German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck famously flipped the concept "trade follows the flag" to "Die Flagge folgt dem Handel" i.e. the flag follows trade. This would now mean that geopolitics follows geoeconomics, or that wars follow economic interests.

In fact, powerful states want free control over the resources of weak states; those resources become the 'national interests' of the powerful state and to secure them they are willing to go to war with those states. To achieve that, wherever all diplomatic means and deterrence fail; when global nay-saying, political isolation and sanctions become futile; when colour revolutions become unsuccessful and even proxy wars miscarry – then direct war becomes the inevitable last option to set things straight again.

Usually, war breaks out when one of the warring parties perceives that the existential or strategic cost of not fighting is worse than the destruction of war itself i.e. if you don't fight you will lose national sovereignty or become politically or economically enslaved. And the other party that is perceiving itself as the 'stronger' one, is thinking of the zero-sum game, wherein it will simply knock down its opponent and force it to 'behave' and then snatch away its resources as war bounty.

Then there is also the Thucydides Trap, wherein Thucydides noted in his History of the Peloponnesian War that "it was the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable." With globalisation in all avenues, Thucydides Trap has also become global, and the rise of China, Russia and the Global South has instilled fear in the........

© The Express Tribune