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Why did World War I start? Was it the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the arms race, or a misplaced sense of national pride and ethnocentrism? Perhaps there is no simple answer.

An even more difficult question to answer simply would be to identify why the War continued for five years. In his book Humanity: A Moral History of he 20th Century Jonathan Glover argues that both the instigation and perpetuation of World War I were the result of a series of traps. These "traps", simply put, were ideologies that made the parties involved feel and act as if war was the only solution to the problems the international community was facing in the early 1900's.

Glover maintains that "war is often a trap and going to war is not often an aim of modern political leaders. Usually they find themselves trapped by the implications of policies they have embarked on. And whole groups can be trapped in a spiral of hostility leading to war". Glover asserts that these traps impacted those both directly and indirectly involved in the war. He says that the political leaders, the soldiers, and even the civilians ascribed to these traps. The trap of the arms race lead to the start of World War and the trap of the media helped to perpetuate it, and Glover's solutions of mutual cooperation and altered psychology (respectively) do not adequately address the consequences of these traps.

One of the traps that led to World War I was the arms race. The culmination of arms races makes war more likely as they cultivate fear. This trap helped to spark World War I as Germany began a naval construction program that threatened the power of Great Britain. As both countries responded to the others' growing military strength patriotism and nationalism grew as fear and aggression grew among both the leaders and members of the respective nations.

The arms race instigated World War I, but Glover claims that this trap can be avoided simply through cooperation tactics, or a tit for tat strategy. Because a race of arms leads to fear and fear is a result of the unknown, cooperation solves that problem by anticipating your competitor's next move through mutual restraint. Mutual restraint negates the fear caused by this trap because it operates on the idea that if one of the involved parties avoids war, the other will do the same. Furthermore, Glover suggests that could be achieved by the implementation of a world order that operates as a sort of moral authority that would govern agreements and global

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