The destiny of warfare depends on actors’ relative capabilities. By definition, different capabilities are the means of the actor in international relations to achieve certain goals. Some of those capabilities can be tangible and easy to measure, but others (such as morale or leadership) can be intangible and can only be estimated in practice.

Concerning global politics, international relations, and warfare, there are at least five tangible capabilities of the actor (the nation-state) that can be measured and consequently be known:

1)     Capability of the military power: is directly connected with the questions of the size and capability of the actor’s armed forces and the quantity and quality of weapons possessed. Logically, the greater the military capability of an actor, the greater the accumulated power and, therefore, the real chances to win the war. In practice, it is not common for one actor is rank high on all of these dimensions of military capability, as the state can possess more advanced weaponry and therefore reduce the size of its army regarding manpower.

2)    Resources of economic power: several issues are important, like the actor’s GDP/GNP, level of industrialization, level of technological development, or structure of the economy.

3)    Resources of natural wealth: the focal question is: Does the actor have enough natural resources to support its military and economic capabilities and designs in international relations?

4)    Demographic development: a large population usually contributes to a larger military and labour force. At the same time, it is important to consider the population’s age, sex, health, or education. It is significant to know if there is enough labour force and people to serve the army. Can the use modern skillful technology? Finally, the interrelations between the people and state authority are of extreme importance, i.e., do the citizens politically support the government or do some social, confessional, or interethnic strifes threaten internal homogeneity and political unity.

5)    Importance of geography: size of territory, access to the sea, does the actor’s state have high mountains or wide and long rivers which can provide natural defense, and do the landscape, geography in general, and climate permit agriculture or strengthen defense.

In this regard, we can compare China and Japan:

1)       China has a larger population and a larger economic market compared to Japan.

2)      Japan has a higher level of technology than China.

3)      China has double the GDP of Japan.

4)      China has several times larger military forces than Japan.

5)      China has nuclear weapons, but many of Japan’s advanced technologies could be converted to military weapons, including nuclear.

6)      Japan has a military alliance with the USA, but in the case of war between China and the USA, it is assumed that Russia will actively support China.

Specific capabilities do not produce generalized power but are useful only in particular contexts. Japan’s technology is crucial to China’s policy of modernization, while China’s market is crucial for Japan’s exports. Both enjoy leverage over the other. A second reason why an actor’s advantage in tangible resources is not sufficient to judge its relative power is the role and influence of several intangible resources which determine how effectively one political actor (state) can realize its tangible capabilities.

Intangible Factors of Power and Success in War

Four focal intangible factors of power have a direct impact on success in war:

1)     Resolve: As a very matter of historical fact, all potential and real economic and military resources which a state possesses have little value if a government lacks the will to use them or is unable to do so due to lack of knowledge or technical possibilities. The question arises: Is an actor determined to use capabilities to fulfil its ultimate foreign policy goals, including war as an instrument? The Vietnam War (1965-1975) shows the US wearied of the prolonged warfare before the US foes and was less willing to accept high casualties than were the Vietnamese.

2)    Leadership and skill: Are political leaders of the actor able to rally citizens in support of their foreign policies? Can they effectively mobilize resources for the purpose? For instance, the US policy in Vietnam was undermined by the inability of US President Johnson to mobilize public support for the war. 

3)    Intelligence: Do decision-makers understand the foreign policy interests and political, economic, and military capabilities of potential enemies? Do they possess reliable information about enemies’ intentions and capabilities to realize their policy goals? The absence of such information was a crucial obstacle to Western efforts to fight global terrorism.

4)    Diplomacy: How effectively does a country’s diplomats represent its interests abroad? Effective diplomats can communicate and promulgate the foreign policy goals of their respective countries, gauge the interests and foreign policy goals of other states and actors, anticipate others’ actions, or negotiate compromises.

Explaining War Between States

The causes of war have long interested political philosophers and modern social scientists. Genesis records two thousand years of history from Biblical creation to the time of the first war. Never again would two thousand years pass – or even two hundred – without war.

War refers to different types of activities. Conflicts understood as wars (military conflicts between states) differ in scope and range from internal violence /conflicts among subnational groups (i.e., civil wars) to confrontations between neighbouring states, or even world wars (wars between many states on different continents). Wars can range from a few hundred deaths to tens of millions; duration can vary from the 1967 Six-Day War up to the Hundred Years’ War (1337-1453).

War includes wars between a state and a non-state actor outside its borders. The state as an abstract collective does not make decisions about peace and war, but people with certain passions, ambitions, and physical and psychological limitations decide. Explanations for war can be found in the nature and behaviour of statesmen and politicians.

The desire for more power is a crucial classic argument about the sources of war that looks to human nature and lust for power. This desire to dominate applies to states and to individuals. Humans are egoists with an innate desire to amass power and dominate others. The balance of power can be the only workable mechanism that can suppress human malevolence and malignant power.

