What is the largest cause of war throughout history?

The source of all conflict? PRIDE! From the Garden to today it has been pride that has motivated mankind to feel entitled to something worth fighting for.

Sir, do you think their are any instances where the difference between self-protection (of assets, way of life, beliefs, etc.) differs from the innate need to survive when threatened?

CW3 (Join to see) - Chief Warrant; Not to be flip, but what ended about 150 years ago?

The Civil War ended, and I think I fits nicely into self-protection/greed.

CW3 (Join to see) - Chief Warrant; Indeed it does, and there isn't any real way that it can be linked to "the innate need to survive when threatened" as "The North" was strong enough to survive on its own.

In fact, a good case can be made that, had the Confederacy achieved its war aims, then the Confederacy was (essentially) doomed as it could not survive economically without slavery and slavery was irrevocably doomed to vanish in any event.

The most likely outcome (if "The Union" had accepted the succession of the "Slave States" would have been a "Confederacy" shut off from the interior of North America and reliant on a single cash crop which the world's markets had already discovered a cheaper and better supply chain for. This would have left "The Confederacy" without the necessary capital with which to expand (and modernize) its economy and would have (almost inevitably) have lead to "The Confederacy" becoming (essentially) an "economic client state" of "The Union" and resulted in a situation where "The Union" could dictate economic terms that favoured "The Union" regardless of their impact on "The Confederacy".

Considering that one of the causes of the American Civil War was the feeling amongst "Southern money" that "The South" was on the verge of becoming an "economic client state" of "The North" - which could dictate economic terms that favoured "The North" regardless of their impact on "The South", the most probable outcome would have been for "The Union" to have won the American Civil War without actually having had to fight it.

Surely some of the most bloody of all time.

COL Mikel J. Burroughs - Colonel; Pardon my skepticism but what "religious ideology" was the cause of WWI and what "religious ideology" was the cause of WWII?

Of the 28 wars with more than 1,000,000 fatalities, only two are "religious wars" (and you have to get down to number 17 on the list before you even meet the first of them [and, technically, since that listing is actually an amalgamation of several individual wars, it shouldn't even be on the list so that the first "religious war" would actually be number 23 {out of 27}]).

COL Ted Mc thank you sir and Yes I realize that now, but my initial perception was still there in the back of my mind because of the atrocities committed in some of those wars. I was educated earlier by SPC Jeff Daley, PhD as well.