Customer Reviews

The Causes of War

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It was the principal textbook for a Causes of War class I took. It is very well-written. If you want to understand what really causes war and what people think causes war but doesn't, you should read this book. Blainey provides a great deal of evidence for the claims he makes and gives the arguments of the notions he disputes.

Mr. Blainy creates an interesting abacus paradigm, which he uses to explain why wars occur. Some of the factors, that are modeled as column on the abacus, are the perceived power of the antagonists, the perceived availability of allies, and a grab bag of 'other causes' such as distracting the populous from domestic concerns. These factors have different weight for different nations. Wars are caused when the sum of the factors for war exceed a certain threshold that can also vary from case to case. One other interesting thought he inspects is the method in determining the causes of wars. Traditionally he argues the cause of war was determined by what goes on prior to the war. This is more difficult, because these factors are colored by the perceptions of the various actors, and often contain misconceptions. The true causes of war can be determined after the war, when the true war power of the combatants are revealed by the win/loss column

I recently took a class on war, and this book was used as one of the textbooks. After reading this book, my entire preception of war has changed. Mr. Blainey has shown me so much that I never even thought about before. Not only that, but he exposes several myths about wars. For example, some people believe that wars can happen by accident. Blainey even puts up a good argument for it, but in the end, he explains why that is folly. It is truly an excelent book that I would recommend to anyone interested in war.

In my senior history class, we had to read either this book or Why Nations Go to War by John Stoessinger. We've been discussing the causes of war and the commons misconceptions that different historians have held. I found Blainey to be precisely on the mark in his analysis. The information he presents is hard to refute. However, I felt he made his point a little too well, if you know what I mean. I found myself stuck in example after example. After an interesting first 150 pages, I found myself dreading finishing it. It's just too bland for my taste. If I were you, especially if you're in Dr. Igo's class like I am, I would read the first 7 or 8 chapters, read the first page and the last page of the other chapters, and read the summary at the end of the book. That's all you really need to know.