The BICC conflict matrix
Why do people wage war? Many people are quick to identify some alleged basic evil that is solely responsible for all violent conflicts of today and the past—be it religion, capitalism or the reputed belligerent, wicked and greedy human nature. More often than not, such abbreviated statements do not do justice to the complexity of the topic. There is no easy answer to what the root causes of wars are. Violent conflicts can have many causes. In the history of humankind, there has probably been not one single war that can be traced back to one single cause. The factors that suddenly make a group decide to enforce their goals with violence against another group are both diverse and multifaceted.
To corroborate this observation, BICC has designed a matrix that clearly and systematically arranges the various ideas and theses on the causes of war The matrix is based on a qualitative understanding of war that understands the collective use of physical violence as a process. According to this, causal explanations for the outbreak of wars are allocated to different categories of causes based on a logical set of steps.
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Politics
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Economy
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Culture
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Military
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Environment
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| Contradiction | Older political science texts often ascribe wars to political differences between different states or organized groups. According to the famous definition of the Prussian General Carl von Clausewitz (1780 to 1831), war is understood as a "continuation of policy by other means". The exact contested political subject, however, can vary. So-called territorial disputes, generally between two or more countries, over the conquest of a particular region or the moving of a border in one direction or the other are one of those subjects. The Conflict Barometer of the Heidelberg Institute for International Conflict Research counted 58 of these conflicts for 2010. Domestic conflicts (so-called civil wars) are often about questions such as political self-determination, i.e. the independence of a certain section of the population from the rest of the country (secessionist conflicts). Other political quarrels, in turn, lead to competition amongst different social orders, such as during the Cold War, in which the idea of communism was juxtaposed with a liberal-democratic market economy. Such conflicts around ideology or political systems still exist, 20 years after the end of the East–West antagonism albeit under changed conditions. According to the 2010 Heidelberg Conflict Barometer, these are the most frequent matters in dispute worldwide (117 cases). Sources and further information:
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The Russian revolutionary Vladimir I. Lenin (1870 to 1924) believed in an "unalterable relationship" between wars and class struggles within a country. Without abolishing classes, one would also not free the world of wars. In this concept, violent conflicts are always initiated by certain class interests. Lenin and other Marxists considered a war of liberation or a revolutionary war—a war of the oppressed class against the oppressive class, slaves against slave masters, serfs against landowners, workers against the bourgeoisie—a just and necessary violent conflict. Even beyond communist ideologies, it cannot be denied that class divides are fraught with social conflict potential. The larger the gap between the rich and the poor, that is the more unjust the distribution of wealth, the larger the risk of a rift in society. The economist and Nobel Prize laureate Amartya K. Sen asserts, "the relationship between inequality and rebellion is indeed a close one". Sources and further information:
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Cultural diversity is part of our lives around the globe. People have different religious beliefs, feel part of different ethnic communities, are led by different values and norms and vary in their sexual and culinary preferences. According to US-American political scientist Samuel P. Huntington (1927 to 2008), such differences invariably lead to a 'fight of cultures' on the global macro level. In his contested but still often used thesis (by politicians), Huntington posits that conflict lines of the future primarily run along cultural rather than political or economic boundaries. The political scientist Harald Müller, amongst others, contradict this approach in his alternative concept of 'the coexistence between the cultures'. In this concept, he sees culture as a source of conflict as secondary while considering the role of ethnic and interstate tensions to be more important for modern conflicts. In his reasoning, he refutes Huntington's idea of rigid homogeneous cultural blocs and refers to the mixing of 'cultures' by the more intensive economic and communicative linkages of globalization. Sources and further information:
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There is a huge difference in military capacities among states. While many Western states can purchase latest weapons technology on international arms markets, the armies of poorer states are still using military equipment from the 1950s or even from World War II. Indeed, the United States currently account for more than half of all global military expenditures. Still, the military gap between countries is not simply due to absolute differences. The Global Militarization Index (GMI) developed by BICC shows that in relation to their respective size and economic performance, some countries invest rather fewer resources in the military sector, others a lot more. It is also worth noting the geographic distribution: Some regions, such as western Europe, parts of Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America show relatively low levels of militarization. Countries with high levels of militarization can be found in regional clusters, primarily in the Middle East and North Africa as well as in parts of South and South East Asia. Sources and further information:
