In this highly original and important book, Hidemi Suganami analyses one of the fundamental questions of international relations: what causes war? Drawing on historical, statistical, and philosophical perspectives to produce an innovative theory, he rejects the simplistic notion that war can be explained by some straightforward formula, yet demonstrates that there are basic similarities among the diverse origins of wars.

Such similarities, he argues, are rooted in the way the origins of wars, conventionally, are narrated. Comparing various narrative accounts of the origins of wars, Suganami shows that enquiry into the causes of war is inseparable from the question of responsibility.