness to address needed changes spawned support for a five or six decade long struggle pitting those espousing massive state intervention in the economy against those espousing retention of major elements of the economy in the hands of private persons.

With the European system reeling from the devastation of World War I and most of the world pummeled by the great economic collapse of the 1930s, mankind sought correction to the manifest injustices of the capitalist world. Hitler took the ideas of such thinkers as Hegel and built on the traditional concepts of obedience to authority. He propelled Germany into a quest for national glory based on a system in which ultimately the State would control if not own the great industrial enterprises and would dictate to all of society.

Also railing against the system’s inequities and immoralities ( in their views) communists sought, with the USSR in a leadership position, their version of utopia in which all would be owned, people included, by the State. In both the national socialism of Hitler and communism of Stalin, the citizen owed virtually everything to the state. Individual freedoms were severely circumscribed in return for the state’s interventions against the corrupt and evil owners of giant enterprises.

In opposition to these concepts of the supremacy of the state or the nation, there were the great democracies of the world in which the citizens reigned supreme within the constraints of the social contract. The state manifested the will of the people, if not it had no right to exist. Varying degrees of state intervention in the economic structure were tried within the general structure of democracy in recognition of the evils that unbridled capitalism could practice. Early in the rise of communism, nationalization of enterprises involving key sectors – communications, steel, transportation were common among the Western democracies, although later a more balanced posture of developing a restrained or bridled capitalism came to prevail.

Thus, the industrial states of the World aligned themselves into two groups, one side consisting of states espousing democracy/bridled capitalism (euphemistically the Free World) against a set of largely Soviet dominated nations (euphemistically aligned behind the Iron Curtain). Hitler and his national socialism were a temporary aberration as his version of utopia was attempted and failed in the space of a few short years. But for fifty years or more the Free World or the West confronted the Soviet Bloc. While the level of direct violence, after the excesses of the two world wars were laid aside, was limited by the fear of nuclear holocaust, the public fatigue with the threat of that holocaust and with the burden of paying for institutions of mutual deterrence grew just as the aversion to the direct violence in prior revolutionary eras had grown.

As the end of the 20^th century approached the burden of maintaining a revolutionary posture resulted in the peaceful demise of the Soviet Union. The West which had always leaned more to maintenance of the status quo was tired of the contest and delighted to ameliorate if not lay aside its devotion to massive armies of nuclear weapons.

SQ 4 (Rump Session) – This fatigue brought on by a seemingly interminable cold war and fear of nuclear holocaust set the stage for the current epoch which is characterized by the absence of ideological disputes between the major powers. We have lived through this revolutionary epoch. The omnipresent terror of considering a possible failure of deterrence remains a vivid memory.

The other condition presumed necessary for a new status quo epoch is that of accomplishment of significant reform. That has also occurred in ample measure in the 20^th century. After a near disastrous retrenchment into tariff protection in the 1930s, a regime of rather free trade has emerged and brought unparalleled prosperity to those nations prepared to exploit the new trade opportunities. Within the national economy the unbridled power of the owners of capital has been extensively, if less than perfectly, constrained with progressive taxation on incomes, with the growth in union power, with safety regulations and with such policies as unemployment compensation. The massive increases in productivity, rate of technical change and the need for efficient workers also resulted in living standards of the workers in enterprises improving to unprecedented levels.

Thus, with the dismantling of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the dismantling of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Cold War more or less coterminous with REVO 3 can be said to have ended. The big powers see no threat from one another, at least no eminent threat, and are at peace (uneasy, as is characteristic of the anarchic international system). While there are ample disputes which the advocates for change would like to raise to the level of meta concerns, such has, as of this writing, not been achieved. It should be expected that this epoch will endure for at least another generation.

The utility of a theory is ultimately determined by its ability to forecast likely future courses of events. Before attempting to look ahead I believe it helpful to very briefly recount the historical record cited here.

b. a significant record of reforms ensuing from the preceding revolutionary movements

SQ 1 – I did not study the period before 1400 which should have been a revolutionary epoch, thus, it is not possible to comment on the extent that conditions a. and b. prevail. However, I have shown that meta disputes (c) were at a very low level as expected and there was a significant increase in criticisms of the morality of the Church (e). Big power participation in war (d) was 30 percent below that of the following period (REVO 1).

SQ 2 – I cited many expressions of dismay about the destruction from the religious wars (condition a). Reform in the Catholic Church and the establishment of alternative institutions of faith fulfilled the parameter (b). Meta disputes were almost absent as demonstrated from the internal data as was the case for big power participation in wars (conditions c and d). As this epoch matured there was an increasing perception of corruption and inefficiency on the part of the Divine kings (e). Thus all of the conditions that should be present in a status quo era have been shown to be present in SQ 2.

SQ 3 -- The period following the last gasps of the revolutions advocating representative government is a little different. There was a revulsion against war, but it was rather localized and it also was stronger at the end of the Napoleonic wars than at the end of the revolutionary era. However, by 1848 there was both a fatigue with unrest and a sharp increase in concern about their future incumbency on the part of Kings and Nobility. The parameter of a turn against violence and chaos, the general form of condition (a)., was there and a number of citations have been made. Similarly I made several references to reform achievements in government (b). Meta disputes declined sharply as did big power involvement in wars with other big powers, from the internal data (conditions c and d). It was during this interval that the perceptions of the inequities and injustices in the distribution of rewards from the rapidly growing industrial sector grew (condition e).

SQ 4 -- This is a rump session that at this writing is very near its inception. Therefore observing its characteristics is not an easy task. From the internal data, big power participation in war is down sharply (d) and meta disputes (c) are not common among the big powers. The revulsion against the fear of nuclear annihilation is something that almost every one of age 30 and above recalls all too vividly (a). Without, giving citations but again based on living experience, the robber baron of old has been severely constrained by laws and customs as well as by the newly acquired power of labor (b). The increasing level of protests

Condition	SQ 1	SQ 2	SQ 3	SQ 4
a. war revulsion	unk	yes	yes	yes
b. reforms made	unk	yes	yes	yes
c. low meta conflict	yes	yes	yes	yes
d. low big power fighting	yes	yes	yes	yes
e. growing injustice seen	yes	yes	yes	preliminary evidence

against globalization, against environmental degradation and against the gaps in welfare between the West and others appear to portend the expected growing discontent with the injustices in the system.

Of the twenty conditions that should be demonstrated over the four eras, 17 are shown to be present in significant degree. One condition for the recent era seems to be present but on a preliminary basis. The two other conditions were ones on which no observations could be made because required comparisons were to conditions that were before the data set. Thus, in terms of actual observations the agreement with the postulated conditions that should be present is very close to 100 percent.

REVO 1, 2 and 3 – It has been demonstrated from the internal data that all three of the revolutionary eras were characterized by all of the conditions (a) (b) and (c). There is little merit in constructing another table as above; suffice it to say the agreement with the theory is 100 percent.

The Next Epoch – If we assume from this analysis that significant shifts in underlying social forces require about two or three generations to mature, it would be reasonable to expect that a new revolutionary period is likely to commence 20 to 30 years from now. It will be built on political concepts that evolve to correct the then currently perceived injustices and inequities in society. The injustices should be either worsening or perceived to already be pronounced. Such injustices are not absolute but rather are measured relative to the values of society of the time.

We should now see the precursors to the ideas that will take root and cause the disruption of society toward the middle of this century. If we are to get clues as to how the concepts will take root, it might help to look at primary values that seem to characterize the meta beliefs of today. My observations are that the following are very widely held beliefs in the West, that are espoused at least in terms of rhetoric.

These values taken together in some manner might be expected to form the basis for the next revolution, as those intellectuals in society most concerned with a just order strive to mobilize public perceptions to a view that the current system is failing, failing to conform to values. That mobilization of perceptions can be expected to occur in the first instance among the middle and upper class youth.. The two issues that currently seem to raise the greatest range of hackles are economic globalization and environmental corruption. The most articulate are in the developed world and they have democracy, human rights protected and social advantage. But, globalization causes loss of jobs in the developed world and environmental degradation is universal, consequently the affluent youth have some self interests on these issues that overlap their perceptions of public interests. This is probably a necessary condition to get support for change.

Despite the intensity of the beliefs of a few, I do not feel that environmental issues apart are likely to be a basis for a possible world revolutionary movement. Economic globalization and gap between the wealth of the developed nations and the rest do seem rather likely candidates as a basis for a new concept of a correct and just order for world society..

In my reviews of historical writings for each of the eras leading up to a period of world revolution, I came across references to significant economic change taking place – change in cultural environment and the rise of a new middle class with aspirations to have a position commensurate with their class’s new economic status. The economic changes leading to the socialist revolution seem clear enough and the American and French ideas seem to derive in no small part from the industrial revolution that was on its threshold. Looking back still further feudalism was breaking down and some urban economic enterprises were growing before the religious upheavals that started in the early 16^th century. Thus, I accept economic change, probably driven by technological change, as a probable factor in adding a dynamic element to the cycle.

The most probable course for a new meta reformist drive is one that might parallel the 19^th century. Rather than basing the arguments about inequity and injustice on the heads of the owners of capital, the target in the 21^st century is likely to be the leaders of the have (rich) state’s and their associated multi-nationals. The have’s possess growing wealth. A few newly industrializing states are undergoing extremely rapid change with many of their citizens prospering, but many old professions are disappearing creating tensions along with the prosperity.

To provide the needed source of activists there are those of the old industrial countries living the good life and profiting from cheap labor. The newly industrializing are prospering but with major dislocations. And there are many in south Asia and Africa where life is not improving at a pace commensurate with the TV and movie scenes of first world affluence that they now view from a globalized media system. Misgovernment is wide spread in the Third World and helps to further exacerbate the tensions. AIDs threatens to reverse the recent progress in a number of countries. The basic ingredient of the potentially disaffected are there awaiting the new intellectual giant that will mobilize them.

Demagogues will argue that great (intolerable) inequities exist between countries and will likely assert this gap results from the unfair and inequitable global trading system. Today, we see semi-violent, raucous demonstrations by youth against globalization.

The advocacy of human rights, not a driving issue unto itself, may be the catalyst that enables the advocates of reform to mobilize the forces required in reaction to the perceived injustices resulting from globalization. In researching for this book, I found to my surprise that two of the more prominent recent American diplomats were backing away, some, from their established realist positions in developing foreign policy. Particularly striking is Henry Kissinger in the third volume of his memoirs citing a new found adherence to the principles of Wilsonianism.

I had frequently criticized the applicability of all-purpose Wilsonianism for conducting foreign policy. I had emphasized the need for a consistent view of the national interest and recognition of the importance of the balance of power. At the same time, it was wrong to treat Wilsonianism as the idiosyncrasy of a few American intellectuals. Instead it was the instinctive expression of a society founded and shaped by immigrants who had affirmed universal principles of liberty and justice...An international order based entirely upon national self-interest would not be sustained by a people who thought of their country as the ‘shining city on a hill.’

This statement is rather surprising since most of us know Kissinger as someone who made his career as a hard line realist. Richard Holbrooke if you will a hard nosed somewhat liberal diplomat followed suit.

I came to the conclusion that the choice between ‘realists’ and ‘idealists’ was a false one: in the long run, our strategic interests and human rights supported and reinforced each other....American foreign policy needed to embrace both Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson.

Both Kissinger and Holbrooke are acutely sensitive to America’s debacle in Vietnam and the inability of the government to sustain a course of action based on power, a course which appeared to many to have been strongly at variance with the moral ideals such as those which are traditionally said to have guided Woodrow Wilson.

Human rights, obviously, transcend national sovereignty. Human rights are severely abused in many of the less developed countries of the world. It is not difficult to envision a new philosophy, the foundation is there already, that demands a paternalistic interventionism to protect the human rights of the downtrodden. Afghanistan and Iraq perhaps are first cases. And these cases raise fault line issues that may well exacerbate tensions between Islam and Christianity, unless handled with great sensitivity and skill. The West and China are likely to be at odds over any such movement. Within the West, conflict will inevitably arise as questions of distribution of economic rewards are raised. (This was written before France and Germany dissented on Iraq.)

Clearly, the last points are speculative. The purpose was to demonstrate a plausible scenario rather than to prognosticate as to the actual. It is, I believe, plausible that a drive to promote and protect human rights could mature and that a perception of widespread injustices generated by the current economic system in an era of rapid globalization could mature and provide the recruitment base for the advocates of forceful intervention on human rights.

Wars are ever present, often central to a political group’s existence but are ever changing as the result of man’s adaptive behavior. Generals are traditionally accused of fighting the last war in their tactical and even strategic decisions. Politicians are equally prone to the misuse of historical experiences.

While we can look at some elements of the history of warfare to develop understanding about today’s conflicts, it is also true that there are substantive and meaningful differences in patterns and relationships in today’s world that can, if not properly considered, negate the validity of historical examples.

History is replete with lessons, but a single case does not a pattern make. The lessons of history much be understood within the context of the times. Man is adaptive, responsive to the past and forever seeking a better future. Yes, lessons there are in the historical experience, but equally there are mis-lessons.

In this paper I explore some of the trends in the history of use of warfare. Understanding of those trends and of the social forces underlying the trends will help in applying the lessons of history in a thoughtful and fruitful manner.

Just as military leaders are brought up with exposure to Clausewitz and Liddel Hart, many foreign policy leaders are brought up with exposure to European Diplomatic history, often as interpreted by Morgenthau and Carr. The time periods which are used are those of Napoleon and Bismarck and perhaps Hitler and Eisenhower and Chamberlain and Churchill. Understanding these periods and the thinking of these giants of the past is necessary.

But, I will demonstrate here how much one must also consider the changes that their very presence induced. If we look at the history of conflict we find that a period as little as two generations can and has generated very different values and rules of thumb. There are, it seems clear, some enduring social forces acting to bring about conflict, but those forces are manifested in different ways at different times. Moreover, some of the forces of a century ago were not enduring and to use them as the basis for lessons of history will often be highly misleading.

Wars are the product of the central beliefs of mankind. Those beliefs are in part the product of enduring traditions and in part the product of the adaptation of those enduring traditions in the light of the technological reality of the times. It is only by grasping something about the interaction between beliefs and technological evolution that we will be able to grasp something about the nature of warfare at a particular time, including that of our time.

This paper seeks to define trends and reasons for those trends to suggest future patterns

The paper (12) at the end of this collection describing the data developed and used here contains tables on the overall frequencies of occurrence of the issues studied in understanding warfare. If we are to understand modern warfare issues it is necessary to examine the time dependent changes that are not reflected in the overall frequencies. I look at the trends in the major issues in the following paragraphs. I have collected the issues that have shown a largely steady trend upward and separated them from those showing a downward trend.

As already presented there are cycles in human belief systems and to examine trends it is often necessary to control for the cyclical effects which can create perturbations that have a magnitude equal or greater than the trend changes. To do this, in the following tables I have separated the data into status quo and revolutionary eras.

ERA #	Avg. value all issues	% Racial issues		% Discrimination. issues		% Economics issues		% Terrorism as issue		% Meta-Ideology
ERA #	Avg. value all issues	S .Q	Revo	S Q	Revo	S Q	Revo	S Q	Revo	S Q	Revo
1	0.32	10	12	03	03	08	08	02	04	06	18
2	0.65	26	35	09	11	07	11	07	11	03	22
3	0.88	50	32	13	10	13	15	16	13	09	43
4	0.98	45	NA	17	NA	24	NA	17	NA	13	NA

These issues are lumped together in this table in an empirical categorization. These are the issues that showed a largely consistent upward trend over these six centuries. And as can be seen in the second column the normalized average for all columns shows a steady upward progression. In contrast to the issues clustered as downward trending over this time period (table below) these issues appear to relate to people’s beliefs. I will return to that interpretation below.

In order to simplify I normalized each column by dividing by the largest entry in the column and then averaged the rows across all columns, Status Quo and Revolutionary. The results show an extreme regularity in this and in the next table. A large share of the variable used here show either a consistent upward or downward trend over the six hundred year time period. The upward trending group tripled in relative frequency while the downward trending group fell by two thirds. The implication is for some systemic force underlying the trends.

ERA #	Avg. value all issue	# Big Involved per war		% Sovereign Nation Fight		% Fight to gain Colonial Control		% Fight to gain Throne/Presidency		% Fight over Territory
ERA #	Avg. value all issue	S Q	Revo	S Q	Revo	S Q	Revo	S Q	Revo	S Q	Revo
1	0.90	0.94	1.29	64	61	42	34	45	34	26	27
2	0.87	1.38	1.05	68	46	44	31	32	23	30	23
3	0.58	0.77	0.58	47	30	37	10	20	17	28	16
4	0.36	0.35	NA	20	NA	06	NA	28	NA	15	NA

The regularity in the trends is emphasized the following table that extracts the normalized average columns from the tables of upward and downward trending issues.

ERA SEQUENCE	upward Trend	downward trend
ERA SEQUENCE	Average Frequency Values
ERA 1	0.32	0.90
ERA 2	0.65	0.87
ERA 3	0.88	0.58
ERA 4	0.98	0.36

If we look just at the summary labels for the issues, clustering them by either upward or downward trending, there is an underlying force that is suggested.

The downward trending issues appear to be those associated with the aims and objectives of governments run by monarchs in the era when realpolitik and mercantilism maintained supremacy as concepts. The upward trending issues are those associated more with the current beliefs of human rights, equality and national self-determination. Terrorism’s rise is likely the product of the increased interaction between the strong and the weak. Otherwise, this cluster of issues appears to reflect the rise of representative governments. I look at the trends these categories as defining fundamental changes taking place.

years	%sov	%relig	%office	%strat	%land	%trade
1400-1599	63	40	40	8	25	8
1600-1799	64	31	32	17	29	12
1800-1949	42	21	21	13	23	5
1950-2000	27	33	20	14	17	1

years	%civ	%race	%econ	%discrm	%phil	%terror
1400-1599	36	9	8	3	10	3
1600-1799	34	26	9	8	11	8
1800-1949	45	39	12	11	21	12
1950-2000	75	41	17	13	33	17

Composite indices using the conflict issues from this data base were constructed to represent these two conceptual types of wars. The change in prevalence between the two types of wars over the centuries has been profound. In the 15^th to the 18^th centuries the wars of the kings occurred with a relative frequency of 0.90 and remained frequent until the mid 19^th century, starting a fall (as monarchies began to recede) which brought their relative frequency down to under 0.40 in the late 20^th century. This represented a two thirds reduction in relative frequency. The wars of the people, under 0.35 in relative frequency in the earliest years, grew to over 0.80 after the mid 19^th century and then to almost 1.0 in the final years of the 20^th century, tripling in frequency.

This major transition in warfare type occurred in large degree after about 1850 and was more or less completed by World War II. The beginnings of the modern era of relative health security and widespread improvements in quality of life for workers can be found in the middle of the 19^th century. The technological advances changed society as education spread and the quality of life was enhanced. Political structures had to evolve to adapt to these changes and that lead to changes in issues in warfare and values and limits placed on the warfare process.

The tables given above cover the full six hundred years of the data base. But, the major evolution of values and warfare systems have taken place within the past two hundred years. I shall examine these two centuries in more detail.

After centuries of warfare, the West, at least on its home territory, is almost at peace. Within the borders of Western Europe and North America, the West, only the low intensity Anglo-Irish, Spanish-Basque and American ethnic conflicts have marred the record of peace since Germany’s defeat in the Spring of 1945. Is this a situation that is unique, likely to endure, a random event? Perhaps these sweeping questions cannot be answered with any certainty, but a detailed examination of the more recent record of warfare does cast some light on likely answers.

While the West has seen peace to an unusual degree, many parts of the world have seen near unprecedented levels of violence in the most recent fifty years. Is this a result of a shift of wars from Europe, or from outside causes, will it endure?

The human record of perceiving current trends within their historical context, rather than as unique and perpetual conditions is not outstanding. At the end of the 19^th century a pattern of stable peace in Europe, similar to that of today, tended to be viewed as enduring. In interpreting the current conditions it is important to look with some care at the trends in patterns in violence during the more modern times, which I shall take as beginning with the initial formation of governments of the people at around the turn of the 19^th century. The detailed examination of the wars of this two hundred year time period will enable us to uncover information of considerable consequence as we seek answers to questions such as those above.

One pattern that has been clearly shown particularly in the paper on cycles and in the first part of this paper is that relationships, patterns and interpretations of events evolve, evolve relatively quickly. A generation makes for change with respect to the less deeply embedded forces of society while the lapse of two or three generations brings sweeping changes in even the most fundamental of man’s action patterns.

Facing this era of proliferation of killing power and perhaps lulled into complacency by the absence of overt threat to the West, it would be well to understand in depth the forces and patterns underlying political violence in the modern era. Moreover, it would be well to suggest how the end of the 20^th century patterns fit into the longer term and more enduring forces leading to deadly conflict. That is the ambitious aim in this paper. Inevitably there is redundancy with the earlier papers; it is also true that the work here goes beyond that earlier presented.

There were roughly 500 incidents of political violence started during this two hundred time period, roughly twice the rate of new war start in the prior four hundred years. Excepting the period from the start of WWI through WWII, new war starts ran at about 2.5 per year – the years around the two world wars were low in new starts which reflects the limitation of the definition of these two incidents as single wars rather than an agglomeration of several almost autonomous fights. If some correction is attempted to account for this the number of new starts of war remained rather stable for 150 plus years, except for the years of the great depression during which there was very little fighting.. Starting with the last half the 20^th century wars starts accelerated by at least a third to something in excess of 3 per year.

Late in the last century we find not only that new war starts increased, there was an increase in numbers on-going during a year because of a major upsurge in the duration of conflicts. Looking back wars fell in duration from the range of 3 to 4 years at the start of the 19^th century to average duration of 2 to 3 years, a figure maintained through the mid 20^th century. By late in the 20^th century the average war was lasting 6 to 7 years, often even longer.