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The wars of the future, some experts forecast, will be about water. Indeed, access to clean drinking water in the world is distributed very differently. Regions that have very little natural reserves, where demand is higher than supply and that are very poor suffer the most from the lack of water. According to UN estimates, more than one billion of people cannot access clean water regularly, in particular in the dry areas of Africa and parts of South Asia, where drinking polluted water is one of the main causes of deadly epidemics and many other illnesses. It is true that there is also a lack of water in the United Arab Emirates, but the country has enough money to design green golf courses and artificial gardens in the desert—while paying the price of an extremely high water consumption even compared to water-rich countries. But also independent of the geographic position, access to drinking water is likely to become the privilege of a wealthy elite. The privatization of water further exacerbates this dynamic. Besides water, the distribution of other, rare natural resources can be the structural basis of conflicts. Today, the access and the control over crude oil deposits are already one of the causes of violent conflict. Given a continuously rising demand for oil, globally limited reserves and the fact that the global production peak has likely been reached, conflict scenarios of this kind seem to become more important. According to some researchers, bitter conflicts around the access to the last deposits of the 'black gold' will trigger the wars of the future—if this is not already the case in many parts of the country. Sources and further information:
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| Motivation | Political differences do not necessarily result in violent conflict. In a democracy, a multitude of different, partially contradicting, political views are normal—and even desired. Under certain circumstances, however, one group may decide to enforce its political interests by using violence—i.e. "force the adversary to fulfil (its) will", as Clausewitz once phrased it. Rather than counting on diplomatic negotiations, a country could order its armed forces to, for instance, simply cross the border and occupy the contested territory by force. Similarly, a politically motivated group within a country could lose trust in peaceful processes of change and instead resort to arms to achieve their goal—be this political independence or the establishment of a new social order. Sources and further information:
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Greed, this was already clear to philosophers in ancient times, can be a pivotal trigger for violence or war. In the past, primarily Marxist theories of war named the ambition for profit maximization as most important motivation to act in so-called imperialistic wars. After the end of the East–West antagonism, this thought had also entered mainstream political science, in particular in the debate on alleged 'new wars' of today. According to this debate, these wars were primarily characterized by the emergence of non-state violent actors, such as warlords, mercenaries and private military companies as well as the replacement of political objectives and motivations by business-oriented thinking. In these 'civil war economies', the use of violence is an expression of either one party’s dissatisfaction, or of it turning into a commodity itself. Alluding to the definition of war by Clausewitz, the political scientist Herfried Münkler describes the 'new wars' as the 'continuation of looting by other means'. This opinion was empirically underpinned by a quantitative, however methodologically controversial study written by the economists Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler for the World Bank in 2004. Sources and further information:
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One can reply to the thesis of the 'fight of the cultures' that conflicts do not arise from cultural differences themselves but rather are a consequence of how these differences are perceived and interpreted by certain groups. The identification of the 'other', some theories suggest, is also a precondition for recognizing oneself as a member of a certain group in society. The US-American political scientist Benedict Anderson, therefore, called such groups "imagined communities". National states, for instance, are by no means 'natural' subjects but social constructs that always need the differentiation from others. Cultural diversity can be—and often is—perceived to be an asset. The perception of the 'other', however, can also lead to tensions in society. This is primarily the case when one group considers its position in society to be superior to that of another group. One example of this is the claim of monotheist religion to ‘own ‘the one and only truth—a claim that has caused suffering and hardship over centuries in the history of bloody crusades against 'unbelievers' (and that is still ongoing in many regions). Racist ideologies that consider certain groups of people characterized by their skin colour or their cultural habitus as inferior have a similar principle in mind. The 'other' is always the mirror image in which the 'self' recognizes its alleged superiority. For Carl Schmitt (1888 to 1985), German expert in constitutional law and philosopher—who has been criticized primarily for his commitment to National Socialism but who is still being considered a 'classic of political thinking' (see Münkler, 2005)—this very constitutive differentiation between 'friend' and 'foe' was the birth of political thinking. In some cases, the 'other' seems to take the shape of an elementary danger that must be eliminated—and, paradoxically, at the same time that of a guarantor of and a threat to one's own self-image. Sources and further information:
