Why nations fight
Subtitle: past and future motives for war
By: Richard Ned Lebow.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2010
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 295
ISBN-13: 9780521192835
Subjects: War -- Causes
Description: "Four generic motives have historically led states to initiate war: fear, interest, standing and revenge. Using an original dataset, Richard Ned Lebow examines the distribution of wars across three and a half centuries and argues that, contrary to conventional wisdom, only a minority of these were motivated by security or material interest. Instead, the majority are the result of a quest for standing, and for revenge - an attempt to get even with states who had previously made successful territorial grabs"--
Table of contents: title: Machine generated contents note: Part I. Introduction: 1. Introduction; 2. Theories of war; Part II. War in the Past: 3. Theory and propositions; 4. Data set and findings; Part III. War in the Future: 5. Interest and security; 6. Standing and revenge; Part IV. Conclusion: 7. Conclusion; Appendix: data set.