In recent years there are more wars and wars less easily resolved given long wars as well as more wars.

Over this entire time period there were some 500 violent incidents across the world. England fought in 77 wars, the US in 67 and France in 53. The war participation of these nations overlap, but in a simple indicative statistic, the total war participation of these three major democracies exceeded 30 percent of all wars. In the earlier years it was higher, reaching over 50 percent at times. After 1946 the aggregate number of French, US and English wars totaled only 7 percent of all wars, a remarkable fall in war participation. Particularly in the case of the US, a very large share of its earlier wars were relatively smaller incidents against the fragmented and weak American Indian tribes. With the disappearances of political colonialism this type of war has largely disappeared. Similar though less extreme patterns exist for England and France.

Statistically the three major democracies were involved in the following percentages of the wars which were started during five major time periods. The time groupings are made to illustrate the change in behavior most vividly.

Country	1800 to 1913	1914 to 1945	1946 to 1970	1971 to 1989	1990 to end
U. S.	14	19	8	5	5
U.K.	21	17	8	2	8
France	14	11	7	25	5

There is a remarkable parallelism, despite the US earlier policy position of maintaining non-involvement in European conflicts. Its wars result from parallel belief structures shared in Western culture.

Colonial expansion and conquest of technically less advanced people accounted for much of war participation of these three great colonial powers. The US expansion was demonstrated in its move west across the North American continent. These wars are nominally the wars of empire and those of the pre-eminent power. Other research has shown the effect of power on war participation rates.

Three other countries were, during this total time period, relatively frequently involved in violent conflicts. Turkey, Spain and to a lesser extent Russia/Soviet Union were involved in particular types of conflict. Spain was involved in 10 percent of wars as its empire disintegrated in the 19^th century and had relatively high participation in its times of domestic troubles in the first half of the 20^th century.

Turkey has a pattern similar to Spain’s although with a time lag. The Turkish empire came apart over the course of nearly a century keeping Turkish participation in wars at about 10% for the first 150 years of the time period. As in the case of Spain, with the final break up of its empire and its relegation to the position of second rank power, Turkey has participated in very little conflict (mainly with its Kurdish minority) in the second half of the 20^th century.

Russia has been involved in about 9% of wars during the 19^th and 20^th centuries. In the earlier part of the 19^th century many of the wars resulted from its colonial expansion. However there are two periods of colonial break up, one at the time of Bolshevik revolution in the 1917 to 1922 time period and the second in the break up of the Soviet Union in the last ten years of the 20^th century.

These statements of warlikeness or perhaps more accurately war participation rates are somewhat disquieting. The West has fought intra and inter civilizational wars on a scale no other group has approached. The three first and major democracies of the West have excelled at both types of wars. Available power and misdirected (I argue) beliefs about racial superiority may be blamed and placed as things of the past in explaining this apparent anomaly when taken from a Western perspective.

My own observations are that, in terms of the empirical participation in violent conflicts – the evidence is very ambiguous as to whether there is a more warlike culture, or not. But, there is every reason to believe that many nations of the world have a folklore citing past wars with the major powers of the West. That is a heritage that weighs on the future.

The greatest number of wars in any region during this time period was in Africa. As will be shown for other regions, the African fighting was influenced by events in the West. There were only 18 wars in Africa in the first 70 years of the 19^th century when Europe was in turmoil. When stability was secured in Europe in the last years of the 19^th century and early in the 20^th the number of wars in Africa grew to 33, a tripling of the rate of wars from 0.25 per year to over 0.75 per year. Interestingly a similar pattern exists in the 20^th century, after its first decade. From 1914 to 1945 there were 4 wars recorded as centered in Africa. Forty eight African wars occurred after 1945. An increase from just over one every ten years to more than one a year. At the end of the 20^th century there is more conflict in Africa than in any other region.

The next largest number of wars in these two centuries occurred in East and Southeast Asia. The pattern is rather similar to that in Africa. When the West was busy with its ideological disputes, wars were less frequent in Asia, 0.19 and 0.28 per year respectively, in the first halves of the 19^th and 20^th centuries. In the second halves of the centuries wars occurred almost twice as often at the rates of 0.4 per year.

For both Africa and Asia it should be expected that the period of frequent wars that has existed for 30 or more years now will fade. Gradually residual effects of the West’s colonial period are being resolved. It may well be that the West will intervene more vigorously as it has apparently done in Kosovo, Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq in it efforts to promote human rights, stability and influence.

Central and South America together accounted for almost as many wars as in Africa, 89 altogether. The time pattern of wars is, on the other hand, rather different. African wars occur most often when the West is more at peace with itself. The wars of South and Central America are closely attuned to the West’s ideological and power struggles. In the 19^th century the Latin American fighting was twice as frequent (0.55 new wars per year) in the first 70 years compared to last half of the century. In the 20^th century, wars are more evenly distributed but with a similar pattern of modest decline late in the century.

The four regions listed above, Europe, Africa, East Asia and Latin America, together hosted over 60 percent of all wars. Another 5 to 8 percent of conflicts took place in each of North America, the Middle East, Eastern Europe and South Asia. Other than a modest decline in the late 19^th century, in aggregate wars in these regions remain constant at about 0.70 new starts per year.

Events in the West have had a powerful influence on world conflict. Warfare in the West centered on ideological disputes with the involvement of the big powers has commonly been accompanied by and lead to relative quiet in Africa and much of Asia. In the years following on the disruptions on values and political relations engendered by the West’s struggles to define its beliefs about world morality, Asia and Africa become the scenes of fighting, in the 19^th century as areas of incursions by the West and in the 20^th century as the regions broke away from European control.

Central and South America are somewhat more attuned to the West, although seemingly with some time lag as the new western ideas about world morality are absorbed in the regions. Conflict in the Mid-East appears to relate to factors other than ideology cycles in Europe. This also seems to be the case for South Asia.

The political atmosphere in Europe spills over into Latin America where war participation rates significantly reflect those in the West and to a certain extent the same pattern is shown in Eastern Europe. There is also another spillover in that periods immediately after intense fighting in the West finds these two regions experiencing much local fighting that probably reflects political dislocations in these secondary regions. In Africa and Asia, war participation rates are more or less inverse (in a time period sense) of those in the West. The Middle East and South Asia appear to derive their conflicts from separate signals than those of much of the rest of the world. Presumably this would reflect the relative insulation between Islam, Hinduism and Christianity.

Fundamentally, an interpretation of these trends that is provocative is that ideas drive wars and ideas spread across the global from strong to weak and with improved technology at an ever faster rate. Ideologies spread to other regions, usually with a time lag. The arguments for the colonialism of the end of the 19^th century are discredited. However, assuming a continuation of social forces similar to those of a century ago, one would find a basis for arguing for the evolution of a new paternalism to extend the values of the powerful nations to the weak and misruled.

In the years at the end of the 20^th century and the start of the 21^st there is much conflict across civilizational lines. In terms of the cyclical concept of warfare driven by beliefs either meta or micro (we-they) it would be expected that the fault line conflicts would be most prevalent during the status quo periods toward the second halves of the two centuries examined here.

Three measures that can be said to be related to civilizational fault lines presence in warfare were made in this coding. They are respectively race, religion and ethnic differences as issues which were listed as contributing to the decisions to go to war. The most useful index of the prevalence of civilization antagonisms in warfare over this two hundred year interval is obtained by examining the average frequency of these three issues in warfare. That average is shown in the table below.

	1800 to 1820	1821 to 1848	1849 to 1870	1871 to 1890	1891 to 1913	1914 to 1945	1946 to 1970	1971 to 1989	1990 to end
% Fault Line Wars	18	21	30	35	33	16	28	31	35

When battles over Western meta-ideology are prevalent in the first parts of the two centuries, ethnic or civilizational differences are put, relatively, into the background. When the overall state of the world’s morality has been set aside as an issue among the major powers, civilizational fault lines assume the prominent position in bringing on violent conflicts in the later halves of the centuries.

Fault line issues occur in an average of 19 percent of wars in the first halves of the two centuries and in 33 percent, almost double, in the second halves of the two centuries.

It is very appropriate to ask should this be viewed as a cyclical phenomenon in which the 20^th century mirrors the 19^th along important dimensions, or is the pattern at the end of the 20^th century a unique occurrence in human history? The commonality over the two time periods is that 1) of fault line wars being more prevalent and at a similar level and 2) meta-ideologies are not in dispute. The uniqueness argument is probably supported by the pattern of struggle for political control in the 19^th century time period and the struggle for ethnic/religious group autonomy in the 20^th. In some measure the conflicts of the 20^th century are a direct result of the conflicts of expansion from the 19^th century.

As the reader should fully expect, I, nonetheless, opt for the cyclical explanation. Fault line issues are endemic in the world system and the constraints that tend to prevent them from erupting into violence are only present when the big powers are engaged in struggles over the meta-ideologies of the day. In such times the big powers suppress the we-they conflicts as potentially threatening to the balance of forces. The we-they tensions and animosities are always present and can take any of several forms. Whenever, the big powers no longer feel the requirement to suppress such conflicts they will erupt. Such has been the pattern for centuries not just in the 19^th and 20^th centuries.

If such is accepted, political fragmentation conflicts are ultimately likely to be set aside with the advent of some new belief as to how the meta-structure of the world should be erected. The question of which explanation to use is of considerable importance because the stabilizing structures and initiatives that should be adopted will be quite different depending on which of the explanations more closely approximates the reality of the future.

In the cyclical explanation, during revolutionary periods civilizations will simply tolerate one another as they struggle with big picture issues. In these times, attempts to find means to control inter-civilization tensions perhaps become somewhat irrelevant. In the unique event explanation, political fragmentation, ethnic cleansing and so forth may remain as the prominent issues of the medium term and beyond future – with particular emphasis on the Islamic/Christianity fault line.

Probably supportive of the cyclical explanation is the empirical fact that big power participation in wars fell at the end of both centuries, by about 25% in the 19^th century and by close to 50% in the 20^th century. With central issues of the meta-structure of society reduced in prominence, balance of power and strategic concerns also become less prominent. Strategic concerns fall by about 30 percent at the ends of the two centuries, although the fall is noticeably greater in the 19^th century than it has been in the 20^th. The big powers see, it would appear, less threatening worlds when the issues relate to civilizational conflicts than they do when meta-beliefs are in question.

The largest shift in issues occurred in the late 19^th century when only 10 percent of wars were said to have meta-ideology as a cause and in the rump session in the last decade of the 20^th century during which the fall back was to 10 percent again, although the sample is rather small.

Today with the disappearance of meta issues, war issues are often described in terms of corruption and misrule or simple grabbing of power. In many cases the fight is not over change of the system but rather over change of office holders. This is unlike the post-Napoleonic war period of the 19^th century. Little to nothing was said about misrule and corruption in those years. Rather the moral imperative of white man’s burden seemed to prevail. In other respects the two intervals have distinct similarities. Fundamental reform and strategic concerns fall sharply in both cases. Most wars take place outside of the West in both end of century time periods. Ethnic or religious issues take center stage in both eras. Conflict over land is up in both eras, although significantly more so in the 19^th century.

The powerful, the democracies have been most warlike (that is participate in most wars) for most of this time. But, for whatever reasons in the last 50 years this group has greatly reduced its participation in warfare. Referring back to the section on political structure and warfare success, I feel from these data there is little basis for concluding that any political structure and perhaps any culture is more inherently warlike or peaceful. Power is likely the major force underlying participation in warfare. Its effects are greatest when either power is declining or when it is increasing for a nation.

It is clear that both the beginning and end of empire are conflictual times. The end of empire reflects declining power and appears both empirically and logically to be followed by relatively peaceful behavior for the former empire builder. This is likely a factor in the behavior of the three major democracies.

In many respect the second halves of 19^th and 20^th centuries have important similarities. The patterns in the first time period proved to be transitory and presumably the same will be true in the current situation.

Although meta issues endure for a considerable time and in-group/out-group conflict seemingly remains for centuries, the particular trends during a given time seem to be far more transient. Patterns of conflict seldom endure much beyond a generation, or at the most extreme over two to three generations. This is a particularly relevant conclusion for so few of political leaders seem to have much grasp of history – prior to some last single prominent event. The implications is that patience is a major means for resolving issues of the times – just wait 10 or 20 years and new issues will be on the scene and the old ones will be relegated to secondary positions, if not solved.

Although continuities tend to prevail in the system of conflict, it also appears that conflict is driven in some measure by evolving technology and economic capability. The current nature of international system as reflected in conflict is sharply different from that of the 19^th and early 20^th century. Today there are relatively very few sovereign wars. Conversely there are many many civil wars. What does this portend? Will the desire to promote stability cause the big powers to accept spheres of influence and in that sphere act as policeman to keep civil violence from evolving to widespread instability? Is the U.S. move into Afghanistan and into Iraq a portent of things to come? This in measure was one of the responses of colonial powers a century earlier. If it were to be repeated what form would the policing take since national rights to self determination are now so firmly embedded in the value system?

The paper on Decision Maker Folly (3) contains a long discussion on probable change in values with respect to the rights to wage warfare over the last two centuries. Although there is no direct data available on value changes from within this data base, we do see above how the issues in warfare have changed as monarchies have been replaced by representative governments. This clearly must reflect changing values about when war is appropriate. We know from common wisdom that the 19^th century West held very different views on aggressive warfare and on racial equality and had little in the way of a commitment to human rights. We know from the UN charter and common wisdom that aggressive warfare is not readily accepted in the 20^th century and that human rights, racial equality and rights of national self determination are part of the value complex adhered to at least at the rhetoric level today.

In the chapter of Decision Making Folly I tested the relevance of these values by examining the relationship between success rates in initiating warfare and the issues which were cited as leading to the war. I did this separately for the two centuries postulating that success rates were best when pursuing warfare consistent with the values of the times. The relationship was strong, perhaps too strong for the pragmatist such as myself, suggesting some failures in the data or in the hypotheses. However, I think the direction of the relationship is clearly demonstrated even if the effect may very well be over estimated.

Accepting this, then we see a clear demonstration of the change in values regarding the acceptability of warfare from the early 19^th century through to the 20^th century. Absent some failing in the analysis that this researcher cannot detect, the evidence is powerful that the decision maker of today operating on the realist model of inter-group behavior is running against the tide of history and is incurring significant risks of failure. The evidence also suggests that both domestic and international acceptance of a group’s posture as morally superior to the opponent is worth several divisions in the field.

This section is interpretive based in part on the value changes suggested in the section above and on more than thirty years of first hand experience in countries of the world in which poverty limits health care and limits quality of daily life as well.

The change in values cited in the prior section has originated in the West and is accepted outside of the West on an intermittent and inconsistent basis. I postulate that the change in values in the West regarding the acceptability of warfare co-occurred with technological changes that resulted in major gains in health care and in general wealth and quality of life. The technological evolution resulted in much of the uncertainty of continuation of life in the face of diseases being removed and resulted in a major portion of the populations of the West living a life good enough to wish for it to continue.

I refer the reader to the section on the Beowulf Epic in the paper on Regularities in Warfare (7) and to reference works on Frederick the Great and several Germanic philosophers to help grasp the attitudes toward risking one’s own life and taking the life of others that characterized the past. Those views on life have changed sharply probably lead by the American view. The change was most significant after 1950 or thereabouts. The war to bring glory to the leader; the war to acquire plunder; the war of adventure were once facts of life in the West as well as the rest of the world.

With representative government these wars became largely unacceptable in the West as I believe the section on the moral imperative in the paper on Decision Maker Folly demonstrates. When one is secure in one’s health and living a good life with family the appeal of going to war is far less than when one faces a daily risk of fatal diseases, awakes each morning wondering if there will be adequate food on the table and if the children will have a future with any glimmer of hope and prosperity.

I have lived in and worked in Afghanistan, Egypt, the Philippines and worked in Pakistan, India, Liberia, Angola. Family values are very similar to my Western family values. Children are loved and valued. Values regarding one’s life and the lives of others are, however, not the same.

Many in Afghanistan, the poor in the Philippines, many in Angola and other Third World countries must accommodate their family and self values to live with great uncertainty regarding health survival and must struggle to find rewards of living in a situation of constant struggle to survive. The poor in these societies have since childhood lived with the death of loved ones and have experienced lives of little joy or security. It is simply a fact from my 30 plus years of observation that life is valued less by those adjusting their emotions to this heritage.

As a result in these nations the idea of going to fight in a war brings near universal excitement. It is likely to also bring a more certain likelihood of food on the table and does not incur much additional risk of death. The constant facing of death of friend and family is also reflected in a greater callousness about the lives of others. There is a lesser reluctance to practice violence on others. The result is that attitudes toward warfare and violence for many of the Third World are closer to the attitudes found in the West a century or more ago – James Fennimore Cooper and Allan Eckart in their works on the American frontier provide a flavor of the attitudes toward violence found in the West in prior years and these are attitudes that still prevail in many parts of the world today.

The current restrictions on warfare are defined in the West and are only in varying degrees internalized in the Third World. As those nations enhance their health systems and their wealth they will catch up, but that is a situation that is decades down the road.

Islam is largely of the third world. The respect for life that comes with greater prosperity is yet to be evinced by this civilization that in some of its values has yet to undergo the transition found in the West a century and more ago. In a few simple categorical statements:

*the respect for life in warfare began to be more important in late 19^th century, prisoners of war began to be treated with some care

*plunder as a valid basis for war was seriously eroded by the early 20^th century

*aggressive warfare began to be much less acceptable toward the second quarter of the 20^th century

*the military aristocracy was severely decimated at the end of WWI and virtually gone after WWII

*people’s issues prevailed by 20^th century with the spread of representative governments

*plunder is less acceptable in the new millennia, but remains common under different rubrics

*military aristocracy is not as important as formerly in the West and its role is fading now

Much of this change in attitudes regarding the practice and acceptability of war relates to the quality of life, with those having a good life showing less willingness to go to war and risk that good life and with those having a life secure from threatening diseases having a greater respect in general for life than did their ancestors in prior centuries. In the poorest countries of the world, life is cheap because of poor health facilities. It is also the case that the quality of day-to-day life is very poor for many and therefore its continuation tends to be less valued. Consequent to this are separate attitudes toward the sanctity of human life in rich and poor nations of the world. A single set of rules regarding what constitutes civilized warfare, surely a contradiction in terms, is not likely to apply across this civilizational gap.

These are all important differences that need to be incorporated as part of our wisdom about wars, their causes and consequences. But, just as the wars of the 19^th century were wars over issues that no longer prevail in the early 21^st century, the future can be expected to produce yet other differences.

A century and a half ago the European powers saw themselves as bringing modernity to the nations of Africa and some in Asia and even the Middle East. Self interests were, of course, involved but a belief that they could share a superior civilization was also there. As their colonial frontiers expanded the necessity for political control to protect those frontiers also expanded. In some measure we have analogous forces operating today that may in the near future produce an analogous system’s level movement.

The basic causes of the poverty of these countries lie within their own borders. Without political changes, no matter the external advantages that are offered, the corrupt, wealthy centric, inefficient governments found in the Third World will continue to promote policies and programs that are wasteful, supportive of inefficiencies and corruption and assure that the wealthy in the country stay wealthy. The poverty in these nations results from these internal conditions in far greater measure than from all of the deficiencies of the international economic system.

Yet with the weapons of mass destruction, a term I dislike but use, these weaker nations do threaten the well being of neighbors and even the world. The paper entitled Folly presents data showing how, in brutal language, stupid the world’s leaders have been and continue to be. Wealthy nations may well decide that they cannot risk the destructive potential that threatened leaders of the poor might unleash, a view that seems to have guided the Bush administration in its assessment of the Iraq threat.

A new paternalism in which the West (allied with the few wealthy, but not Western countries) concludes that enough is enough and undertakes to bring more efficient government to the poor nations is well within the realm of vision that now is on the horizon. Peacekeeping is a natural step in that direction. The American move under the Bush administration to lay out a role of protecting the world from madmen who might gain control of mass destruction weapons – read Saddam – is already partly on the table (this was written before the Iraq war).

This series of papers which develop the forces underlying warfare and interprets their meanings for society would be difficult to understand and certainly hard to accept as valid without some appreciation of the quantitative basis for the conclusions. The readers interested in the details of the empirical investigations may go to the four preceding analytic papers. Those interested in having a credible basis for conclusions and interpretations should find what they need in this summary paper.

If I were to write, as I do later, without empirical support, that the world’s leaders have repeatedly lead us down the primrose path of use of military might to protect our interests only for us to find this path, so beautifully portrayed in rhetoric, in actuality to lead to failure, often devastating failure, there would be fully justified reactions of skepticism if not outright rejection of the statement. Similarly the assertions which are made with respect to cycles in warfare and in other areas are likely to be looked upon as the author’s opinions and/or judgements without some clear reference to the data base involved.

The basic findings derive from patterns which exist in as many as one thousand incidents of war. These wars together involve several thousand participants and equally many combatant pairs. Even for the findings in which only the modern era is examined, the sample size will normally be 200 or more for conclusions based on wars as the unit of analysis and 500 or more for results defined by participants and combatant pairs. That is, the basic conclusions derive from regularities and relationships which recur in very large numbers of events. This study covers a massive amount of data and a huge period of time.

It is also the case that some findings go beyond the data on warfare; and in one finding I have made an interpretation that is outside of, although consistent with, the data. In order to allow the reader to understand the empirical basis, each finding given in this paper is classified by the degree to which there is factual evidence to support it. A classification of (A) indicates very strong and direct factual support from these data; a (B) indicates good support from the data with outside supporting evidence that is strong; for those labeled (C) there is a considerable element of inference, but the finding is based on the data; if the regularity is suggested by the data, but there is no direct support for it, it will be coded as (D).

This research shows that the frequency and distribution of wars in the world as well as the wars among major civilizational groups remain constant over very long periods of time. The first three findings that I will cite relate to what I shall term the system of warfare. That is, these findings refer to patterns that derive from worldwide stable relationships.

