According to Ōnoki, the war had been decided upon by the majority of the great nations due to distrust between the shinobi villages and due to the unstable balance of power that had resulted from the last war with Akatsuki and Madara Uchiha. Hisashi Wakahisa predicted that the war would begin due to the ambiguity of power distribution between the villages, due to the level of merging that occurred within the Allied Shinobi Forces.