Why War?
by Richard Overy | W. W. Norton & Co., 2004, 304 pages

The question of why war exists is a commonly asked one. Why have human beings throughout the history of the species engaged in organised violence against one another? In our modern world, why do educated and mostly civilised people support the large-scale slaughter of their fellow man?

A distinguished military historian like Richard Overy — whose greatest expertise relates to those most destructive of wars waged during the 1930s and 1940s — is well-placed to try to answer this.

Published in June, Overy’s Why War? is an ambitious work.

His book is broken down into two sections. Firstly, Overy examines the general causes of warfare, surveying the theories which have been proposed and the evidence which has been uncovered in areas such as biology, psychology, anthropology and ecology.

Secondly, he looks at the specific motives for warfare under four headings: resources, belief, power and security. These, he stresses, are not mutually exclusive. Many wars will be waged for more than one reason, even if one reason is cited as casus belli.

Ancient conflicts

It is most welcome that Overy rightly dismisses the modern trend to overlook lethal violence from the pre-state past, as if organised violence was something relatively new in human history.

He cites chilling archaeological evidence of ancient massacres, including the discovery of the remains of 66 human beings who were mostly butchered with axes near Vienna around 7,000 years ago.

On the question of biological determinism and the controversial claim of Harvard entomologist Professor Edward Wilson that aggression was innate, Overy suggests that recent research on behavioural genetics has mostly vindicated Wilson’s findings.

If our genes explain some part of this mystery, the evolution of human psychology is another factor worth pondering.

“The evolution of a psychology for warfare is a universal, species-typical adaptation, even though it is manifested in different locations and times in a variety of ways,” Overy writes.

This psychological basis for conflict can be as extreme as those martial values cultivated in ancient Sparta or amongst the Vikings, or it can be observed in the sanitised military culture of any modern army.

When combined with a strong in-group attachment — and expressed against an out-group enemy — this warrior spirit can become extraordinarily lethal.

Prehistoric conflict is particularly interesting. As Overy explains, there are serious challenges involved in interpreting the archaeological evidence of such conflict, whether that be skeletal trauma, iconography such as cave drawings of battles, weaponry or fortifications.

While historians can continue to argue over whether conflicts between small tribes can really warrant the term ‘warfare’, it takes an incredible amount of naivety to follow the example of Jean Jacques Rousseau in assuming that our ancestors lived peaceful and idyllic lives.

One case-in-point is the Alpine iceman, Ötzi, whose frozen remains were discovered in 1991, more than 5,000 years after his death.  

Ten years after this discovery, analysis showed that in Ötzi’s back, there was an arrowhead. On his blade, there was the blood of at least three different humans.

Competition and religion

The second half of the book is less interesting, dealing with the various reasons why groups choose to engage in warfare. Resource shortages are certainly important, and Overy references the cross-cultural work of Carol and Melvin Ember, who found that a fear of resource scarcity has led to the great majority of conflicts.