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generally react to this perception of threat by increasing their own weapons holdings, adjusting their military capacities to those of their rivals or even exceeding them. Those rivals, in turn, will in all probability respond by increasing their weapons holdings again. The US-American political scientist John H. Herz once described this dynamic as a 'security dilemma', which means that the self-help attempt of a state to look after its security needs tends to lead to rising insecurity for all. The well-known vicious circle of an arms race is initiated. A state, the German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724 to 1804), already considered as war: A war does not manifest itself in the 'outbreak of hostilities' alone but already in the "constant appearance of war-readiness (that) is a continuing threat to other states". The aim of a war may also be to slow down armament efforts of another country. This, for instance, was the purpose of the US-American invasion of Iraq in spring 2003, where the administration argued that it would destroy alleged weapons of mass destruction or to prevent the manufacture of further weapons. Sources and further information:
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The scarcer a resource—and the more essential it is—the more groups are inclined to use force to be able to control it. Still, competition around access to scarce natural resources, whether it be water or oil, does not necessarily have to result in violent conflict or even wars. Studies have shown that conflicts around water, in particular, can be resolved peacefully when the parties to the conflict get together and sort out in detail who has access when to how much of the sought-after resource. This, however, requires a modicum of trust on both sides as well as the general willingness to enter into a compromise. If these conditions are hindered by other factors, such as a culturally historical mistrust in another ethnic group, this will make it harder to find a non-violent solution to the conflict. In this case, one party alone could seize the resource in question. In the most extreme case, it might even be the party's additional goal to prevent the other party from gaining access at all to the contested resource. Sources and further information:
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| Catalysts before outbreaks of violence | The decision to want to enforce one's goals with violent means can have many different reasons. Political catalysts may also play a role in this. One factor may be the feeling that one is excluded from peaceful decision-making processes. Even though this is rather a tendency in autocratic states than in democracies, even democratic countries have experienced politically motivated violence; especially when the goal to be reached is that of minorities and thus is not considered to win the majority. Often, phases of political upheaval, such as the change from autocratic to democratic structures, are characterized by violent conflict. Political power and resources are re-allocated; at the same time, many rules and ruling authorities have either ceased to exist or have been suspended. In extreme cases, the absence of a functioning political order, as in so-called failed or collapsing states can be a catalyst for violent acts. Already in 1651, the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588 to -1679) wrote that people needed an all powerful sovereign to control their belligerent nature. Without such an authority, Hobbes argues, life is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short". Sources and further information:
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Social and demographic factors can increase the likelihood of outbreaks of violence. Often, the potential for political unrest can be traced back to dictators that resist modernization as well as failing educational systems. Widespread poverty combined with lacking prospects of development or life perspectives often lead to despair that makes every means appear right. Those who have nothing to lose may tend to risk everything to achieve their goals—be they political, economic or cultural, which includes their lives. Yet, the risk of war decreases with an increase in the level of education and improved opportunities for women to participate in society. The share of youth in countries that do not offer any opportunities for economic and individual development seems to be a demographic stressor that can contribute to the outbreak of violence. In science, this excess of youth in a population is called the 'youth bulge'. In Germany, this thesis was presented for the first time by Heinsohn in 2003. His explanation of a 'lack of positions' in society, which could be reduced by war and violence has, meanwhile, been empirically refuted and is highly controversial. Nevertheless, this thesis is often still being used. Sources and further information:
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Sometimes, cultural factors influence the decision to resort to violent conflict. Violent self-help or 'blood feuds' are a way of solving conflicts that is socially acceptable in some areas of the world. The important question is whether and to what degree a certain community understands the use of violent means as a legitimate instrument of social interaction. In 1970, the US-American historian Richard Hofstadter coined the term 'gun culture' to describe a society in which important aspects of its collective identity are rooted in a close association with guns or their possession. Besides the widespread affinity to guns, the cultural practice of demonizing or 'de-humanizing' the enemy can reduce one’s inhibition about using violence. Sources and further information:
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At times, military capacities of rivalling countries are evenly balanced. Often, in such cases, no conflict party dares to attack the other as the feared losses would be in no proportion of the expected gains. An extreme example for such deterrence is the concept of mutually assured destruction, in short, the guaranteed destruction of both sides, that held the superpowers in check during the Cold War. If, however, one party to the conflict considers itself as clearly superior to its enemy (whether rightly so or not) then its willingness to risk open confrontation is likely to be much greater. All in all, it can be said that one party to the conflict would be more prepared to initiate a war when it considers itself able to win it in military terms without suffering too many losses. The technical ability of the United States to engage in violence over large distances and at minimal losses to its military in all likelihood plays an important role in its decision to do so. Sources and further information:
