My point with ww1 and ww2 is that, if you graphed wars by people involved, destruction, whatever, they stick out of the group by a long way. I think your looki

My point with ww1 and ww2 is that, if you graphed wars by people involved, destruction, whatever, they stick out of the group by a long way. I think your looking at the picture with too much of a us-centric view. The US is not involved in the majority of wars, at least not directly with men nondescript materials. You're right in that the world wars are all part of the same narrative about destabilisation that leads to other wars - arguably the majority of conflicts around today have roots in both. But if you look at some more topical wars/conflicts - say the Arab/Israel conflict from 1948-present you see that it's not just about gaining territory but far deeper things (territory is the score, but the purpose is much deeper) plus the military conflicts during this period have been much more conventional with the majority of attacks being primarily military. Lately it has gone more asymmetrical and terrorism v conventional military but initially it was tanks on battlefields. Again other conflicts in the he second half of the twentieth century were far make typical wars in that they were relatively localised, didn't involve things like carpet bombing civilian population and didn't involve mass troop movements. Even Vietnam and Korea, wars with direct US involvement, had a fraction of the men deployed as compared with Ww2. Also, it's a good point about making the cost of a war prohibitive - we have the means to do this now - but the costs of a war don't usually fall onto the main aggressors on all sides. Typically it falls onto the soldiers, refugees and ordinary citizens. If powerful countries were prepared to apply the costs of war to those who start them, the incidence would go down. But you spiral into an eye-for-an-eye retaliation which is a worse mess.