Opinion: If war isn't natural, why does it keep happening?

Note: This is an opinion piece

Across the world, organised violence continues to shape global politics. The persistence of war raises an uncomfortable question: is this simply what humans are, or is it something we keep choosing to build?

This question sits at the heart of how we understand violence. If violence is innate, war may be inevitable. If it is constructed, then it is not fate. It is failure.

For the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the answer was clear. In Discourse on the Origin of Inequality (1755), he argues that human beings are not naturally violent, but instead have an innate capacity for compassion, which he calls ‘pitié’. Early humans, living in pre-social conditions, were not driven by domination or competition. Violence, and eventually war, emerged later alongside the development of private property, social comparison, and hierarchy. War, then, is not a natural condition of humanity, but a consequence of how society is organised (Rousseau, 1755).

This philosophical argument gains credibility when placed against anthropological and archaeological evidence. Research suggests that sustained, large-scale warfare became significantly more common following the Neolithic transition, when human societies shifted from nomadic lifestyles to settled agriculture (Ferguson, 2013). The accumulation of surplus resources, the demarcation of territory, and the emergence of inequality created new incentives for conflict. If war were truly an inherent feature of human nature, it is difficult to explain why it intensified so sharply only after these structural transformations. In this sense, violence doesn’t seem like a constant feature of human life, but rather something that depends on specific historical contexts.

Yet Rousseau’s optimism has a powerful critic. Thomas Hobbes, in Leviathan (1651), imagined a world where, in the absence of authority, humans exist in a violent state of insecurity, driven by fear and competition: a ‘war of all against all’. For him, society does not create violence, but contains it. Order, rather than being natural, is imposed. Hobbes’ argument is compelling, particularly when we look at contexts where state authority collapses. But it risks overstating inevitability. If violence were our default condition, it would be far more constant across time and space than historical evidence suggests.

This debate becomes even more complex when we turn to evolutionary theory. Humans are not simply peaceful or violent; they are both. Research in evolutionary anthropology, shaped by Darwin, suggests that traits such as empathy, fairness, and even moral emotions like guilt and shame may have been selected because they enhance group survival (Bowles and Gintis, 2011). In other words, the capacity for goodness is not a cultural accident; it is biologically embedded. Yet this same social sensitivity also makes humans aware of status, exclusion, and threat, which can just as easily fuel conflict. If biology gives us the capacity for both empathy and aggression, the question becomes: what determines which side emerges?

This is where sociology and modern psychology become crucial. The controversial Stanford Prison Experiment, led by Philip Zimbardo in 1971, demonstrated how quickly ordinary individuals could adopt cruel and authoritarian behaviours when placed in certain institutional roles. In the study, 24 male students were assigned to the roles of ‘guards’ and ‘prisoners’ in a simulated prison environment set up in the basement of Stanford University. Within less than 48 hours, guards began to display authoritarian and humiliating behaviour: they enforced arbitrary rules, deprived prisoners of sleep, and used psychological intimidation. Prisoners, in turn, showed signs of extreme stress, anxiety, and emotional breakdown. The situation escalated so quickly that the experiment, initially planned for two weeks, was terminated after just six days (Zimbardo, 1971). Although later critiques (Le Texier, 2019) revealed that the experiment was heavily influenced by the instructions given to participants, the broader insight remains significant; behaviour is shaped by context and power structures. Violence, in many cases, is not spontaneous but situationally enabled.

A similar pattern emerges in the Milgram obedience experiment conducted by Stanley Milgram in 1963. Participants were instructed to administer what they believed were increasingly painful electric shocks to another person (an actor) whenever that person gave incorrect answers. Despite hearing cries of pain, a significant proportion of participants continued to administer shocks when prompted to do so. Around 65% went as far as the highest voltage level. The significance of Milgram’s findings lies in the normality of the participants. They were not unusually aggressive individuals, they were ordinary people placed in a structured situation where authority was clearly defined. The experiment demonstrated that harmful actions can arise not from personal malice, but from obedience and the desire to meet expectations (Milgram, 1963). Taken together, these studies suggest that human behaviour is highly sensitive to context. Violence is not simply inside us, it is produced by systems that demand it. And nowhere is this clearer than in contemporary warfare.