For four centuries, from 1400 to 1800 there were 130 (+ or - 4%) wars started in each century. During this time, the era of sailing ships, communications by messenger and travel by horse, the number of new war starts per century stayed constant. The number of wars started per century then doubled with the advent of steamship, railroad and telegraph, to 250 wars (+ or - 2%) per century.

.Based both on change in technology and change in war inception rates, I treat the years before 1800 as pre-modern and those after that date as the modern era. I separate the data for these time periods in the next two findings.

FINDING 2. The Constant level of warfare cited in finding 1 is accompanied by a constant War Participation Rate for Islamic as well as for Christian CivilizationsA+

The first graph depicted a remarkably constant world level of warfare within a technology window. Examining the same data on a civilization basis shows another strong and unexpected regularity. The West, Islam and Orthodox civilizations participated in the same percentage of wars in the modern era (after 1800) as in the pre-modern era (before 1800). In each time period the West participated in two thirds of wars, Islam in 30% and Orthodox groups in one war in six.

There are roughly 500 total wars in each time period, with the consequence that in maintaining constant rates of participation in war, the three civilization groups each roughly doubled their per year rates of warfare after 1800. Let me emphasize, after 1800 the world saw a doubling in wars started per year; the West experienced a doubling in new war starts per year; Islam experienced a doubling in new war starts per year; and finally the Orthodox groups saw the same thing – twice as many new war starts per year after 1800. Before 1800, the West fought in about 88 wars per century and participated in some 171 wars per century after 1800. Islam, which fought less often than the West showed the same doubling of its rate of war making, from 38 wars per century to 74 wars per century, before and after 1800 respectively.

The issue of variations in warlikeness by civilizational group has fascinated the public and scholar alike. The West has a larger population than does either the Islamic or the Orthodox communities. We can make a rough correction to the raw participation rates to account for the population differences to determine what effect this might have on indicative rates of participation in warfare. Once this is done war participation rates relative to those of the West are about 70 percent for Islam, while Orthodox participation in war is about 170% that of the West. Prima facie Samuel Huntington’s assertion of Bloody Islam does not fit these data very well.

It is generally accepted that power and number of points of contact between groups are also factors in war making frequency. Thus, there is little basis for concluding that, despite its higher participation rates, the West is intrinsically more prone to war than is Islam, and certainly the data do not support an assertion of a more warlike Islam. The Orthodox community is relatively small and the data are strongly influenced by the years of conflict between this group and Turkey and by Russia’s expansion across Central Asia.

The next graph depicts the prevalence in inter-civilizational wars for the two major groupings. As before, I use 1800 as a division point. Two recurrent patterns are shown. The West has fought a constant share of its wars with an Islamic opponent in both pre-modern and modern eras. The same is true for Islam, a constant share of its wars have been with Christian groups (presuming Islam sees all Christians through much the same prism I have lumped the West and Orthodox groups together in computing Islam’s Christian opponents) over the six hundred year time period. Again we find a recurrent pattern of constancy.

Somehow some social force that must be related to basic belief structures of the two communities apparently underlie these facts on actual warfare participation rates.

The second finding from the data shown on this chart is of particularly great relevance for Western observers. Islam has been an opponent in only a small share (about 17%) of the West’s wars. Not shown, but important, is that Islam (because of Islam’s political weakness) has in general not been a major opponent in the West’s wars since the middle of the 18^th century. In contrast, a Christian opponent has been involved in almost two out of three of Islam’s wars. These Christian opponents threatened Islam’s existence at least since 1800, because they were powerful and expansionistic. These wars may be thought of as involving Islam in a fight for its very cultural existence because of the threat from an ever present and more powerful Christianity. For over two centuries the West’s wars were fought against other groups and Islam constituted, in a military sense, only a weak nuisance. A fundamental asymmetry in warfare experience exists between the two groups with Islam mainly having fought for its existence against Christian groups and the West only occasionally having fought minor wars with Islamic groups.

I have grouped all Christian groups when examining the opponents of Islam since I do not believe that the Muslim community differentiates Christian groups. Islam is a much more important opposition group for the Orthodox than for the West (about 60% of the wars fought by Orthodox groups involve a fight with Islam.)

It is worth saying that these are findings that were totally unexpected. Rather when the data were aggregated the patterns seemed to leap from the computer screen. I had no expectation that the world system had seen a very constant level of warfare until modern transport and communications technology began to evolve. Even less did I foresee that Islam and the West maintained such a regularity in relative participation rates in warfare.

The two civilizational groupings of Islam and Christianity, representing half of the world’s people, have fought a fixed share of their wars against the other group for six centuries. They have participated in a virtually unchanging percentage of the world’s wars for this same period, even though the new communications technologies of the modern era seem to have doubled the overall rate of wars in the world.

Whatever those forces are that ascertain the frequency and direction of warfare, it must be that they relate in some way to the civilizational groups – be the forces ideological, geographical or power. Moreover, those forces, the belief structures presumably, retain a constancy in relative terms that is remarkable for a time interval of this length. Perhaps equally remarkable is that when overall warfare rates doubled with modern communications and transport development, the rates of engagement in wars for each of these civilizational groups also doubled. Knowledge of the belief groupings tells one much about conflict groupings.

Of course, in looking at this constancy a question is raised as to whether the pattern may reflect a finite war tolerance level. Assuming there is an environment in which there is constant conflict of interests and in which there is a general tradition of use of war as a conflict management mechanism what are the forces that produced only so many wars per century, until contact levels expanded? An interpretation of war fatigue combined with the presumption of ever present conflict and a firm tradition of use of war for conflict management is certainly consistent with this pattern in the data. The doubling of the levels of war at the inception of the modern era may be interpreted as a consequence of increased contact points which if accepted would mean that the ever present conflicts of interest should become more prevalent in number given modern technology. Such an interpretation would suggest another significant increase in warfare as today’s globalization of contacts continues. Supporting this conclusion, at the end of the data sample, late 20^th century, average new war starts per year had increased to 3.2 to 3.5 from the post 1800 average of about 2.5 new starts a year.

I wish to emphasize that the preceding paragraph is speculative. The data are as presented and have a regularity that is very unlikely to be a chance event in my judgement. Some speculation as to possible causes of the regularity are both inevitable and needed to direct further research. With the data available at this time, I can, however, do little to test the validity of these interpretations.

Although it also must remain at the level of inference, for the data do not contain any representation of perceptions, a virtually inevitable conclusion is that there is a fundamental asymmetry in Islam’s and the West’s perceptions of the threat posed by the other party.

From the more recent historical experience it would only be expected that on Islam’s part there is the perception of an aggressive and powerful, threatening West. Logically, I would suggest that Christianity should be perceived as more warlike and as threatening their very civilization from the Islamic side of the divide. The Gallup Poll conducted in 2002 in a number of Islamic countries showing the very great perceptions of hostility toward the policies of the current premier country of the West certainly is consistent with such an interpretation. Karen Armstrong in her well done brief history of Islam makes a number of references to the effect that this perception of a threatening Christianity has had on Muslim intellectuals.

On the other hand, over 80 percent of the West’s wars in the past two centuries have not involved a fight with any Islamic group. The West’s wars that threatened the existence of Western groups have not involved fights with Islam for something over two centuries (since the decline of the Turkish Empire). Islam may be warlike, but as a group it has presented a secondary security concern to the West and has been viewed as perpetually weak and ill-organized. Will terrorism and weapons of mass destruction and the strong position of Islam with respect to oil supplies change that perception?

Scholars and practitioners have speculated on the effects of contact points relating both geographic location and technology to war propensity. Clearly, the technological changes in communications which increased contact points after 1800 is a plausible explanation for the doubling of war rates after that date. Further work would be required to determine if the war participation differences between West, Orthodox and Islam could be related to their particular geographic locations. Power is another factor said to explain involvement in wars and the greater power of the West and at least Russia among the Orthodox could explain, plausibly, part of the greater participation rates for these two groups. Finally, it has been endlessly speculated that some cultures/societies are more prone to go to war than others. However, the typical view from the Christian perspective is that the nomadic origins of Islam, compared to the more nearly settled agriculture setting in which Jesus preached, should make Islam a more warlike grouping. Perhaps some corrections for power and geographical elements could make the data fit conventional Western wisdom, although it does not seem overly likely that any such correction could be developed that might be considered valid. For now the record shows the West as dominating the war stage of the world and that the West has been a continuing major threat to Islam.

My point of departure in this work was that of explaining the managing of bureaucratic decisions. A career in foreign service left me convinced that bureaucracy is ill equipped to select from the alternatives, the decision or decisions which would efficiently serve public interests. The data on failure rates in starting war indicated faulty decision making on a scale that wildly exceeded my already pessimistic expectations.

Time Period	Political Form	Percent Win	Number of Events
19^th century	All	41	336
20^th century	All	27	199
	Democracy	40	52
	Monarchy	24	54
	Dictatorship	22	36

For a period of three centuries the party initiating fighting in a war (I shall call these parties the aggressors) have failed to achieve their objectives in a majority of wars. The rate of success by aggressors, when there is no large power advantage, has declined over time throughout this three hundred year time period, such that in the 20^th century the aggressor, absent a major power advantage, has failed to use war as a mechanism to achieve successful resolution of conflict in three out of four wars. I believe that at least in part this lack of success in using war to achieve favorable resolution of conflicts is the consequence of inept decision making. The recollections of decision making events I participated in suggests that this is so. As a partial test of this idea I speculated that democratic groups would be likely to achieve better results. As the bottom three lines in the above table show, in the 20^th century democratically organized groups have done better, but when initiating war still have not succeeded in more than half of cases.

Part of the poor success rate achieved when starting a war is, I believe, related to the undesirable moral position of being labeled as the aggressor. In fact, the moral posture of the participant seems more generally to have been highly important in determining success in warfare. Using a three point power scale of small, medium and large, an analysis of the records of warfare examined indicate that a one step power advantage has been worth almost 20 percentage points on the win rate scale. I used this index to estimate advantage of a superior moral position. I sought to relate the effect of moral position on win rate and to equate that with the effect of power advantage on win rate. The graph shows the effect in terms of power equivalent for different moral positions.

Postulating that there were significant value system differences between the 19^th and 20^th centuries regarding the acceptability of balance of power wars and the desirability of promoting human rights and national self determination, I could define situations in which it was possible to infer different moral positions for participants in the two centuries. That is, it was possible to make an assumption from the issues in a war as to which participant had a better moral position in the eyes of both its own people and the world community. I could crudely estimate the effect by showing the differences between the 19^th and 20^th centuries of known changes in world values.

For the 19^th century fighting for power, for example, was in good measure acceptable, while pursuit of power became increasingly unacceptable as a justification for war in the 20^th century. The middle lines on Figure 4 labeled not pursuing power balancing show, for the party starting the war, that slightly better results were obtained when seeking power balancing in the 19^th century. In contrast, in the 20^th century a major power increment (equivalent) accrued to parties not engaged in traditional balance of power wars. In the 19^th century human rights and racial equality and national self determination were not strong moral guides and these data show that little advantage accrued to parties pursuing such issues. Again there was change as these became guiding considerations in the 20^th century and the evidence shows a gain in effective power position.

Figure 4 shows expected patterns; 20^th century success rates are far better 1) for the party said to be fighting in favor of human rights, 2) for the party not labeled as the aggressor and 3) for the party opposed to a group seeking to enhance power position. It must be recognized that the chart shown here involves major inferences. Please recognize that I stretched the data but believe it not likely that I have made an error that would invalidate the relationships shown. Presuming validity of those inferences, the chart shows an astonishing result. A better moral position, presuming the postulated value changes from the 19^th to 20^th centuries, is worth on the average somewhere between one and two power steps. This is likely an over estimate that occurs due to weaknesses (not understood) in the analysis process, but I believe the direction of the relationship is as suggested and that the effect is quite significant. A variety of factors are believed to operate here which include one’s own will to fight, the ability to obtain outside support (alliances) as well as the internal belief that one’s cause is just, all of which relate to society’s values and judgements as to relative moral posture. Whatever the causes, the moral values of the 20^th century appear to be reflected in success rates for wars fought in the 20^th century. The 20^th century values on the other hand do not appear to be reflected in the success rates achieved in the 19^th century wars.

The basic thrust of this analysis comes from an attempt to find a plausible explanation of why the parties initiating conflict as shown in Finding 4 so seldom win. The chart shows how poorly they do in relative power terms. But, also if the inferential model is valid, the values of human rights, national self-determination, suppression of racial and economic discrimination and opposition to aggressive war for balance of power reasons became extremely important in the 20^th century. A question is raised about globalization as a conflict issue and whether terrorists can, as they are attempting to do, turn the power and wealth of the West against it morally?

Circumstances vary significantly, but overall approximately half of wars are not successfully terminated. That is, overall for about half of wars the same groups fight again over similar issues within 25 years of a cessation of military hostilities. When a war is largely civil in nature the likelihood of a failure in termination goes to almost 70 percent, with a similar figure associated with failure of termination in wars in which there was a prior war over similar issues, between the same participants, within the past 25 years. In this latter case it is suggested that almost half of wars are fought yet a third time.

War is repeatedly selected as a means to favorably resolve a conflict; a satisfactory resolution is usually not achieved and the war must be fought again to determine results, and then sometimes again.

Unsuccessful wars are repeatedly started; leaders, on both winning and failing side, do not comprehend how to conclusively terminate the wars. Obtaining a good moral position greatly enhances success rates.

These poor results both in starting and terminating wars can be used as evidence to support assertions of decision failures. It could alternatively be argued at least for the aggressor that my categorizations of failure are sometimes erroneous in that they do not presume primacy of the interests of the leaders, rather than those of the people. That is, it may be in some cases a decision to start a war is successful for the leaders and a failure for the people and that my measures of success only relate to the objectives of the people. In this work, when an attacking group failed to achieve its ostensible group or people’s aims in the conflict, the event was classified as a non-success for that group. However, few of the events were said to have ostensible objectives such as strengthening the hold on office of a leader, or increasing the power of one domestic faction over another, or of possibly serving as vengeance in a personal vendetta, despite much speculation on these effects by writers of diplomatic histories. Data were not available to make such valuations. Certainly this is an area for future research.

What can be said with certainty here is that in the usual case the attacking party has failed to achieve its ostensible objectives and in many cases has clearly failed absolutely. To differentiate the failed or non-success from a loss I contrast two cases -- the US failed to achieve its war aims in Vietnam although it did not lose the war. Hitler both failed and lost. Despite this limitation of the data, the available evidence on decision processes suggests to me that it is the decision process itself that is faulty and partly the cause of the apparent lack of success in initiating wars. Although in general the decisions I participated in during my career in foreign affairs did not relate to issues as important as going to war, work by Tuchman, and Halperin as well as memoirs from such thoughtful persons as Robert McNamara refer to war decisions that were as ill founded as those non-war related decision processes in which I participated. Again, the interests of humanity demand a major allocation of research hours in this area.

Looking for indicators of when success is more likely, leads to one major conclusion. Attaining a position deemed by own and other peoples to be morally superior is extremely important in achieving successful outcomes in warfare. There is much at risk in the analysis I made, but within the constraints of the facts that were available there is a clear indication that a demonstrably superior moral position is worth one step or even more on a three point (small, medium, large) power scale. If one accepts the arguments regarding the central thread of basic human beliefs as guiding warfare, a point which I will ultimately make, attaining a superior moral position is plausibly a critical factor in the successful waging of warfare. One might argue that the ultimate decline of the great power over the years such as suggested by Paul Kennedy in his The Rise and Fall of the Great Power at least in part relates to the arrogance of power which results in leaders not giving moral position sufficient weight in conflict resolution decisions.

It is probable that firing the first shot erodes that party’s moral position despite propaganda efforts to the contrary, although the only evidence I can offer to support this assertion of probable, is inferential. It is plausible that ethno-superatism and the tradition of military action (heroes, excitement, etc.) give leaders the freedom to make poor analytic decisions with respect to undertaking wars. A self evaluation of superior military and economic capability, or even superior cultural spirit ala Japan in World War II, perhaps enhances the room for decisions that do not lead to desired results.

There are many anecdotal descriptions of decisions to go to war, at least for the Western nations and for the more important wars. As in the quotes given in the first paper of this volume, there are many apparently authentic descriptions of inept decision making. My own interpretation is that wars are started with little understanding as to the consequences (see the earlier quotes from a discussion between Milosovic and Itzbegovic) because wars are accepted as the traditional means to project and protect the interests of the in-group. Covert decision making and lack of ability to predict consequences allow this easy solution of following tradition. But, that is a conclusion that remains to be researched.

Warfare involves some of the most basic human values. We know from the recently ended Cold War that differences in beliefs regarding the proper ordering of society create, for extended periods of time, tensions and conflicts that promote war. We see in the war on terrorism religious, distorted, beliefs that are so strong that suicide attacks are undertaken by both young men and young women. One of the key subjects investigated in this work was the extent to which human belief systems are a root of war.

The record of wars presented here shows a clear long term cycle in the intensity of warfare in the overall system. The cycle is statistically related to the prevalence of conflict over meta-beliefs. I use the term meta-beliefs to refer to beliefs that are presumed to be universally applicable, such as the belief in a particular god, or the belief in democracy. Figure 5 shows, in eras defined from traditional historical dates, that the religious war era (the two bars marked as 2 on the chart), the years following the American and French revolutions (bars marked as 4) and the years after the Russian revolution (6) are times in which warfare is markedly more intense as shown by the intensity bar in the graph. In these same years, meta-belief issues are five times more common among the reasons said to underlie the conflict leading to the war than is the case for the other time periods indicated. Clearly the eras so defined are revolutionary eras with respect to the universal belief systems that pervade human values. And just as clearly the intensity of warfare during these time periods is much higher (more than twice as high) than is the case during those years in which meta belief systems are not so frequently at issue.

The cycle is regular and it has gone on for six centuries at least. Consistently, following a period of two generations or so of relative stability, a new revolutionary concept has emerged on the scene and has been accompanied by intense violence spawned by the contests required to decide whether the new revolutionary concept is to be considered as applicable, widely, or not. Just as consistently the periods of fighting and chaos of ideas are followed by periods in which 1) fighting is less and 2) disputes over meta-beliefs as the stated reasons for fighting are relatively uncommon. The next finding is that the linkage of violence and revolutionary beliefs in a perpetual cycle is causal in nature.

FINDING 8. Meta belief Intensity derives from antithetical values, causing cycles C

Before going to the discussion, please note that this is the first finding that is classed only as a C with respect to statistical validity. The model offered is derived from outside the data and the causal relationship is derived from observations on the evolution of values and from a reading of cause and effect in major political philosophies as they have evolved over time. This is an assertion that can be tested against hard facts of political writings, but I have not had the resources to do the hard testing. I do not offer it, however, as an hypothesis but as a Finding for I believe the evidence is strong enough to place it beyond the level of hypothesis despite its limited systematization.

A long historical discussion of the pattern is given subsequently, I will briefly review those rather complex arguments here.

Parents bring up their children to distinguish right from wrong, society further promotes these beliefs about moral and immoral. Parents also teach their children to be ambitious and to succeed in furthering their own interests. Humans are innately selfish. The result of these and related processes is that humans have two antithetical values embedded in their most basic personalities. On the one hand they wish to do and to promote what is right and moral (represented by the altruism box on the left of the chart above) and on the other to promote and protect what is good for themselves (schematized by the box labeled selfish to the right on the chart). Pursuing one of these values often means sacrificing in some measure the other.

Within a social group there will be a distribution of people with intrinsic net value weightings, from rather altruistic to rather selfish. The weights given to the respective values depend not only on the intrinsic values of the person but also on the particular ethos of the time. I make here what is an assertion that seems without question despite lack of systematic measures. That assertion is that there is always perceived injustice in the system. With injustice always present there is a constant need for reform; when on a collective basis the need for reform is perceived as strong it brings out the altruistic side of the population, in effect shifting the net position of the population towards the left. Selfishness is also ever present, to be emphasized when the conditions tend toward insecurity and chaos. We have the two values in competition with one another in a static mode. Other forces must be inserted to create the dynamic cycles which occur as emphases shifts from one end of the scale to the other.

There are increasing injustices as technological change makes established systems for distributing society’s rewards produce less fairness -- see today’s globalization. The growing injustice, brought about by changing technology, brings about a swing toward altruistic or reform leaning values, particularly for those members of society who are intrinsically more inclined to be reform oriented, changing the balance of forces in society. The result is greater efforts to reform the system so as to ameliorate the growing injustices.

Although society as a whole shifts toward a reform orientation there remain those with greater intrinsic leanings toward the selfish side of the value system. Disorder is brought about as conflict is spawned between those more reform, altruistically, inclined and those more selfishly inclined. This process is shown along the line of arrows on the top part of the chart. The move toward the communist/socialist efforts to reform capitalism and the wars over the right and wrong of this are simply the most recent examples.

The resulting disorders (from the conflicts over change or not change) produce insecurity and dislike of change which then intensify the value placed on selfish protection of self by those more inclined to this value. The disorder also tempers the desire for reform among those tending toward the altruistic end of the scale. Consequently the distribution of persons along the axis of reform (altruism)/status quo (selfish) shifts to the right toward the conservative end of the spectrum. The swing toward conservatism produces order but the stability inhibits evolution of society’s reward systems which once again leads to an increase in both real and perceived levels of injustice -- once again initiating the cycle. This process is schematically illustrated along the lower lines in the chart.

The result as the diagram indicates is a continuous process that slowly produces in times of stability a shift toward altruism and in times of disorder a shift toward selfishness. The middle groups in society shift their emphases to cause first a preponderance of forces of reform and then move in response to the resulting disorder so as to create a preponderance of interest in stability. Further, the orderly/static system produced from the emphases on selfishness heightens injustices causing a shift toward the values classed as altruistic. Thus, we have a model that is logically internally consistent, consistent with the hard data on cycles in conflict and one that is supported by strong anecdotal evidence from time dependent changes in thinking of the major political philosophers of these years.

