We don't need it.
We have advanced enough to feed everyone on the planet several times over. So the defending the tree/waterhole impulse can be easily stopped world wide if food and water are made human rights. We have advanced in our mating practices as well so that impulse is already quelled.
The only ones to profit are corporations already fat from extended wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as elsewhere.
Not only do we maim our up and coming generation by sending them to battle (they all are damaged by the experience) and in some cases fatalities occur. We grossly neglect their needs when they return to the US and muster out. And these aren't volunteers in the sense that out of a number of career paths offered and obtainable they chose the military. Instead these are soldiers that have few options to avoid unemployment, and that dangling GI Bill of college cash is also a big lure. Easy pickings in this economy.
But socially we really can make war disappear virtually overnight by only ensuring basic needs are met. If one has enough to eat and feels secure and stable there is little impetus to take something by force. And that is what war is. A big act of armed robbery. It is just the shootout part we usually recall. But land, factories, resources, and populations are being taken by the victor. Sometimes the victor gracefully returns these items but for the most part when a territory is gained the US and other Nations tend to hold onto and exploit their gains.
The right of self determination should be seen as not only an aspect of the human animal but the social one as well. Simply because outside cultures deciding and dictating brings disharmony. And social disharmony is like the ringing of a bell. At first there is just the tink of metal on metal. And then the sound forms in the cone of the bell and amplifies. If you could see those tinks as individuals wronged by an outside culture the resulting exponential growth of the outrage creates enough disharmony to justify taking it back by force. And it starts over again.
We don't have to be violent to solve problems. Violence is a loss of control. And in the case of war, the control lost was of negotiation.
And of wits. Do you really think if we gave two hundred dollar tablets to most of these populations and made wifi available to those that are not violent they would be sitting around some leader bent on convincing the end is neigh if they do not shed blood? Or do you think they would too busy playing Candy Crush or blogging?
And guess what?
My ideas are much much cheaper than any war ever will be.