War has always been economic. The ability to win wars is not the ability to inflict losses, but the ability to sustain losses--both economically, and politicall

War has always been economic. The ability to win wars is not the ability to inflict losses, but the ability to sustain losses--both economically, and politically. You might make an argument that for a brief period around modern times, wars were lethal enough that this was not the case. But even during this time period, the ability to inflict damage was largely an economic factor.