To avoid repetition, I refer the reader to the table shown under Finding 11. In this table, in-group belief issues rank third among the factors associated with warfare in the 20^th century. Only greed and universalistic belief issues outrank those related to conflicts between us and them. As the cold war with its passionate conflicts over universalistic concerns as to whether there would be communism or democratic capitalism passed, the ethnic conflicts in Africa and the Balkans as well as South Asia assumed a dominant position in overall warfare patterns.

These types of conflicts tend to be enduring in nature. Consequently they might be considered endemic in the system. As this was written Hindus and Muslims of India butchered one another over a temple/mosque site in which the specific conflict dates back to 1523 when the Moghul emperor Babur authorized the destruction of an important Hindu temple in order to allow the construction of a mosque. The recent violence between Serbs and Muslims in the former Yugoslavia has been commonly sourced to a demagogic speech by Slobadan Milosovic on the anniversary of the defeat of the Serbs by a Turkish army in the year1389. The ability to look back on and remember long ago slights and injuries is startling.

Henry Kissinger states that the Cold War tensions between the major powers lead them to strive to keep the ethnic based (endemic) conflicts subdued and partly under control. With the demise of the tensions between the big powers, the smaller nations have in a sense been freed to fight over their traditional animosities.

These in-group/out-group conflicts are based on very long memories in many cases. They endure just below the surface to reach pandemic levels when the atmosphere is conducive. Perhaps twenty percent of conflicts spring from such animosities.

There is a thread that runs through all of the findings listed up to this point. The beliefs structures of humanity, beliefs and values that are established to promote social cohesion and stability and to provide reason to life, are woven into most of the regularities we find in warfare. Although not foreseen at the onset of the study, this conclusion provides a degree of satisfaction about the validity of the patterns presented. In most societies there is a strong sanction against the taking of human life. Those cultures that we think of historically as glorying in the act of killing have largely faded from today’s scene, except where there is enduring hatred between groups, groups usually residing physically adjacent and culturally vast gaps away. In today’s value systems human rights, sanctity of life, racial equality at least in theory, all mitigate against the use of political violence. No longer can king seek to acquire another throne or a patch of land; no longer can chief send his raiders out for booty or heads.

These sanctions against the taking of lives must, however, be set aside to successfully engage in warfare. Implicitly, this occurs when the act of warfare is justified as protecting or promoting society’s most sacred beliefs. Thus, it is entirely logical that descriptions regarding issues in warfare should commonly reflect the basic value systems of the combatants.

In the above section on the System of Warfare the unifying theme or at least one unifying theme is the startling constancy in relative participation rates in warfare for the three major religiously defined civilizational groups that were examined. In the second cluster of conclusions, an effort to understand the reasons for the repeated failures of those initiating fighting led to an inferential conclusion regarding the strong importance of moral posture in achieving successful conclusions in war. And in this section we find that two sides of the internal human value systems, fairly said to be universally held, of altruism and selfishness at both the meta and the micro level, are critically related to why wars take place. It is suggested that wars derive not from pursuit of power, not from anarchy per se, not even directly from a genetic design of humankind. Rather, wars evolve it would appear as mankind first attempts to promote systems of universal morality and justice and then to protect the sanctity of the superior in-group.

To test the extent to which this explanation is predominant in warfare I chose to generate additional information from the data I had available. Most of the items recorded in this data base about issues in warfare, about success and so forth were coded in a manner which I know to be demonstrably valid and replicable, but those coded items and the original records on which they were based often did not directly indicate the predominant reason for a particular war. I relaxed my requirement for reliability, to generate the additional measures needed to quantify the interpretation made in the above two paragraphs, I undertook a coding of the wars of the 20^th century as to whether they were fundamentally wars about belief structures or about other issues such as greed or the realist’s assertion of power driven. Coding for this task was more difficult than that initially undertaken and therefore more prone to uncertainty. Nonetheless, I was able to code the importance of meta or micro beliefs with an acceptable reliability rate, but I often struggled in doing so. Further work needs to be done in this area, but, my results suggest that at least sixty percent of the wars of the 20^th century were importantly or even largely about such basic beliefs. That coding is summarized in the table found under Finding 11.

The fundamental root of war grows from basic human beliefs regarding raison d’etre and in-group stability.

Power and greed are significant secondary factors, but to understand the roots of war we must understand the intolerance and mutual distrust and hatreds that spring from the beliefs that mankind employs to define a valid and moral life and to define the superior in-groups.

Beliefs are shown above to be a fundamental root of war. But, there are many other factors that are cited as reasons for fighting. Two major findings relate to these other issues, one relating to trends and the other to the prevalence of issues which are indicative of two traditional theories of conflict and warfare.

We rely on the lessons of history to guide us in much of what we do. Particularly in the field of foreign affairs, many of those from the West have relied on the diplomatic histories of European nations as records from which to grasp an understanding of the politics that evolve in a system of relative anarchy such as those between nations or those between less formal groups not recognizing the sovereign authority of the other party. Not many years ago Winston Churchill asserted that the wars of the future, those of the new people responsible governments, would be more terrible than the traditional wars of the kings. To my knowledge this profoundly thoughtful observer of conflict and war did not say what the differences would be, but rather only that the fighting would be more devastating.

One of the more pronounced empirical patterns in these data is that of the change in the reasons for fighting over the centuries. Technology of transport and communications, of economic productivity and of medical care have changed radically over the six centuries studied here. The natures of the political structures have changed in equal or greater degree. The king of old may have been free to pursue war as a normal means to acquire plunder or prestige for his dynasty as described in the Beowulf excerpts reproduced later. The leader of today, on the other hand, must strive to rhetorically mobilize the people behind his objectives for he has no divine right to govern, the few absolute dictators aside.

Figure 7 tracks these changes. It depicts indices that I have developed as composite indicators of issues in warfare: one characterizing wars of the kings; the other representing issues in war that are more common among governments responsible to their people. The kings’ wars indicator is derived by combining the measures about wars over territory, over trade, and political domination. The kings’ wars tend to involve sovereign nations. The Peoples’ wars index is derived from a combination of measures of racial tensions, legal or other discriminatory practices, economic level differentiation, civil wars, terrorism and a focus on meta-beliefs.

The indices are in relative terms. In the past 150 years, the king’s wars have fallen in importance by three quarters. Over that time the wars of the people have grown in importance by a factor of close to four to one. The big change in king’s wars occurred after 1850 when monarchy was disappearing and surviving monarchs perceived themselves to be under threat. The big change in people’s wars occurred somewhat earlier as American and French inspired ideas of government responsible to the people started to spread to other countries. The shift has been profound with one type emerging from extreme obscurity and the other moving from dominance to near oblivion. Wars are fought over the issues of the time.

As noted the most prevalent issues in warfare are belief related, with greed as a major secondary concern. The Marxist philosophy suggests that class conflict related to issues of economic or political oppression will be a dominant factor in warfare. Measures of oppression are meaningful considerations in provoking violence even at the end of the 20^th century, but these measures rank only 5^th or 6^th in frequency of occurrence among the categories of issues considered here. Compared to the 19^th century this category of issues shows a declining frequency as an explanation of warfare.

The Realist school does a bit better as an explanatory factor in warfare, but its effects remain very much below the drives related to both universal and particularistic beliefs and does

Rank of Issues in Warfare -- 20^th century

ISSUE	1900-1932	1933-1960	1961-2000	TREND
UNIVERSAL BELIEF	1	1	1	UP
PLUNDER	2	2	2	UP
BELIEF, IN-GROUP	4	3	3	MIX
POWER	3	4	4	DOWN
OPPRESSION	5	6	5	MIX
POLITICAL CONTROL	6	5	6	DOWN

not measure up to greed either. The downward trend of power considerations in overall warfare is caused, at least in part, by the increase in prevalence of civil wars in which power balancing has not been generally seen as a major issue in the violence. Power remains a relatively stable, although secondary, factor in wars between major powers. But, wars between major powers are less common today than in the past. If there is a reversal in this trend with wars among major powers once again becoming more prevalent, I would expect power to reverse its downward trend and become a more important, although still secondary factor in causes of war.

As a product of Western culture with deep roots in our democratic heritage I had a profound interest in the interaction of political form and war performance and participation. A table presented earlier showed that democracies perform a little better in starting wars than do the groups formed along other political lines, but still do not do very well. Not shown in this summary is that the investigation of win rates suggested that democracies start about as many of their wars as do groups with other political forms, raising questions as to whether democracies tend to be more peaceful or not. When examining war participation rates by political grouping the following results materialized.

Although their participation in warfare has been declining for two hundred years, by far the most involved in wars have been the older, big democracies – the UK, the US and France. In the 19^th century at times half of all wars involved at least one of these countries. It is true that especially for the United States, the 19^th century wars were heavily weighted toward what could be called colonial or expansionistic conflicts as the new nation moved its frontiers steadily westward. The UK and France also fought colonial contests in that century. Perhaps the dedicated internationalist would discount these incidents of violence as not real wars and exclude them from the analysis. Tens of thousands were killed and died from dislocations as the results of such fighting. The wars resulted from the major political forces of the time. I accept these as adequate reasons for counting them as wars.

With the end of World War II and the move to relative stability in Europe and the passing of acceptability of political colonialism, these three nations fight much less often than formerly, but remain at the top of the list of countries repeatedly involved in warfare.

	1800 to 1913	1914 to 1945	1946 to 1970	1971 to 1989	1990 to 2000
US	14	19	8	5	5
UK	21	17	8	2	8
France	14	11	7	2	5

I conclude that the above patterns in part reflect an unmeasured but nonetheless fundamental force leading to warfare. It is, unfortunately, a force I could not measure. In justifying the assumption of the importance of this force I will go back to that Epic Poem so many of studied in our literature courses.

The poem of Beowulf is in a way an allegory for the deeply embedded traditions of warfare that evolved in far distant centuries but from which evolved traditions that remain as defining concepts of appropriate actions for society in our own day. As the great hero and king, Beowulf, reminiscences, he states.

Earlier, describing Beowulf in the flower of youth, the poet who captured this story paints a scene of beauty and joy as the hero and his men glory in the defeat of the monster Grindel

Beowulf is eulogized as strong, brave, manly, powerful and good in the terms of the morals of the day. In contrast the poet slanders the recently dead king as arrogant and above all selfish.

The image of what is a worthy man comes from the lips of the hero as he undertakes to fight yet another evil.

Of great interest to us in this time of racing technological change is the repeated references, in this tail from 15 centuries ago, to a stagnant technology. Treasures are valued as ancient, line 907 above. Weapons are also valued for their ancient nature as the next stanza on an old helmet shows..

While war is glorified and becomes virtually an end for the noble class, it is only glorified in society’s values when it is just, when it is for good above evil.

Again the story returns to the ruler unable to conform to the culture’s standards of generosity; even though he was brave and strong in battle, he is denigrated as unworthy.

Even this poem from early in our Christian heritage laments the old ones sending the young to do battle that they, the elders, no longer must risk.

The warriors unwilling or unable to live by their creed of courage and loyalty are castigated as not worthy of being called men.

The morality of war as so defined is re-emphasized in Beowulf’s dying soliloquy.

The soliloquy is followed by lamentations of fear from his followers as they refer to grudges that are held by old enemies who will now attack following the death of their super-hero king.

FINDING OR SPECULATION: The tradition of military glory is a root cause of war D

In the Beowulf allegory, violence against fellow man is glorified, justified if for a moral end by the standards of the day. It is not only a normal part of life, it is a virtual reason for life for this upper class. Even plunder becomes virtually a moral end if reached through unselfish courage and strength. In this bygone era the privileged class justified its existence through war, through raids that brought well being to their people. War bred excitement and camaraderie in an era of scarcity in the harsh climate of northern Europe. The tradition dates back still further but written records of this eloquence are few.

The nobility in later times maintained and expanded this tradition and the wars of kings even into the latest pre-modern times were there for that privileged class. With the anarchy bred by sovereign nations, with leaders responsible only, if it all, to their people and with the endemic anarchy found in societies of fluctuating injustice, the tradition of trial by struggle to the death, was sunk deep into social values.

As governments lost their aristocratic roots and as education spread and health care and sanitation reduced life’s uncertain existence, the warfare tradition was not discarded, rather elaborate laws designed to somehow make warfare less inhumane were evolved. Aggressive war was deemed immoral, international courts able to try those deemed to have violated the rules of humane conduct of war were established. All these steps have circumscribed the freedom of parties to practice this fundamental tradition. It, however, remains that when a conflict is judged to be societally of critical importance, moral codes can be read as condoning, even demanding the resort to arms.

In the years of Beowulf, wars had to be just, the leader had to behave with generosity toward his people, if not his enemies, to justify the fighting. Wars seldom resolved issues instead they usually spawned a need for vengeance in a second or third war. The tribal elders egged on the young to fight the wars they had not finished but could no longer practice. Much that we see in the politics of today derives from these traditions that grew in a time when most other aspects of society were sharply different. The tradition of trials of strength through violence has remained, although somewhat modified.

That is, wars occur not from simple rational calculation, but from an awareness that this is an accepted form of behavior in certain circumstances and that to be painted as a leader, or as a culture, as too cowardly to risk war is simply unacceptable. It seems rather far fetched to attempt to explain repeated failures in war, the constant level of warfare and so forth unless one accepts that in part the resort to war is not so much the result of rational and careful analysis but rather is the resort to a tradition that does not have to be treated in rational terms

There is the excitement generated by war, but that flashes and fades as the pains of war build. I find it hard to explain the repeated moves into warfare that produce failure. The slaughter of one ethnic group by another cannot be justified as rational for it seldom achieves its ends. No these are solutions that are chosen because war is an instrument that substitutes for mediation, compromise, for rational balancing. It is the traditional determination of right by determination of the strongest. If there is failure, the tradition holds; it is better to have fought and failed than not to have fought at all, to paraphrase another familiar aphorism. That tradition may be weakening as rules increasingly place strictures on the use of war, at least in theory; it is nonetheless yet a tradition that guides the net thinking of society.

In my original work I set out to determine sources or causes of warfare, trends and patterns in warfare and the results of decisions to go to war. It was to be a largely empirical exercise. The sections below entitled respectively, Sources of War, Decisions to go to War and Trends derive from those initial objectives. Under each heading, I have listed the relevant findings from the statistical work. To serve my final objectives I have also found it necessary to list relevant findings from other sources, outside of my statistical work.

In addition to the three categories of conclusions that were defined by my original objectives there are four categories that result from knowledge and observations gained during the research. For an example of such an empirical collation I direct the reader to the group of statements listed under Constant level of warfare. Well into the research as I called up on the computer screen a graph of new war starts by century, it ultimately registered that new war starts summed by century were virtually constant for four hundred years. The bar graph showed four centuries of a virtually constant level of new war starts, at 130 per century. New starts, however, doubled more or less concurrently with the advent of the steamship, railroad and telegraph. I concluded that this was unlikely to be a chance occurrence and sought to determine if there was some internal explanation or a plausible external explanation. In part the categories of Warfare Tradition and War Fatigue evolved from that search for explanation. They ultimately become part of the wisdom set that I describe.

There is a final category that collects those things that are commonly held in conventional wisdom to be relevant to the study and practice of warfare but which scored poorly in this analysis. Perhaps foremost among these is the explanation that warfare evolves from the anarchical relations that characterize international affairs. I found evidence that such is probably the case for certain types of wars – big power wars. But, big power wars are a small fraction of all wars and not necessarily a large fraction of important wars. And, even for big power wars anarchy seems to be a fundamental source of the tensions leading to wars only on a secondary basis.

The statements (pieces of the puzzle) listed here are given in this paper with limited explanation. Details are found in the other papers in this series, are in the first volume of the set, Essays on Six Centuries of Warfare. To enhance credibility, each of the statements made here is followed by a capital letter or letters indicating primary source(s) of the conclusion. An S is used to indicate that the statement derives from patterns and relationships found in the statistical analysis of the1029 wars that took place from 1400 to the present. These statements are very largely objective and reproducible and can be safely treated as factual. An O is used to indicate that the primary source of the statement is from outside writings and analyses. An S is objective, an O indicates a widely accepted pattern or fact. An I is used to classify those statements that come from the author’s interpretations of the data, from the author’s personal experiences of almost five decades in the foreign affairs fields or in a few cases from other sources, such as in O, but which are ideas that are not so widely accepted.

A primary objective in this research was to determine the issues in dispute that were said to be important in the decisions to undertake warfare. With that in mind the historical records for each of the wars were examined to determine what were listed as the primary conflicts leading to the war. These conflict issues were then examined to determine time trends and interactions among them. There are 9 patterns and relationships uncovered, six of which derive from the war data. Two others involve the author’s interpretations although both of these have support from other scholars.

From these, that I shall refer to as facts despite some limitations, I make 6 conclusions as to warfare that are meant to be incorporated as possible into the overall model of warfare that I intend to derive. For this category the conclusions revolve around the importance of basic beliefs as causes of war. Secondly I note the cyclical nature of emphasis on the most fundamental beliefs, a pattern which derives from the antithetical human values on the one hand of seeking of justice and on the other of the seeking of personal advantage.

*periodically world warfare increases in intensity for an extended period of time S

*such periods of intense warfare are known from history as revolutionary periods O

*periods of intense warfare show high absolute and relative frequency of conflict over meta ideological issues S

*man seeks on the one hand raison d’etre which will define his place in a just and orderly society O/I

*man on the other hand seeks stability and comfort often at the expense of others O/I

*technological changes taking place at times when social systems are relatively static heightens inequities breeding reformist beliefs S/O

*most wars are either universal justice (meta) ideology or we/they belief derived S

*two beliefs types that are inviolate, meta (universal justice) and micro (in-group vs out-group), lead to wars

*technological change exacerbates the inequities in society and the inequities ultimately lead to eras of reformist (meta ideology) wars

*humans are driven by antithetical needs for justice and security, as one need achieves primacy it undercuts itself and brings the other to primacy

*the cyclical alternation in primacy of these beliefs is causally related to this repeated undercutting

Wars are presumably brought on by conscious decisions made by senior leaders. A major aim in the research was to discover what could be learned about successes and failures in starting and stopping wars and to detect any trends over time in this area. Very little systematic data existed about decision processes per se, consequently the empirical study was focused on results not on the decision processes.

However, the poor results – start wars and fail to achieve aims and failure to stop wars definitively – made it imperative to incorporate as much as feasible the element of the decision process into any model/theory of warfare. Case study information and the author’s own experiences are used to supplement the systematic or data derived relationships in order to make it possible to understand something about the why of the decision processes as well as about an understanding of the results. While the findings noted are largely derived from the statistics, some important relationships are based on these outside sources and/or author inferences.

Here we immediately encounter both an interdependency and a discontinuity. Wars involve conflicts over basic beliefs, but the leaders firing the first shot seldom achieve their aims. Seemingly a long history of such failure would result in some modification of behavior. Such is not the case, failure rates actually worsen in more recent times. In some measure my concept of the warfare tradition, listed subsequently, as an important part of the war decision process is derived from the pattern of continuing and repeated failure to start wars successfully. It (war tradition) is a possibility as an explanation for the empirical pattern indicating lack of learning. A similar conclusion is drawn from the empirical fact that a majority of wars are fought again. That is, it appears that a majority of wars are not terminated with a resolution of the issues which lead to the war originally. Values and attitudes have changed over time, but the behavior patterns of failed war starts and failed war stops have continued.

These statistics lead to the assumption that war making decisions are not fully rational and cannot be explained as of a Clausewitzian nature. The emotional element deriving from allegiance to fundamental beliefs which tends to be antithetical to rational calculation is consequently presumed to be critical in deciding to undertake wars.

*democracies succeed more often when starting a war, but still only at the 50/50 level S

*moral values in wars of the 20^th century differ sharply from those of the 19^th century S/I

*intelligence information for war start decisions is sparse and frequently inaccurate O

*leaders have war making aims that are not the same as those of their people O/I

*the only wars with a low re-fight rate are those between sovereign nations that have not fought recently S

*conditions of either pre-war or a civil war have lead to re-fight rates of about 75% S

As noted earlier this category came off the wall. Constant levels of warfare were found in this research, constant overall and by civilizational grouping. The conclusions I reach must be considered as somewhat speculative, if not out of keeping with common wisdom. I wonder about the constancies in warfare participation rates within and between Islam and Christianity but find it to hard to believe that the enduring consistent pattern is a chance, rather than a systemic, relationship.

*for 400 years from 1400 the world had a constant level of new war starts per century S

*With the advent of the industrial revolution civilizational and inter-civilizational (Christian and Islam) war start rates doubled to keep relative war rates constant. S

*with 20^th century globalization new war start rates increase by a further at least 30% S

*presuming constant political conflict, there must a factor that is more or less constantly limiting the frequency of using warfare for conflict management – war fatigue

*increased inter-group contact levels and fighting capabilities increase the numbers of wars

*Islam and Christianity seem to have established patterns of conflict that date back for centuries, perhaps from the beginnings of the religions

Again this was not a factor in warfare that guided the initial research formulation. It was during the investigation that the author began to understand that it was an important factor in the warfare process. Clearly war is accepted as an option which can be used to project and to protect interests. What was less obvious was the apparent extent to which war was used without rational expectation of success, becoming almost an end rather than a means. That is, in part, the acceptance of war as the ultimate mechanism to manage conflicts derives from tradition rather than objective analysis.

Without much direct evidence, I find it necessary to in part explain failed decision making by referring to the tradition of better to have fought and failed than to have exhibited a cowardly unwillingness to die for one’s country/people.

