ANALYSIS - Do wars break out when world takes summer holiday?

By Peter Apps, Political Risk Correspondent

LONDON (Reuters) - Asset managers, diplomats and politicians disappearing for long summer holidays should beware: if history is any guide, major events from wars to crashes happen disconcertingly often when everyone heads to the beach.

Last summer, the August "silly season" was shattered by the unexpected war between Russia and Georgia. The year before saw the first ripples of the subprime mortgage crisis and credit crunch, while July 2006 brought the Israel-Lebanon war.

The Asian financial crisis started in July 1997 -- in part prompting the Russian rouble crisis in August 1998. Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990, while Soviet hardliners briefly ousted vacationing President Mikhail Gorbachev in August 1991.

Further back, World War One broke out in August 1914 and World War Two at the start of September 1939.

So, does that mean the northern hemisphere summer has a particular propensity for "black swans" -- unexpected, high impact events that can turn the world upside down overnight?

"The thesis that these things happen in the summer -- wars, financial crises, etc -- is interesting but hard to prove," said Sam Wilkin, senior consultant at Oxford Analytica. "The standard explanation has always been that people are away from their desks and so it is all dealt with by second-stringers."

That theory would suggest that those key decision-makers who would normally notice an emerging crisis and act to deal with it might simply not be there at the key moment, thereby taking no action and allowing events to run out of control.

It could help explain why British bank Northern Rock fell into such trouble after credit markets dried up in the summer of 2007, prompting a spiralling crisis that led to a run on the bank and its nationalisation in September.