To spoil Ender's Game a bit: the bugs were initially hostile, in a very "we genuinely don't understand non-hive species" way such that they were intensely horri

To spoil Ender's Game a bit: the bugs were initially hostile, in a very "we genuinely don't understand non-hive species" way such that they were intensely horrified when they realized that all the people they killed were individuals. They were then purely on the defensive as humanity launched the second war. In Starship Troopers (this varies between the book and the movie), as I recall, the bugs are more or less a peer species to humanity. They're engaged in territorial struggle, which escalates to war. (The movie version engenders a lot of debate over whether the inciting incident of the war was a false flag by the earth government.)