Take the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, which escalated dramatically in 2022 following Russia’s full-scale invasion. By 2025, thousands of civilians continued to be killed or injured annually, with urban areas, energy infrastructure, and transport networks frequently targeted. The pattern of violence here is not random or purely emotional, it’s strategic. Attacks on infrastructure are often aimed at weakening energy supply and disrupting civilian life, particularly during winter, while the increasing use of drones reflects a shift toward technologically mediated warfare (OHCHR, 2024). These developments show how violence evolves with tools, incentives, and military objectives rather than simply erupting from human instinct. A similar structural dynamic is visible in the war in Sudan, which began in 2023 as a power struggle between rival military factions. The conflict has led to tens of thousands of deaths and the displacement of millions, but its dynamics are rooted in institutional failures: fragmented authority, competition over state control, and the absence of stable governance (ACLED, 2026). Civilian harm is widespread not because individuals are inherently violent, but because there are few mechanisms left to constrain organised force. In this context, violence is enabled by the collapse of structures that would otherwise regulate it, tying conflict directly to power struggles and institutional breakdown. The brutality observed is less a reflection of human nature than of systemic breakdown. Where governance collapses, the regulation of force collapses with it. What links these conflicts is not human nature, but organisation. It is sustained by political interests and justified through language that renders violence acceptable, even necessary. Civilians, meanwhile, remain the primary victims, highlighting the asymmetry between those who make decisions about war and those who suffer its consequences.

International relations theory captures this dynamic in its own way. Realist thinkers argue that in an anarchic international system, where no overarching authority exists, states are compelled to prioritise survival, often through force. War, in this view, is not driven by human aggression alone, but by the structure of the system itself. Even well-intentioned states can become locked in cycles of competition and insecurity. But this perspective, while powerful, risks normalising what it seeks to explain. It describes the persistence of war without fully questioning the conditions that sustain it (Wendt, 1992).

And that is the deeper issue. War continues not simply because humans are capable of violence, but because our institutions, incentives, and political structures continue to produce it.

This does not mean that human nature plays no role. Fear, group identity, and the capacity for dehumanisation are rooted in human cognition and can intensify conflict under certain conditions (Bandura, 1999). However, these tendencies do not automatically lead to war. They must be activated, shaped, and often exploited within broader social and political systems that reward aggression or fail to restrain it. Rousseau’s central insight, then, retains its relevance: war is not inevitable. But neither is peace. Both are contingent outcomes, dependent on the structures we create and sustain.

If war is something we create, not something we are, then its persistence is not fate; it is failure. Not of human nature, but of the systems we continue to tolerate. The question is no longer simply what we are, but whether we are willing to keep building a world that makes violence so easy to organise - and so hard to stop. As Albert Einstein observed, “Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding.”

Bibliography:

ACLED (2026,) “Drone Strikes in Sudan’s Kordofan Region Take a Toll on Civilians and Aid Operations | Associated Press.” ACLED, 19 Mar. 2026.

Bandura, Albert (1999), ‘Moral disengagement in the perpetration of inhumanities’, Personality and Social Psychology Review, Vol.3, No.3, pp.193-209.

Bowles, Samuel and Gintis, Herbert (2011), ‘Culture and Institutions Matter’, in A Cooperative Species: Human Reciprocity and Its Evolution, pp.33-35. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Ferguson, Brian (2013), ‘The prehistory of war and peace in Europe and the Near East’, in Fry, Douglas P. (ed.) War, Peace, and Human Nature, pp.168-190. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hobbes, Thomas (1651/1996), Leviathan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Le Texier, Thibault (2019), Histoire d’un mensonge: Enquête sur l’expérience de Stanford. Paris: La Découverte.

Milgram, Stanley (1963), ‘Behavioral study of obedience’, Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, Vol.67, No.4, pp. 371-378.

OHCHR (2024), “Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict — September 2024 | UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine.” Ohchr.org, 11 Oct. 2024.

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1755), A Discourse on Inequality. London: Penguin.

Wendt, Alexander (1992), ‘Anarchy Is What States Make of It: The Social Construction of Power Politics’, International Organization, Vol.45, No.2, pp.391-425.

Zimbardo, Philip (1971), A Study of Prisoners and Guards in a Simulated Prison. Bristol: Intellect Books.