Gat 2009

So Why Do People Fight?
Evolutionary
Theory and the Causes of War
AZAR GAT
Tel Aviv University, Israel
The causes of war remain a strangely obscure subject in the discipline of

International Relations. Although the subject is of cardinal significance,
theories of International Relations address it only obliquely, and most
scholars in the field recognize the lacuna only when their attention
is drawn to it. While people have a good idea of the aims that may
motivate states to go to war, an attempt at a strict definition of them
is widely regarded as futile. This article seeks to show how the various
causes of violence and war all come together and are explained within
an integrated human motivational complex, shaped by evolution and
natural selection. These interconnected causes of fighting — some of
them confusedly singled out by various schools in IR theory, most
notably within realism — include competition over resources and
reproduction, the ensuing quest for dominance, the security dilemma
and other prisoner’s dilemmas that emanate from the competition,
kinship, identity, and ideas.
KEY WORDS ♦ causes of war ♦ critique of IR theory ♦ evolutionary

theory ♦ human motivation
The causes of war remain a strangely obscure subject in the discipline of

International Relations. Although the subject is obviously of cardinal signi-
ficance, theories of international relations address it only obliquely, and
most scholars in the field recognize the lacuna only when their attention is
drawn to it. Studies dedicated to the question are scarce. Indeed, even those
which cite the subject in their title, such as Blainey (1973) and van Evera
(1999), barely deal with it, but rather are concerned with various conditions
that affect the likelihood and frequency of war. As Jack Levy has concluded
in his review of the literature on the causes of war (1989: 210, also 295):
European Journal of International Relations © The Author(s) 2009. Reprints and permissions:
http://www.sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav, Vol. 15(4): 571–599
[DOI: 10.1177/1354066109344661]
European Journal of International Relations 15(4)
‘a clear answer is yet to be found.’ Another, collective effort (Rotberg and

Rabb, 1989), that brought together historians and political scientists, reveals
mainly perplexity.
Bradley Thayer’s excellent article (2000) and book (2004) are the most
comprehensive contribution to a small but growing body of work in the field
of International Relations that has taken up the evolutionary perspective,1
and he is the only one that directly addresses the causes of war. Given our
shared perspective, it is not surprising that we agree on a great deal. Con-
centrating on how Darwinism explains and validates some major realist
propositions, Thayer points out, for example, the evolutionary rationale
behind the realist stress on egotistic competition and conflict between states
for survival and ascendancy, arguing that this is merely an extension of the
same from the individual, kin-group, and tribal levels. He also suggests that
evolutionary theory can resolve the disagreements that exist among realists
as to the causes and aims of inter-state competition and conflict. Classical
realists, such as Morgenthau (1961), claimed that states seek power and act
to gain it even by force because the quest for dominance is in human nature.
By contrast, structural realists (Waltz, 1979) hold that it is not human nature
but rather the endemic struggle for survival in an anarchic system that forces
states to seek power, in self-defense and irrespective of their wishes, because
of mutual fear and the dictates of the security dilemma. Offensive structural
realists have stressed that the constraints of the anarchic state system force
states that seek to survive not only to defend their power but also to try to
actively increase it by dominating and subduing the others, again regardless
of their true wishes; this has been labeled ‘the tragedy of great power politics’
(Mearsheimer, 2001).
Critics have long suggested that realists tend to confuse ends and means.
Inter alia, their overall correct focus on the quest for power has caused
them to lose sight of the underlying reality that explains why the struggle
for power takes place. Morgenthau (1961: 4–5, 27–37, 113–16, and chs
5–8), for example, is famously ambivalent about the relationship between
power and other aims of foreign policy, sometimes suggesting that power
is a universal means for attaining the latter, but more often claiming that all
other aims are largely a disguise for the quest for power. Even resources are
discussed by him purely as a means for power, but not as coveted objects.
However, if, as he claims, the quest for power is rooted in human nature, why
is it there and why is its significance so overwhelming, if indeed it is?
Structural realism raises no less difficult questions. If it is mutual appre-
hension and the security dilemma in an anarchic system that force states
to act to preserve and expand their power, why — in the absence of other
motives — does the mutual apprehension that fuels the security dilemma
exist in the first place? Even though realists have been predisposed to stress
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Gat: So Why Do People Fight?
the struggle over scarce resources, somehow this has not figured prominently
in their explanation of state conduct, including war. This pretty obvious
but long unnoticed point has been well made by Schweller (1994, 1996),
who has claimed that states go to war not merely for security reasons but
also in order to achieve ‘coveted values,’ because they see ‘opportunity for
gain,’ ‘profit,’ ‘rewards,’ or ‘spoils.’ He, and others, have exposed the ‘status
quo bias’ in much of the recent International Relations literature, wherein,
indeed, scholars such as Waltz, Walt, and Snyder seem to believe that,
inherently, no profit can be made from aggressive action in the international
arena because of the balancing effect of the coalition that will form to oppose
an expansionist state.2 In the wake of the above criticism, Mearsheimer
(2001: 20) has recognized that in Waltz’s ‘defensive realism’ there are
actually no reasons for war; yet he has failed to see that his own ‘offensive
structural realism’ suffers from the very same problem. Similarly based on
the security dilemma alone, it leaves ananswered — indeed, unraised — the
question of why that dilemma should arise at all if no positive motives for
aggression exist on any side. Realists have lost touch with the purpose of the
whole exercise.
Schweller does not specify what the ‘coveted values,’ ‘gain,’ ‘profit,’
‘rewards,’ and ‘spoils’ for which states go to war might be, though his list
of historical examples provides ample illustration. People generally have a
pretty good idea of the aims that may motivate states to go to war; yet an
attempt at a strict definition and explanation of them is widely regarded as
futile, because individuals and collectives are believed to be capable of being
driven to war by practically any reason — for the attainment of any aim or
value, which are held to be largely ‘construed’ culturally.
This brings us to the age-old philosophical and psychological question
regarding the nature of the basic human system of motivation. Cultural
diversity in human societies is stressed for excellent reasons, but all too often
to the point of losing sight of our easily observed core of species specificity.3
As this article suggests, despite their many particularities, societies through-
out history have manifested a remarkably similar set of reasons for fighting.
Arguing that the human motivational system as a whole should be approached
from the evolutionary perspective, the article begins with an examination of
what can be meaningfully referred to as the ‘human state of nature,’ the
99.5% of the genus Homo’s evolutionary history in which humans lived as
hunter-gatherers. In this ‘state of nature’ people’s behavior patterns are
generally to be considered as having been evolutionarily adaptive. The inter-
action of biological propensities and cultural development in shaping the
causes of war in historical state societies is examined in the second part of
the article.
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Although I shall now survey the reasons for warfare among hunter-
gatherers one by one, it is not my intention to provide yet another ‘list’ of
elements, such as that provided in Hobbes’s Leviathan, ch. 6, or by modern
psychologists (e.g. Burton, 1990; Maslow, 1970). In the absence of an
evolutionary perspective, these lists typically have something arbitrary and
trivial about them. They lack a unifying regulatory rationale that suggests
why the various needs and desires came into being, or how they relate to
one another. Instead, I seek to show how the various reasons come together
in an integrated motivational complex. This complex has been shaped by the
logic of evolution and natural selection for geological times. It is the totality
of human motivation — in relation to the causes of violence and war — that
this article seeks to lay out and explain.4 To understand the fundamental
causes of war is to grasp how (a) the pursuit of evolution-shaped human
objects of desire, (b) by means of the violent strategic behavioural option,
(c) is endemic in anarchic systems. Here, too, it is all the so-called ‘levels’ —
the individual, the state, and the state system — in their causal interactions,
that have to be comprehended as a whole.
The Human State of Nature

