1. They want what another country has 🗺️🛢️
Land. Oil. Water. Minerals. Even the routes that ships use to carry goods.
Countries need resources to grow. But sometimes, instead of trading or negotiating, their leaders try to grab what they want.
Take Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990. Kuwait was a small, oil-rich country, and Iraq’s leader Saddam Hussein wanted control over its oil reserves. Iraq also owed Kuwait a huge amount of money. Invading Kuwait was supposed to solve several problems at once.
Or take Venezuela, a South American country with enormous oil reserves. In January 2026, US forces attacked the country and captured its president, Nicolás Maduro. The US accused him of serious drug-related crimes, but President Donald Trump also spoke openly about Venezuela’s oil.
The basic idea? Sometimes it’s simply: “You’ve got something we want.”
2. They want to be the boss 👑🌍
Sometimes a powerful country wants to control what other countries do.
When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, President Vladimir Putin wanted to stop Ukraine from becoming too close to Western countries and their military alliance, NATO. Ukraine, meanwhile, wanted to decide its own future.
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