Starting from one or more local groups, each civilization has reached out “to conquer the world”, occupy it, organize it, dominate it, exploit it, perpetuate itself.  In each case expansion, occupation, domination and exploitation are limited by human capacity (human nature); by the relative brevity of a single human life; by the extreme variations in the capacity of successive leaders.  It is limited by geography; by the means of transportation and communication; by overhead costs that increase geometrically as the civilization expands arithmetically; by the means of delegating responsibility; by accounting devices, available raw materials and labor power; by power struggles inside the ruling oligarchies; by the failure to maintain a balance between centerism and localism; by growing local demands for self-determination; by the invasion of nomads seeking to plunder the tempting honey pot at the nucleus of the civilization.

Such limitations are political, economic and sociological.  Psychological forces are also at work.  The vigor and vitality of the early builders gradually spends itself.  The will to austerity and the sense of loyalty and social responsibility are diffused and diluted.  Bureaucracy degenerates into a rat race.  The paralysis of parasitism replaces the will to power.  Physical gratification gains priority over the service of the gods.  Consistently, through its entire written history, civilization has been built upon what the civil law of all nations calls “robbery with violence”.  In every instance when the robbers have grabbed everything in sight, and gorged to the point of physical satiety, they fall to quarreling among themselves or turn with boredom and disgust from the whole sodden mess of discord, disorder and degeneration.

Each step, from the establishment of an urban nucleus of expansion, through the building of rival empires to the final struggle for supreme power, involves the violent subordination of lesser interests to the interests of one supreme authority.  Violence takes precedence over persuasion and negotiation.  In each case the final appeal is to armed combat using the most sophisticated weapons available.

During the “time of troubles” which overtakes each civilization, war and the threat of war become normal aspects of domestic and international relations.  A specialized war-making bureaucracy is organized; war plans are made; war games (rehearsals) are carried on, and wars are fought as a means of determining which nation or combination of nations shall have access to raw materials and markets, dominate the trade routes, control the weaker peoples, own and exploit the colonies.

To the victor, war is the means of extending national or imperial frontiers and legalizing expansion at the expense of the vanquished.  Defeat in war leads to the imposition of indemnities, the payment of tribute, the transfer of territory to the victor and in extreme cases the extermination of the defeated nations or empires.