Subsistence Resources
In contrast to long-held Rousseauian beliefs that reached their zenith in the
1960s, widespread deadly violence within species — including humans —
has been found to be the norm in nature (Gat, 2006; Keeley, 1996;
LeBlanc with Register, 2003). Competition over resources is a prime cause
of aggression and deadly violence. The reason for this is that food, water,
and, to a lesser degree, shelter against the elements are tremendous selection
forces. As Darwin, following Malthus, explained, living organisms, including
humans, tend to propagate rapidly. Their numbers are constrained and
checked only by the limited resources of their particular ecological habitats
and by all sorts of competitors. Contrary to the Rousseauian imagination,
humans, and animals, did not live in a state of primordial plenty. Even
in lush environments plenty is a misleading notion, for it is relative, first,
to the number of mouths that have to be fed. The more resource-rich a
region is, the more people it attracts from outside, and the greater the
internal population growth that takes place. As Malthus pointed out, a new
equilibrium between resource volume and population size would eventually
be reached, recreating the same tenuous ratio of subsistence that was the fate
of pre-industrial societies throughout history. Hence the inherent state of
competition and conflict found among Stone Age people.
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Let us understand more closely the evolutionary calculus that can make
the highly dangerous activity of fighting over resources worthwhile. In our
affluent societies, it might be difficult to comprehend how precarious people’s
subsistence in pre-modern societies was (and still is). The specter of hunger
and starvation was ever-present. Affecting both mortality and reproduction,
they constantly trimmed down population numbers. Thus struggle over
resources was very often evolutionarily cost-effective. The benefits of fighting
also had to be matched against possible alternatives (other than starvation).
One of them was to move elsewhere. This, of course, often happened,
especially if one’s enemy was much stronger, but this strategy had clear
limitations. By and large, there were no ‘empty spaces’ for people to move
to. In the first place, space is not even, and the best, most productive,
habitats were normally already taken. Furthermore, a move meant leaving
a habitat with whose resources and dangers the group’s members were
intimately familiar. Such a change could involve heavy penalties. Moreover,
giving in to pressure from outside might establish a pattern of victimization.
Encouraged by its success, the alien group might repeat and even increase
its pressure. Standing for one’s own might mean lessening the occurrence
of conflict in the future. No less, and perhaps more, than actual fighting,
conflict is about deterrence.
Reproduction
The struggle for reproduction is about access to sexual partners of reproduc-
tive potential. There is a fundamental asymmetry between males and females
in this respect, which runs throughout nature. At any point in time, a female
can be fertilized only once. Consequently, evolutionarily speaking, she must
take care to make the best of it. It is quality rather than quantity that she
seeks. She must select the male who looks the best equipped for survival
and reproduction, so that he will impart his genes, and his qualities, to the
offspring. In those species, like the human, where the male also contributes
to the raising of the offspring, his skills as a provider and his loyalty are other
crucial considerations. In contrast to the female, there is theoretically almost
no limit to the number of offspring a male can produce. He can fertilize an
indefinite number of females, thus multiplying his own genes in the next
generations. The main brake on male sexual success is competition from
other males.
Around this rationale, sexual strategies in nature are highly diverse and
most nuanced, ranging from extreme polygamy to monogamy (Daly and
Wilson, 1983; Ridley, 1994; Symons, 1979). However, although monogamy
reduces, it by no means terminates, male competition. If the male is restricted
to one partner, it becomes highly important for him as well to choose the
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partner with the best reproductive qualities he can get: young, healthy, and
optimally built for bearing offspring; that is, in sexual parlance, the most
attractive female. The need to take care of very slowly maturing offspring,
which required sustained investment by both parents, turned humans in the
monogamous direction. However, competition over the best female partners
remains. Furthermore, humans, and men in particular, are not strictly mono-
gamous. In most known human societies polygamy was legitimate, though
only a select few well-to-do men were able to support, and thus have, the
extra wives and children. Second, in addition to official or unofficial wives,
men tend to search for extra-marital sexual liaisons.
How does all this affect human violent conflict and fighting? The evidence
across the range of hunter-gatherer peoples tells the same story. Within the
tribal groupings, women-related quarrels, violence, so-called blood feuds,
and homicide were rife, often constituting the principal category of violence.
Between groups, the picture was not very different, and was equally uniform.
Warfare regularly involved the stealing of women, who were then subjected
to multiple rape, or taken for marriage, or both.
So hunter-gatherer fighting commonly involved the stealing and raping of
women, but was this the cause or a side effect of hunter-gatherer fighting?
This is a pointless question that has repeatedly led scholars to a dead end.
It artificially takes out and isolates one element from the wholeness of the
human motivational complex that may lead to warfare, losing sight of the
overall rationale that underpins these elements. Both somatic and repro-
ductive elements are present in humans; moreover, both these elements are
intimately interconnected, for people must feed, find shelter, and protect
themselves in order to reproduce successfully. Conflict over resources was
at least partly conflict over the ability to acquire and support women and
children, and to demonstrate that ability in advance, in order to rank worthy
of the extra wives. Resources, reproduction, and, as we shall see, status are
interconnected and interchangeable. Motives are mixed, interacting, and
widely refracted, yet this seemingly immense complexity and inexhaustible
diversity can be traced back to a central core, shaped by the evolutionary
rationale.
Anthropological studies show that successful men in hunter-gatherer
societies had several wives, in rare cases as many as a dozen, with a record
of two dozen in the most productive environments. Many wives naturally
meant a large number of children for a man, sometimes scores, who often
comprised a large part of the next generation in the tribe (Chagnon, 1979:
380; Daly and Wilson, 1983: 88–9, 332–3; Keen, 1982; Symons, 1979: 143).
Again, women are such a prominent motive for competition and conflict
because reproductive opportunities are a very strong selective force indeed.
This does not mean that people always want to maximize the number of
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their children. Although there is some human desire for children per se and
a great attachment to them once they exist, it is mainly the desire for sex
— Malthus’ ‘passion’ — which functions in nature as the powerful biological
proximate mechanism for maximizing reproduction. As humans, and other
living creatures, normally engage in sex throughout their fertile lives, they
have a vast reproductive potential, which, before the introduction of effective
contraception, mainly depended for its realization on resource availability.
Polygyny (and female infanticide) created women scarcity and increased
men’s competition for, and conflict over, them (Divale and Harris, 1976).
Among Aboriginal Australian tribes, about 30% of the Murngin adult
males are estimated to have died violently, and similar findings have been
recorded for the Tiwi. The Plains Indians showed a deficit of 50% for the
adult males in the Blackfoot tribe in 1805 and a 33% deficit in 1858, while
during the reservation period the sex ratio rapidly approached 50–50.
Among the Eskimo of the central Canadian arctic, the rate of violent deaths
was estimated at one per thousand persons per year, 10 times the 1990 US
rate which is the highest in the developed world. Among the !Kung of the
Kalahari Desert, known as the ‘harmless people,’ the rate of killing was 0.29
persons per thousand per year, and had been 0.42 before the coming of state
authority, 3–4 times higher than the 1990 US rate (Gat, 2006: 129–32).
The data for pre-state agriculturalists is basically the same. Among the
Yanomamo of the Orinoco about 15% of the adults died as a result of
inter- and intra-group violence: 24% of the males and 7% of the females.
The Waorani (Auca) of the Ecuadorian Amazon hold the registered world
record: more than 60% of adult deaths were caused by feuding and warfare.
In Highland New Guinea violent mortality estimates are very similar: among
the Dani, 28.5% of the men and 2.4% of the women; among the Enga, 34.8%
of the adult males; among the Goilala, whose total population was barely
over 150, there were 29 (predominantly men) killed during a period of 35
years; among the Lowland Gebusi, 35.2% of the adult males and 29.3% of
the adult females (Gat, 2006: 129–32).
Dominance: Rank, Power, Status, Prestige

