HIST 2102H Chapter Notes - Chapter N/A: Wage War, Perpetual Peace, Forego
20 Feb 2016
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Political realism war is an inevitable outcome of human insecurity and the desperate quest for power it generates. In realist thinking the world is a violent, hostile environment which the will to self- preservation rules. In a realist setting one much remain constantly on the alert, making others cower so that they do not attack, always ready to kill before being killed. According to biologists, fighting, in the animal kingdom, cannot be regarded as either accidental or abnormal. Aggression is a constant and apparently a useful part of the daily behaviour of many animals and becomes destructive and harmful only under exceptional circumstances. Food and females are the other frequent stimuli of animal aggressiveness, although the diversity is extreme from one species to the other. The human animal happy enough to live in an environment offering no occasion, no motive for fighting, would suffer no damage, either physiological or nervous.
