If you want peace, study war
The scary thing for me about wars is that the soldiers aren't the ones making the decisions. Some group of people in comfortable offices look at a map, says "yeah, I think this option is more favourable to us than peace". Then a war happens. It is all about incentives and capabilities.<p>One of the lessons from being a Stallman watcher for many years - people are <i>profoundly evidence based</i>. If there hasn't been a war in 30 years, then they assume there will not be a war next year no matter how the background is changing.<p>The fading of WWII in the public memory could be argued as the biggest single risk that society faces. There are too many people who just won't understand how bad and how possible total war is. There is a huge background risk that the age of abundance ends and then things get dicey.