known going in that it would be terrible, but they had no idea that it would be as terrible as it proved to be. Then, with the invention and use of the atomic bomb in World War Two, the destructive potential of war was raised to a new level.
In earlier times, war had been only one of the plagues that afflicted human beings; even in this century, the influenza epidemic that followed World War one killed more people than the war had. But as disease and famine appeared more controllable than before, war emerged as the supreme potential peril hanging over the human race. As a consequence, the study of the causes of war, and by implication of the possible means of its prevention, has aquired a new urgency.
In the following essay, three schools of thought regarding the causes of war will be examined. All proceed from a premise that is at once pessimistic and optimistic: pessimistic in that none of these schools of thought look forward to a moral transformation that will render war unthinkable, optimistic in that the all, at least indirectly, suggest that if we can more fully understand the conditions that lead to war, we can more effectively take measures to prevent wars from breaking out.
The first of the three main schools of thought regarding the nature and origins of war is the realist approach. The essential premise of this theory has been set forth by one of the chief modern exponents of the realist view, Hans Morganthau. The realist theory
Believes that the world, imperfect as it is from the
rational point of view, is the result of forces in-
inherent in human nature. To improve the world one
must work with those forces, not against them. This
being inherently a world of opposing interests and of
conflict among them, moral principles can never be
fully realized, but must at best be approximated
through the ever temporary balancing of interests and
the ever precarious settlem...