*military institutions are a fundamental instrument available for supporting efforts to reach group objectives O

*an array of national beliefs is promulgated to prove innate superiority and courage of one’s people O

*leaders are reluctant to make concessions to others because of the fear of being labeled as too cowardly to protect the interests of their people S

*over the years reasons that make war acceptable have changed and war itself has had restrictions placed on its use S/O

*despite high failure rates warfare often remains the ultimate conflict management tool of choice

*part of the irrational processes involved in going to war relates to the war tradition

*leaders have leeway to select a war solution independent of the interests of their people; they find they can use emotion instead

This is one of the three original groupings of warfare patterns and issues that directed this research. However, the import has been far greater than that expected. The extent to which the issues in warfare have changed and the extent to which they relate to wealth levels directly as well as indirectly through political form was not foreseen.

Technological change is a fundamental source of trends in warfare and politics. Changing technology has destabilized social systems as it distorts the allocation of the rewards of society. It has moreover changed mankind’s attitudes toward the risks of war and has as well influenced the attitudes toward the taking of the lives of others. No model of warfare can be complete without some accommodation to the evolution of technology and of economic productivity and resulting value changes.

*king’s issues have been declining in warfare, people’s issues have been growing for two centuries S

*In recent years there have been more and more restrictions placed on the use of war O

*values regarding the use of warfare change with new technology – wealth, education, health S/O/I

*realism is going down overall as a factor in warfare, but remains roughly constant in big power wars S

*prosperity in Europe and war fatigue have changed its view of its military tradition

*reliance on American protection, cultural similarity and lack of American need for anything other than democratic Europe are part of Europe’s new view of warfare

*the greater incidence of conflicts between the strong and the weak with globalization results in more incidents of terrorism

This is in effect the obverse of the warfare tradition. Wars are certainly in a sense loved. Wars as they continue and produce the effects that they often do can be just as vociferously hated. Common wisdom accepts this latter response to war. It enters into this analysis at two levels. First and perhaps most importantly it enters at the big picture level as people and philosophers become dismayed and angered by the chaos and costs of revolutionary periods. It enters at the level of individual wars as well, as such wars continue without resolution or produce high costs with no apparent success. In both cases, the people’s revulsion against and fear of war constrain the leaders in their freedom to turn to the warfare tradition as a conflict management tool.

*after extended periods of revolutionary warfare, people seek stability and reduction of warfare O

*after an unsuccessful or particularly costly war people are reluctant to start a new war O

*war fatigue seems to operate in all cultures, but perhaps with different coefficients S

*the politician’s freedom to select the war instrument may be constrained by war fatigue

*a generational length half life of war fatigue in the presence of constant conflict and the warfare tradition is a factor creating constant warfare levels.

*leaders can only manipulate people up to their war tolerance level and people will only push democratic leaders up to a similar point

Plunder and international anarchy have been widely postulated as causes of warfare. Both these factors appear in these data, but not as primary causes of warfare. Anarchy, as it is referred to as a cause in warfare, is almost by definition restricted to sovereign nation against sovereign nation and empirically is largely at the big power level. Most wars are not of this type and therefore anarchy can explain at most a small share of wars. Moreover, even for big power wars, issues other than the insecurity associated with lack of an international law enforcing mechanism seem to prevail more often. Anarchy/power/insecurity is a factor at the big power level as the realists assert, but at a significantly lower level of importance than they would impute.

A once popular explanation of warfare derived from Marxist theory. This theory does not fit the world of the 21^st century very well.

Plunder is a somewhat more complex factor. Changing values have revised the context of wars of plunder. In the days of nobilities and kings, unabashed plunder was an accepted, if not always admired, pretext for violence. The advent of representative government has pushed this pretext off the screen for most countries – it does still show up but only occasionally in its traditional form.

There is a relatively new form of plunder that occurs primarily in the more newly independent countries which are most unstable. In many of these countries an important, even primary, source of wealth is that of occupation of government office. Thus, we have violent coups that seem to be primarily formulated to gain control of the spigots flowing with government gold. Given the values of the day most of these coups are overtly formulated to achieve reform in society, but that is often ruse not reality. Plunder remains one of the top causes of warfare, at least in the Third World.

*realism remains a rather steady important but secondary factor in big power wars S

*Marxism was a product of a particular time, with the departure of that time trade and class conflicts severe enough to lead to war disappear S/O

*greed and plunder remain important, secondary factors in warfare but change form as political values change, a king could fight a war of plunder, a president cannot; however in an unstable political entity one can fight for office with plunder as covert objective S/O

*political philosophies (theologies as well) are products of their time (technology) and must evolve or disappear

*anarchy is an important tertiary cause of war overall, it is secondary among big power wars

*as democracy and stability are entrenched in new states plunder wars will decline, sharply, reducing frequency of wars in the world system

*political philosophers probably unwittingly mislead the people in promulgating what they purport to be truths. Probably it is the youth that accepts, naively, these as truths and uses them to foment warfare.

From these individual elements of the warfare puzzle I will strive to develop a full picture. First, I turn to more traditional historiography to add realism and clarity to this multitude of stark statistical statements.

Here I will trace the systemic pieces of our warfare puzzle through the historical evolution of world conflicts of ideas and beliefs. Although much of what I listed in the previous papers derives from statistical analysis and is thus relatively objective in nature, I believe a major element of understanding and credibility is added by showing how those pieces fit into a traditional historical review of warfare and conflict of ideas. Covering six hundred years requires a very quick sweep, please be patient.

Because in the patterns to be shown there is an evolutionary component on top of which is overlain a cycle, examination of numerical trends is made difficult. For example, in the long run the frequency of ethnic issues in warfare is going up over time, but the frequency falls or levels out during particular intervals because there is also a cyclical effect which results in ethnic issues having lesser importance in those years when meta issues of universal justice issues are in dispute. In order to compensate or counteract this tendency I have centered the following discussion around eras which are defined from conventional historiography, but which conform to the statistical material as well. These eras are ones from which cyclical periods are defined.

I started this analysis from the year 1400 since I had expected a cyclical pattern based on earlier research. The goal in selecting this start date was that of obtaining a sufficient interval of data to precede the expected surge of warfare that should have accompanied the Protestant Reformation early in the 16^th century. In my terminology, the 15^th century should have been one of a status quo orientation in basic social issues, while the 16^th century should find the start of a revolutionary period.

I start the data set with this presumably relatively unwarlike period of time in which such wars as are fought are not expected to involve conflicts regarding the overall structure of society. I refer to the years from 1400 to 1520 as Era 1 and classify it as a Status Quo Era.

During Era 1 European Society was, nonetheless, in considerable ferment. The Black Death had decimated populations changing the ratio of land to labor. Feudal financial arrangements were crumbling in the face of this change. The three masted ship began to open up long distance exploration in a way not seen before. Cities and trade grew, with the beginnings of a new monied class emerging. National consciousness began to rise. If the theory pressed here is applicable to this early age we would predict that the persons in power were capturing a disproportionate share of the new wealth being created and in this era of relative ideological stability the changes were being laid that would lead to the disruptions in the next, Revolutionary (REVO) Era.

The Church of the time was increasingly perceived to be corrupt and its members seen to be living in an unfair and theologically indefensible luxury. That is, the Church was capturing and consuming too great a share of the wealth being produced in the system as a whole. With the advent of the printing press ideas, including those for change, spread at an unprecedented rate. It is claimed that an astounding six million books were printed in Europe in the first half century after Gutenberg developed the movable type printing press in the middle of the 15^th century.

An intellectual movement decrying the Church corruption and demanding reforms grew rapidly helped by the improved distribution of printed materials. Perhaps the most famous and influential of the critics of the Church was Martin Luther. I use the year of his nailing his 95 thesis to the Church door as the start of Era 2 which in my terms is revolutionary in nature. It extends to 1648 when the signing of the Treaty of Westphalia is traditionally accepted as terminating the religious wars.

The theory that is propounded here indicates that we should find some fundamental differences in conflicts and warfare in Era 2 compared to Era 1. More precisely Era 2 should show more intense warfare, a greater frequency of conflicts over issues of universal justice and most likely a greater relative frequency of civil conflict. The following table shows that these changes occurred in Era 2.

PATTERNS IN ERA 2 RELATIVE TO ERA 1

Indicator	Era 1 1400 to 1521	Era 2 1521 to 1650	Percent Change
Meta beliefs conflicts–% wars	6	19	+317
Civil conflicts–% wars	33	41	+24
We/they conflicts-% wars	21	23	nil
Warfare–avg. Intensity	190	238	+25

Conflicts over issues of the form of a universal (meta) system for a just society triple in frequency as a source of warfare from Era 1 to Era 2. The intensity of warfare index increases by 25% while the relative frequency of civil wars goes up at a similar rate. The basic pattern of an escalation in warfare over issues of basic beliefs is demonstrated using these data. A second element in the beliefs mix so important in warfare, the index of we/they conflicts, should be less important in this revolutionary time (although there is also an evolution upward on we/they conflicts as more inter- civilizational contacts occur as the age of exploration starts) when questions related to universal ethical values are at issue. The we/they conflicts remain, as predicted, at a constant frequency from Era 1 to Era 2.

The fundamental theory evolving here is based on the presumption that humans have a constant desire to see a system with adequate fairness and justice. Further all systems for ordering society so far designed by mankind have inherent flaws and produce less than ideal fairness and justice. Over time there is a tendency, absent corrections to the system, for the haves to continually expand their share of the rewards of society while the initially have nots tend to receive an ever lower share of society’s rewards. The result is that over time there is an increasing divergence between society’s ideal of fairness and justice and the actual levels achieved. The basic human need for a fair and just society triggers a demand to correct these injustices. The consequence of this trend of a growing gap in rewards between haves and have nots is a perception of lack of adequate justice and a consequent rise of reformist sentiments, as typified by Luther. Later I will also argue that technological change further distorts system production typically giving even more to the haves and thereby accelerating the trend of greater public perceptions of essential unfairness and unacceptability of the extant system.

Conflicts then arise between those who believe reform is required and those who believe that the existing traditional system is sufficiently just and correct. When the beliefs become sufficiently divergent, intense warfare is turned to as a means to determine the views that will be judged as correct. With very basic human beliefs at issue in such conflicts, resolution of differences is not easily obtained. Before compromises become possible, a generation or perhaps more of political and intellectual leaders must pass from the scene to be replaced by those who see a world of some unfairness, but more importantly see a world in which there has been prolonged and unacceptable chaos and destruction.

In Era 2, ultimately the years of chaos and destruction, that came about because of the struggle over which theology should prevail, produced a backlash. The second basic need, for security and stability, then began to count more in the people’s current concerns than did the fairness and justice concerns of a few decades earlier. In the particular case of the religious movements, during the revolutionary era reforms had taken place in the Church and a new version of Christianity had evolved. These changes produced greater, if not ideal, justice in society. The chaos that accompanied the fights for change produced a desire for an end to warfare and the reforms achieved reduced the perceived needs for reform. Some still sought further reform, but more of the population sought stability even if it meant some sacrifice of fairness. With the Treaty of Westphalia a new universal system focused on order and stability achieved prominence, that system revolved around sovereign states and divine kings.

The desire for stability evolves naturally in reaction to death and destruction. For it to coalesce populations into action, intellectuals must define new systems for ordering society, that purport to be adequately just, but which also contain the necessary sanctions and values that will exalt the maintenance of stability, the Status Quo. Such a theory that was promulgated as just and which would, it was claimed, promote order and stability was that which presumed the divine origins of kingship. Absolute obedience to divinely allocated authority was mandated. On the issue of justice, the new intellectual underpinning proclaimed the King was by moral authority required to rule fairly and equitably, given the values of the time.

One of the leading political figures of the time, Cardinal Richelieu of France, stated his thoughts in promoting more strongly the already extant theory of the divine origin of kingship as follows: his domestic aim was to make the King absolute in his kingdom in order to establish therein order and rule.... In looking back briefly, the period of intense warfare had lead to extensive reforms in the Catholic Church, established a competing alternative in the forms of various Protestant sects and had protected and extended the power of the noble aristocracy. The new conservative theory of divine kingship led to a third era, in this history of conflict, of relative status quo orientation extending from the Treaty of Westphalia (1648) to the American Revolution (1775).

This new era should be a period of less intense warfare, less conflict over ideas of universal justice and fewer civil wars. These indices should show a decrease in prevalence in Era 3 compared to Era 2. The following table shows this. Moreover, as universal beliefs are set aside, peaceful coexistence is perhaps the best term to describe this, the secondary level of conflict, our group against other group(s) will come to the fore. That is the beliefs that hold social groups together, the beliefs in in-group love and allegiance, should figure more prominently in warfare in status quo eras. I term the collective expression of such issues as ethnic or racial frictions, discrimination and so forth as we/they conflicts.

PATTERNS IN ERA 3 RELATIVE TO ERA 2

Indicator	Era 2 1521to 1650	Era 3 1651 to 1775	Percent Change
Meta beliefs conflicts–% wars	19	2.6	-86
Civil conflicts–% wars	41	26	-37
We/they conflicts-% wars	23	43	+45
Warfare–avg. Intensity	238	180	-22

Consistent with the theory, in Era 3 overall issues related to the definition of a system for universal (meta) justice virtually dropped off the scale, falling by 86 percent. Despite increases in population and the expansion in contacts between societies in the age of exploration the intensity of warfare index fell by about a fourth and civil war frequency fell by a third. A large jump of 50 percent occurred in the relative frequency of we/they conflicts. Thus, in Era 3, as in Era 2, we see the changes that are predicted from this cyclical theory of warfare.

Again the theoretical formulation offered here is substantially supported by differences in warfare between two intervals the inception and termination dates for which are determined from sources outside the data base.

A system for ordering society appears to have operated relatively effectively for some years in this status quo era. But, humankind is complex with its members having varying interpretations and motivations. No system for defining universal order and justice is ever likely to be judged by all to be free of imperfections. Moreover, all such systems, proclaiming enduring relevance or not, are creatures of their time. Technological change creates new opportunities and undercuts old systems.

Those starting the era (3) with more assets tended to accumulate relatively more and the changing technology created new wealth that those with more at the start captured more of. We should expect this to lead to increased real and perceived unfairness and injustice after something on the order of two or three generations.

In this time period there was vastly increased international trading and migration associated with improved sailing vessels. Enhanced water power and the beginning of steam power were further breaking down the old associations of individual craftsmen in favor of factories or systems of dispersed home production undertaken for a common entrepreneur. Migration to the city for the new jobs and to the new colonies upset old rural income sharing schemes. In the cities there grew newly wealthy traders and entrepreneurs with a new level of education and new comprehension of the world as they saw it.

Meanwhile the old adage that power corrupts was slowly creating kings that appeared to be far from divine in behavior and whom governed in a manner far from the ideal expressed in the original ideas of divine origin of kingship. Increasingly, large segments of at least the educated members of society began to accept that the system was unfair, not just. They sought definitions of new systems that would correct the evils.

As usual a set of intellectuals both lead and followed these views. Seeking a new basis for governance they hit upon what is sometimes called natural (as opposed to the discredited divine) origin of government. Paine, Rousseau and many others promulgated the ideas that the people were the source of the right to governance. Intrinsic in this concept was the dispossession of kings and the idle nobility. Again belief systems originally promulgated by fallible humans to meet the needs of a past time ultimately divided society into hostile camps. Only the jousting field of warfare could ascertain where truth would be found to reside. This leads us to Era 4, from the American Revolution, 1775, to the last revolutionary gasps in Europe around 1850. Do we find the expected changes in the level and character of warfare?

PATTERNS IN ERA 4 RELATIVE TO ERA 3

Indicator	Era 3 1651 to 1775	Era 4 1776 to 1850	Percent Change
Meta beliefs conflicts–% wars	2.6	22	+700
Civil conflicts–% wars	26	44	+69
We/they conflicts-% wars	33	33	nil
Warfare–avg. Intensity	185	228	+23

Yes, the expected patterns are present in strong enough measure to fully support the concepts being set forth as a theory, of sorts, of warfare. Once again, we see a historical period widely accepted as one of unrest being characterized by conflicts over universal/meta ideological issues (700 percent growth). Warfare intensity grew by 23 percent and civil conflict prevalence by almost 70 percent, as predicted.

The evolutionary element here is also important although less readily demonstrated from the empirical evidence, being masked somewhat by the cyclical effect. In Era 2, the first period of revolutionary conflict of ideas, society was just exiting the feudal, rural era. Only the beginning of urban industries and education were showing. Wealth and power were still heavily concentrated in the nobility. That revolution culminated in the confirmation of the position of the nobility relative to the Church and others.

In Era 4, society has moved very far from the feudal patterns of a century and half earlier. The old feudal character of the rural areas was rapidly crumbling undercutting both wealth and power of the nobility. The urban traders and industrialists were increasing to significant numbers with considerable wealth and unprecedented education. While divine kingship as a theory would consolidate power and wealth for the nobility, the theory of the right to governance springing from the people, in practice the educated people, consolidated the power and wealth of the middle classes. That is, there is a cyclical regularity of seeking change overlain on an evolutionary reality of shifting technology and wealth.

Warfare and conflict over issues of the form of the correct political system became common following American and French revolutions and continued, though less intensely than in the religious wars, for about three quarters of century. As before, an extended period of chaos and disorder produced 1) a desire on the part of the people for stability and 2) a set of intellectuals seeking to define systems that would promote the order the people desired.

Nationalism became the ordering force. Not unlike the concept of divine kingship, a new construct of allegiance to and obligation toward an abstraction, the nation, was used to counter what were seen as the destabilizing concepts springing from the American and French revolutionary experiences. But, as always, the conservatives sought to hold as much ground as possible while conceding enough to the radicals to placate them somewhat. Thus, we see the emergence of constitutional monarchies, a concept conceived to bridge divergent interests.

In addition, there seems to be another recurring feature of restoring stability and that is the release of energies against out-groups that can be considered either hateful, or uncivilized, or both. The great period of colonial expansion is said to have been partly motivated by such thoughts. As we can see the empirical record for the Status Quo Era 5, 1851 to 1913, shows the patterns in warfare that we should expect.

PATTERNS IN ERA 5 RELATIVE TO ERA 4

Indicator	Era 4 1776 to 1850	Era 5 1851 to 1913	Percent Change
Meta beliefs conflicts–% wars	22	9	-60
Civil conflicts–% wars	44	38	-14
We/they conflicts-% wars	33	82	+250
Warfare–avg. Intensity	228	157	-27

In Era 5, the status quo years between the receding of French revolutionary forces and the beginning of the Marxist conflicts, warfare intensity, not frequency, is down as is civil conflict. Issues of universal justice are less prominent in conflict. Meanwhile we/they conflicts escalate to unprecedented levels. The cycle is fully demonstrated, but there is as well evidence of evolution.

This is an era when there is increased conflict between the technologically much more advanced West and the, technologically more backward, Rest. The technology in the West brought these more powerful nations into conflict with the less advanced and thereby weaker nations of others regions of the world. With both a release of energies into a presumably economically valuable expansion and a belief system that promoted the extension of their presumably superior Western culture, we/they conflicts reach an all time high.

This technology of transport and communications changed the nature of world wide conflicts. When we look later at the number of new war starts in this time period we will see that the increased contact levels of the West and the Rest sharply increased the number of new war starts, largely between the West and the Rest.

The results of this evolutionary process has an effect on the parameters I am using to demonstrate the cyclical patterns. The increase in number of new wars per year tends to increase warfare intensity even though the wars are often smaller wars. The increase in contacts results in increases in we/they wars in both phases of the cycle, tending to mask the cyclical pattern. The establishment of new nations from those people’s temporarily colonized and the bringing of Western political concepts and values increased the frequency of civil conflicts. That is, in good measure, while the same generalized forces operate in world conflict, the revised distribution of nations and political groups changed the number of contact points changing the probable numbers for different warfare conditions, potentially masking cyclical patterns.

It is not possible to separate the cyclical and evolutionary patterns in a fully satisfactory manner. In the current period of extremely rapid change in economic technology and trade philosophy we face a similar situation of changing warfare patterns that reflect a different distribution of power centers in the world, not a different set of fundamental political/social forces.

To return to the original theme, in the 19^th century better technology of transport and communications with steam power for ship and rail, telegraph, as well as the vast improvements in military hardware changed the world bringing much more contact and much more conflict between groups. Wars expanded in number between the center and the periphery while ideological coexistence kept relative peace among the members of the center.

This new technology was having a profound if delayed effect at the center as well. More and more rural residents moved to urban factories. Worker productivity soared vastly increasing the wealth of the West. But, old systems of paying workers as little as possible and showing little concern for working conditions deriving from a heritage of low productivity were imbedded in the industrial culture. The result was that the barons of industry captured a disproportionate share of the increased output from the new productivity.

Despite efforts to ameliorate the plight of workers, the industrial barons had too much power and in many cases too much greed to permit sufficient change. Our cycle repeats and the people, workers and the educated, began to accept that the system was not producing enough fairness and justice. The intellectuals (Marxists/socialists in this case) ever waiting in the wings began to develop paper systems that would control the greed of the barons and allocate more of the earnings of industry to the workers.

The conservative camp had sincere doubts about whether socialism as a system would produce long run benefits for society; these doubts complemented their selfish concerns about keeping their privileged positions. The reformers flocked to the ideas of socialism in recognition of the inequities that were being promulgated by unconstrained capitalism. An extreme form of socialism, communism, gained a foothold and three quarters of a century of conflict ensued during which it was determined that capitalism, as modified by socialist pressures, was militarily superior and therefore presumably more truthful.

Era 6 should show both the characteristics of revolutionary conflict and of increased conflict levels due to enhanced communications technology.