The interconnected competition over resources and reproduction is the
root cause of conflict and fighting in humans as in all other animal species.
Other causes and expressions of fighting in nature, and the motivational and
emotional mechanisms associated with them, are derivative of, and subordinate
to, these primary causes, and originally evolved this way in humans as well. It
is to these ‘second-level’ causes and motivational mechanisms, directly linked
to the first, that we now turn.
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Among social animals, possessing higher rank in the group promises one a
greater share in the communal resources, such as hunting spoils, and better
access to females. For this reason, rank in the group is hotly contested. It is
the strong, fierce, and — among our sophisticated cousins, the chimpanzees
— also the ‘politically’ astute that win status by the actual and implied use of
force. Rivalry for rank and domination in nature is, then, a proximate means
in the competition over resources and reproduction. For this reason people
jealously guard their honor. In traditional societies in particular, people were
predisposed to go to great lengths in defense of their honor. The slightest
offense could provoke violence. Where no strong centralized authority
existed, one’s honor was a social commodity of vital significance.
To avoid a misunderstanding: the argument is not that these behavior
patterns are a matter of conscious decision and complex calculation con-
ducted by flies, mice, lions, or even humans. It is simply that those who
failed to behave adaptively became decreasingly represented in the next
generations, and their maladaptive genes, responsible for their maladaptive
behavior, were consequently selected against. The most complex structural
engineering and behavior patterns have thus evolved in, and program, even
the simplest organisms, including those lacking any consciousness (Dawkins,
1989: 96, 291–2).
As with competition over women, competition over rank and esteem
could lead to violent conflict indirectly as well as directly. For instance,
even in the simplest societies people desired ornamental, ostentatious, and
prestige goods. Although these goods are sometimes lumped together with
subsistence goods, their social function and significance are entirely different.
Body and clothes ornamentation are designed to enhance physically desirable
features that function everywhere in nature as cues for health, vigor, youth,
and fertility (Darwin, 1871: 467–8; Diamond, 1992: ch. 9; Low, 1979). It
is precisely on these products of the ‘illusions industry’ — cosmetics, fashion,
and jewelry — that people everywhere spend so much money. Furthermore,
where some ornaments are scarce and therefore precious, the very fact that
one is able to afford them indicates wealth and success. Hence the source of
what economist Thorstein Veblen, referring to early 20th-century American
ociety, called ‘conspicuous consumption.’ In Stone Age societies as well,
luxury goods, as well as the ostentatious consumption of ordinary ones,
became in themselves objects of desire as symbols of social status. For this
reason, people may fight for them.
Indeed, plenty and scarcity are relative not only to the number of mouths
to be fed but also to the potentially ever-expanding and insatiable range of
human needs and desires. Human competition increases with abundance
— as well as with deficiency — taking more complex forms and expressions,
widening social gaps, and enhancing stratification. While the consumption
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capacity of simple, subsistence, products is inherently limited, that of more

refined, lucrative ones is practically open-ended. One can simply move up
the market.
Revenge: Retaliation to Eliminate and Deter

Revenge is one of the major causes of fighting cited in anthropological
accounts of pre-state societies. Violence was activated to avenge injuries to
honor, property, women, and kin. If life was taken, revenge reached its peak,
often leading to a vicious circle of death and counter-death.
How is this most prevalent, risky, and often bloody behavior pattern to be
explained? From the evolutionary perspective, revenge is retaliation that is
intended either to destroy an enemy or to foster deterrence against him, as
well as against other potential rivals. This applies to non-physical and non-
violent, as well as to physical and violent, action. If one does not pay back
an injury, one may signal weakness and expose oneself to further injuries. A
process of victimization might be created. This rationale applies wherever
there is no higher authority that can be relied upon for protection, that is,
in so-called anarchic systems. In modern societies it thus applies to the wide
spheres of social relations in which the state or other authoritative bodies do
not intervene. In pre-state societies, however, it applied far more widely to
the basic protection of life and property.
Thus the instinctive desire to strike back is a basic emotional response
which evolved precisely because those who struck back were generally
more successful in protecting their own. This is remarkably supported by
the famous computerized game that found tit-for-tat the most effective
strategy a player can adopt (Hamilton and Axelrod, 1984). But tit-for-tat
poses a problem. The offender cannot always be eliminated. Furthermore,
the offender has kin who will avenge him, and it is even more difficult to
eliminate them as well. In many cases tit-for-tat becomes a negative loop of
retaliation and counter-retaliation from which it is very hard to exit. One
original offence may produce a pattern of prolonged hostility. Retaliation
might produce escalation rather than annihilation or deterrence. In such
cases, fighting seems to feed on, and perpetuate, itself, bearing a wholly
disproportional relation to its ‘original’ cause. People become locked into
conflict against their wishes and best interests. It is this factor that has always
given warfare an irrational appearance that seems to defy a purely utilitarian
explanation.
How can this puzzle be explained? In the first place, it must again be
stressed that both the original offence and the act of retaliation arise from a
fundamental state of inter-human competition that carries the potential of
conflict, and is consequently fraught with suspicion and insecurity. Without
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this basic state of somatic and reproductive competition and potential

conflict, retaliation as a behavior pattern would not have evolved. However,
while explaining the root cause of retaliation, this does not in itself account
for retaliation’s escalation into what often seems to be a self-defeating cycle.
A prisoner’s dilemma situation is responsible for the emergence of such
cycles. In the absence of an authority that can enforce mutually beneficial
cooperation on people, or at least minimize their damages, the cycle of
retaliation is often their only rational option, though, exposing them to very
heavy costs, is not their best option.
The prisoner’s dilemma is of great relevance when explaining the war
complex as a whole and not only that of revenge and retribution. Still, it
ought to be emphasized that not all violent conflicts or acts of revenge fall
under the special terms of the prisoner’s dilemma. In the context of a funda-
mental resource scarcity, if one is able to eliminate, decisively weaken, or
subdue the enemy, and consequently reap most of the benefits, then this
strategy is better for one’s interests than a compromise.
Power and the Security Dilemma

