Causes of war and peace

I am new to international politics sites Antiwar.com and https://libertarianinstitute.org/ have educated me on the issues with the supplement World Politics Review Podcast. So if I am reading this right from Conflict After the Cold War, Indecisive wars create shorter periods of peace as opposed to decisive wars creating longer periods of peace. So this oil war that Bush started because of weapons of mass destruction in which Obama, Biden, and Trump all kept going because it will garner them political points, also war is when one nation is in conflict with another nation when one or both fail to see their bartering position is not as strong as they think it is and those conflicts are usually resolved by conflict resulting in the weaker nation conceding and the rebalancing of powers on the international market. The conflict being decisively ended or indecisively ended determines how long we have before a new conflict breaks out. So this war has lasted 20 plus years of “liberal states” imposing their rule on other states that are not of their ideological belief and function. I ask who is the dictator and when the liberal states act more like a realist in action liberal on paper makes you wonder.

“Wars usually end when the fighting nations agree on their relative strength, and wars usually begin when fighting nations disagree on their relative strength.”

“In peace time the relations between two diplomats are like relations between two merchants … The treaties he signs are simply more courteous versions of commercial contracts.”

“The expansionist and competitive behavior of nineteenth-century European states rested on no less ideal a basis; it just so happened that the ideology driving it was less explicit than the doctrines of the twentieth century. For one thing, most “liberal” European societies were illiberal insofar as they believed in the legitimacy of imperialism, that is, the right of one nation to rule over other nations without regard for the wishes of the ruled.”

Reading this book I see why others in other nations loathe the USA and western “liberal” states.

I am still reading and this is for others to lead me to other resources or inform me on why we are in this eternal loop of war and peace.