Explaining Intrastate Wars

The end of the Cold War in 1990 marked a shift in the nature of war: a substantial increase in the number of intrastate (civil) wars. The world saw, after 1990, a proliferation of ethnic, nationalist, religious, and other conflicts among subnational groups. Intrastate wars are much more prevalent today in global politics than interstate wars.

Civil wars destroy national economies, leaving civilian populations to live in poverty. Intrastate wars can spill into neighbouring states and become regional problems, especially in cases when transnational ethnic communities become involved. In general, intrastate wars are of a complex nature, and several factors must be considered to explain the outbreak of any particular intrastate war.

There are several causes of intrastate wars, including historical animosities, conflicts over scarce resources, redressing past and present injustices, and security dilemmas arising from domestic anarchy. The most important include:

1)     Interethnic animosities: are in many cases a genuine cause of civil wars, even those that appear to be identity wars. They include ancient or primordial hates. Some ethnic groups have deep grievances going far back into history. In such cases, the only way to achieve peace (but not necessarily justice) is by a strong centralized authority (even dictatorship) and when such authority disappears, the conflict is reborn. This theory explains inter-ethnic conflicts in the 1990s in the territory of ex-Yugoslavia. Many researchers find this theory controversial and unsatisfactory. If ancient hostility is the main factor in contemporary interethnic conflicts, then long periods of peace among such groups are difficult to explain. Also, the theory suggests that it will be virtually impossible to prevent future conflict, and that the future looks bleak for regions characterized by religious and/or ethnic heterogeneity. Many ethnic and national groups live together peacefully by solving interethnic disputes without war (like Slovaks and Czechs at the time of “Velvet Divorce” finalized on January 1, 1993). According to authors like Paul Collier, conflicts in ethnically diverse countries can be ethnically patterned without being ethnically caused.

2)    Economic background: at times, historical animosities are an excuse for ambitious leaders but economic incentives and opportunities provide more persuasive explanations for inter-ethnic conflicts and civil wars. There is a higher possibility of interethnic warfare in low-income countries with weak governing structures that depend heavily on natural resources for their export earnings (e.g. Nigeria). One rational-choice economic explanation is loot-seeking – war for private richness. Valuable natural resources as petroleum (Nigeria), diamonds (Sierra Leone), coal (Kosovo), or timber (Cambodia) offer reasons for conflict as they provide rebels with means to fund and equip their groups or if they win the war, to grow from corruption. But the mere presence of natural resources is not sufficient for interethnic conflict or any kind of civil war. Often, civil war is likely if rebels have workers to take advantage of the resource and if a government is too weak to defend its natural resources. The loot-seeking argument focuses on the gain from the war itself. Leaders on all sides of the civil war create infrastructure in government and society to wage war and invest heavily in weapons and training of soldiers. They profit personally from these investments and so have little incentive to stop fighting.

3)    Justice seeking: civil wars may be caused by groups seeking revenge and justice for past and contemporary wrongs. Such wars are likely to start when there is important social stratification, with large numbers of unemployed young people, political repression, or social fragmentation. Some theoreticians claim that people rebel when they receive less than they believe they deserve and seek to right economic and/or political injustice. Such groups claim that they are deprived of wealth given to other groups or that they are being denied a voice in the political system. However, the incentives to rebel include a group’s perception that the state is unwilling to remedy the injustices. This theory also tries to explain why both relatively privileged and deprived groups may mobilize.

4)    Security issues: can be a source of interstate conflict and intrastate conflict. Security issues cause conflict within states when the state authorities disintegrate and create a condition of domestic anarchy in which each group’s efforts to defend itself appear threatening to others. The security issue is intensified by the inability to distinguish adequately between offensive and defensive weapons and the tendency of each party’s rhetoric to signal offensive intentions. Domestic security issues can be severe coupled with predatory goals, given the economic dimension to many civil conflicts.

Terrorism and War

Terrorism involves the threat or use of violence against non-combatants by either states or militant groups. It is a weapon of the weak to influence the strong that aims to demoralize and intimidate adversaries. Terrorism as a special kind of warfare and politics is defined by the means used rather than the causes being pursued.

Terrorism is not a new phenomenon, but several aspects of contemporary terrorist activity are new:

1)     The level of fanaticism and devotion of contemporary terrorists to their cause is greater than their predecessors’.

2)    Their willingness to kill large numbers of innocent people indiscriminately contrasts with their predecessors’ violence against specific individuals of symbolic importance.

3)    Many new terrorists are prepared to give up their own lives in suicidal attacks.

4)    Many new terrorist groups are transnational, linked globally to similar groups.

5)    Such terrorist groups make use of modern technologies like the internet, and some seek to obtain weapons of mass destruction.

So how should we respond to the threat posed by the new-style terrorism? Despite some successes through conventional warfare, many critics argue that the levels of violence, aims, and organizational structure of new-style terrorist groups differentiate them from conventional enemies like hostile states. This had led many researchers to question the concept of “war on terrorism” launched by US President George Bush, Jr. The debate about whether terrorism can be tackled through conventional warfare raises further questions regarding the relationship between terrorism and nation-state, like Taliban Afghanistan, that have supported it.