Revenge or retaliation is an active reaction to an injury, emanating from
a competitive and, hence, potentially conflictual basic state of relations.
However, as Hobbes saw (Leviathan: ch. 13), the basic condition of com-
petition and potential conflict, which gives rise to endemic suspicion and
insecurity, invites not only reactive but also pre-emptive responses, which
further magnify mutual suspicion and insecurity. It must be stressed that
the source of the potential conflict here is again of a ‘second level.’ It
does not necessarily arise directly from an actual conflict over the somatic
and reproductive resources themselves, but from the fear, suspicion, and
insecurity that the potential of those ‘first-level’ causes for conflict creates.
Potential conflict can thus breed conflict. When the ‘other’ must be regarded
as a potential enemy, his very existence poses a threat, for he might suddenly
attack one day. For this reason, one must take precautions and increase one’s
strength as much as possible. The other side faces a similar security problem
and takes similar precautions. Things do not stop with precautionary and
defensive measures, because such measures often inherently possess some
offensive potential. Thus measures that one takes to increase one’s security
in an insecure world often decrease the other’s security and vice versa.
What are the consequences of this security dilemma (Herz, 1950; Jervis,
1978)? In the first place, it tends to escalate arms races. Arms races between
competitors take place throughout nature. Through natural selection, they
produce faster cheetahs and gazelles, deer with longer horns to fight one
another, more devious parasites and viruses, and more immune ‘hosts.’ Many
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of these arms races involve very heavy costs to the organisms, which would
not have been necessary if it were not for the competition. This, for example,
is the reason why trees have trunks. Trees incur the enormous cost involved
in growing trunks only because of their life-and-death struggle to outgrow
other trees in order to get sunlight. As with humans, competition is most
intense in environments of plenty, where more competitors can play and
more resources can be accumulated. This is why trees grow highest in the
dense forests of the water-rich tropical and temperate climates.
Arms races often have paradoxical results. The continuous and escalating
effort to surpass one’s rival may prove successful, in which case the rival
is destroyed or severely weakened. However, in many cases, every step on
one side is matched by a counter-step on the other. Consequently, even
though each side invests increasing resources in the conflict, neither gains
an advantage. This is called, after one of Alice’s puzzles in Lewis Carroll’s
Through the Looking-Glass, the ‘Red Queen effect’: both sides run faster and
faster only to find themselves remaining in place. Arms races may become a
prisoner’s dilemma.
The special feature of arm races created by the security dilemma is that
the basic motivation on both sides is defensive. Since suspicion is difficult
to overcome, there is another way to reduce the insecurity. The sides may
choose to actively pre-empt, that is, take not only defensive precautions but
attack in order to eliminate or severely weaken the other side. Indeed, this
option in itself makes the other side even more insecure, making the security
dilemma more acute. Warfare can thus become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Since full security is difficult to achieve, history demonstrates that constant
warfare can be waged, conquest carried afar, and power accumulated, all truly
motivated by security concerns, ‘for defense.’ Of course, in reality motives
are often mixed, with the security motive coexisting with a quest for gain.
Actual competition over somatic and reproductive resources does not
have to exist on every particular occasion for the security dilemma to flare
up. Still, what structural realists have missed is that it is the prospect of such
competition that stands behind the mutual insecurity, and the stronger the
competition and potential conflict, the more intense the security dilemma
will grow (see Schweller, 1994, 1996).
World-view and the Supernatural

But what about the world of culture that after all is our most distinctive
mark as humans? Do not people kill and get killed for ideas and ideals? From
the Stone Age on, the spiritual life of human communities was imbued with
supernatural beliefs, sacred cults and rituals, and the practice of magic.
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The evolutionary status of religion is beyond our scope here. Like warfare,
religion is a complex phenomenon that is probably the result of several
different interacting factors. For example, from Emile Durkheim (1965) on,
functionalist theorists have argued that religion’s main role was in fostering
social cohesion, inter alia in war.5 This means that in those groups in which
common ritual and cult ceremonies were more intensive, social cooperation
became more habitual and more strongly legitimized, which probably
translated into an advantage in warfare.
But how did hunter-gatherers’ supernatural beliefs and practices affect
the reasons for conflict and fighting? I argue that on the whole they added
to, sometimes accentuating, the reasons we have already discussed. The all-
familiar glory of the gods, let alone missionary quests, never appear as reasons
for hunter-gatherers’ warfare. These will appear later in human cultural
evolution. The most regular supernatural reason cited by anthropologists for
fighting among hunter-gatherers is fear and accusations of sorcery. It should
be noted, however, that these did not appear randomly, but were directed
against people whom the victim of the alleged sorcery felt had reasons to
want to harm him. This, of course, does not necessarily mean that they really
did. What it does mean is that competition, potential conflict, animosity,
and suspicion were conducive to fears and accusations of sorcery. To a
greater degree than with the security dilemma, the paranoia here reflects the
running amok of real, or potentially real, fears and insecurity, thus further
exacerbating and escalating the war complex.
Conclusion: Fighting in the Evolutionary State of Nature

Conflict and fighting in the human state of nature, as in the state of nature
in general, was fundamentally caused by competition. While violence is
evoked, and suppressed, by powerful emotional stimuli, it is not a primary,
‘irresistible’ drive; it is a highly tuned, both innate and optional, evolution-
shaped tactic, turned on and off in response to changes in the calculus of
survival and reproduction. It can be activated by competition over scarce
resources, as scarcity and competition are the norm in nature because of
organisms’ tendency to propagate rapidly when resources are abundant.
Deadly violence is also regularly activated in competition over women,
directly as well as indirectly, when men compete over resources in order to
be able to afford more women and children.
From these primary somatic and reproductive aims, other, proximate and
derivative, ‘second-level,’ aims arise. The social arbiters within the group can
use their position to reap somatic and reproductive advantages. Hence the
competition for — and conflict over — esteem, prestige, power, and leader-
ship, as proximate goods. An offense or injury will often prompt retaliation,
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lest it persists and turns into a pattern of victimization. Tit-for-tat may end
in victory or a compromise, but it may also escalate, developing into a self-
perpetuating cycle of strikes and counter-strikes, with the antagonists locked
in conflict in a sort of prisoner’s dilemma situation.
Similarly, in a state of potential conflict, security precautions are called for,
which may take on a defensive but also offensive or pre-emptive character.
The security dilemma variant of the prisoner’s dilemma breeds arms races
that may produce an advantage to one side but often merely produces a
‘Red Queen’ effect, by which both sides escalate their resource investment
only to find themselves in the same position vis-a-vis one another. Organisms
can cooperate, compete, or fight to maximize survival and reproduction.
Sometimes, fighting is the most promising choice for at least one of the
sides. At other times, however, fighting, while being their rational choice, is
not their best one.
Finally, a few comments on the evolutionary perspective that underpins
this study. As our grand scientific theory for understanding nature, evolu-
tionary theory does not compete in explaining motivation with scholarly
constructs such as psychoanalytic theories or the realist approach in IR;
rather, evolutionary theory may encompass some of their main insights
within a comprehensive interpretative framework. For instance, Freud, Jung,
and Adler were divided over the elementary drive which each posited as the
underlying regulating principle for understanding human behavior. These
were respectively: sex; creativeness and the quest for meaning; and the craving
for superiority. All these drives in fact come together and interact within
the framework of evolutionary theory which also explains their otherwise
mysterious origin. Similarly, realist ‘theory’ in IR is an analytical construct,
whose fundamental assumptions and insights capture some important, albeit
partial, truths about reality, explained by evolutionary theory (see Thayer,
2000: 126, 137–8, 140; 2004: 11–12, 93).
Some readers may wonder why evolutionary theory should be presented
here as different from and superior to other scholarly approaches. It is
because evolutionary theory is nature’s immanent principle rather than an
artificial analytical construct. It is the only non-transcendent mechanism for
explaining life’s complex design. This mechanism is blind natural selection in
which at every stage those who are endowed with the most suitable qualities
for surviving and reproducing survive. There is no reason for their survival
other than that they proved successful in the struggle for survival. ‘Success’
is not defined by any transcendent measurement but by the immanent logic
of the evolutionary process.
This brings us to another widespread cause of resistance to ‘sociobiology,’
the belief that it upholds biological determinism in a subject which is
distinctively determined by human culture. For once humans developed
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agriculture some ten thousand years ago, which led to the growth of the first
states about five thousand years ago, they set in motion a continuous chain of
developments that have taken them far away from their evolutionary natural
way of life. Original, evolution-shaped, innate human wants, desires, and
proximate behavioral and emotional mechanisms now expressed themselves
in radically altered, ‘artificial’ conditions. In the process, they were greatly
modified, assuming novel and diverse appearances. All the same, cultural
evolution did not operate on a ‘clean slate,’ nor was it capable of producing
simply ‘anything.’ Its multifarious and diverse forms have been built on a
clearly recognizable deep core of innate human propensities. Cultural take-off
took place much too recently to affect human biology in any significant way.
Biologically, we are virtually the same people as our Stone Age forefathers
and are endowed with the same predispositions. With cultural evolution all
bets are not off — they are merely hedged. We now turn to examine these
gene–culture interactions to see how they shaped the motives for human
fighting throughout history.
Historical State-Societies
As we have seen, the motivations that lead to fighting are fundamentally
derived from the human motivational system in general. Fighting, to extend
Clausewitz’s ideas, is a continuation of human aims, and the behavior
designed to achieve them, by violent means, and, now, on a progressively
larger scale and with increasing organization, mainly associated with the
state. How did cultivation, accumulated resources, stratification, coercive
structuring, and a growing scale affect the motivational system that led to
fighting?
Resources
Territories for cultivation (and for pasture) replaced hunting and foraging
territories as an object for competition. However, where both of the above
involved competition over the right of access to nature, the real novelty
brought about by cultivation was the exploitation of human labor. With
cultivation it became possible to live off other people’s work. Accumulated
foodstuffs and livestock could be appropriated by looting. Other somatic-
utility objects, such as fabrics, tools, and metal, were also desirable targets.
In addition to their utility value, objects possessed decorative, status, and
prestige value. Precious objects that acquired the role of money, most
notably precious metals, became the most highly prized booty. Control
over both natural sources of raw materials and trade intensified as a source
584
of competition. Furthermore, not only products but also the producers