PATTERNS IN ERA 6 RELATIVE TO ERA 5

Indicator	Era 5 1851to 1913	Era 6 1914 to 1989	Percent Change
Meta beliefs conflicts–% wars	9	49	+544
Civil conflicts–% wars	38	70	+84
We/they conflicts-% wars	82	57	-40
Warfare–avg. Intensity	157	483	+307

Warfare intensity reached a level never before experienced, up a solid 300 percent above the relatively high levels of the prior status quo years when world contacts points and conflicts expanded because of the evolutionary effect. With Western values expanded world wide and education levels so much higher than ever that this tended to constitute a new environment; ideological conflicts increased more than five fold.

Before proceeding, much of this time period is that which existed when I was professionally active and in various ways part of the conflict between the West and Communism/Soviet Union. While I attempted to code warfare events in these times in an objective manner, if there is bias in my data I presume it is most likely to be in coding ideologically based conflicts for the wars of this era. I feel confident that if there is bias it is not going to change the trend, at worst it might result in overstating the trend.

Civil wars increased very sharply from cyclical and from evolutionary effects as the latter half of the era was one in which the number of nations in the world increased by more than three fold with new nations, not surprisingly, tending to be politically unstable.

We/they conflicts declined significantly in frequency but remained relatively high because of the evolutionary changes.

On what may be a somewhat different track, the fatigue of enduring warfare seems to have been reflected more in the failure of one side of the ideological conflict than in the development of a new philosophy of a conservative nature. Clearly the design of socialism, at least its communist variant, does not adequately reflect the adage that power corrupts. That design failure combined with the inherent difficulties of efficient central planning in complex economies drove the socialists to destruction.

Meanwhile the capitalist/democratic systems, adapting much from socialism, continued to improve productivity and produced unprecedented wealth for workers as well as barons. There is an evolutionary pattern overlaying these cycles that, if its presence is real, has profound meaning for mankind.

The first revolutionary era ended with the development of a theory of divine kingdoms, a system that benefitted the secular nobility and royalty – the highest level of society which was emerging from the feudal years of isolation.

The second revolutionary era ended with the development of a theory of what might be termed divine nationalism and representative government. The main beneficiaries of this system were those in the middle and upper classes, but not the nobility. These classes had evolved new wealth and vast educational improvements that made the old divine king seem a foolish concept. The foolish behavior of kings made them appear even more the fools.

The third revolutionary era ends with a theory of constrained capitalism and of absolute human rights (rights might be considered analogous to divine in this context in that they are presumed to come from some on-higher, greater law). This theory, if you will, brought power and prosperity down to the working class where enhanced productivity and education gave them a power position that demanded representation.

These changes fit rather nicely into a progression brought about by scientific and technological evolution. It has also been accompanied by rather extensive changes in the warfare tradition as will be discussed later. Can we see another era of vicious civilizational conflict between West and Islam, as Samuel Huntington foresees? Or has the evolutionary effect changed the nature of conflict and warfare? Some more speculation on this later.

PATTERNS IN ERA 7 RELATIVE TO ERA 6

Indicator	Era 6 1914 to 1988	Era 7 1989 to 2000	Percent Change
Meta beliefs conflicts–% wars	49	13	-73
Civil conflicts–% wars	70	82	+17
We/they conflicts-% wars	57	87	+53
Warfare–avg. Intensity	483	311	-36

By 1989 with the fall of the Berlin Wall there is a useful date for terminating Era 6 and postulating the emergence of a new Status Quo Era 7. We have a rump session here with only a little data, the trends for which are shown in the next table.

In general the expected patterns show even with the very limited data set. Intensity falls, but reflecting evolutionary effects remains high. Ideological issues fall satisfyingly and we/they conflicts expand from an evolutionary high figure to an even higher level. Civil conflicts do not conform to the cyclical expectation of a decline. I suggest that we have an evolutionary effect, probably one temporarily above the trend, in which the expansion in the population of new nations created enough civil conflict related to power and political form to offset the fall in conflicts over meta ideology.

Looking forward some, perhaps to a next revolutionary period, we are experiencing what is generally accepted as a very high, probably unprecedentedly so, rate of technological change and increased global interaction. Extrapolating from these past experiences we should expect the beginning signs of a push for reform. I suspect also that the length of the cycle is shortening, as in the historical pattern, as the rate of technological change accelerates. As predicted from this analysis, there are now showing up serious movements protesting the unfairness of this new system in which those in the rich nations prosper mightily and most of the rest of the world’s people experience limited benefits, or with the AIDs’ crisis worsening, even find their lives under threat.

The following tables summarize the results of this examination of the statistical data as they relate to known patterns in history. In the first table I include only the war indicators that show distinct cyclical tendencies. Some of these show evolutionary elements as well and I have so indicated in the right hand column of the table. I have also, in the fourth column, shown whether the warfare indicator peaks during the revolutionary or the status quo period.

The first four items shown derive from beliefs that most closely relate to the presumed two basic needs for 1)justice and 2)security. They are enduring for the reason they relate to enduring needs. Of these four, warfare intensity and frequency of conflicts related to meta beliefs show a strong tendency to be at a peak during revolutionary periods. Thus, for example, conflicts over meta beliefs were up 37 percent in the first revolutionary period, 700 percent in the second and 54 percent in the third (see the first data block in the table). In the three status quo eras (second data block), compared to the prior revolutionary period, this indicator fell 86, 60 and 73 percent, respectively, showing the consistent and pronounced tendency to peak during the periods traditionally defined as revolutionary.

Indicator	Change SQ to Revo Eras	Change from Revo to SQ Eras	When most prominent	Evolutionary Tendency
Basic Needs Indicators
Meta conflicts	+37,+700,+54	-86,-60,-73	Revo Eras	moderate up
Civil conflicts	+24,+69,+84	-37,-14,+18	Revo Eras	strong up
We/they conflicts	nil,nil,-40	+47,+250,+53	SQ Eras	strong up
Warfare Intensity.	+25,+23,+307	-22,-27,-36	Revo Eras	weak up
Transient Beliefs Indicators
Wars for Colonial Acquisition	-20,-30,-70	+29,+20,-20	SQ Eras	weak down
Wars of Sovereign Nations	-5,-32,-36	+11,+2,-32	SQ Eras	moderate down

Civil wars also surge upward as each revolutionary period evolves. There is as well for civil conflicts an apparent evolutionary trend. This relates to the increased communications occurring with more modern technology which creates an upward tendency in civil conflicts that at the end of the data set somewhat masks the cyclical pattern. The we/they conflict indicator also evolved upward at a sharp rate as the West extended its political reach beginning even during the religious wars of Era 2. The we/they indicator tends to level out during the revolutionary periods and to make its gains in the eras I have labeled as status quo, perhaps more like a step function than a cycle when the effect of evolution is included.

The colonial gain indicator (related to efforts to gain political control of another group) and the sovereign versus sovereign big power wars both tend to be more prevalent in the status quo eras, but are trending downward over time and can be cited as probably related to transients beliefs and related values deriving from the particular technology of earlier eras.

The next tables shows those parameters I have developed as indicators of warfare patterns that do not evince a clear cyclical nature. The first of these tables enumerates the number of new war starts per year for each of the eras. War starts appear to relate directly to the technology of transport and communications. The increased rate of contacts from these transportation improvements is presumed to have produced more conflicts. Assuming the warfare tradition and the warfare fatigue factors remain constant, the greater rate of conflicts thus induced should itself produce the greater number of wars which the data set indicates is the case.

Warfare levels remain close to constant (measured as average new war starts during the era) through eras 1, 2, and 3 up to 1776 when modern technology was on the horizon. Era 4 which straddles, in measure, the introduction of steam power and telegraph communications shows a distinct upward trend in new war starts, which is followed in Eras 5, and 6 by a further increase. Finally, the rump session, Era 7, evinces a further surge in war starts. More contact points between groups seeing themselves as separate cultures produces more warfare, all other factors being equal.

Note: Era 4 straddles the start of steam power and Era 7 is strongly in the globalization period

The next table shows the non-cyclical issues in warfare. As in the cyclical set I have classified these into sub categories that indicate my understanding of how the evolutionary effect was recognized. In the first two the upward tendencies relate to increased contacts of the West with the Rest of the world.

Terror is of course a practice most engaged in by the weak who can do little to fight otherwise. The expansion of the West resulting from enhanced transportation brought an ever ascending number of conflicts between the strong and the weak. The relative frequency of citations of use of terror as a factor in warfare ascends with the same steady pattern.

The next of the non-cyclical issues grouping (realist concept related) reflects an interpretation of a trend that evolves both because of the increase in number of weak powers in the world and because of a change in values that relate to wealth and education. Improved wealth and education appear to have somewhat attenuated the warfare tradition although the effect is largely restricted to the West and the few developed Non-West states. The restrictions on use of war in the West reduces big power conflicts and thereby the relative frequency of wars of the type proclaimed by the realist school. Meanwhile, those states (Non-West) which have not undergone the same value transition keep the warfare tradition strong and warfare levels high. Early on in the time period covered by this analysis there was evidence of an increase in the incidence of wars related to the traditional realists concerns with big powers, balance of power and control of territory. However, after the 16^th century there was a steady tendency for these realist indicators to step downward. In this trend, the status quo eras would not show much change in frequency, for the indicators, but the next revolutionary period would show a fall that was not subsequently recovered.

Indicator	Change from SQ to Revo	Change from Revo to SQ	When most prominent	Evolutionary Tendency
Increased Contacts of Strong with Weak
Terror Issues-% wars	+100,+57,-19	+75,+45,+31	recent years	strong up
Relative Decline of Realist Concepts
Big Power Wars - %	+37,-25,-25	same,-27,-39	early years	moderate down
Realist issues -%	+24,-17,-25	same,same,same	early years	moderate down
Strategic, power balance-%	+233,-12,-7	+21,-27,-7	early years	moderate down
Marxist Theory
Trade as an Issue	up slightly toward end of 19^th century			gone in 20^th c.

Trade issue went up to a modest level early on as mercantile patterns held sway. As mercantilism disappeared, trade as an issue in warfare subsequently disappeared from the radar screen of the causes of war.

One factor that does not fit well into the model being put together here and one that has remained important and steady is that which I have termed plunder. The indicators I have here are ones in which there is a relatively belief free effort (remember I attribute a large share of wars to belief related conflicts) to gain control of the apparatus of government. In the early years this was manifested as an effort to gain another’s throne usually derived from some rationale of a dynastic claim. In the more recent years, the pattern that I equate with the earlier is that of coups aimed to replace one ineffective and/or corrupt regime with another. Almost a third of the conflicts recorded here had at least an element of this. The frequency level is steady over the years. From these data, and my interpretation, almost all wars derive in considerable measure from either basic belief conflicts or for goals of plunder.

These then are the historical patterns that are systemic in nature that I will build on to describe the roots of warfare over the centuries. They define the setting in which leaders must evaluate the situation and make their decisions regarding war or not war.

In the following paragraphs I have described a series of general patterns about warfare over the years. All of the descriptions are grounded in empirical facts, but almost all are interpreted. I have used appears as a term of preference to preface the interpretations.

I shall cluster most of the descriptions into one of two categories. First are those related to the decisions to undertake warfare. Second there are a series of statements about the decision making environment (what I have referred to as the systemic factors). A third cluster contains residual patterns that do not fit easily into the above two categories.

The writings leading up to this paper have presented a conclusion that war making is not in the realm of the rational. I do not know how widely this concept is accepted, I have not seen much about it in the scholarly writings with which I am familiar. But, as quoted earlier a very popular novelist writing about contemporary international affairs does have his hero advise the president that he should not consider the opponent of the day to be deciding his courses of action on rational grounds.

1. This brings me directly to the first generalization. Wars are entered without achieving apparent aims; in modern times, absent a large power advantage, as many as eight of ten of the parties firing the first shot did not succeed. Even with large power advantages failure rates upwards of 20 percent have been experienced. Moreover, success rates have been declining for at least 250 years. There is some evidence that democracies do not do as poorly as dictatorships in making decisions, but democracies do not do well in absolute terms.

The validity of these conclusions, shocking as they are, cannot be questioned for the data are factually supportable and overwhelming in results. One might respond, without examining the facts, that only inept governments, probably dictatorships have experienced such failings. The assertion if made does not fit the facts; in the course of the second half of the 20^th century the list of countries initiating hostilities and failing to achieve aims reads rather like an international Who’s Who. To list only a few, there are Argentina, North Korea, France, the UK, Egypt, Iraq, the US, Japan, the Soviet Union.

Failure of society to learn from these experiences is very puzzling. Are we creatures of tradition, emotion, faulty processes? Although I cannot fully comprehend the processes that lead to such repeated failures my observation is that all of the above factors are involved.

Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defense and deeply involved in the run-up to war in Vietnam wrote:

When John F. Kennedy became president, we faced a complex and growing crisis in Southeast Asia with sparse knowledge, scant experience, and simplistic assumptions. As time passed, we came to recognize [the situation] was far more complicated than we had initially perceived...We remained divided over how to deal with it. from his In Retrospect:

They rise to eminence by means of qualities that are not necessarily those needed to govern, and even less suited to building an international order.

Based on personal experiences and quotes such as this as well as a citizen’s observation of the ineptitude in international affairs of Clinton and then Bush on assuming office, I am satisfied that much of the root of poor results in war initiatives derives from poor quality decision making, done by inexperienced leaders.

As the conflict with Iraq unfolded in early 2003 Newsweek printed these observations:

Last year House Majority Leader Dick Armey suggested that Israel is entitled to the West Bank on Biblical grounds, and that ‘Palestinians should leave.’ And later, For some extremist Hindus, going nuclear was a near religious experience. After India tested a bomb in 1998, an influential right-wing Hindu group...wanted to organize religious pilgrimages to the test site in Pokhran.

Beliefs such as those attributed to Mr. Armey when they are derived from a three thousand year old document are certainly not likely to lead to carefully reasoned decisions. It is singularly difficult to comprehend how any group conceiving of a nuclear weapon as representing some religious exaltation could possibly address warfare decisions in dispassionate and analytic terms. Few of my generation found it either easy or safe to ignore the inflexible assertion of the belief that it would be Better dead than red .

I suspect that beliefs regarding truths that provide humankind its social structure, beliefs that cannot be questioned , often lead to decisions to protect national honor irrespective of perceived consequences (e.g. Saddam in 2003). Or, such beliefs contribute to conclusions that one’s own society is so superior that it will prevail in conflict regardless of material weaknesses (e.g. Japan in World War II). Beliefs of sufficient intensity appear to preclude rational weighing of options.

The written history of the world is largely a history of warfare... ...war antedates the state, diplomacy and strategy...Warfare is almost as old as man himself, and reaches into the most secret places of the human heart, places where self dissolves rational purpose, where pride reigns, where emotion is paramount, where instinct is king. He goes on to state, Europe remained a warrior society at heart. The law of God fell on deaf ears when men’s blood was up....

The warfare tradition is powerful, it (turning to war) is a response to conflict management that lets leaders off the hook in difficult conflict situations. The tradition of courage and honor in fighting for one’s nation provides a response that will often be accepted on an emotional basis. There are a number of anecdotal citations of decisions to go to war that seem to have this as a factor in non-rational decision making. It is the courageous leader who will set aside the warfare response and seek compromises if he fears that his domestic opposition will so label him as cowardly or as denigrating of national honor.

Commentary – Putting aside the honorable tradition of suicide warfare expressed in the old slogan better dead than red, one is pushed to assume that initiation of warfare is done under the presumption that it will bring one’s group toward a more favorable outcome on the conflict at issue. Favorable results on the issues in conflict have been achieved in only a small minority of war starts over the past century, or even past two centuries.

One would be tempted to place the fault at the doorstep of leaders as I do in some of the above statements, but I suspect these do not do full justice to the reality of the situation. Leaders lead to war and leaders, as is in part true in the Johnson quote above, are pushed to war.

At the same time, I accept that given a dispassionate review and sufficient foresight, Germans would not have supported Hitler’s aggressions, Japanese would have doubted the wisdom of Pearl Harbor and Saddam’s folk would not truly have liked to see war with Iran. There are ample grounds here for arguing that immense human suffering might be avoided in the future if we can restrain our propensities to seek war as a conflict management instrument. Perhaps a careful review of the record of past failures can provide a degree of restraint on our emotional responses.

A related observation – If a party fights from a better moral base, the results tend to be somewhat better. However, the act of starting a war itself degrades the moral position. Enhancing the moral position for the war initiator requires careful crafting of the rationale. It is not clear that leaders and their people show sufficient care in evaluating the potential moral base in warfare – certainly that was ultimately the major factor in the lack of success of the United States in Vietnam.

2. A corollary to the first observation is that, wars are seldom successfully terminated; most wars are fought again within a generation. Excepting the ideology free war between sovereign powers, about 3 out of 4 wars are re-fought within a generational time period. Presumably these wars had to be re-fought because they were terminated without satisfactory resolution of the conflicts at issue.

The pattern has been, and is, that wars are initiated that do not produce desired results. Wars, with issues not favorably or otherwise resolved, are fought again in a large majority of cases. Distressingly, our decision making processes lead us to failed wars and then lead us back again.

Less is written on the why of failed terminations than on failed initiations. One does see an occasional reference to the difficulty of getting out of a war once it is started. But, I have seen little in the way of studies of war termination processes and the consequences of the chosen termination conditions. There has been some interesting writing on Japanese decisions on termination in World War II, but this is a rather untypical case.

It appears that perhaps a combination of factors, fatigue and lack of success, result in the termination of fighting, rather than stopping as the result of objectives having been reached. Fatigue fades with time and lack of success probably is magnified with time. The lapse of a generation or so seems to be sufficient to ensure re-initiation of warfare. Presumably over that generational time we would often see demagoguery which highlights the unfairness of the last war settlement. The demagoguery accompanies a lessening of the memory of the horrors of war as a new population of young without war experience matures.

Commentary – Again this is an area that is rife with potential for expanding society’s understanding. Whether it is better to fight to a finish or invoke a recess is a question that should provide scholars with research direction for years to come. My observations on the data such as are available suggest that it is extremely rare for leaders to go into a war with anything but the vaguest notions of how to get out of the fighting and on what conditions to get out.

Although the data throughout this analysis involves many nations in many circumstances, in terms of America’s future even our superb democracy seems to suffer the same failings as do the nations of the world at large. This is being written as a second Iraq war is being seriously considered (war was finally started as final editing was done) only 12 years after the first. The moral posture of the U.S. in the war in Vietnam negated a vastly superior military capacity. It would be well for my fellow citizens to not consider themselves to be above the failings seen more generally.

3. Moving from the direct decision making on starting a war to the environment in which those decisions are made, I note the third of the empirical observations that are of relevance to society. Periodically the world experiences an increase in intensity of warfare. In these periods of more intense warfare the issues in conflict relate to the design of fair and just systems for ordering overall society. In these times the issues in conflict are derived from universalist ideologies. These periods are noted as revolutionary times.

The cyclical upturn in violence over issues of universalist ideologies appears to be derived from real and perceived worsening of justice and fairness in the international system, such as happened with the industrialization of Europe in the 18^th and 19^th centuries. It appears that the worsening fairness situation is fundamentally caused by design flaws in the reward allocation system. For example the workers got little in the early years of the industrial revolution while the owners became hugely wealthy. The flaws inherent in the reward allocation processes of society are enhanced by technological change as this technological change creates new wealth and production systems.

The revolutionary movements appear to be the products of the interventions of intellectuals who upon observing the injustices, the unfairness conceive corrections to the system, such as did Marx. The intellectuals are prone to promoting their corrected designs as based on inalienable truths – see the recent experience with Marxism. The increased violence then appears to be the result of conflicts between believers and non-believers. Ultimately there is the turn to violence to ascertain who is correct.

As mankind constantly seeks universal justice and personal stability and security there is constant conflict over the design of a system which will promote these two often antithetical needs. On a crude count basis most wars are either universal justice ideological or we/they belief derived. Thus, these are fundamental forces that bring mankind to the killing fields.

Commentary – This is a pattern that has gone on with great regularity for close to six hundred years. An examination of the record of warfare from even earlier years presumably would show similar forces in operation. For our purposes I will consider the forces as enduring.

As noted below the more rapid evolution of technology which tends to enhance the inequities caused by flawed system design is causing, it appears, a shortening of the period of the cycle to perhaps 3 or 4 generations today, from a period of well over a century if we go back to the 16^th and 17^th centuries. It further appears that the globalization taking place in the presence of galloping changes in technology will lead within a generational period to a new ideology involving needed, as reformists see it, system change. The forces of society are such that, unless corrections alleviating the perceived injustices can be taken warfare will again be turned to, to determine the right and wrong between conservatives, preferring the existing system, and the reformists, seeking to install the new more just, in their view, system.

4. The cyclical upturn in violence must, tautologically, be matched by downturns. Periodically world warfare declines in intensity. In such periods more wars tend to occur, but they are relatively smaller conflicts with the consequence that in aggregate warfare intensity declines. In these periods ideological or revolutionary conflicts almost disappear and we/they conflicts prevail.

The downturns appear to be related to intellectuals developing conservative philosophies that are designed to counteract the chaos and change of the revolutionary periods. The people at large find such philosophies attractive with their promise of reducing revolutionary violence (the backlash effect). It appears that internal stability is in part promoted by development of external enemies. If so, the greater prevalence during these times of we/they conflicts would be expected. We/they conflicts appear to be endemic to the world political system and are only held in abeyance, in measure, by the higher priority accorded to universalist ideological disputes during revolutionary periods. After conflicts deriving from differences over universalist ideologies, the second or third most common characteristic of warfare is that of conflicts over issues of us against them.

Commentary – The pattern of movement to promote reform, the achievement of partial reform successes and the appearance of backlash, against too much disturbance that results from change and from dispossession of those losing out in change, is a widely recognized social phenomenon. System designs are ever imperfect and promotion of changes that are widely perceived to be needed produces both corrections and backlash in society. The level of warfare data and the cyclical pattern in issues in warfare suggest that this is a phenomenon that pervades the international intellectual system. The reformists seek change and obtain center stage when unfairness/injustices become too pronounced. The disturbances the reformists create when on center stage lead to the rise of the conservatives who in opposing undue change become the top stars in the firmament.

