Scarcity

Many people believe that a core cause of war is scarcity. Scarce resources like food, water, land, oil, and minerals cause groups to form armies to fight over them. There is some truth to this view: battles or wars are sometimes fought over resources.

However, the expense of war, without even counting in the damage caused by it, nearly always exceeds the value of the resource being fought over. For instance, in the American Civil War, the Northern states could have purchased each one of the four million slaves in the South for less than those states spent on the war.

Often resources are a rallying point for politicians and warlords to drum up soldiers and support for a war. The politicians tell a story of scarcity and future deprivation to justify war, when cooperation would provide more prosperity and security.

Human ingenuity provides ways to get along with reduced "essential" resources. Conservation, substitution, and alternate sources or means are nearly always available. Generally, fighting a war over a resource damages the resource, as in poisoned water, burning oil wells, and ravaged farms.

Today, many civil wars in poor countries are financed directly or indirectly by corporations or governments who wish to extract basic resources like timber or minerals. Factions fight over control of these lucrative resources. In such cases, the incentive for war has more to do with greed than scarcity. We are all complicit in this, because we buy goods like computers and furniture that are made up of these "blood resources."

If war is caused by ongoing scarcity, then the rest of the world has a responsibilty to protect itself and the war victims by preventing that war, perhaps by providing some resources and ingenuity for a long-term solution.

P:5Y works to understand, address, and solve every violent and threatened conflict in effective and long-lasting ways.