There are degrees of warfare, and the sort we are conducting at the moment is pretty mild compared to things like carpet-bombing Viet Nam ~50 years ago. I do favor a soft power strategy involving education and opportunity but civic societies are not things that come into being overnight, they can require decades or even centuries to take root. It would help, of course, if we didn&#x27;t maintain alliances with semi-totalitarian states like Saudi Arabia.<p>On the other hand, I don&#x27;t think that peace and enlightened democracy are necessarily the natural state of mankind - I favor Hobbes over Rousseau, and think the latter&#x27;s glorification of primitive society rather facile, notwithstanding the fact that he meant well.