The US doesn’t want democracy, ctd.
Further to my comments from this morning, a very sage friend passed along this quote from Augustine, City of God, 19.12:
Whoever gives even moderate attention to human affairs and to our common nature, will recognize that if there is no man who does not wish to be joyful, neither is there any one who does not wish to have peace.
For even they who make war desire nothing but victory,–desire, that is to say, to attain to peace with glory. For what else is victory than the conquest of those who resist us? and when this is done there is peace. It is therefore with the desire for peace that wars are waged, even by those who take pleasure in exercising their warlike nature in command and battle.
And hence it is obvious that peace is the end sought for by war. For every man seeks peace by waging war, but no man seeks war by making peace. For even they who intentionally interrupt the peace in which they are living have no hatred of peace, but only wish it changed into a peace that suits them better.
They do not, therefore, wish to have no peace, but only one more to their mind.
…even wicked men wage war to maintain the peace of their own circle.
The inevitibility of conflict is assured by the refusal of the ausgespielt to accept the new ‘peace’ imposed upon them by the vanquisher; they rise up and a new conflict is borne.
Geopolitics is really not that complex. Self-interest is a useful interpreter.
