Quote Originally Posted by davidbfpo View Post
I do wonder if Western public opinion, which should impact political decision-making, are simply reluctant to consider war - not the almost constant skirmishing in many parts of the world away from them - as being effective for their interests (personal and national) and legitimate.
Assuming my ideas on 1) the growth of the individual as the center of Western political thought and power, and 2) that war is a group-on-group activity, it follows that 3) war become less likely where outsiders are seen less as groups and more as a collection of individuals. Killing in war (group-on-group) is morally sanctioned. Killing in something less than war (individual-on-individual) is murder. Therefore, those other killings are not seen as legitimate unless they are to either punish those individuals for their past crimes or to stop future crimes.

This is, in my opinion, the foundation of the Democratic Peace Theory - why democracies tend not to go to war with other democracies. Democracies will go to war with autocracies, particularly where it is framed as a war of liberation. The enemy is an oppressive state apparatus. The members of that oppressive state apparatus are seen as criminals. In the minds of the Western Individualist political entities, this is not a war against Iraq or Libya, it is a targeted action against the criminals in the Iraqi or Libyan government. For the liberal individualist, war can never be sanctioned because it goes against their foundational belief in the individual, rather than the group, being the central political figure.

That said, War ain't what it used to be ... so who knows.