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War is a multicausal phenomenon, not only in the oft-noted sense that a variety of factors contribute to the making of a war, but also in the perhaps less obvious sense that there are multifarious causal paths to war. Some of the more ideographically-minded are adamant, therefore, that "the only investigation of the causes of war that is intellectually respectable is that of the unique origins … of the particular past wars".2 And even one of the more nomothetically-minded has conceded, some dissenting voices notwithstanding, that "the hope that there are a few necessary conditions that must always be present in order for war to occur is probably not going to be fulfilled".3 Indeed, those factors which are commonly considered as contributory causes of war – for example, misperception, domestic instability, the "cult of the offensive", to name but a few – are neither sufficient by themselves, nor are they even necessary to bring about a war. To the extent that these factors are deemed to have been necessary elements in causing some specific wars of the past, they must be treated as having been only contingently so; and there are very many contingencies resulting in the outbreak of war. None the less, it is one of the main contentions of this chapter that there are some "family resemblances' among the narratives, or stories, of war origins.4 The purpose of this chapter is to expound such a claim and outline some of its implications.

DOI: 10.1057/9780230286429_2

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