War is basically organized killing, whether it be by drone aircraft or by hundreds of thousands on a battle field, as soon as you find a reason to kill as a country/movement you are at war. There are often valid reasons for a war, but getting to that point is a failure in itself.
How do you organize or motivate people to start killing each other in the first place?
One old tried and tested method is if you don't kill them I will kill you, kill your family, burn your crops and seize your hovel [or castle if you were the king], this was often used in the middle ages.
Another good one used from time immemorial, see that lot, they are evil, they worship a false idol/god. Death to the heathens/infidels.
Often these two propositions were used in conjunction for some pretty brutal failures.
You could try the tried and tested failure of suppressing religion, it's the suppression part that leads to the failure.
You can then try another old reasoning, they are sub human and we are bringing them enlightenment, often used to justify asset stripping and Empire. We will make your life better if you are willing to die for us, and if you are not you will bear the consequences and that goes for you lot; as you are now subject to our power. If you try and leave our sphere of influence, that means war.
We often seem to resort to, they want to kill us, so we better kill them first. This seems to be a very popular point of view on the Sunday talk shows. The other fine piece of reasoning seems to be if we can kill them without any of our own being killed it's not really a failure, I mean war.
I admire the blinkers used for so many years prior to a failure, you would think that in the hyper connected world that they would be all too bloody obvious.
We are proposed on a daily basis cheaper products, hey ain't that great we are pulling people out of poverty every day, without our demand for cheap stuff they would still be living in huts. Sadly this has a few knock on effects.
Our own work is devalued at home and wages stagnate but profits rocket promoting income inequality.
We support some pretty nasty and oppressive regimes around the world in our Corporate Empire, sorry, I mean globalization.
When our suppliers become too rich we have to find somewhere cheaper to make our cheap stuff. Child labor, indentured servitude, slavery, oh shush, it's cheap, what you don't see cant hurt you. Until..
You know those regimes we supported, they threaten our security, let's kill them.
Oh, you remember that regime we at first liked then tore down well...something bad has happened and now we need to kill them, before they kill us. Oh and did you know, their religion sucks.
Look our income inequality is democratic theirs is by authoritarian regime, we are the good guys. Look we are democratically elected leaders and our sucking up of the worlds resources for huge profits is the will of our people. Hell, we even give them enough to get by without having them revolt. We are bloody good at it, we make them believe they actually have a choice. Democracy works, you should try some, we bought ours and gosh you should see the profits, unbelievable, you should really try it.
Gated communities often make me think along the same lines. OMG poor people, let's build a fence, then we will be safe from the consequences of our actions. Machine gun turrets would be nice, can they be designed to blend in with the architecture? We are an exceptional people, can I open carry for my own defense, because you know, it's not really as exceptional as all that.
This is another reason why exceptionalism as a concept get's me fuming mad, it is used to justify all kinds of failure. Cuz we is better, got that, our bombs are compassionate bombs, we are killing for good.
But I digress.
We are pretty good at ignoring the reasons and the signs, we are also damn good at justifying failure, I mean war/killing.
Well you know nobody likes war, there is no profit in it.
Ha.
Just a rambling thought on a Sunday.