Theories of War

A significant amount of research in International Relations (IR) has been inspired by inquiry into the meaning, causes, and consequences of the phenomena of war – both in contemporary global politics and throughout history. That inquiry has produced many contributions to thinking about “the war puzzle” in global politics, but no single or consensus theory of war. In fact, the multiple causes of war make it too complicated for any single theory to cover. The complexity of the “war puzzle” has led to a significant amount of theorizing from diverse perspectives. This chapter will discuss many of those theories, and show the ways in which they individually and collectively neglect gender. I argue that this neglect is problematic because war cannot be fully understood without gender analysis. This chapter makes that argument first, by outlining a number of traditional approaches to war, and then by discussing the ways that gender is key to understanding war, conceptually, empirically, and normatively.