5. The social forces cited above are permanent in principle although their particular manifestations relate to technology. There is a pronounced evolution of associated beliefs and values regarding warfare and social system design that relates to world levels of: wealth, health and education. There is no reason to dispute that with ever greater technology humankind has increased its wealth and improved its health. Over this six hundred year time period the changes in the sciences, in economics, in health systems have been astounding. The improved technology has made for better qualities of life, less risk of health failures and enabled and demanded better education for the mass.

It appears that the better health and improved quality of life has decreased the population’s willingness to risk their own lives and resulted in greater respect for the lives of others.

The improved education has, along with these changes, it appears increased the demand by the population in general to participate in determining its group’s policies and form of governance.

It appears that in the West this increase in the certainty of and value of life has constrained the conditions under which warfare is considered a moral conflict management instrument.

It further appears that in the West the greater wealth and more certain health situation has reduced the role of religious beliefs in life’s decisions.

It appears that these evolutions in values have not yet attained comparable prominence in the poorer, non-Western nations, resulting in asymmetry in willingness to use warfare and violence.

Commentary – When examining warfare and conflict over the centuries there is found very pronounced changes in issues, in conflict levels, in types of wars as well as changes in political forms for states, particularly between the late 20^th century and the 19^th century. There is ample reason for believing that mankind steadily adjusts beliefs and values to conform to the form of the economic and political systems consistent with more advanced technology. Moral issues change, political form changes, freedom to employ violence changes. Much about the systems of mankind is driven by changing technology. At the same time, values are sticky and people are reluctant to modify values especially those that fall into the realm of religion. The consequence is that value change lags behind technological change. This is a major source of instability and conflict as the conservatives resist change and the liberals promote it.

The lag in value change in the non-Western nations of the world and their relative weakness are major factors in the long term rise in the frequency of terroristic incidents in warfare.

6. Technological change induces other evolutionary effects that impinge on warfare. Concomitant with increased communications and transport capability, contacts between culturally highly different groups have grown. More contacts, especially those between diverse cultures, have meant more conflict, consequently overall warfare levels have increased. Today’s globalization is likely a major cause of the increased level of warfare which we see in the 21^st century.

It appears further that the complex of changes in economic activities, in productive capacity and in more widespread education that accompany technological change is a significant factor in destabilizing the social reward systems which in turn generates pressure for restructuring which becomes the basis for ideological conflict.

Commentary – The world of violence is undergoing a major programmatic shift. The end of European colonial dominance created a series of nations without traditions of modern governance (by this I mean governance consistent with the technology and values of the day). Civil wars have proliferated as a result. The resentment against strange cultures, past colonial dominance and current economic disparity has created what are called North-South antagonisms. It is the absence of military and economic power for the South that accounts for the current surge in terrorism.

7. The opening section in this paper refers to the irrationality of decisions that lead to war. Although not supportable from data within the data base analyzed here, the processes that can be tracked are not to all intents and purposes explainable without reference to the tradition of ultimately turning to warfare for conflict management, if no other options appear attractive. To restate that, warfare is often turned to less with hope of success than out of a desperation of seeing no alternative. Despite the inherent uncertainties and risks, and repeated failures, fighting and dying for one’s people is exalted. Leaders failing to protect national honor by sending the youth into battle, even into hopeless battle, are frequently castigated, in the extreme as traitors.

It appears a significant root cause in world warfare is that of the tradition of grandeur, heroism and sacrifice for national good that is the myth which society has developed regarding military service.

It appears from the data examined here that the greater the number of national entities in contact with one another the greater the number of conflicts and the greater the number of opportunities for execution of the warfare tradition.

Commentary – The warfare tradition is strongest among the less wealthy groups of the world and perhaps varies also by culture. The posturings of Saddam and of Kim Jong Il about national heroism, about success against an immensely more capable opponent and of national honor make no rational sense. They are part of a tradition bred to ensure a willingness on the part of persons to risk death and injury in the name of their people.

The less there is to live for and enjoy in peace, the greater the appeal of the warrior tradition referred to by Keegan at the start of this paper.

8. Conflicts are pervasive and warfare is not. War is glorified at its inception and perhaps on into its execution if success is clear and sacrifices not excessive. Ultimately warfare fatigue will set in and demand both termination of any on-going war and avoidance, if at all possible, of any new war. The fatigue factor seems to have a half life in the range of a generation or less.

Commentary – Warfare fatigue as a constraint on a leader’s freedom to execute warfare is a concept that is in line with common wisdom and I suspect few will dispute its relevance nor its validity. There is a puzzling aspect in these data that I have chosen to relate to the combined effect of the warfare tradition and of the warfare fatigue factor. At the world wide level, within the Islamic and Christian cultures and between Islam and Christianity there is a six hundred year regularity in warfare levels that involves too many data points to be considered as random chance. Without professing a full understanding, I suggest that constant conflicts, the warfare tradition and war fatigue interact to create a systemic regularity in levels of new war starts. Technology intervenes to increase contact points and thereby conflicts, leading to the transition from one steady state level of system warfare to a higher state that is sustained until technology once again expands the contact points between national groups.

The observations above regarding evolving constraints on the warfare tradition may intervene to offset this historical trend of more conflicts and more warfare which I believe to be causal. Thus, we may find the pattern of Western peace will expand as technological advances expand in greater measure to the Rest of the world.

9. While the above represents the most prevalent features of warfare as practiced in the recent hundred years there are other what I term residual features that nonetheless remain important. Plunder although under a different justification in modern times remains the second or third most prevalent root of political violence. The realist school’s theory of power balancing and seeking, although less common than it once was continues to carry some weight among the big powers.

Plunder now occurs primarily in countries with unstable political systems in which public corruption is rife. Violence is often used to gain office, the source of wealth from corruption. Typically, however, there is a rationale made of throwing the crooks out of office as a step toward mythical political reform.

Perhaps in part an artifact of the reduced number of big powers and from nuclear fear, big power conflicts have been relatively rare in the last half century. Consequently the power balancing and power seeking behavior that seems to have characterized the European big power system has become relatively rare, accounting for no more than 10 percent of warfare in more recent years.

10. The final generalization I wish to make is alluded to in statement number 8 above. Both because of the puzzling nature of the relationship noted and because it relates to divisions between Islam and Christianity, I feel the regularity in warfare rates and warfare participation rates deserves particular mention. The regularity is so strong that it seems unlikely that it is a chance event, but is one for which I have no plausible specific causal explanation. If one divides the data as pre-modern (prior to 1800) and modern, the rate of new war starts was constant by century in the pre-modern times. With the advent of modern transport and communications new war starts at the aggregate level doubled. Such makes sense. Also comparing modern to pre-modern war the number of war starts per year of Christian and of Islamic nations each doubled as did the number of wars in which Christian and Islamic nations fought one another. The consequence is as logic indicates the rate of war participation of Christian and Islamic nations each remained constant between pre-modern and modern times, as did the rate at which Christian and Islamic nations fought one another.

With several hundred years involved, hundreds of wars and dozens of nations involved in making up the data base I find it difficult to say this is simply a statistical happenstance. I suspect, but cannot give specifics, that this patterns relates to long term tendencies deriving from a combination of the warfare tradition as constrained by the war fatigue factor. Why such should be constant over time, and between civilization groups is not by any stretch of thinking obvious.

Poor Decision making is clearly of extreme importance in making war. In the most recent years close to 80 percent of war starts fail. Excluding big power, realist wars -- these are small in number although often large in size -- over 70 percent of these wars have to be re-fought within 20 years of their termination/suspension. Presumably many of these wars should never have happened since they did not produce desired results.

The overall index of intensity of warfare is over 100 percent higher during revolutionary time periods than it is during the status quo eras as defined here. With a not fully satisfactory index, it was found that at least 40 percent of wars had as a major element in their conflict mix, concerns over universalistic ideological matters. On the order of 20 percent of wars contained a significant element of we/they conflicts among the issues in dispute.

Basic and fundamental beliefs produce conflict issues that bring on considerably over half of wars. Thus, belief structure and efforts to manage its positive elements in a constructive way between groups must, along with faulty decision making, be cited as a fundamental root of war.

I have demonstrated a clear cyclical pattern that has endured for hundreds of years and which is arguably the causal consequence of human forces that endure. The data, much less complete than the war issues data, suggest that the accelerating rate of technological change, because of its destabilizing effect, is shortening the period of the cycle from perhaps 150+ years to something on the order of 75+ years. Moreover, expanded contact rates are associated with and plausibly cause an expended number of conflicts of interests. The greater frequency of conflicts of interests produces more wars, seemingly tripling or more the rate of a couple of centuries earlier. An extremely important fundamental root of war is associated with the imbalances and disturbances that result from technological evolution.

Finally, there is a factor that I am certain is critically important but which I did not find a means to quantify. Especially in the poor decision making/failure paradigm, I am certain that the tradition of turning to war to accomplish aims or to show national honor is a significant factor. The war making tradition is evolving, however, as technology brings new wealth, health and education.

Plunder remains as a primary cause of war among unstable and small states, but I believe it is fading. The realists, the Clasewitzians do find a niche, perhaps 10 to 15% of wars, in big power conflicts.

Wars are more numerous today than at any time in human history and impose great costs and suffering on us. When Hindus butchered Muslims, when Palestinians blew themselves up to kill Jews, when Iraqis failed to take Kuwait, the costs and the suffering endured in undertaking warfare have in practice not produced beneficial management of the conflicts at issue.

John Keegan and Quincy Wright delve into the human psyche to argue for some not fully rational thought process in deciding on war. Are we truly boxed into entering again and again the killing fields because as Keegan rather eloquently states, our self dissolves the rational when we ponder the prospect of fighting for what we believe are our truths? I, personally, think not.

In undertaking this research I believed that our modern research technology would make it possible to better understand the processes that have in the past lead to warfare and that better understanding would enable us to suggest to society some lessons which might be examined to mitigate and control warfare in the future.

I put forth the following ideas with both humility and a certain trepidation for I accept that the issues are vastly complex, multidimensional while the analysis I have done tends to be single dimensional at a time. Nonetheless, learning does take place in human affairs and it is men who bring forth painfully and iteratively the patterns which develop the perceived need for change, for learning. I hope this study is one iteration on the path to better understanding of warfare. We have in the recent past seen constraints placed on use of warfare, perhaps more constraints are possible.

The lessons that I wish to suggest here, if they are to be valuable must reach several rather different audiences; these are:

1. Obviously, senior policy makers and above all political figures need to be much better educated on the subjects that follow:

2. Intellectuals and theologians have played critical roles in promoting warfare and violence with their adherence to rigid ideologies promoted as absolute truths. It is hoped their successors might think again as this record is put on their educational agenda.

3. Society’s opinion leaders and in particular journalists are often incredibly ill educated on the consequences of their pontifications. Better informed they will serve society better.

4. Ordinary citizenry have something of a tendency to believe too deeply that with which they have been indoctrinated. The pattern of fallibility of past leaders, if developed as part of the educational process, might well cause pause in their willingness to fight and die for the received truths.

5. The military community has a tough role in society. They must be prepared to place themselves in harm’s way. That traditionally has required firm tradition, exaltation of past sacrifices and virtually unquestioned beliefs. It is in part the tradition that they honor so deeply that has brought on war.

I wish to suggest several areas in which there are lessons that mankind might well learn from.

In the past kings and chiefs could start a war with no or very little moral opprobrium reverberating from that action. From these data it appears that in the 18^th century the initiator of war might have achieved slightly better than a fifty percent success rate. Many, many things have changed which have resulted in rather severe rules established to limit the conditions under which war is considered just and moral. At the end of the 20^th century about three out of four of the wars (absent a large power advantage) did not bring to the initiating party the benefits sought. Of those wars started, something like 70 percent were restarts, that is once is not enough. Values regarding use of war changed and results achieved changed. Apart from not winning, which I recorded in systematic data, an anecdotal review of a range of cases suggests that many starting the war also lost the war – an indicator that I did not include in my data.

I write in the first instance for the American audience. I can almost hear those readers muttering to themselves “ well we certainly don’t start wars without good cause and we never lose.” But, those causes good or otherwise were not directly served in Vietnam, nor in Somalia. The evidence is strong that few governments are immune to the irrational, start/fail war virus.

I believe there are some lessons from this study of patterns in the use of political violence – war. I do NOT believe that we are likely to ever eliminate war, nor do I think as a pacifist. The evidence seems to suggest that Keegan in his assertion regarding the warrior society in which pride reigns virtually supreme has been real enough and that warrior society has not fully disappeared despite rules limiting the use of warfare to manage conflicts. These are long established traditions that are not easily broken, but equally are not impossible of change.

A more in-depth review of the record of decisions to undertake warfare done by distinguished scholars, neither pacifist nor pro-war, could develop a reference base that would make foolish decisions to start wars perhaps somewhat harder to take. The need to better understand the irrational and emotional and ignorance base for war start decisions is very real.

A serious question is, if one looks at most American presidents, can the world’s superpower afford to repeatedly elect a leader with so little understanding and tolerance for international affairs and then have him learn through on the job mistakes? In recent years Clinton, initially ignorant, learned quickly from his errors. At this writing my vote would go against Bush having learned much. Facing the threat of use of weapons of mass destruction we can ill afford to have this kind of on-the-job learning through accumulated mistakes.

Some, largely case study research has been done on past decisions to initiate wars. Little has been done in studying how the combatants might efficiently and finally terminate wars. It is only rarely, as demonstrated in this massive sample of wars, that the termination occurs because issues are resolved. Without resolution the war is resumed within a generational time period or less. One might wonder about the differences in processes employed in war termination between France and Germany in the Franco-Prussian War, in World War I and in World War II. The first two terminations lead to re-fights while the third lead to an alliance between the two nations. Or one might delve into why terminating the First Gulf War left so little stability in its wake.

I think it is most likely that wars are ill managed and that war fatigue tends to set in before issues are fully resolved, this is particularly so when the issues derive from strongly held beliefs. Can it be that a good case can be made, on historical grounds, for the necessity of compromise, even at the expense of the hallowed national honor? All of society would likely benefit from an understanding of how common it is to start a war, to fail, to stop for a time and then to start the same war anew.

These are simply musings on a hugely complex subject. There is, nonetheless clear evidence for suggesting that there is something fundamentally in error in termination processes, if in three out of four cases fighting is resumed within a few years. Study and learning is needed to educate our society.

The most fundamental source of the conflicts that lead to war are the beliefs that mankind employs to provide social stability and satisfaction in a non-war environment. This study suggests some lessons about the role of beliefs that could be helpful in controlling/ameliorating warfare.

Beliefs, I suppose tautologically, are rigid, difficult to change. Basic religious dogma, strong nationalism, fear of alien beliefs – these underlie conflicts between groups and are among the most important roots of war. It would appear that holders of virtually all belief systems tend toward being uncomfortable with the beliefs held by other cultures. It is also the case that some belief systems are more tolerant of alien ideas than are others. And, beliefs systems do change their tolerance levels. I perceive, presumably correctly, that Christianity in general is a more tolerant religion than it once was. Americans in general are certainly more tolerant of the value systems of American minorities than they were even in my youth.

Perhaps there is room for thoughtful review and evolution in this area. Some changes to give serious consideration to belief tolerance would clearly, from the interpretation of data made here, reduce the frequency with which conflict of ideas is likely to lead to war. Belief tolerance would likely as well reduce severity in the wars that do occur.

Intellectuals and opinion leaders are prone to promote absolute beliefs, absolute truths. Yet, both our intellectual and religious dogmas acknowledge human limitations and failures. Rather than seeking ultimate truth perhaps our political philosophers can think of satisficing truths, to use a term from economics.

The opinion leaders promote, often in demagogic terms, truths and the youth, tending most toward intolerance as a class, see the injustices proclaimed. They seek a cause they can pursue with fervor. They become believers, but with little understanding. Ideas of sacrifice for these new truths appeal immensely to some. The most extreme versions of this view were demonstrated on Sept. 11 and are practiced repeatedly by Palestinian youth. Belief transcends purpose and its demonstration becomes the end. I think, in a much broader view, of the anti-globalization protestors, a group with some meritorious concerns at the root of their violence, but with a quite pronounced inability to recognize the limits of what they believe in.

Can we maintain purpose and cohesion without allegiance to unbending received truths? It is a option worth exploring.

Islamic fundamentalists are a group prominent for intolerant views. Americans as targets of those views can easily see the failings of the Islamists. Americans need, in analogy, to step back and apply the same rules of logic to ourselves, to our extremists and fundamentalists. I suggest to add a ray of hope another lesson in history and that is that action brings, virtually inevitably, reaction. Just as civil rights, just as communism and just as many other --isms saw their fervor wane as new power seekers come on the scene, so will Islamic fundamentalism lose its fervor. Within this generation great changes will occur. Standing up to their current intolerance with rigid, equally intolerant opposition may be self satisfying, but it may not be the most effective way to speed the demise of the fundamentalist threat.

My apologies to the more fervent religious community who accept absolute truth, but it is empirically that beliefs are either directly developed by man, or are interpreted in fundamental ways by man, imperfectly. Religious leaders, intellectuals and opinion leaders develop concepts designed to promote justice and stability for humankind. These concepts provide the element of human raison d’etre. But all have design flaws for they are human designed. The evolution of technology in general exacerbates the effects of these flaws. The need, and it is commonly painful to do, is to reinterpret earlier conceptions to fit human conditions under a new technological regime. The alternative to peaceful evolution of rules to adapt to new technology is to seek warfare as a means of change.

Beliefs have been developed as intellectuals saw injustice and produced ideas for better systems that resonated with the people’s perceptions of the times. These usually sold as truths to youth, youth not intellectually mature, seeking excitement, seeking to do better than their forefathers and not seeing the consequences of that which they do.

Belief systems, based on historical evidence, are never without flaws even within the times in which they are developed. As noted below technological change creates situations in which new relationships exist and creates situations with opportunities for human well being that could not have been even dreamed of a century earlier. That is, technological change creates situations in which old belief systems become unstable and ultimately untenable.

Marx justified his system as historically deterministic and at least close to eternal. This promulgation of new ideas as immutably true may aid the process of recruiting believers, especially among the youth and the less educated. That promulgation creates war since as of now no one has come forth with beliefs that are universally accepted.

A complex subject but it would be potentially advantageous to put some of our best minds to work on devising tolerant belief systems – hopefully that is not a contradiction in terms.

A new revolutionary era is on the horizon. The forces that have driven ideological conflicts in the world for several hundred years are still present. The human forces leading in that direction are not immutable, but presumably must be recognized before alternatives can be devised. Absent change it appears that there will be an increasing perception of injustices between the wealthy and the poor nations of the world as initial advantages allow the rich to grow ever more prosperous and place the poor in the position of perhaps bettering their lot but being unable to keep up. Belief purveyors see this and are evolving new systems that they hope will bring more justice. We see the precursors of the unrest that their intellectual mutterings will produce. In time a new Marx or a Luther will capture the imagination of the reformist oriented and will find a coterie of followers to fight for changes.

This revolutionary period presuming it is on the horizon is particularly threatening because of its coincidence with the fundamentalist Islamic period and the fact that a large majority of the Muslims of the world live in poor countries -- live in those countries which are not treated justly they will argue. We may, probably will, as a consequence find that the purveyors of economic injustice will find common cause with the Islamists raising yet more opportunities for violence.

The threat of vastly destructive weapons that can be obtained by the weak and the poor offset in some not fully understood measure the conventional military superiority of the rich nations.

This is an area in which society needs to devote important resources for study of the forces and for the devising of corrective actions.

It is well accepted and appreciated that life styles in the world have changed and are changing as science brings new communications, new health, new wealth to many of the globe’s people. Less understood is the political, using the term political very broadly, changes that have been and are being induced by the new life styles deriving from the constant technological changes.

Wealth, education, health are all factors that are driven directly by technology in good measure. Looking back at history one can see the evolution of the political systems and public values that were induced by changes in these conditions of humankind. The Church lost power as life became more secure, kings lost power as educated people realized they knew as much as the divinely anointed kings.

A basic problem in Islam is that a set of beliefs initially developed in desert conditions of poverty and warfare is being challenged by the opportunities for people made possible with modern science and health systems. Value changes always lag technical changes and that lag has been a fundamental source of unresolvable tension since mankind’s inception.

In this time of very rapid change, globalization is a reasonable word to describe the general chaos created in world values, it would be well for society to set about devising new institutions to help in the adjustments of values and beliefs. This includes Islam if it is to prosper.

Among the most conservative of values are those associated with warfare. Men and women must be conditioned to sacrifice themselves for the greater welfare of an abstract concept of the people, or of the nation. With most humans valuing life above virtually all other considerations, the belief systems that condition for military sacrifice are necessarily deeply embedded in the national folklore. Heros, sacrifice, glory, national superiority are inculcated for most citizens during their youth.

For those in the military the inculcation is yet stronger. Leaders even outside the military promote national unity and sacrifice. The warfare/military traditions and values grew to maturity many centuries ago when life quality and opportunities were greatly different, when the effects and consequences of warfare were very different. War crimes tribunals, UN laws against warfare and other initiatives have been taken, but the butchering of the youth in the Iran-Iraq war, the butchering in Rwanda, the World Trade Tower devastation and as this is going to press the violence in Iraq show us vividly that warfare/military values continue to lag the changes dictated by our new technology.

Again this is an area for study and development. There is need for a carefully balanced, integrated critique of our military traditions that will generate suggested innovations that go beyond war crime tribunals, laws on warfare and the UN. World interdependence and potential prosperity both demand developments in this area.

