Lecture Notes | Causes and Prevention of War | Political Science

Note: There are no lecture notes for Sessions 11 and 23.

Course readings.
SES #	TOPICS	LECTURE NOTES
I. Introduction
1	Introduction	Course Overview (PDF)
II. 34 Hypotheses on the Causes of War
2–3	8 Hypotheses on Military Factors as Causes of War	Military Power and the Causes of War: 8 Hypotheses (PDF)
4–7	Misperception and War; Religion and War	"What Were They Thinking?" National Misperceptions as Causes of War (PDF) The "Spiral Model" vs. the "Deterrence Model" (PDF) Three Types of Spirals (PDF)
8–9	More Causes of War and Peace	More Causes of War and Peace (PDF)
III. Cases: Wars and Crises
10	The Seven Years War	The Anglo-French Seven Years' War, 1756–1763: An Inadvertant War? An Avoidable War? (PDF) Great Wars of European History, 1740– (PDF)
12–14	World War I	The Austro-Prussian War of 1866 / The Franco-Prussian War of 1870 (PDF) The Origins of the First World War, Part I (PDF) The Origins of the First World War, Part II: Who Caused the War? Theories of Responsibility (The Fischer Controversy) (PDF)
15–18	World War II	The Origins of the Second World War (PDF) Causes of the Holocaust (PDF)
19	Interlude: Hypotheses on Escalation and Limitation of War Nuclear Weapons, Nuclear Strategy, Other Weapons of Mass Destruction and the Causes of War.	The Causes of Intense War (PDF) Weapons of Mass Destruction and World Politics (PDF)
20–21	The Cold War, Korea and Indochina	The Cold War (1947–1989) and Korea (1950–1953) (PDF)
22	The Israel-Arab Conflict	Causes of / Solutions to the Israel-Arab Conflict (PDF)
24	The Peloponnesian War	The Peloponnesian War, 460–404 BCE (PDF)
IV. The Future of War
25–26	Testing & Applying Theories of War Causation The Future of War Solutions to War	The Future of War and Solutions to War (PDF)