themselves could be captured and carried back home as slaves, to labor
under direct control. Finally, looting could be further upgraded into
tribute extraction, a more systematic and efficient appropriation of labor
and resources through political subjugation, which did not involve great
destruction, waste, and disruption of productive activity.
The balance of costs and gains is the most intricate and intriguing issue
here. Cultivation greatly increased the material costs of fighting. Hunter-
gatherers’ fighting harmed mainly the antagonists and their productive
activity, but (with minor exceptions) barely the resources themselves.
Cultivation, however, added to the above the ability to inflict direct damage
on the resources and on other somatic and labor-intensive hardware.
Antagonists regularly ravaged crops, livestock, production implements, and
settlements in order to weaken and/or increase the cost of war incurred
by the opponent. Furthermore, growing political units and technological
advancement meant that fighting no longer took place close to home, during
lulls in productive activity, and with simple arms and improvised logistics.
Metal weapons, fortifications, horses, ships, pay for long-term soldiers, and
provisions consumed huge resources. Exact data are sparse, but it is clear that
military expenditure regularly constituted by far the largest item of states’
expenditure, in most cases the great majority of it. States’ tax revenues may
have reached as much as 10% of the national product and rose to even higher
levels during military emergencies.6 In pre-modern subsistence economies,
where malnutrition was the norm and starvation an ever-looming prospect,
such a burden literally took bread out of people’s mouths.
Resources ravaged by and invested in war thus constituted a new, massive
addition to the cost side of fighting. Whereas among hunter-gatherers the
struggle for resources approximated a zero-sum game, wherein resource
quantity remained generally unaffected, fighting now invariably decreased
the sum total of resources, at least so long as the fighting went on. Only
the relative distribution of these decreased resources and, moreover, the
re-channeling of their future yield might result in net gains for one at the
expense of the other.
Who was that ‘one’? Neither humanity nor even individual societies
counted as real agents or units of calculation in the competition. Unequal
distribution was the rule not only between but also within rival sides. Chiefs
and their war hosts might accumulate wealth through raiding, while the
rest of the tribal people suffered the consequences, in the form of enemy
reprisals, counter-raiding, and ravaging. Indeed, the state itself was largely the
outgrowth of such processes: power gave wealth, which, in a self-reinforcing
spiral, accentuated intra-social power relations in a way that obliged people
585
down a progressively more hierarchic social pyramid to follow their superiors

while receiving a lesser and lesser share of the benefits.
Thus cultivation, resource accumulation, and the state for the first
time made possible predatory, ‘parasitical’ existence on the fruits of other
people’s labor. Whereas productivity-related competition generally increases
productive efficiency, predatory-parasitical competition increases predatory-
parasitic efficiency while decreasing productive efficiency. All the same, by
being efficient in the predatory competition, one was able to secure the
benefits of production.
There were also ‘spin-off’ and long-term net productive gains resulting
from the power race. How much of a substantial independent ‘spin-off’
effect military innovation in metallurgy, engineering, horse breeding, naval
architecture, and supply had on society is difficult to establish. But the most
significant spin-off effects seem to have come from the state itself. It was
through violence that one power established authority over a territory or
society, thereby securing increased internal peace and imposing coordinated
collective efforts, some of which, at least, were for the common good,
decreasing ‘free riding.’ Large states introduced economies of scale, and, as
long as they did not become monopolistically big and overburdened by over-
heads, they generated and accelerated innovation (see Mann, 1988: 64–5).
War was a ‘two-level game,’ in which both external and internal power
relations and external and internal benefit extraction were linked.
Sex and Harems

The same logic applies to that other principal source of human competition
— the sexual — considered from the perspective of male fighting. Students
of war scarcely think of sexuality as a motive for fighting. The underlying
links that connect the various elements of the human motivational system
have largely been lost sight of.7
Silence is one reason for this blind spot. While some aspects of sexuality
are among the most celebrated in human discourse, others are among the
least advertised and most concealed by all sides involved. Nonetheless, the
evidence is overwhelming and has recently returned to the headlines, shock-
ing the Western public with mass documentation from the wars in Bosnia,
Rwanda, and the Sudan. Throughout history, widespread rape by soldiers
went hand in hand with looting as an inseparable part of military operations.
Indeed, like looting, the prospect of sexual adventure was one of the main
attractions of warlike operations which motivated people to join in. Young
and beautiful captured women were a valued prize, in the choice of which
— as with all other booty — the leaders enjoyed a right of priority. While
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in heroic sagas of semi-barbaric societies, such as the Iliad, the sexual value
of that prize was barely veiled, the practice was no less in force — openly or
more discretely — in the armed forces of more civilized societies.8
The other major reason — apart from the silence of both victors and
victims — for the oversight of sexuality as one of the potential benefits
of fighting was the exponential rise in large-scale civilized societies of
accumulated wealth, which functioned as a universal currency that could be
exchanged for most of the other good things in life. Even more than before,
fighting advanced reproductive success not only directly, as women were
raped and kidnapped, but also indirectly, as the resources and status won
by fighting advanced one in the intra-social competition for the acquisition
and upkeep of women domestically. By and large, power, wealth, and sexual
opportunity comprised overlapping and interlinked hierarchic pyramids.
Where polygyny was permitted, the rich and powerful acquired a greater
number of wives and enjoyed a marked advantage in choosing young, beauti-
ful and otherwise worthy ones. In addition to wives, many societies sanc-
tioned official concubines, and there were, of course, unofficial concubines
or mistresses. Yet another avenue of sexual opportunity was females in the
household, some of whom were slave girls captured in war and raiding.
Finally, there was the sex trade per se, where again the most consummate
and graceful exponents of the trade could be very expensive.
The manner in which power, wealth, and sexual opportunity were linked
is most strikingly demonstrated at the apex of the hierarchic pyramids, most
notably in the figure of the so-called Oriental despot, who had his counter-
part in the empires of pre-Columbian America. Rulers possessed large
harems. According to the Greek authors (Cook, 1985, ii: 226–7), Alexander
the Great captured 329 of King Darius III’s concubines after the Battle of
Issus (333 BC). Only slightly later, Kautilya’s Arthasastra (i.20 and i.27)
provides a detailed description of the construction and procedures of the
harem, as well as an account of the bureaucratic apparatus that supervised
the march of prostitutes who were invited to the court.
Bureaucratic records, where they survive, constitute the most solid source
from which verified numbers can be derived. The most bureaucratic and
most magnificent of empires was China. According to the state’s records
(Bielenstein, 1980: 73–4), the imperial harem of the Early Han (second and
first centuries BC) comprised some 2000–3000 women, whereas that of the
Later Han (first and second centuries AD) reached 5000–6000. Imperial
China represented the ultimate in terms of harem size. The records of the
Ottoman Privy Purse indicate (Peirce, 1993: 122–4) that at its zenith,
during the first half of the 17th century, the sultan’s harem comprised some
400 women, with another 400 kept on a ‘retired list.’
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Gardens of Pleasure and Cherubs with a Flaming Sword at their Gates

