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Why Nations Go to War? A Researcher Analyzed 94 Wars and Found One Common Reason
No, it’s not resources or land.
To all our veterans, thank you for your service. And to my dad, who served his country for all the right reasons.
On March 20, 2003, the United States launched “Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF).” We all know the official narrative — Saddam Hussein had “weapons of mass destruction.” Apparently, Hussein was cooking up nuclear warheads in his basement like some kind of James Bond villain. We had no choice. We had to invade. The world was at stake.
Except none of that was true.
What there was, however, was George W. Bush with a vendetta. Saddam had once tried to assassinate his daddy, and like any good son of Texas, Bush responded the way anyone would — with a multi-trillion-dollar war and a few hundred thousand body bags. Freud would have had a field day.
The Iraq War isn’t an isolated case. Most people assume wars are about oil, strategy, protecting borders, acquiring land and resources, or simply keeping the bad guys at bay. You know, practical things. Sure, reasons often overlap. When nations go to war, it is never straight-line thinking.
So, Historian Richard Ned Lebow decided to examine those reasons. He found one common thread.
