Wars are not a choice we make for no reason.
I know of no wars started by anyone to impose lack of religion on someone else. We have lethal Sunni v Shia, Catholic against Protestant, but no agnostic suicide bombers attack crowded atheist pubs.
Some wars have been due to the lust of rulers for power and glory, or to revenge to wipe out the humiliation of a former defeat.
Population pressure is the ultimate cause of every war.
Special interests and the demented philosophy of conquest have driven most wars throughout history. Rarely has the cause of liberty, as it was in our own revolution, been the driving force.
The driving force for the Arabs is hatred of Israel. Hatred of the Jewish people.
War is human. People fight for the same reasons that the Greek Historian Thucydides identified nearly 2,500 years ago: fear, honor and interest.
The force which makes for war does not derive its strength from the interested motives of evil men; it derives its strength from the disinterested motives of good men.
Wars are never fought for altruistic reasons.
Prejudice and passion and suspicion are more dangerous than the incitement of self-interest or the most stubborn adherence to real differences of opinion regarding rights.
It is simply not true that war is solely a means to an end, nor do people necessarily fight in order to obtain this objective or that. In fact, the opposite is true: people very often take up one objective or another precisely in order that they may fight.
These are roots of all evil, hatred and greed, for money, for the construction and for the sale of weapons. This should make us all think, who is behind it all?
If we offer a prize, so to speak, to anyone who manages to bring a country under his physical control - namely, that they can then sell the country's resources and borrow in its name - then it's not surprising that generals or guerrilla movements will want to compete for this prize. But that the prize is there is really not the fault of the insiders. It is the fault of the dominant states and of the system of international law they maintain.
Religion is a big problem in Israel and the Arab world, but again, the problem isn't religion but political leaders who want to use the religion.
War is party-blind. It doesn't care who is in the Oval Office. The forces that drive us to war don't care whether it's Republican, Democrat, or other. The fact is, these parties are prey to special interests. That is something Eisenhower was afraid of.
In my view - which could be wrong, but it is my field - there is no better formula for social instability than to divide a society between two ascribed characteristics that are seen as opposite.
My point is not that religion itself is the motivation for wars, murders and terrorist attacks, but that religion is the principal label, and the most dangerous one, by which a "they" as opposed to a "we" can be identified at all.
The Iraq War is largely about oil.
In fact, climate change is directly related to the growth of terrorism.
Today people can see and protest all the different interests that want war to happen, the people it financially benefits. The First World War wasn't fought for that reason. The Second World War wasn't fought for that reason. Your entire country and way of life could be overtaken.
I used to think that the causes of war were predominantly economic. I came to think that they were more psychological. I am now coming to think that they are decisively "personal," arising from the defects and ambitions of those who have the power to influence the currents of nations.
Unless we do things in this country to slow down our population, slow down our birth control, provide better water for people, provide power for people, we're gonna find out that the next wars are not going to be fought over diamonds, gold and political things.
Civil war, now, 100 years in the future - the things that motivate human beings, they don't change emotionally.
Almost all wars, perhaps all, are trade wars connected with some material interest. They are always disguised as sacred wars, made in the name of God, or civilization or progress. But all of them, or almost all of the wars, have been trade wars.
It is not armaments that cause war, but war that causes armaments.