All this should not be regarded as a piece of exotic piquancy, something
peripheral to the real business of government. On the contrary, as with the
other elements in the human motivational system, it was for the supreme
commanding position over the garden of pleasures that people reached or
fought in defense of, killed and were killed. As Ibn Khaldun (1958: ch. 3.1)
wrote: ‘royal authority is a noble and enjoyable position. It comprises all the
good things of the world, the pleasures of the body, and the joys of the soul.
Therefore, there is, as a rule, great competition for it. It rarely is handed over
(voluntarily), but may be taken away. Thus discord ensues. It leads to war
and fighting.’ The same reality was vividly captured by the ancient Greek tale
of wisdom regarding the sword of Damocles. The ruler, according to this
tale, was seated at a table packed full with all the world’s delights and objects
of desire, while a sword hung on a horse-hair above his head, liable to fall
down and kill him at any moment. Ruling was a high-stake–high-risk–high-
gain affair, with force as its mainstay.
A rigorous study of royal violent mortality rates has yet to be undertaken.
All the same, some data may illustrate the point. According to the Biblical
record, only nine out the 19 kings of the northern kingdom of Israel died
naturally. Of the others, seven were killed by rebels, one committed suicide
to escape the same fate, one fell in battle, and one was exiled by the Assyrians.
Four or five out of Achaemenid Persia’s 13 kings were assassinated and one
was apparently killed in war (Cook, 1985: 227, 331). During the last century
of the reign of the Hellenistic Seleucids, practically all of the 19 reigning
monarchs became victims (after having been perpetrators) of usurpation and
violent death. During the 500 years of the Roman Empire, roughly 70% of
its rulers died violently, not to mention the countless contenders who were
killed without ever making it to the imperial crown (Southern and Dixon,
1996: x–xii, for the data on the late Empire). During the lifespan of the
Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium (395–1453 AD), 64 out of its 107
emperors, more than 60%, were deposed and/or killed (Finer, 1997: 702).
Six out of eight kings of Northumbria in the 7th century AD died in war
(Abels, 1988: 12). It is estimated that during the later Viking period more
than a third of the Norwegian kings died in battle, and another third were
banished (Griffith, 1995: 26).
All these are merely examples taken from countless similar tales of
insecurity, violent struggle, and bloodbaths at the apex of political power.
Violent usurpations spelled doom not only for the ruler or contender, but
also for their families and followers, and, if the struggle turned into a full-
fledged civil war, for masses of soldiers and civilians. All the same, there was
no shortage of candidates to take up this high-risk–high-gain game.
588
Was it ‘worth it’ and in what sense? Did people who engaged in the
high-gain–high-cost, intra- and inter-social, ‘two-level’ game of power
politics improve their ultimate reproductive success? The answer to this
question seems very difficult to compute. On the one hand, rulers enjoyed
much greater reproductive opportunities, most strikingly represented in the
autocratic harem. On the other hand, contenders to the throne, and even
incumbent rulers, played a highly risky game for both themselves and their
families. Some light is shed on the question by a remarkable study recently
conducted on the Y (male) chromosome in Central and Eastern Asia, which
demonstrates how great rulers’ reproductive advantage could be (Zerjal et al.,
2003). It reveals that some 8% of the population in the region (0.5% of the
world’s population) carry the same Y chromosome, which can only mean
that they are the descendants of a single man. Furthermore, the biochemical
patterns indicate that this man lived in Mongolia about a thousand years
ago. It was not difficult to identify the only likely candidate, Chinggis Khan,
an identification confirmed by an examination of the Y gene of his known
surviving descendants. This, of course, does not mean that Chinggis Khan
alone sired so many children from a huge number of women, an obvious
impossibility even if he had ceased his military conquests altogether. The
tremendous spread of his Y chromosome is due to the fact that his sons
succeeded him at the head of ruling houses throughout Central and East
Asia for centuries, all enjoying staggering sexual opportunities.
To be sure, Chinggis Khan was among the greatest warlords ever, and
his dynasty probably the most successful. Countless unsuccessful bidders
for power, whose lines ceased because of their failures, have to be figured
into the other side of the equation. All the same, the apex of the social
pyramid held such a powerful attraction for people because it was there
that evolution-shaped human desires could be set loose and indulged on a
gigantic scale. On a more modest scale, the same considerations held true
farther down the social hierarchy.
The Quest for Power and Glory

Status, leadership, and power were sought out in the evolutionary state
of nature because of the advantages that they granted in access to somatic
and reproductive resources. With resource accumulation and hierarchic
organization, the scope and significance of coercive social power rocketed.
Furthermore, since both resources and power could now be accumulated and
expanded on a hitherto unimaginable scale, while being closely intertwined
and interchangeable, power, like money, grew into a universal currency
by which most objects of desire could be secured. Power became the
medium through which all else was channeled, and the quest for power thus
589
represented all else. For this reason, the quest for power seemingly acquired
a life of its own and was also pursued for its own sake. To be sure, power was
desired not only for positive reasons; the security dilemma itself drove people
and political communities to expand their power as a defensive measure, for
in a competitive race one would rather swallow than be swallowed.
Like status and power and closely linked to them, the quest for honor
and prestige was originally ‘designed’ to facilitate access to somatic and
reproductive resources. As such, it too is stimulated by powerful emotional
gratifications, which give it a seemingly independent life of its own. Again,
the potential for the fulfillment of this quest increased exponentially in large-
scale societies. The stellas on which autocrats celebrated their achievements
in super-human images are interpreted by scholars as instruments of royal
propaganda; but, equally, they express the quest for the ultimate fulfillment
of the craving for boundless glory and absolute domination, which could
now be extended to the ‘four corners of the world’ and ‘everything under
the sun,’ as the mightiest of imperial rulers boasted.
All the above also applied to individuals in general and to political com-
munities at large. Community members bathed in their collective glory
and were willing to pay for its advancement and protection. This again was
derived from the conversion value of honor and glory in terms of power,
deterrence, and inter-state bargaining. Individuals and political communities
jealously guarded their honor and responded forcefully even to slight
infringements not because of the trifling matters involved, but because of the
much more serious ones that might follow if they demonstrated weakness.9
To paraphrase Winston Churchill: choosing shame rather than war might
very likely beget shame and then war.
Kinship, Culture, Ideas, Ideals

