Concept, Main Causes and Types of Wars

We explain that it is war and the main causes that initiate these conflicts.Besides, the types of war and that they are world wars.

A war is the most serious social and political conflict between two or more communities.

What is war?

When we talk about war, we generally refer to an armed conflict between two relatively massive human groups , using all kinds of strategies and technologies, in order to impose themselves violently on the other, whether causing death or simply defeat, is the most serious form of social and political conflict that may exist between two or more human communities.

Much has been said about war, which seems being part of human (especially international) relations since the beginning of civilization.In fact, many economic systems, social miscegenations and technological advances have been sadly the result of prolonged and bloody wars.Many genocides, devastation of cities and losses cultural irreparable, too.

However, the rules that regulate and determine a war (and the simple fact that those rules exist), have changed throughout human history, what when it comes to defining who they are and who are not the combatants, what margins of neutrality there will be or what kind of weapons will be allowed.

However, there are those who consider every attempt to regulate war as naive , since it obeys the most selfish of human desires.According to Carl von Clausewitz, thinker of the subject, “the War is the continuation of politics by other means.”

See also: Vietnam War.

Main causes of war

In ancient times, wars used to be initiated due to territorial expansion.

The causes of war can vary greatly, depending on the social, political, economic and cultural context in which they occur , as well as those involved and their particular history.Usually there is no single motivation for war, but a set of them and contextual variables, since war is a complex issue.

In ancient times, wars used to be initiated due to territorial expansion (that is, owing to arable land or economic resources), such as the wars of conquest that the Roman Empire unleashed around it in Europe, Africa and Asia.

Many of them were often involved in religious considerations or deep cultural confrontations, such as the numerous crusades that the Catholic Church in charge of the Holy Roman Empire would later unite against the Arab kingdoms, against the pagans, or by the reconquest of Jerusalem , city considered sacred in that religion.

Other wars were triggered by internal disputes of a nation , from which some set of territories wished to become independent and form a separate nation, such as the American Independence Wars, which cut the political and economic link regarding Europe.

The latter also occurs when two or more political factions dispute the conduct of a nation, which leads to civil war, as is the case of the Nicaraguan conflict during the Sandinismo.

Types of war

In response to the purposes of its participants and the context of their opposing sides, we can talk about:

• Holy wars.Those that a church or a religious representative summons, relying on ancestral traditions of struggle for the survival of one religion over others, or of a culture over others, which leads to consider itself as the only legitimate and true, and all others as infidels and sinners.


• Civil wars.Those two or more political and/or social or racial sides are disputed within the same country, for controlling the direction of the institutions or imposing a socio-political model over another.In this case, the combatants are not usually strictly military, but almost the entire population is involved in the confrontation.


• Guerrilla warfare.Conflicts in which a container (usually an occupation force) is disproportionately superior to the other, and the latter goes to tactics of brief confrontation and rapid withdrawal, since he cannot face his enemy frontally.


• Total war.This name is used for the conflicts in which the nations involved mobilize until the last of their available resources to confront and defeat the enemy.It should not be confused with the concept of "absolute war" of von Clausewitz.


• Nuclear war.Surged only from the twentieth century and the development of atomic weapons of mass destruction, they represent a danger even for the life of the planet itself, since the atomic bombs could devastate cities and entire regions.there was one, luckily, because it could mean the end of humanity.

World wars

World War II lasted from 1939 to 1945.

The world wars have been bellic events of enormous magnitude, involving dozens of countries (especially the powers of the moment) and in which, for Thus, few countries were able to maintain their neutrality .The effects of these large-scale wars have always been devastating, tragic, involving millions of wounded and dead, as well as untold losses in material goods.

So far there have been two world wars, both in the twentieth century : World War I (or Great War) from 1914 to 1918 and World War II from 1939 to 1945.Cold between the US and the now extinct USSR, which lasted almost sixty years, is often considered a third world war, with the proviso that the contestants never faced each other directly, but through their influence in third countries.