War used to be obvious, Joseph Fouche says — and an obvious choice:
Starting war was easy and maintaining it was what society was setup to handle. Throughout history, society has been a machine designed with one purpose: to wage war and win it. Life for most of human history was lived on the razor’s edge of survival. Mortality due to war was in the 20% range for hunter-gatherers, the default human condition for most of the existence of the species. Men, it could be said, evolved to be the victims of war. Women, it can also be said, evolved to be the prizes of war. War was the deciding mechanism of who lived and who died. It was the first and sometimes the only welfare consideration of the state. Violence is an easier language to master than reason and investments in violence were easier to justify and easier to sell than investments in reason. The payoffs were often immediate and visible. Vividness is something the mind prizes and seizes hold of. Brawn won the battle with brains over and over again. Achilles was the rule, Odysseus the exception.However, the bomb came along and ruined this shining mecca. Everything was fun in war up until the moment the eggheads made obvious war a game no one could win. Suddenly the law of the jungle, red in tooth and claw, was null and void. Brawn scratched its head in oafish bewilderment and looked to this “brain” thing for help. The triumph of the nerds was at hand.
War downsized and moved down the spectrum of war from annihilation to coercion and, more often, influence. Wars became wars of erosion, where the enemy was worn down over decades, a slow boil that cooked them unaware. Drip, drip, drip, wars of influence go on over decades.