The stupidest wars that where never fought

Pangur

Donor
Don't have a link, but I'm pretty sure there was one instance when a bear almost caused WWIII.

) October 25, 1962- Cuban Missile Crisis: Intruder in Duluth At around midnight on October 25, a guard at the Duluth Sector Direction Center saw a figure climbing the security fence. He shot at it, and activated the "sabotage alarm." This automatically set off sabotage alarms at all bases in the area. At Volk Field, Wisconsin, the alarm was wrongly wired, and the Klaxon sounded which ordered nuclear armed F-106A interceptors to take off. The pilots knew there would be no practice alert drills while DEFCON 3 was in force, and they believed World War III had started.
Immediate communication with Duluth showed there was an error. By this time aircraft were starting down the runway. A car raced from command center and successfully signaled the aircraft to stop. The original intruder was a bear.



Source http://www.nuclearfiles.org/menu/ke...dents/20-mishaps-maybe-caused-nuclear-war.htm
 
I read once that one war of the Aztecs (against Tlatelolco, I think) had as its official cassus belli that the king of Tlatelolco, married to a sister of the Aztec emperor, did not satisfy his wife while in bed.

Apparently this was because there was a taboo in pre-Conquest Mesoamerica against declaring wars for selfish reasons, so even though the reasons of the war were plain and obvious to everybody (Tenochtitlan needed to swallow Tlatelolco to grow as a city, and Tlatelolco is nowadays nothing more than a neighbourhood in Mexico City) they still needed to come with some official non-selfish reason, even if it was as retarded asthis one.
 
So basically the point of this thread is to come up with the stupidest reasons for a ATL war that you can think of for example...

The Manure War:
Prussian and Austrian relations where at a dangerous low already, however when the Prussian King sent a letter to the Austrian Emperor, the messager accidentally dropped it in a pile of horse dung, but decided to deliver it anyway. The Emperor, mistaking this as intentional, was furious that his rival would dare send him a message smeared in horse waste and declared war.

The war (The War of the Bavarian Succession, to give it its official title) started in July 1778 and ended in May 1779. No actual battles took place, only a few cavalry skirmishes. The main activity undertaken by both sides was foraging for food, which led the Prussians to call it the Potato War and the Austrians to call it the Plum Fuss. The actual cause was a dispute over the choice of heirs for the then-vacant throne of Bavaria, which was eventually resolved diplomatically.

Now, for a war actually fought over manure:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Pacific
 

HeWhoIsMe

Banned
I read once that one war of the Aztecs (against Tlatelolco, I think) had as its official cassus belli that the king of Tlatelolco, married to a sister of the Aztec emperor, did not satisfy his wife while in bed.

Apparently this was because there was a taboo in pre-Conquest Mesoamerica against declaring wars for selfish reasons, so even though the reasons of the war were plain and obvious to everybody (Tenochtitlan needed to swallow Tlatelolco to grow as a city, and Tlatelolco is nowadays nothing more than a neighbourhood in Mexico City) they still needed to come with some official non-selfish reason, even if it was as retarded asthis one.

I probably have the same war in mind only I thought the official reason was that the Tlatelolcian people were roaming around their main market with their bare butts in plain sight. The two cities being so close to each other , it was inevitable that the Aztec high priests and nobles in Tenochitlan caught a glimpse of the sight and considered it a grave insult. They prompltly declared war and captured Tlatelolco


Also,
The 1996 Imia episode between Greece and Turkey would have been a really stupid war if it escalated into one...
 
Football War trumps Pig War but it's a close run thing.

I think they can't be compared. The Football War wasn't even trigged by the match, it just happened close to it and so they were unfairly related. In the other hand, the Pig War was almost really started over a pig being shot.
 
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