[Panpiper]

John Keegan has a lot of respect from the circles I keep. And he is right, warfare aught by natural law be a matter of ritual posturing rather than coming to blows. It is a fact that it is extremely rare to 'win' a war. All one can really hope for is to loose less than the other side (and call that victory). The Allies 'won' world war two, but at what cost? Virtually the whole planet was war ravaged by the end.

Animals in nature will rarely fight (unless it is a carnivore killing prey, but that is rarely a fight). Two males squaring off competing for mates and status will posture and make noise attempting to intimidate the rival into backing down. Rarely will it come to blows, this because there is too much risk of injury. Even if one animal wins, it is likely to be wounded in the confrontation, which would severely impair it's ability to compete with any other male. Primitive human societies mimic this behavior for perfectly good reasons. It is our 'civilized' society that tends to habitually devolve into orgies of mutual murder.