Growth causes war

Finally, at the most abstract level, the struggle for greater wealth and power is central in the literature on the causes of war. ‘… warfare appears as a normal and periodic form of competition within the capitalist world economy. … world wars [end page 296] regularly occur during a period of economic expansion.’71 ‘War is an inevitable result of the struggle between economies for expansion.’72 Choucri and North say their most important finding is that domestic growth is a strong determinant of national expansion and that this results in competition between nations and war.73 The First and Second World Wars can be seen as being largely about imperial grabbing. Germany, Italy and Japan sought to expand their territory and resource access. Britain already held much of the world within its empire … which it had previously fought wars to take! ‘Finite resources in a world of expanding populations and increasing per capita demands create a situation ripe for international violence.’74 Ashley focuses on the significance of the quest for economic growth. ‘War is mainly explicable in terms of differential growth in a world of scarce and unevenly distributed resources … expansion is a prime source of conflict. So long as the dynamics of differential growth remain unmanaged, it is probable that these long term processes will sooner or later carry major powers into war.’75