Are people only interested in these crude materialistic objectives, which
even after humankind’s dramatic cultural take-off can ultimately be shown
to derive from evolution-shaped sources? Lofty aims exist, but, as already
claimed, as a continuation rather than a negation of the above. A highly
intricate interface links the natural with the cultural.
Let us begin with the factor of identity. People exhibit a marked,
evolution-shaped innate predisposition to favor closer kin over more remote
ones, or ‘strangers’ — that is, to favor those with whom they share more
genes. Roughly this means that people in any kin circle struggle among
themselves for the interests of their yet closer kin, while at the same time
tending to cooperate against more distant circles. In this incessant multi-
level game, internal cooperation tends to stiffen when the community is
faced with an external threat, while inner rivalries variably diminish, though
590
never disappear. It should, of course, be added that non-kin cooperation and

alliances for mutual gain are commonplace, becoming only more so with the
growth of large-scale organized society.
While the above limitations on kin cooperation must always be kept in
mind, the range of kin affinities and kin bonds expanded dramatically in
large-scale state-societies. Wherever they took place, agricultural expansions
in particular created ethnies which often encompassed hundreds of thousands,
but were divided into separate, competing, and often hostile tribes, tribal
confederations, and, later, petty-states. It is not sufficiently recognized that
above all it is within such ethnic spaces that larger states tended to emerge
and expand, for people of a similar ethnicity could be more easily united and
kept united, relying on shared ethnocentric traits and bonds. Indeed, it was
primarily on their loyal native ethnic core that states and empires relied when
they expanded beyond that core to rule over other ethnicities. Thus, contrary
to a widely held view, ethnicity mattered a great deal in determining political
boundaries and affinities from the very start, rather than only achieving that
effect with modernity.10
To be sure, it is overwhelmingly cultural traits rather than genetic gradations
that separate ethnicities from one another. The point is entirely different.
Since in small hunter-gatherer groups kinship and culture overlapped, not
only phenotypic resemblance (similarity in physical appearance) but also
shared cultural traits functioned as cues for kinship, as well as proving vital
for effective cooperation. Thus, whether or not national communities are
genetically related (and most of them are), they feel and function as if
they were, on account of their shared cultural traits. Independence from
foreign domination has been perceived as crucial to a people’s prosperity
as a community of kinship and culture, often evoking most desperate
expressions of communal devotion in its defense. To be blind to the sources
and workings of these intricate mental mechanisms of collective identity
formation inevitably means to misconceive some of the most powerful bonds
that shape human history.
The power of ideas is even more far-reaching. People everywhere kill and
get killed over ideas, irrespective of kinship and across nations. How is this
lofty sphere — the often most abstract of metaphysical ideas, indeed, all too
often seemingly absurd notions — connected to the practicalities of life?
The key for understanding this question is our species’ strong propensity for
interpreting its surroundings as deep and as far as the mind can probe, so
as to decipher their secrets and form a mental map that would best help to
cope with their hazards and opportunities. Homo sapiens sapiens possesses an
innate, omnipresent, evolution-shaped predisposition for ordering its world,
which inter alia extends to form the foundation of mythology, metaphysics,
591
and science. We are compulsive meaning-seekers. It is this propensity that is

