The reality is that war is an effective means of population equilibrium, and it's no coincidence that its' enthusiasts skew heavily male. Genetically speaking,

The reality is that war is an effective means of population equilibrium, and it's no coincidence that its' enthusiasts skew heavily male. Genetically speaking, it offers a good deal: eliminate competitor males, and if you survive, your mating opportunities statistically improve after the war is over (and that's without mentioning the horrid connection between war and mass rape in ancient warfare, and still sometimes today). Ironically enough, I think these violent "selfish gene" urges have been co-opted into (relatively) less deadly forms of war by sociopaths who seek economic domination and control (typically using the recursive logic of game theory; after all, they're just keeping up with the other sociopaths). I wish I could remember the source, but I've read that conquest and colonionism is so expensive that it tends to be net-neutral even after extracting the resources of the vanquished; however, it is an extremely effective way to transfer wealth internally between powers on the victor's side. Given the perverse incentives at work, the only way to reduce war is to pro-actively wage peace, from every angle: deepen economic interdependence, extend the circle of empathy through culture, and perhaps most importantly, continue to inter-breed across every geographic and ethnic divide.