The Causes of War Quotes

“War and peace are not separate compartments. Peace depends on threats and force; often peace is the crystallisation of past force.”
― Geoffrey Blainey, The Causes of War

“One may suggest that nations, in assessing their relative strength, were influenced by seven main factors: military strength and the ability to apply that strength efficiently in the chosen zone of war; predictions on how outside nations would behave in the event of war; perceptions of internal unity and the unity or discord of the enemy; memory or forgetfulness of the realities and sufferings of war; perceptions of prosperity and of ability to sustain, economically, the kind of war envisaged; nationalism and ideology: and the personality and mental qualities of the leaders who weighted the evidence and decided for peace or war.”
― Geoffrey Blainey, The Causes of War

“When two nations had a contradictory assessment of their own military power and the issue at state was vital to both nations, war was likely.”
― Geoffrey Blainey, The Causes of War

“It is the problem of accurately measuring the relative power of nations which goes far to explain why wars occur. War is a dispute about the measurement of power. War marks the choice of a new set of weights and measures.”
― Geoffrey Blainey, The Causes of War

“No wars are unintended or 'accidental'. What is often unintended is the length and bloodiness of the war.”
― Geoffrey Blainey, The Causes of War

“Wars can only occur when two nations decide that they can gain more by fighting than by negotiating. War can only begin and can only continue with the consent of at least two nations.”
― Geoffrey Blainey, The Causes of War

“On the eve of each war at least one of the nations miscalculated its bargaining power. In that sense every war comes from a misunderstanding. And in that sense every war is an accident.”
― Geoffrey Blainey, The Causes of War

“Wars end when nations agree that war is an unsatisfactory instrument for solving their dispute; wars begin when nations agree that peaceful diplomacy is an unsatisfactory instrument for solving their dispute. Agreement is the essence of the transition from peace to war and from war to peace, for those are merely alternating phases of a relationship between nations.”
― Geoffrey Blainey, The Causes of War

“Since every nation tends to believe that each of its past wars was fought in self-defence, a drawn war is more likely to be remembered as a victory.”
― Geoffrey Blainey, The Causes of War

“In the palace of glass and iron, the locomotive and telegraphic equipment were admired not only as mechanical wonders; they were also messengers of peace and instruments of unity.”
― Geoffrey Blainey, The Causes of War

“Manchester’s disciples believed that paradise was an international bazaar. They favoured the international flow of goods and ideas and the creation of institutions that channeled that flow and the abolition of institutions that blocked it. Nations, they argued, now grow richer though commerce than though conquest.”
― Geoffrey Blainey, The Causes of War

“Why did nations turn so often to war in the belief that it was a sharp and quick instrument for shaping international affairs when again and again the instrument had proved to be blunt or unpredictable? This recurring optimism is a vital prelude to war. Anything which increases the optimism is a cause of war. Anything which dampens that optimism is a cause of peace.”
― Geoffrey Blainey, The Causes of War