responsible for our species’ remarkable career.
Thus the array of ideas regarding the fundamental structure and working
of the cosmos and the means and practices required for securing its
benevolent functioning have been largely perceived as practical questions of
the utmost significance, evoking as powerful emotions and motivation for
action — including violence — as any other major practical question might
(see Boyer, 2001: 135–42). They hold the key to individual, communal,
and cosmic salvation in this and/or other worlds, worthy of the greatest
dedication and even to die for.
Although religious, and later secular, salvation-and-justice ideologies regu-
larly emerged and sometimes remained grounded within a particular people,
they often carried a universal message that transcended national boundaries.
Furthermore, the relationship of the new universal religious and secular
ideologies with war was complex. The obligation of a ‘just war’ was already
evident in many of the older religions. With the new universal ideologies,
this obligation was reinforced, as was the ban on belligerency among the
faithful. At the same time, some of the salvation ideologies incorporated a
strong missionary zeal that could be translated into holy belligerency against
non-believers. Furthermore, militant salvation ideologies generated a terrific
galvanizing effect on the holy warrior host.11
Christianity, starting as a religion of love, compassion, and non-violence,
later developed a brutal militant streak toward non-believers and heretics,
which awkwardly coexisted with its opposite in both doctrine and practice.
With regard to the relations among the faithful its position was more con-
sistently pacifist. Islam incorporated the holy war against the non-believers
as an integral part of its doctrine from its inception, while preaching unity
and non-belligerency within its own house. The blatant fact that within both
Christianity and Islam fighting went on incessantly despite religious con-
demnation merely indicates that, while being a very potent force, religious
ideology was practically powerless to eradicate the motivations and realities
that generated war. Much the same applies to Eastern Eurasia, where spiri-
tual ideologies such as Buddhism and Confucianism were more tolerant and
even more conflict-averse.12
Conclusion
This article’s contribution is two-pronged: it argues that IR theory regarding
the causes of conflict and war is deeply flawed, locked for decades in ultimately
futile debates over narrow, misconstrued concepts; this conceptual confusion
is untangled and the debate is transcended once a broader, comprehensive,
and evolutionarily informed perspective is adopted.
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Thus attempts to find the root cause of war in the nature of either the
individual, the state, or the international system are fundamentally misplaced.
In all these ‘levels’ there are necessary but not sufficient causes for war,
and the whole cannot be broken into pieces.13 People’s needs and desires
— which may be pursued violently — as well as the resulting quest for power
and the state of mutual apprehension which fuel the security dilemma are all
molded in human nature (some of them existing only as options, potentials,
and skills in a behavioral ‘tool kit’); they are so molded because of strong
evolutionary pressures that have shaped humans in their struggle for survival
over geological times, when all the above literally constituted matters of
life and death. The violent option of human competition has been largely
curbed within states, yet is occasionally taken up on a large scale between
states because of the anarchic nature of the inter-state system. However,
returning to step one, international anarchy in and of itself would not be an
explanation for war were it not for the potential for violence in a fundamental
state of competition over scarce resources that is imbedded in reality and,
consequently, in human nature. The necessary and sufficient causes of war
— that obviously have to be filled with the particulars of the case in any
specific war — are thus as follows: politically organized actors that operate in
an environment where no superior authority effectively monopolizes power
resort to violence when they assess it to be their most cost-effective option
for winning and/or defending evolution-shaped objects of desire, and/or
their power in the system that can help them win and/or defend those
desired goods.
Wars have been fought for the attainment of the same objects of human
desire that underlie the human motivational system in general — only by
violent means, through the use of force. Politics — internal and external — of
which war is, famously, a continuation, is the activity intended to achieve at
the intra- and inter-state ‘levels’ the very same evolution-shaped human aims
we have already seen. Some writers have felt that ‘politics’ does not fully
encompass the causes of war. Even Thayer (2004: 178–9), who correctly
argues that evolutionary theory explains ultimate human aims, nonetheless
goes on to say, inconsistently, that Clausewitz needs extension because war
is caused not only by political reasons but also by the evolutionarily rooted
search for resources, as if the two were separate, with politics being somehow
different and apart, falling outside of the evolutionary logic.
What is defined as ‘politics’ is of course a matter of semantics, and like all
definitions is largely arbitrary. Yet, as has been claimed here, if not attributed
to divine design, organisms’ immensely complex mechanisms and the
behavioral propensities that emanate from them — including those of human
beings — ultimately could only have been ‘engineered’ through evolution.
593
The challenge is to lay out how evolution-shaped human desires relate to one
another in motivating war.
The desire and struggle for scarce resources — wealth of all sorts — have
always been regarded as a prime aim of ‘politics’ and an obvious motive
for war. They seem to require little further elaboration. By contrast, repro-
duction does not appear to figure as a direct motive for war in large-scale
societies. However, as we saw, appearance is often deceptive, for somatic
and reproductive motives are the two inseparable sides of the same coin.
In modern societies, too, sexual adventure remained central to individual
motivation in going to war, even if it usually failed to be registered at the
level of ‘state politics.’ This may be demonstrated by the effects of the
sexual revolution since the 1960s, which, by lessening the attraction of
foreign adventure for recruits and far increasing the attraction of staying at
home, may have contributed to advanced societies’ growing aversion to war.
Honor, status, glory, and dominance — both individual and collective —
enhanced access to somatic and reproductive success and were thus hotly
pursued and defended, even by force. The security dilemma sprang from this
state of actual and potential competition, in turn pouring more oil onto its
fire. Power has been the universal currency through which all of the above
could be obtained and/or defended, and has been sought after as such, in
an often escalating spiral.
Kinship — expanding from family and tribe to peoples — has always
exerted overwhelming influence in determining one’s loyalty and willingness
to sacrifice in the defense and promotion of a common good. Shared culture
is a major attribute of ethnic communities, in the defense of which people
can be invested as heavily as in the community’s political independence and
overall prosperity. Finally, religious and secular ideologies have been capable
of stirring enormous zeal and violence; for grand questions of cosmic and
socio-political order have been perceived as possessing paramount practical
significance for securing and promoting life on earth and/or in the afterlife.
In the human problem-solving menus, ideologies function as the most
general blueprints. Rather than comprising a ‘laundry list’ of causes for war,
all of the above partake in the interconnected human motivational system,
originally shaped by the calculus of survival and reproduction.
This calculus continues to guide human behavior, mostly through its
legacy of innate proximate mechanisms — human desires — even where the
original link between these proximate mechanisms and the original somatic
and reproductive aims may have been loosened or even severed under altered
conditions, especially during modernity: more wealth is desired even though
above a certain level it has ceased to translate into greater reproduction;
with effective contraception much the same applies to sexual success; power,
594
status, honor, and fame — connected to the above — are still hotly pursued
even though their reproductive significance has become ambivalent.
To the extent that the industrial-technological revolution, most notably
its liberal path, has sharply reduced the prevalence of war, the reason for this
change is that the violent option for fulfilling human desires has become
much less promising than the peaceful option of competitive cooperation.
Furthermore, the more affluent and satiated the society and the more
lavishly are people’s most pressing needs met, the less their incentives to
take risks that might involve the loss of life and limb. This does not mean a
millenarian era of selfless altruism. People continue to compete vigorously
over scarce objects of desire, partly because much of the competition among
them concerns relative rather than absolute allocation of gains. On this
realists are on firmer ground than radical liberals. However, liberals have
been right in stressing that human reality is not static and, indeed, has
been changing dramatically over the past generations, with the growth of
affluent-liberal society going hand in hand with deepening global economic
interdependence and mutual prosperity.14 As conditions have changed —
indeed, only for those for whom they have changed, most notably within the
world’s affluent and democratic ‘zone of peace’ — the violent option, the
‘hammer,’ in the human behavioral tool kit seems to have declined in utility
for attaining desired aims.
Notes
1. See also Thompson (2001); Rosen (2005).
2. For the ‘status quo bias,’ see Waltz (1979: 108–9, 137); implicitly in Walt
(1987); and most strongly, Snyder (1991). Snyder’s defensive bias has been
criticized by Zakaria (1992).
3. The best discussion on this point is Tooby and Cosmides (1992).
4 As will be shown here, this totality is not fully encompassed in Thayer’s evolu-
tionary account (2000, 2004).
5. Durkheim was followed in the functionalist tradition by Bronislav Malinovski and
A.R. Radcliffe-Brown. More recently see Heiden (2003); and for an evolutionary
perspective: Ridley (1996: 189–93); Wilson (2002).
6. Rome is the best documented case: Frank (1959, i: 146, 228, and passim; v:
4–7, and passim); Hopkins (1980); more broadly see Goldsmith (1987: 18, 31–2
[Athens]; 48 [Rome]; 107, 121 [Moghal India]; 142 [Tokugawa Japan]).
7. Even Thayer generally shies away from sexuality in his evolutionary account of
war. There have been, of course, attempts to connect sexuality with politics, most
famously, in Freud’s footsteps, those by Wilhelm Reich and Michel Foucault.
8. Thornhill and Palmer (2000) is an evolution-informed study. See also Buss and
Malamuth (1996); Goldstein (2001: 362–9); van Creveld (2001: 33).
595
9. Two works on the subject are: Mercer (1996), which unpersuasively rejects the
significance of that factor in crisis; O’Neill (1999).
10. Cavalli-Sforza et al. (1994). This is not the place to go into the vast literature on
nationalism.
11. For a similar argument see: Stark (1996: ch. 8: ‘The Martyrs: Sacrifice as Rational
Choice’); Wilson (2002). Both works overlook the military aspect.
12. Schwartz (1997) is historically naive and overstates a good case; as do Dawkins
(2006) and Hitchens (2007). Martin (1997), although idiosyncratic and
apologetic, rightly claims that religion was merely one interacting element within
a complex array of factors. Stark (2001: ch. 3) is best.
13. See Suganami (1996), an excellent work of analytical philosophy that dissects
Waltz (1959 and 1979). This, more or less, is also the message in Buzan et al.
(1993).
14. See Modelski (2001: 22); Sterling-Folker (2001); Gat (2005).
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AZAR GAT is Ezer Weitzman Professor for National Security in the

Department of Political Science at Tel Aviv University. His publications
include: A History of Military Thought: From the Enlightenment to the
Cold War (Oxford UP, 2001); and War in Human Civilization, (Oxford
UP, 2006), which was named one of the best books of the year by the
Times Literary Supplement (TLS). His more recent articles include: ‘The
Democratic Peace Theory Reframed: The Impact of Modernity’, World
Politics, Oct. 2005, and ‘The Return of Authoritarian Great Powers’,
Foreign Affairs, July–Aug. 2007. His Victorious and Vulnerable: Why
Democracy Won in the 20th Century and How it is still Imperiled is has just
been published by the Hoover Institution, Stanford.
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So Why Do People Fight?

The causes of war remain a strangely obscure subject in the discipline of

KEY WORDS ♦ causes of war ♦ critique of IR theory ♦ evolutionary

The causes of war remain a strangely obscure subject in the discipline of

‘a clear answer is yet to be found.’ Another, collective effort (Rotberg and

The Human State of Nature

Dominance: Rank, Power, Status, Prestige

capacity of simple, subsistence, products is inherently limited, that of more

Revenge: Retaliation to Eliminate and Deter

this basic state of somatic and reproductive competition and potential

Power and the Security Dilemma

World-view and the Supernatural

Conclusion: Fighting in the Evolutionary State of Nature

of competition. Furthermore, not only products but also the producers

down a progressively more hierarchic social pyramid to follow their superiors

Sex and Harems

Gardens of Pleasure and Cherubs with a Flaming Sword at their Gates

The Quest for Power and Glory

Kinship, Culture, Ideas, Ideals

never disappear. It should, of course, be added that non-kin cooperation and

and science. We are compulsive meaning-seekers. It is this propensity that is

Maslow, Abraham (1970) Motivation and Personality. New York: Harper.

Tooby, John and Leda Cosmides (1992) ‘The Psychological Foundations of

AZAR GAT is Ezer Weitzman Professor for National Security in the

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