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I saw in an article mentioning that there is a link between national debt and starting wars I don't recall where I've seen it mentioned to look for further references on the matter.

Are there known historical studies or academic papers that examined historical data to find a causation link between national debt/trade deficits and starting wars?

Mention: When I say national debt I refer to both external debt and internal debt (both to internal debtors and through fiat currency).

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Not sure about causation, but the idea makes financial sense. First off, you can wage war on the creditor. If you win, you force them to wipe out the debt. If you lose, you're no worse off than before. Second, it's a way to distract the populace from the fact that your economy is in deep doodoo. Third, you increase GDP and help economy sometimes (see USA's economy due to WWII). Fourth, you may gain financial assistance from enemies of your enemies. – DVK Jan 27 at 15:03
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War has definitely been used to take peoples minds off of governmental problems, including debt. Take a look at Henry V's part of the 100 Year war and the Falklands war. – Russell Jan 28 at 4:37
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This is a good time to point out that correlation != causation. Getting involved in a long war is a good way to rack up debt. – T.E.D.♦ Jan 28 at 16:03
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@EduardFlorinescu - Also, people starting the war may care a lot more about short term internal stability than longer term extra debt problems. – DVK Jan 28 at 17:03
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@MarkC.Wallace Thanks for mentioning, I will not interpret it as criticism, I assume the risk of a question being closed every-time I post a question. – Eduard Florinescu Jan 28 at 19:28
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I am skeptical as well. One could argue that debt (internal and external) is inversely correllated with state strength, and that war is a way of reinforcing state strength. One might argue that this is part of the grounds for the war of 1812 (the segment of the population that backed the war was motivated in part by their loathing for British creditors).

Ultimately there are books written about why nations go to war, and I believe the only consensus is that there is no single reason why nations go to war. The set of reasons varies by country and by decade. (Any answer for the period of the Congress of Vienna is probably not applicable to the post WWII period, nor can answers from the current era be compared with answers from the bipolar cold war regime.

I also expect that it would be tough to prove, since I sincerely doubt that the agressor would admit "We're going to war because we're deadbeats!".

However you could probably assemble a dataset of wars and graph the trade deficit between the initiating parties. (I think that allies would cloud the issue); the graph would be an interesting resolution to the question.

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It is sometimes argued, albeit farcically in the manner of "For the want of a horseshoe nail", that WWII was started over Germany's inability to deliver telegraph poles it owed to France and Belgium.

For the want of a telegraph pole, the Ruhr was occupied. For the want of a free Ruhr, a shaky economy was sent into a death spiral. For the want of a prosperous economy, the Weimar Republic was destabilized politically. For the want of a stable government, the Nazis were able to take over and start re-arming. For the want of a regime that wasn't evil, the world erupted into war. All for the want of a telegraph pole.

But this is less of a national debt issue than the Allies screwing themselves by burdening Germany with outrageous reparations demands, and then following through on collecting them by force. It convinced Germany of the need to re-arm, and gave the German people a smoldering hatred of the Allied Powers that allowed Hitler's broader war schemes to blossom.

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Interesting theory but wasn't the Ruhr invasion in 1923? Presumably what really drove the Weimar Republic over the edge was the Great Depression - without it the Ruhr invasion would have remained a nasty old story. As it was, the Nazis did make a big deal out of it eventually and found a receptive audience in Depression-era Germany. – Felix Goldberg Jan 30 at 13:42
the Ruhr invasion inflamed the old hatred of the Germans against the French, and caused political power in the Weimar Republic to shift to those parties opposed to the whole Weimar idea, mostly the Nazis and communists. The next elections saw the NSDAP gain significant power, enough to start wiping out the communists, and leading eventually to them becoming strong enough in 1932 to force the emperor to hand Hitler the chancellorship. It's farfetched, and far from the only reason, but yes, the Ruhr invasion was one of the trigger events that allowed the Nazi rise. – jwenting Jan 31 at 7:41
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I am rather skeptical of the theory that leaders go to war to get people's mind off debt, but it's certainly a discussionable matter. However, I do have an example for you of a debtor invading his creditor to write off the debt : here. Spoiler: it backfired rather spectacularly.

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One proximate cause of World War II was the Versailles treaty, and the huge reparations debt it imposed on Germany. One of Hitler's main platform planks was to revitalize the German economy by "tearing up" that Treaty.

Under the Dawes Plan of 1928, Germany would have been paying off Versailles debt for 60 years, all the way to 1988, if it had not been wiped out by World War II.

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