Wars

War is a prolonged state of violent, large-scale conflict involving two or more groups of people.

"It is of course well known that the only source of war is politics ... war is simply a continuation of political intercourse, with the addition of other means." - Carl von Clausewitz, Vom Kriege (On War)

What causes wars to happen in first place? There are many theories about the causes of war. Though this article is about the impact of wars, I think it’s better to know the cause to know about the effect. Some historians state that wars are like traffic accidents. They just happen as a chain of uncontrolled events. Some people totally discard this theory and I am one of them. Psychologists argue that humans are inherently violent and war is a way of expressing that built in rage. Then there are demographic theories of war. Malthusian theory suggests that disproportionate distribution of resources amongst rapidly growing population is the root cause of wars. Second theory is the Youth bulge theory which states that when the population of a nation has more people of fighting age then the chances of the nation waging a war increases. In such a nation the average birth rate is 4-8 children per woman. In such a case one father has to leave not one but 2-3 social positions i.e. jobs to give a living to his sons which is not possible. Present Afghanistan and Europe just before the world wars are apt examples. This theory is the driving force of America's foreign policy and military strategy. Of all the theories the demographic theories influence me the most as I am a management student. If u look closely there has always been a resource for which a war is waged. Be it a beautiful woman such as Helen of Sparta or Draupadi in Mahabharat, or Iraqi oil for American invasion, there has always been a resource to fight for. The types of wars that arise of the situations mentioned in the demographic theories are aptly called as 'Resource Wars'. I will discuss about two important resource wars which have economic and business impacts. The two wars are the African war economies and the American invasion of Iraq. Resource Wars are backed by two motives, need or greed. Of the two wars I am about to mention former fits the need theory whereas the later fits the greed theory.

African War Economies

You must have seen the movie 'Blood Diamond'. Diamond is the resource for which this war is waged. This war fits the Malthusian theory which states that 'scarce resource gives rise to conflicts'. Diamond is just a symbol of the scarce resource in the African soil. Africa is abundant with resource like diamond, oil, gold, cobalt, timber, phosphates, to name a few. Here scarce means that it is unevenly distributed. In such resource rich societies a few elites occupy the natural resource and exploit the resource poor communities. The elites are generally very few in number and the resource poor are many. Hence the elites become ineffective in mobilizing these resources and generating wealth. This leads to open conflicts. This was the first argument for resource wars. This is seen in countries like Rwanda in Africa.

The second argument states that ' abundance of resource ' leads to conflicts. This is commonly known as the Dutch disease, where the non-resource sector shrinks and talent and investment is ploughed to the resource rich sector. This resource richness deeply influences the political economy of the country. Generally resource poor countries grow faster than resource rich countries. E.g. Japan which is relatively resource poor. States like UP and Bihar having rich resources is poor in development. The ill effects of this abundance are: low growth, neglect of resource poor sectors(e.g. agriculture), social inequality, budgetary mismanagement, high level of debt and vulnerability to external shocks. The resource rents help leaders to remain in power and establishing a regime through a system of patronage which rewards followers and punishes opponents. Here the wealth and power gap constantly keeps increasing between the ruling and the ruled. This leads to discontent among the youth which leads to violent conflicts. As the number of youths are also high in such countries. This shows the second theory I mentioned of Youth bulge.

In such countries the prized possession of natural resources can result in coup attempts to control the government. These attempts are funded by neighboring countries, fundamentalists, developed countries, or even companies. For example a war in Congo was funded by French oil company ELF to gain control of oil rigs in Congo Basin. Funding of these military conflicts again becomes a business. This is further exploited by capitalists by supplying them with arms and ammunitions thus forming a vicious cycle.

In 'Blood Diamond', Leonardo Di Caprio is the foreign element in the whole cycle.This was about the need part of the wars I will discuss about the greed part of wars in my next article.

Related articles:

Wars for Greed