The causes and prevention of modern wars
All wars have multiple causative factors, but some are more important than others, and it helps us to understand how to prevent wars if we look at the most important, the salient causes of the wars burning in the present time.
There are 8 major wars, (defined as 10,000 or more deaths in the previous year), 13 minor wars (1,000-9,999 deaths in the previous year), and 10 conflicts (100-999 deaths in past year).
Looking at the salient causes of the 21 current wars (major and minor), we find the following factors:
Religion 9
Foreign Intervention 9
Dictatorships 8
Ethnic differences 6
Secessionism 4
Armed militias 4
Resources 3
Drugs and crime 3
Ideology 3
Poverty 2
Civil war 2
Territory, herder/farmer, climate change, power struggle and post-colonial cause one war each.
Clinical psychology has evolved effective techniques for dealing with anger, and these techniques can be translated to international politics.
Essentially, we help a person with anger issues to recognise the first beginnings of the feelings or situations that will escalate to an outburst of anger, and we teach them ways of diverting away from the path that leads to anger.
the United Nations can use this same approach to war, looking out for disagreements and tendencies and using negotiation in the early stages of problem formation, rather than letting things slide into military action.
The list adds up to more than 21 because most wars have more than one salient factor. It is an update on a more complete study put up on my blog in 2024 here: https://greenerblog.blogspot.com/2016/12/blog-post.html. There is a minor shift in the ranking of some of the factors, due to some wars ending, some wars commencing, and a shift in the way some wars are reported, but the main causes remain pretty much the same
A More Peaceful World 