Conflict Escalation, Psychological Factors in

Abstract

Abstract People have speculated about the psychological causes of war at least since Thucydides, who wrote in the fifth century bce about the Peloponnesian War and concluded that “the growth of the power of Athens, and the alarm which this inspired in Lacedaemon [Sparta], made war inevitable.” As the Athenians saw it, “the powerful exact what they can, and the weak grant what they must… . By a law of their nature, wherever [men] can rule, they will.”