Most wars end up being sparked by violations of sanctity, even if the underlying factors that drive them are economic. Some group considers an idea sacred, and their adversaries threaten to profane that idea. Because their belief is sacred, they will go to any length, and any cost, to protect it.
Think of Catholicism vs. Protestantism in the European Wars of Religion. The injustice of slavery vs. Southern honor in the American Civil War. Nationalism and alliances in WW1. The superiority of the Aryan Race in Nazi Germany. Capitalism vs. communism in the Cold War and conflicts (Korea, Cuba, Vietnam, Central America) within it.
Nazism was fundamentally irrational (and its irrationality led directly to the downfall of Nazi Germany), but that didn't stop it from plunging the whole world into war.
There are plenty of similar flash points in the world today. The current U.S. government includes numerous people for whom the idea of the U.S. as a Christian country is sacred - hell, the acting Attorney General just said that he could not support secular judicial nominees. Economic development (to the extent that it enriches the secular, heathen, and heretical) is part of the problem there, as it profanes the Christian moral fabric of America. Similarly, the progressive left in the U.S. has their own sacred idea: equality.
Economic development, to them, is a net negative to the extent that it benefits entrenched corporations or privileged groups.
Think of Catholicism vs. Protestantism in the European Wars of Religion. The injustice of slavery vs. Southern honor in the American Civil War. Nationalism and alliances in WW1. The superiority of the Aryan Race in Nazi Germany. Capitalism vs. communism in the Cold War and conflicts (Korea, Cuba, Vietnam, Central America) within it.
Nazism was fundamentally irrational (and its irrationality led directly to the downfall of Nazi Germany), but that didn't stop it from plunging the whole world into war.
There are plenty of similar flash points in the world today. The current U.S. government includes numerous people for whom the idea of the U.S. as a Christian country is sacred - hell, the acting Attorney General just said that he could not support secular judicial nominees. Economic development (to the extent that it enriches the secular, heathen, and heretical) is part of the problem there, as it profanes the Christian moral fabric of America. Similarly, the progressive left in the U.S. has their own sacred idea: equality. Economic development, to them, is a net negative to the extent that it benefits entrenched corporations or privileged groups.