I can do no more than raise areas for thought and for possible interventions. Many, many thoughts and debates must intervene to suggest changes. The evidence is rather powerful, however, that the needs for change are urgent and profound. We see this threat and we crawl toward change, piecemeal. We need perhaps more of a dash, with a considerable fillip of integration.

Some years ago I developed and analyzed descriptions of 296 incidents of political violence occurring between 1750 and 1960 and involving at least one combatant with a European heritage. That data set was developed from reference to the works of Quincy Wright and Lewis Richardson as well as very extensive research by myself. Analyses of the patterns and relationships in this set of data demonstrated the value of exploratory reviews of incidents of international affairs, particularly violent conflicts, over extended periods of time. After a career in foreign affairs with a number of international and national groups, I wished to extend the work I had done earlier, but concluded that I needed broader coverage both in geographic and time coverage. I discovered the volume by George Childs Kohn titled Dictionary of Wars which covered the time period and regions that I had examined but also covered both earlier and later time periods and aimed to cover the entire world. Using Kohn’s record as the unifying base I was able to develop a data set covering six hundred years and more or less the entire world. This involved deriving information from my data set, from those of Wright and Richardson and ordering the data with reference to Kohn’s dictionary.

The list of wars which I had developed earlier contained a specification of start and end dates, total casualties, a categorization as to the political relationships involved and a listing by combatant pairs of the issues involved. In my original data set, I did not incorporate any verbal description of the wars. Kohn provides satisfactory details on most of the same information that I incorporated as well as providing a sufficient level of verbal material to give a flavor for the time and conflicts involved.

Examples of abbreviated wars descriptions are given in the second paper of this collection titled, Warfare: Searching for its Roots.

Kohn does not describe his data collection procedures. I knew of my own struggles to define all violent incidents in the more limited scope that I had originally established. The data collection rules which I employed, rigorously, are described in Patterns in Political War and Violence. To validate Kohn’s work, and mine as well, I set about comparing the two collections where there was overlap.

First, I checked 300 of Kohn’s wars (Kohn lists more than 1,000 wars from 1400 through the end of the 20^th century) that I am using for this study against the data set of 296 wars I collected in the 1960s. The 300 incidents were selected randomly from throughout his volume. In a cross check of the 300 against my listing, 89 agree and 4 disagree with the listing I made 30 years earlier. There were 25 incidents from Kohn’s list that were below the casualty cut off that I had used. There were 25 others that were within the time period 1750 to 1960 but did not meet my requirement of participation by at least one group with a Western cultural origin. Another 157 fell outside of the time period for my data set. Thus, due to the different inclusion rules that Kohn and I employed only 90 or so of the 300 incidents selected from the Kohn set should have been included in my data set. Where there was overlap in time and inclusion rule the agreement between the data sources was excellent.

In a reverse check, I examined the first 70 wars (the first 70 chronologically) from my list and found 64 of them in Kohn’s list, with 4 missing and 2 uncertain. The agreement in checking from Kohn’s to my listing then is 89/93, or 96%. When reverse checking from my list to Kohn’s the agreement is either 64 or 66 of 70 depending upon how one should count the uncertains. This gives an agreement rate of from 91 to 94%, depending on how the uncertains are counted. With this degree of agreement, about 94%, demonstrated I did not feel further cross checking to be necessary. I had, in doing my original work, validated my data against the sets published by Lewis Richardson and Quincy Wright.

Kohn’s list is more extensive with its broader inclusion parameters and seems to be collected with even greater care than I had used. Whatever rules he employed, he has included essentially all the events that I had uncovered in a search through more than 300 reference books, as well a small number that escaped my observation. As noted, I had already validated my listing against the work of Wright and Richardson. I am convinced that Kohn provides very close to an exhaustive listing of the relevant violent conflicts from about 1600 onward and covers much of the set from 1400 to 1600. Prior to the arrival of European people in their regions, wars of the preliterate societies in the Americas and Africa could not be tracked. Thus, for the time period from 1400 to about 1600, there is little coverage of violent conflicts in the Americas or in Africa.

The research undertaken here is exploratory in nature. The two data sets conform with one another and with reality well enough to support the exploratory work planned. I think there are errors, but the rate of errors is below 10 percent, and is probably well below that level. The redundancy built into such a massive data set will compensate for the error rate in most uses, particularly when looking at system trends. I am consequently fully comfortable in the use of this data set of 1000 plus incidents of sanctioned violence and consider that it adequately represents the universe of such incidents during the six hundred years, early Africa and the Americas excepted. The agreement between the two data sets appears to be sufficient to indicate the validity needed to permit rigorous hypothesis testing for some of the variables..

Incidents of sanctioned violence are one area of history in which close to full coverage of events exists for literate societies. I know that I spent almost four years collecting my data set and consulted over 300 reference works in the process. The fact that 30 years later Kohn, with no apparent reference to my earlier work uncovered an essentially identical listing of wars suggests that the recording of violent events in the world’s history books is actually close to exhaustive.

The combined data proved fully satisfactory for looking at broad trends, although Kohn for most of the incidents in his data set provides less detail in his descriptions than I did. For each incident, he does provide a brief review of the political social and cultural influences, even though he asserts that his prime concern is the military information. For each incident in his Dictionary the description specifies:

It is in the specification of some of the political/social issues and in the determination of war ending that the greatest difficulty existed in the process of coding information from Kohn’s verbal descriptions which are not totally uniform from incident to incident. However, in terms of the most important of possible validity checks, most of the findings from use of the data meet the criterion of believability, or conformance with common wisdom. To state this validity criterion in other language -- the results from the analysis of the data generally conform to expectations. My portion of the data set, collected for different purposes, provides good information on all of the variables selected for analysis here.

I carefully read the descriptions that Kohn gave for each of the wars included in this data set and recorded the following information. I further checked the records of my 296 wars to add information and sometimes to subtract. I also occasionally went to Richardson’s descriptions. All the data items after (f) in the following list were coded as either yes or no.

The items (a) through (j) were relatively easy to code, on occasion coding the issues listed as (k) through (t) presented a challenge. This is one of the reasons I consider this work exploratory. Because the issues said to be in conflict represent in large measure historians’ perceptions, in the long run there should be an effort made to ensure the issues derive from a range of historical opinions as I did in my original work. As noted, Kohn does not detail his research procedures.

In addition to this original basic data set, I went back to the records of war and coded a variety of parameters for parts of the data set. This was done as additional research ideas developed.

1. For combatant pairs in the wars of the 18th through the 20^th centuries I determined whenever possible which of the parties started or initiated the violence. This almost always meant which party fired the first shots. For a few cases the party making a move of extreme provocation was coded as initiating violence even when there was no direct violence started. Civil war pairs were excluded from this coding process.

2. For the same time period whenever possible all participants, except for civil war combinations, were classified as either having achieved apparent aims, or having failed to achieve apparent aims. The fundamental reason for excluding the civil war pairs was the near impossibility of consistently indicating whether or not aims were achieved.

3. For the 19^th and 20^th centuries, the participants in this data set on success rates in starting wars were coded as to their political form -- democracy, monarchy, dictatorship and other. This was done by the author based on his knowledge of history and politics. This coding is reasonably accurate but is not felt to meet the more than 95 percent accuracy level of the other data sets.

4. The primary data set listed wars by start and end dates. A special data set was created for recent years which involved a counting for each year of wars started and wars on-going at some time during a year.

5. Yet another data set was developed in which religious affiliation and regional location of participants was incorporated. It should be noted that in the basic data set the unit of analysis was the war, or the violent incident to use the broader term. In this data set, as in 1 to 3 above, the unit of analysis is the participant – the group fighting. The primary interest in developing this set was the specification of war participation by Christian and Islamic groups. The coding included:

*religion of combatants – Western vs Muslim, Orthodox vs Muslim, and Muslim vs Muslim and Muslim vs Other

6. The final data added regional affiliation and tabulated conflicts for the UK, France and the US – the latter only covering the 19^th and 20^th centuries.

I was able to locate just over 1000 incidents of sanctioned violence that occurred in this six hundred year time period. This gives an average of almost two wars started during each of the 600 years in the data set. An incident of violence on the average involved 1 big power and about 2.3 small powers indicating that many of the wars involved only two groups. For the complex wars, in the coding system that I employed an individual incident of violence might involve sovereign relationships between combatants, as well as civil relationships or colonial fights. The American Revolution is a good example of a conflict involving multiple relationships. The colonies were coded vis-a-vis England as seeking to escape from a colonial relationship, while the allies of the colonies, the French, were listed as a sovereign nation fighting the sovereign British. Thus, this incident of violence was coded in the scheme I employed as both colonial (escape) and sovereign. The distribution of political relationships found in war is detailed in the table below.

About half of incidents involved at least one combatant pair consisting of two sovereign states. In almost as many cases there was at least one fight going on between groups that were both within one state (coded as civil war). Colonial gain and escape as specifications of political relationship between combatants were each present in about 30 percent of wars. Obviously from these data and that on the number of participants per incident, just over three, it can be seen that political patterns and objectives in violent incidents are often rather complex. While the sovereign state against sovereign state relationship characterized more wars than any other relationship , both civil and colonial fights were very common. There were on the average 1.6 political relationships found among the participants in an incident. As will be seen later there are important time variations in this overall pattern.

The issues in conflict varied from war to war and from era to era. Overall, religious antagonisms, racial antagonisms and fight for control of government (the throne or the presidency) were the most common issues listed, each occurring in about 30 percent of wars. The first two issues listed are later referred to as in-group vs out-group issues and are important in the interpretation which is made as to sources of conflict. But, this finding is important unto itself. In almost a third of all of the 1000 plus wars which took place over the past 600 years antagonisms over group belief structure were present. Attempts to gain control of the top office (throne or presidency) occurred with almost the same frequency. Belief differences prevail but the seeking of the position of power was also very common.

Fights over territory, somewhat less common than the three issues listed above, were present in a quarter of incidents listed in this data set. About 17 percent of all wars included here had one or more participant groups that had as one of the issues in conflict, their philosophy of life as differentiated from that of their opponent(s).It will be shown subsequently that an analysis of the data suggests that struggles over philosophy or concepts of how to order society were strongly associated with more intense violence.

It is thus found that in terms of frequency of occurrence, the most common issues in wars relate to either meta-concepts of the correct ordering of society (as represented in the first instance by the philosophy of life variable cited above) or micro-concepts related to in-group beliefs compared to some alien group (a concept that is reflected in the prevalent codings of religious and racial antagonisms).

Perhaps surprisingly for some, the issues of the realists and the Marxists, while present with moderate frequency, are significantly less prevalent than the above abstract beliefs developed for the proper ordering of society. Strategic power balance issues (realist issues) were present in just under 13 percent of wars. Trade (a primary Marxist pre-supposition) was cited as a source of conflict in about 7 percent of conflicts. Economic discrimination or disadvantage was present in 11 percent of the wars, although not always in a Marxist form, since it often involved discrimination based on ethnic or racial grounds, not on ownership of property. Legal or social discrimination was present 8 percent of the time. The modern bugaboo of terrorism was viewed as an integral cause of conflict in almost 10 percent of wars with a time trend for significantly greater prevalence toward the 20^th century.

It is important to note that historians’ descriptions of the issues in conflict form the basis for this counting of frequencies. In my portion of the data set I consulted multiple historical sources in an effort to assure that all recognized issues were recorded. In general I only recorded issues which I found listed in more than one reference work. Kohn does not describe his data development rules. My presumption from the information which I have is that if there is error in these data it is in under recording of issues.

For the 300 years from 1695 to 1995, I examined every fifth year and calculated the average number of new starts in any year (2.33) and the average number of on-going wars, for which the average was just over 10 per year. In those 60 years examined over the 300 year interval there were only 4 years (7%) in which no new wars were initiated. Eighty percent of the time there were from 1 to 3 new wars started. That is wars are ever present probably back through recorded and pre-recorded history.

The fewest number of wars on-going during any of these 60 years was 2 and this occurred in only 3 percent of the years. There were from 5 to 10 wars on-going (on-going is any war that overlaps a year at any time) in just over 50 percent of the years. At the extreme, there were 15 or more wars on-going at some time, in one out of seven of the years examined. That is, when the world as a whole is considered 2 or 3 wars are started almost every year, and 6 or 7 wars are carried over from the prior year. Wars, of course, varied greatly in duration, but an average of about five years in duration existed over this entire time period. Incidents of sanctioned violence are very much a part of mankind’s history, and I suppose future as well.

Number of wars	new starts	on-going
0	7%	0%
1	32	0
2	28	0
3	18	3
4	7	10
5to6	5	20
7to10	3	35
11to15	0	18
over 15	0	13

I felt because of the very long time period covered it would be informative to look here at the older time period (before the American and French revolutions) and at what might be considered the modern era, from 1820 forward. The increased tempo of life seems to be reflected in wars. In the pre-modern years an average war lasted for about 6.5 years, while the average war after 1820, despite very long conflicts at the end of the 20^th century, had a duration of just over 3.5 years, an almost 50 percent reduction in average duration. The decision to look at the two different time periods separately is certainly justified by the changes in the character of war from pre-modern to modern as can be seen in the following table.

In the modern era, wars are shorter, involve fewer big powers, and are much more likely to involve civil conflicts rather than disputes between sovereign nations. As can be seen issues involving beliefs, meta in nature or in-group related, have increased significantly in frequency in the modern era.

War Characteristic	Before 1790	After 1820
Average Number of Big Powers Per War	1.2	0.7
% with Civil Fight	35	57
% with Sovereign Fight	64	36
% to Get Colonial Control	39	22
% to Escape Colonial Control	23	30
% to Control Government	37	20
% With Racial Antagonism	17	40
% with Economic Inequality	8	14
% with Trade Dispute	10	3
% with meta-beliefs at Issue	9	26
% with Discrimination at Issue	5	12
% with Terrorism as Catalyst	5	13

The other characteristics of war that were recorded but are not listed in this table were relatively constant over the modern and pre-modern years. Religious antagonism fell a little in modern times, but that in large measure represents the effect of the religious wars early in the time period. Strategic issues stayed unchanged, although occurring relatively infrequently. Fights over land were more common than were strategic power concerns, but had much the same frequency in both eras. This chart reflects very similar trends to those shown for the King’s and People’s wars discussed in the paper on Trends. It looks from a somewhat different perspective, however.

There is often speculation about warlike groups. The usual case made by one making such speculation, is to attribute warlike behavior to groups other than ones own. In the 20^th century, looking at modern trends, there were 303 Western or Orthodox Christian groups engaged in the 247 conflicts recorded during the 20^th century, 154 Islamic groups and 118 others. Christian and Islamic participation rates were roughly similar if a correction is made for relative populations, although Christian participation remained somewhat higher. African and Asian nations had much lower participation rates than either Islamic or Christian groups during most of this time period. War participation rates went up late in the 20^th century for many Non-Western groups.

The approach taken here was to meld traditional and quantitative technology in order to extend the development of new knowledge on political processes – war in this case. The aim was to correct at least in part the following weaknesses:

Traditionalist – The traditional in development of political knowledge has relied on massive reading about events and what might be called internal processing of the descriptions of these events in order to detect patterns and regularities. Three considerations tend to limit the development of knowledge following this paradigm.

1. It is very difficult to detect the threads of regularity in extremely complex events when massive bodies of data are processed mentally with at best only limited systemization.

2. Related to 1) is the problem of seeing patterns that do not accurately reflect reality. Seeing the sought is a tendency that is not readily controlled without some crutch of systematic observation and data processing.

3. The traditionalist faces, in communicating with others, a problem of credibility. It is not feasible for the traditionalist to describe with objectivity how conclusions were developed. Thus readers often doubt validity, or at least wonder regarding validity.

War Study Scientist – In relatively recent times corrections to these limitations have been sought by a set of scholars devoted to the statistical or better yet the scientific study of war. Often the pendulum swings too far in a effort to correct past failings and such is the case with the scientific study as practiced.

1. Rigid statistical testing as a requirement has meant that complex, multi-variate forces are reduced to narrow uni-variate data and the conclusions tend toward the trivial.

2. The demand for scientific rigor has restricted the ability to develop data sets. Events or aspects of events are not studied because of the major investments required to develop demonstrably valid data bases.

3. The focus on hypothesis testing, ala the physical sciences, may be valid, but can only be useful when our theory base is much better defined than is now the case.

It is also the case, that which is called the scientific study of war is done largely out of the discipline of international relations and is done with a Western perspective. Consequently data sets tend to be restricted to the more formalized wars of the West.

1. Objectivity – The data, the analytic processes and the bases for relationships can be described with sufficient precision that others may replicate the study.

2. Exploratory – Skeptical about testing hypotheses when the theoretical base is currently so weak, this approach adopts a paradigm of exploring data from many angles to seek patterns and relationships. This of course raises the possibility of observing random events and interpreting them as systematic.

3. Systematic Skepticism – To control as possible the tendency for seeing the sought, data should be always questioned which typically means looking at subsets of a data set or looking at possible alternative explanations. A healthy skepticism is a key element of the methodology.

4. Computer Interactive – Simple statistical models examined on an interactive basis are a standard part of the process. Regression, correlation and others techniques can be used. For this work I found the use of a spreadsheet with its built in capabilities to summarize data from many different perspectives in a matter of seconds to be extremely useful.

5. Semi-hard Data – Emphasis is given to encompassing and exhaustive data that is as systematic and valid as possible. Hard fully objective and valid data are desirable, but breadth and scope are at this stage of development of knowledge of greater importance.

Fundamentally, the approach taken here and suggested for more general application derives from the availability of powerful personal computers. This is a technological advance that allows the melding of the scientific study approach with that of the traditionalists.

Rather than attempting to describe in detail the abstract method, I refer the reader to Papers 3 and 4 on management of warfare and on civilizational aspects of warfare. Development of the data base is straightforward enough. These two papers illustrate how rather straightforward exploratory asking of questions expanded the knowledge base. I recorded in these two papers much about the data search path that was pursued to both discover and validate relationships.

In particular, I point out the detailed examination of the past patterns in war participation of Christian and Islamic civilizations to suggest recurring regularities in many different cases. Throughout, the basis for conclusions is always overt and comprehensible. This is the essence is the methodology. It is not high technology but largely based on common sense, use of modern computer power and derived from a deep commitment to objectivity and skepticism.

Allison, Graham T. and Morton H. Halperin, Bureaucratic Politics: A Paradigm and Some Policy Implications. in World Politics, Spring, 1972.

Clausewitz, Carl von. Principles of War. The Stackpole Company, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, 1960.

Curtis, Michael. The Great Political Theories, Vols. 1&2. Avon Books, New York, 1981.

Denton, Frank H. Patterns in Political Violence and War, 1751-1960. University Microfilms, Ann Arbor, 1968.

Huntington, Samuel P. The Clash of Civilizations. Simon and Schuster, New York, 1997.

Jervis, Robert, Perceptions and Misperceptions in International Politics. Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1976.

Kennedy, Paul. The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. Random House, New York, 1987.

Langer, William l. An Encyclopedia of World History. Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1952.

Mansbridge, Jane J. Beyond Self-Interest. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1990.

Richardson, Lewis F. Statistics of Deadly Quarrels. The Boxwood Press, Pittsburg, 1960.

Shirer, William L. The Rise and Fall of the Reich. Fawcett Crest, New York, 1962.

Vasquez, John A. What do we Know About War? Rowman & Littlefield, New York, 2000.

Group Identity	Start War (#cases)	% Win War
Western	Yes (83)	52
	No (81)	77
Non-Western	Yes (120)	17
	No (78)	42

NOT INITIATE FIGHT	INITIATE FIGHT	TOTAL CASES
Win	Win	TOTAL CASES
62%	34%	535

NOT INITIATE FIGHT	INITIATE FIGHT	TOTAL CASES
Win	Win	TOTAL CASES
50%	34%	185

INITIAL CONDITION	FOLLOW-ON WAR
NO PRE WAR	48%
PRE WAR	63%

WAR TYPE	FOLLOW-ON WAR
PRIMARILY SOVEREIGN NATIONS	49%
CIVIL OR MIXED CONFLICT	58%

Relative Power	Initiate Fight % Win	Not Initiate Fight % Win	Attacked Win minus Attacker Win Rate
same	39	70	+31
one step stronger	64	68	+4
two step stronger	82	85	+3
one step weaker	29	38	+9
two step weaker	11	13	+2

	% start	%win if start	% not start	%win if not start	total cases	% win
democracy*	49	70	51	82	55	76
monarchy	44	38	56	47	125	43
dictator	52	18	48	68	33	42

19^th century		20^th century
humanitarian index	% win if start	humanitarian index	% win if start
lo	40	lo	13
hi	42	hi	47

19^th century		20^th century
Realpolitik index	% win if start	Realpolitik index	% win if start
lo	49	lo	55
hi	38	hi	19

POLITICAL RELATIONS	PREVIOUS WARS	FOLLOW-ON
SOVEREIGN	NO PRE WAR	29%
SOVEREIGN	PRE WAR	70%
CIVIL AND NOT SOVEREIGN	NO PRE WAR	52%
CIVIL AND NOT SOVEREIGN	PRE WAR	64%

Christians in Wars not involving Muslims	0.65
Christians Groups in All Wars	0.95
Muslims in Wars not involving Christians	0.81
Muslims Groups in All Wars	1.30

TIME INTERVAL	CHRISTIAN GROUPS	ISLAMIC GROUPS
1900 to 1949	144	45
1970 to End	79	75

years	wars of kings	wars of people
1400-1599	88	34
1600-1799	95	51
1800-1949	60	75
1950-2000	39	98

1800 to 1839	1840 to 1879	1880 to 1919	1920 to 1959	1960 to 1999
2.35	2.75	2.48	1.55	3.32

1800 to 1848	1914 to 1970	1849 to 1913	1971 to 2000
0.19	0.21	0.33	0.33

political relations	Percent of Incident
sovereign	51
civil	45
colonial acquire	31
colonial escape	27