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The British geographer Richard Auty coined the expression of the 'resource curse' in 1993, which describes the frequent concurrence of wealth in natural resources on the one hand and little economic growth and armed conflict on the other. One thesis of this is that a significant economic dependency on the export of the raw materials can lead to corrupt and clientelistic political structures that in turn cause or tacitly accept poverty to prevail. In such a case, the exploitation of natural resources would fuel both political and socio-economic catalysts, increasing the likelihood of a violent conflict. According to World Bank criteria,12 of the 20 countries with the largest mineral deposits are highly underdeveloped as a result of high debts, widespread corruption and extreme poverty. Four of these countries (Sierra Leone, Liberia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Angola) experienced one or more grave violent conflicts in the past 15 years. Sources and further information:
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| Trigger | The actual crossing of the threshold in using systematic violence is often preceded by one single political event. One must differentiate between such trigger events from structural causes of conflict and from the mobilizing factors. A trigger event condenses all other factors in an instance that can be clearly determined in time, which serves both as reference and legitimization for the following use of weapons. The history of past wars and conflicts is full of many examples of such political trigger events. The most well-known event is certainly the assassination of Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir presumptive to the Austro–Hungarian throne on the eve of World War I. But also the unexpected shooting down of the aeroplane carrying Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana, which set in motion the Rwandan genocide in 1994 can be considered such a trigger event. Besides political attacks, elections or the announcement of election results can trigger violent conflict. One more recent example is the partially violent protests following the (most likely manipulated) Iranian parliamentary elections in June 2009. Sources and further information:
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Socio-economic factors, such as inequality and poverty, may be structural causes and mobilizing catalysts for violent conflict, but they do not determine the exact moment of the outbreak of violence. Here, too, economic factors can play a role. Some studies, for instance, argued that the immediate trigger of internal violent conflicts can sometimes be traced back to sudden price fluctuations for export goods on the international market. Especially in countries that are heavily dependent on exports of only a few manufactured goods, a slump in prices can lead to a dramatic and unexpected drop in income that affects large parts of society and can lead to a violent outbreak of long smouldering conflicts. Sources and further information:
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Cultural events can determine the moment of the outbreak of violence. Often, it is the perception that known religious symbols have been desecrated or defiled. The probably best example from recent history is the Muhammad cartoons controversy. The publishing of editorial cartoons depicting the Islamic prophet Muhammad in September 2005 in a Danish newspaper led to widespread, at times violent, protests in the Muslim world. Scandinavian embassies were attacked and more than 100 persons died in the course of the violence. But not only religious feelings but very profane—and seemingly harmless—cultural events can trigger violent conflict. An example for this is the so-called football war between El Salvador and Honduras in summer 1969 that was triggered by a qualifying match between the two countries for the world championship. Sources and further information:
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The clearest and most immediate trigger for a war is a direct military attack. Besides that, there are examples where a country pretended to have been attacked to justify its own hostilities or to start a war—as it happened in September 1939 when German armed forces attacked Poland ("We have now been returning fire since 5:45 a.m.!") The causes for acts of war are often immanent escalation dynamics that works like a chain reaction. What had started as a small skirmish provokes retaliation that, in turn, is met with increased violence. There is, for instance, the real danger that the regular military confrontations between North and South Korea—although still limited in their scope—could escalate into a larger violent conflict, i.e. war. Finally, human rights violations within the country committed by the military or the security apparatus of that country can also trigger a war, for instance when other countries intervene. This, for instance, was the case of the 'humanitarian intervention' of NATO supported by the UN Security Council resolution in Libya in 2011. Sources and further information:
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Sudden natural catastrophes, such as droughts, floods, earthquakes or volcanic eruptions not only cause immediate catastrophic damage affecting the population. They can also trigger violent conflict as a consequence of accompanying changes in society, such as when groups start to fight for now scarce resources. Geographers of Columbia State University in the United States published a study in mid-2011 in which they initiated a controversial debate positing that sudden climate fluctuations, caused by the so-called El-Nino phenomenon, (unusual, not cyclic, fluctuations in temperature between the ocean and atmosphere in the east-central Equatorial Pacific) have a decisive influence on the outbreak of civil wars. The authors of the study conclude that in the course of the past 60 years, on average, there were twice as many wars in the years in which the El Nino phenomenon occurred. The both infamous and devastating earthquake in Lisbon in 1755 had far-reaching political consequences; not least because it was the beginning of the organized resistance of the people against the aristocracy. Similarly, the outbreak of the civil war in East Pakistan in 1970, which finally resulted in the founding of the state of Bangladesh, can be traced back to a typhoon that had devastated vast areas of the country. Sources and further information:
