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Causes for war



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Sat May 17, 2014 7:32 pm
Evander says...



Hello.

I am writing a book about the aftermath of a war.

And I need a good cause for the war.

The story is set in modern times.

Raven,

Spoiler! :
Wow, that was short. Geeze.
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Sat May 17, 2014 9:26 pm
crossroads says...



I'll speak for all and say we need more info than that.

Does "modern times" mean "21st century Earth as it is currently", or "a world similar enough with same level of technology, but in which changes can be made to how other things are", or perhaps something in between?

Second thing, you might want to inform us a bit on what that aftermath will be about. Wars - all wars - in general lead to some same consequences (people dying, economical losses, etc), but nonetheless different kinds of wars can lead to different outcomes. You can have a country taken over by another country, or you can have government changed, or you can have half a population wiped out by an atomic explosion, and it's important to know what the outcomes are exactly.
Of course, you could not have that for now, meaning you're first looking for a reason for war and then you plan on doing the aftermath once you have that. That's also fine, but you should also tell us if that's the case xP

Also, who would fight in this war? The whole world, or some specific countries? Which ones? Or maybe it's a war within just one country or a nation, because some part of it wants independency?

Lastly, what qualifies as "good" cause for war? Not all wars are fought because of a reason that could objectively be labeled as good.
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Sat May 17, 2014 9:56 pm
Evander says...



This world is like ours now, but not. So... "a world similar enough with same level of technology, but in which changes can be made to how other things are". Is correct.

This war is more of a country has taken over another country.
Spoiler! :
And the country taking over, is taking over with bombs and guns.


The whole world shall fight. All will suffer.

The aftermath is basically a young girl watching her sister die from a bullet wound, and the girl thinking about the world and the war itself.

Maybe I should have gone for 'realistic' instead of 'good'.
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Sat May 17, 2014 10:00 pm
KingLucifer says...



That depends for one, if it was a civil war then you might want to look at possible problems with Government failing or some other things such as what Veronica Roth, Author of the Divergent series, the Government took an interest in controlling peoples behavior to make them more honest, selfless, brave, intelligent, and peaceful. Then you have the Suzanne Collins Hunger Games where Democracy of America degraded into Communism and such plunged the country into civil war.

Then you have a World War such as The Allies vs The Axis Powers, which started because Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated by a member of the Black Hand known as Gavrilo Princip. This ultimately led to the first World War and then the Treaty of Versailles which led to Hitler's rise to power and the second World War.

Ultimately War has happened for one reason: Money, money, money, money. Germany had to pay for all the damages of the first world war, the American civil war with Abraham Lincoln had economy reasons.
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Sun May 18, 2014 6:18 pm
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Rosendorn says...



Okay, I'm going to go with an overview of how and why wars are fought, which is basically going to boil down to "you're going to need to worldbuild a ton to figure it out."

First off, know that "guns and bombs" is a very, very big period. Bombs were invented in the 1200s (in China) and guns were invented earlier than that (but not commonplace until the 1800s).

Even if you're talking "modern" in terms of, say, the past century, you've got a ton of inventions in the past 100 years; these include:

- The machine gun
- The semi automatic
- Assault riffles
- The atomic bomb
- Hand grenades (a type of bomb)

There are a bunch of other advances in technology, including the range and accuracy of the guns, types of ammunition, types of weapons outside of guns and bombs (chemical warfare might not be new, but the type of chemicals used changes war to war, from mustard gas to white phosphorus). If you've taken any liberties with how technology was developed, then you'll have to see what events led to different weapons production. Many of the above inventions were invented for war (see: arms races, as one country tries to out-tech the other to win), so if you don't have those types of races, then your technology will probably be different.

You might want to go through the history of warfare in the past 100 years to figure out exactly what time period and type of war they're fighting. There's everything from man vs men to drones... and that's all in the past 100 years.

Remember, weapons to kill are not invented in times of peace. They are invented when the government and/or the people believe these weapons are needed.

Second, if you want a world war, you're going to have to worldbuild that whole world. I mean knowing every single country involved. The past "World wars" actually had less players than you'd think. Out of over 200 countries in the world in 1900, only 81 countries participated in WWI, and 25 were neutral. A lot of those 81 countries were part of empires (British, Japanese, French and US— why yes the US did have territories around the world), and the term "world war" is a bit of a misnomer; it was mostly fought in Europe.

Now, WWII is more what you'd consider a "world war"... but the Europe war and the Pacific war were two separate events that just so happened to take place at the same time, finished at different times, and were triggered by two separate strikes. First it was Nazi Germany spreading out (Europe), then there is Pearl Harbour, which is what started the Pacific war (two years after the start of the European war, and the US had not been involved before then).

Because our definition of "the world" is skewed to usually only include world powers, the idea of a world war can be really easy to manipulate, especially if empires are involved. So you'll have to define that if you want a world war. A war that big on Earth hasn't actually existed, because even the world wars didn't touch every part of the globe.

