f lost territories. The
logical outcome of such a situation is preparation for a war of
independence by the vanquished, countered by military occupation, rigid
suppression, and exploitation by the victors in the previous struggle.

War is taken for granted as an instrument of policy. It is employed by
civilized nations and empires as a means of expansion. Wars of
independence and restitution follow conquest, dismemberment and
annexation. Civilized nations and empires prepare for war and wage war
as a normal aspect of civilized life.

Civilization, and in particular western civilization, is a time-bomb,
built to detonate and scatter its fragments far and wide. It is a type
of booby trap in which humanity has been caught periodically and
horribly mangled. Without exception, each civilization has contained the
forces and equipment needed for its own annihilation. At no time
reported by history has this formulation been more obvious than during
the decades immediately following war's end in 1945. Destructivity was
lifted to new levels of efficiency by electronic communication, the tank
and the airplane. It was further escalated by atomic fission and
nuclear fusion. Advances in science and technology had made dramatic
increases in the tempo of production and construction. Utilization of
atomic energy had stepped up destructivity to the nth power.

Based on assumptions that oft-repeated experience has proved to be false
and misleading, civilization in the 1970's is unstable and insecure.
Most civilizations are strangled in their cradles or plundered and
demolished in the course of the never-ending political, economic and
military conflicts which have marked and marred civilizations since the
dawn of history. The national and imperial survivors of these struggles
in every known instance have been largely or wholly led by military
adventurers and plunderers in search of booty, fame and power. With
professional plunderers, destroyers and murderers occupying the seats of
power, it is only a question of time and occasion before rising overhead
costs and the misfortunes of war result in their overthrow and
replacement by better organized, better armed invaders who slaughter and
enslave their predecessors and usurp and abuse their power. Of
necessity, civilizations are self-destructive, built as they are on the
ebb and flow of power struggle.

Successive conflicts involve an indefinite volume of overhead costs,
which grow with t