Wars Do Not Begin with Bullets… They Begin When the State Is Absent

Adel Al-Rifai Abu Al-Hassan

If the previous article examined how the state can turn adversity into opportunity through the conscious and intelligent management of the consequences of war, this article moves from managing outcomes to examining causes, raising a deeper question: how and why do wars begin in the first place?
Wars are not sudden events that begin with the first shot fired. They are the result of a long process of accumulated imbalances within the state that have been left unaddressed. When development falters, education weakens, social inequalities widen, justice recedes, and institutions lose their ability to manage diversity, the crisis takes shape deep within the state long before it manifests itself as armed conflict.
In this sense, war is not the cause of the crisis. Rather, it is one of the most visible consequences of the absence of a strategic state capable of early prevention and of addressing structural imbalances before they develop into an explosion.
It is important to understand that the absence of the state does not necessarily mean the formal disappearance of institutions. Rather, it means the absence of the state’s strategic function in guiding society towards balance and stability. A state may be present through its administrative structures, yet absent in terms of its developmental impact and its capacity to prevent imbalances from accumulating into crises.
This is the essence of the argument: the problem does not lie in the occurrence of events themselves, but in the absence of the capacity to identify them early and address their root causes. A state that lacks the tools of strategic foresight and fails to connect its sectors within a unified vision gradually becomes a state that manages crises rather than one that prevents them.
War, in this context, is merely the moment when the truth is finally revealed—after all the warning signs have spoken, but were not heard in time.
Ending a war does not mean ending the crisis, because genuine peace cannot be achieved merely by silencing the guns. It requires eliminating the conditions that led people to take up arms in the first place. States that confine themselves to managing consequences without addressing root causes inevitably reproduce their crises in different forms, regardless of changing circumstances or actors.
This is where the concept of the strategic state begins. Such a state does not view war as an isolated emergency, but as a symptom of deeper dysfunction within the structures of the state and society. It therefore does not merely extinguish the fire; it goes directly to its source: building effective institutions, entrenching justice, distributing development equitably, and reconstructing the social contract on the foundations of citizenship and equality of opportunity.
The modern state is not a reactive state, but a preventive one. It works to stop crises before they emerge and addresses causes rather than merely managing consequences. This requires political courage that goes beyond administering existing realities towards reshaping them through the reform of economic, social, educational and cultural imbalances that accumulate silently until they eventually erupt.
In this context, the state cannot be understood as a collection of separate sectors, because its structure is, in essence, a single interconnected system. Education is linked to the economy; the economy is linked to security; banks are linked to production; and public health is linked to social stability. Dysfunction in any one of these components affects the entire system, just as no partial reform can achieve its full impact unless it forms part of a comprehensive national vision.
All sectors must therefore operate within a single national strategy, or through integrated sectoral plans derived from it, so that each serves the overarching national strategy rather than operating separately from, or in parallel with, it. The issue is not the number of plans a state possesses, but the unity of direction, integration and coherence among them.
Within this framework, education emerges as one of the most important structural factors underlying conflict, particularly in peripheral and rural areas. Limited access to education is not merely a failure in service delivery; it is a factor that reproduces marginalisation and fuels long-term grievances. Expanding educational opportunities and ensuring access to schools in villages and remote areas must therefore be regarded as a strategic necessity rather than simply a matter of public service provision.
Preventing war, however, cannot be achieved through education alone. It also requires restructuring the economy, with the banking sector at its core. Banks, in their traditional form, are no longer sufficient unless their role is redefined so that they become instruments for directing resources towards genuine productive activity rather than merely intermediaries for managing liquidity.
What is required is the transformation of the banking sector into an integral component of the development system. This means directing finance towards productive sectors and organising the relationship between the state, the central bank and commercial banks within a unified strategic vision, so that credit becomes an instrument for building the economy rather than financing speculation or unproductive activities.
Through such a transformation, the financial system becomes part of the productive infrastructure of the state and is directly connected to economic sovereignty, development and the building of national capacity.
The historical responsibility at this stage rests with the state, which faces a clear choice: either confront the root causes of structural imbalances with courage and genuine determination for reform, or continue postponing them and thereby reproduce the same crisis in different forms.
The fundamental difference between an ordinary state and a strategic state is that the former manages crises after they occur, while the latter prevents them before they emerge. And when crises do occur, the strategic state addresses their causes rather than merely their consequences.
Ultimately, this stage will not be judged solely by whether the war ends, but by what emerges afterwards: a state that is more just, balanced, developed and stable—or the reproduction of the same crisis in another form.
The Strategic Principle:
Wars do not begin on the day the first shot is fired. They begin when the state abandons its strategic responsibility to build human capacity, entrench justice, direct development and strengthen institutions.
Peace, therefore, is not merely a political event. It is the natural outcome of a state governed by strategic thinking—a state capable of preventing war before it begins.

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