Three Levels: The Causes Of War

According to the lecture notes, wars, in general, have idiosyncratic causes; but, political scientists noticed some patterned and categorized those causes into three levels: individual level, state/society level, and international-system level. Causes of war can be attributed to individual leaders, who are aggressive either by nature or by the misperceptions they have about other nations or groups of people, such as the anti-Semitic leader of Germany, Adolf Hitler, who is considered by many as a main cause of WWII, and Kim Jong Un, the young leader of North Korea who have shown some aggressive attitudes, but not actual acts, towards the United States. States and societies also can be causes of some wars. States with different political systems are more likely to fight than states with similar systems, such as the capitalist liberal United States against the communist Soviet Union. Similarly, civil wars are more likely to occur between people of different

An example of this level can be seen in WWI and WWII. Having mentioned these three levels, it is essential to recognize that a war can be triggered by a combination of causes from the three different levels. I claim that the next big conflict would occur in the Middle East between two camps: a camp led by Saudi Arabia, and a camp led by Iran. This war would happen because of the different political, and religious views of Saudi Arabia and Iran. Views on the causes of this war range from the very early conflict between the Persians and the Arabs in the rise of Islam to the current national rivalry between the state of Saudi Arabia and the state of Iran. These two relatively great powers have been playing a major role in the politics of the Middle East for almost the past 40 years. In this paper I will examine the belligerents of this war, the possible causes of the war, the internal and external influences on the war, and the final outcomes of the