Motivation in War

[TheCurmudgeon]

How about honour and miscalculation?.....One post referred to The Falklands (1982), when these factors featured on both sides.

Honour ties back to Relatedness. If I figure out how to reduce the size of an image I can demonstrate how the Relatedness need ties in to certain values including Face, Tradition, and Conformity. Face is closely associated with honour.

Miscalculation is not so much a motivation as it is an error in accurately percieving the situation, so I do not go into it.

Thinking - a little - it is curious how much the British sense of honour has featured in our declaring war in 1914 for "plucky little Belgium", at least that was a long-standing strategic interest; quite unlike Poland in 1939, whose security had quickly became a national interest. I hesitate to look at imperial era wars.

Strategic interests would always play into Security.

What I would find more interesting is the "Christmas Truce", where "peace" broke out. Why was it that suddenly the motivation for war no longer mattered to the two sides?

My guess is that they temporarily lost the ability to see each other as seperate groups. Their commonalities (Christian backgrounds and love of soccer) outweighed their perceived differences. They lost the Relatedness motivation and there was not a clear Autonomy motivation at this point in the war (or revenge). I don't have time to go into it, but that would be a facinating flip-side to this question.