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In considering the cause of particular wars (or causes of war in general) the available options can probably be distilled down to three ― Man, Machine, Moment. The decision to go to war (or stumble into it) usually involves a madman with grandiose ideas, or the arrival of a military weapon that changes the odds of winning, or the emergence of an obvious power imbalance between populations, (and most likely, elements of all three). As the historian Geoffrey Blainey has noted, the actual ignition of conflict requires someone, somewhere, to think they hold the advantage in one of these areas, sufficient to get away with aggression and be victorious, and BIFFO! its on. Such was the case in 1453 with the Sultan Mehmet II, Conqueror of Constantinople, and his super cannon Basilik . 1.  The Madman Alexander Christie-Millar, 2024, To the City: Life and Death Along the Ancient Walls of Istanbul , William Collins, London, p. 43, 49-50       "On that winter's day in Edirne, the...

Little seems to have really changed   in the past 1400 years of Islamic experience in the Middle East. Such is their attachment to the intimate intrigues of their religious beginning, that subsequent generations of Muslims appear compelled to re-enact the original resentments and betrayals. There is something almost de terministic about those early divisions, a personalised enmity that has endured, with destructive impact on the contemporary Arab world. This thread of argument, along with the multiple ethnic and imperial nationalisms (Arabian, Turkic, Persian) that have populated and contested the region since, are the subject of a challenging book by Barnaby Rogerson ― THE HOUSE DIVIDED : Sunni, Shia and the Making of the Middle East  (2024, Profile Books, London). It is a tragedy that the author suggests may have been foreseen by the Prophet Muhammad shortly before his death in 632 AD (632 CE or 'Common Era', 10 AH or 'After Hijrah'):          "Once ...