Third, world wars have a lot of cultural tensions under them, especially in the aftermath. Notice old propoganda posters, and even things like the US's "In God we Trust"— it was adopted as the official motto in response to the communist Soviets promoting atheism, because the Soviets were the enemy in the cold war. A lot of racism against the Japanese had existed before WWII, and that got worse after WWII. WWI wouldn't have happened if European political tensions hadn't been about to explode, and the assassination tipped it over the edge.

Wars are messy. Extremely messy. You have racism, hates, prejudices, and bigotry on both sides. You have empires dragging in their colonies to fight for them, scapegoats, fall guys, and each side painting the other as the villain. Germans didn't trust Americans anymore than Americans trusted Germans. Japanese in North America were shipped into concentration camps in both Canada and the US, to get them away from the Pacific coast because they were believed to be potential spies.

If you want to create a realistic world war, you'll have to figure out:

- Religious tensions
- Racial tensions (remember— racism doesn't necessarily need to be between two different skin colours. See the Irish being discriminated against in the UK)
- Allies and enemies
- Pre-existing tensions between nations
- Economic tensions (Nazism spread because Germany was hit hard by the Great Depression and were looking for ways to fix it)
- Who is considered "the victor"— they'll write history, and will paint themselves in the best light to erase any good achievements their enemies did
- Who is considered "inferior"— they'll be subject to new bias and limitations after the war ends, and during the war (can be based on alliance, orientation, gender, ect)
- Who was completely forgotten by history and you never hear about (look up the full list of Holocaust victims and see it includes far more than Jews)

All of those factors, and more, go into the war. Like I said, it's ridiculously complicated, and any one of those tensions can tip the scales to war, and pretty much all of it will be part of the aftermath.
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Thu Jun 25, 2015 3:27 pm
PRANC1NGJ35T3R says...



AdrianMoon, have you considered looking up a little something known as the 'Just War Theory' (originally written by St. Thomas Aquinas but later built upon). It is a list composed of 7 or so reasons for war to be declared. 2 examples would be a figure of authority would have to declare it and there has to be an end to certain means (what is worth the sacrifice of entire troops?).
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Sat Jul 04, 2015 7:13 am
Vikingr says...



For a modern (like set right now) war, special forces would probably be very very important, also unconventional warfare. Over the past decades, special forces have increased in size, capability, and have gained a lot of respect, because of the prevalence of less conventional threats and their ability to deal with such threats.

Also maybe cyber warfare. It happens pretty much everyday from what I gather. Didn't US governmental employee records just recently get hacked by China?

Starting the war would probably take a string of events which build upon each other. WWI for instance, kicked off when it did because of the assassination of the Archduke, BUT things had been brewing; the Archduke was the straw that broke the camel's back. IIRC I remember looking at a transcript of a telegram sent pre-WW1 which specifically mentions the prospect of a war (WWI) happening. Though I haven't looked at them closely, there were the Balkan Wars in 1912-1913, as well as the unification of Germany under Bismarck around the 1870s, including the German victory over the French in the Franco-German (Franco-Prussian) War of 1870-71. Those are a couple of examples. It's late so I'm not thinking fully lol. Also for WWI alliances were major. Austria-Hungry says to Serbia: do this or die, Russia's like "whoa there!" and then France and Britain get in on it too. Germany comes in on the CP side, others do too. Eventually you even have ANZACs (Australia and New Zealand) fighting for Britain, and the German General Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck wages a guerrilla war against the allies for I believe the entire length of the war, in east Africa.

If you want some intrigue, maybe there could be some fabrications, some false flag work. Perhaps some scheming behind the scenes boils over into actual war; like maybe one country is getting ready to attack the other, the other finds out about it and declares war. I think that that's what happened for the Israelis in one of the wars. They learned that everyone was going to attack them so they bombed the heck out of their enemies before they even took off from the ground.

In my futuristic story a war gets started by a foreign planetary power, New Licaea, sending a peacekeeping force to the colony planet Thessia, which is owned by the planetary power of Sol. There is a civil war on Thessia, but then in September 2152 there's a horrible incident in a village in the eastern portion of Thessia. Licaea sends a peacekeeping force to the eastern part, conveniently sorta...occupying much of the eastern part, including a rather large city. Then around November there's a 2nd similar incident in another village, but in the western part, Sol's part. The government of New Licaea basically flips the bird to Sol in official form, and by January they've already massed more troops and heavier equipment than a peacekeeping force would normally have, mostly under wraps though; war breaks out. In the meantime though between the incidents Thessian Media Broadcasting receives videos and all which make it look like they're campaigning against the insurgents.

I hope that this has helped, I know it's about your story and not mine! But maybe it gave you an idea of the sort of thing I was talking about for causes?
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