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| Catalysts after outbreaks of violence | Once a war has broken out, many political dynamics can shape its course, such as shifts within a conflict party. For instance, when in Spain in 2004, a socialist party was elected into government, it immediately kept its election pledge by resigning from the 'alliance of the willing' and by withdrawing all Spanish troops from the Iraq war. Political negotiations among two or more conflict parties can also have a decisive influence on the future course of a war. The degree of military, human or economic losses suffered by one conflict party may affect its decision to deviate from its original objectives and to, instead, aspire to a compromise. Processes of this kind may result in a temporary ceasefire or even a comprehensive peace agreement. External diplomatic pressure on the conflict parties, such as by the UN Security Council, may also play a role in ending wars. Sources and further information:
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To wage war, one needs financial and personnel resources. The more money, weapons and soldiers one party to a conflict has available, the longer it can sustain the conflict—and potentially cause death and destruction. The availability of certain resources will, therefore, decisively influence the future course of a conflict. Once the resources are depleted, the end of the war is not far off in all likelihood. Conflict intensity, in turn, can increase once a party to the conflict suddenly gains access to more resources. Violent actors have various opportunities to access the necessary resources. When they control resource-rich areas, they can mine them and either sell them directly on international markets or collect levies from local traders—one example are so-called blood or conflict diamonds. Sometimes, parties to the conflict get financial support from external actors, such as countries, organizations or individuals that sympathize with their goals. Calculations according to which the risk of a violent conflict is in direct relationship with the proportional size of diaspora groups of the warring factions are methodologically controversial. One BICC study ascertains that diaspora groups consist of a multitude of different actors that potentially could support both violence or peace-support operations in their home countries. Vice versa, the objective of many strategies to end a war is to cut violent actors off from the necessary access to resources. This, for instance, is the aim of economic sanctions that can be imposed by the UN Security Council. Such sanctions can either be comprehensive or only target one specific export commodity. In 2000 and 2001, for instance, the United Nations imposed an embargo on diamonds from Sierra Leone and Liberia to stop the civil war in these countries. Sources and further information:
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The course of wars or violent conflicts is not only influenced by material and personnel resources that are available to the warring parties. As Clausewitz already noted in the fifth part of his famous book "On War' (1833), "an army's performance will also depend on the degree to which its willpower and endurance have been steeled by familiarity with war, military spirit, trust in and devotion to the general, and enthusiasm for the cause". It is also the morale of the individual combatant, their disposition and willingness to use violence and to risk their lives that can be decisive in shaping the future of a war. Similar factors also play a role on the policy level. In this context, the political scientist Herfried Münkler differentiates between 'heroic' and 'post-heroic' societies. According to Münkler, the latter are characterized by comparatively little willingness to accept own sacrifices in wars. Sources and further information:
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Weapons and ammunition: Without these necessary tools to kill, there is no war. The intensity and the scope of the use of violence are likely to depend on the number of tanks, rifles, warships, bombs, etc. available to the warring parties. The aim of weapons embargoes against parties to the conflict, such as UN or EU embargoes against Libya or the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is primarily to stem the degree of violence in the country and to, at best, stop the war altogether. Finally, the type of weapons used also plays an important role. A somewhat exaggerated example: A war in which atomic bombs are involved would have a much different effect than one fought with spears and slingshots. Sources and further information:
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The exploitation and the sale of 'blood diamonds' and other natural resources is often an essential precondition for guaranteeing the continued financing of wars. Thus, the availability of natural resources influences the capability of one party to the conflict to systematically use organized violence. Besides the occurrence and, primarily, the access to natural resources, environmental factors, such as climate or weather conditions as 'environmental catalysts' certainly play a major role in how wars develop. The defeat of Napoleon's army by Russia in 1812, for instance, has often been attributed to the onset of winter. Besides the weather, the nature of the terrain in which war is waged also play a role. In the 1980s, Soviet tanks were hardly an opposition against the Mujahedin in the inaccessible mountains of Afghanistan Sources and further information:
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