Man seems to be a natural killer

----- To John Adams, 1822

To turn to the news of the day, it seems that the Cannibals of Europe are going to eating one another again. A war between Russia and Turkey is like the battle of the kite and snake.

At the time Russia was a Y monarchy using Oy soldiers as agents in a predatory war, however Turkey from its Y Islamist history was probably predatory as well if it had the opportunity. Some former Y-Oy empires can become Ro-R defensive empires in nature, this happened with the Roman Empire under Christianity.

Whichever destroys the other, leaves a destroyer the less for the world. This pugnacious humor of mankind seems to be the law of his nature, one of the obstacles to too great multiplication provided in the mechanism of the Universe. The cocks of the henyard kill one another up. Bears, do the same. And the horse, in his wild state, kills all the young males, until worn down with age and war, some vigorous youth kills him, and takes to himself the Harem of females. I hope we shall prove how much happier for man the Quaker policy is, and that the life of the feeder, is better than that of the fighter; and it is some consolation that the desolation, by these maniacs of one part of the earth is the means of improving it in other parts. Let the latter be our office, and let us milk the cow, while the Russian holds her by the horns, and the Turk by the tail.

This is a Bi-B philosophy in a wealthy country, to defend the country if need be but concentrate on maximizing profits in a positive sum game. The US often profited by selling goods to these warring parties.

The rule of violence in international affairs

----- To - (?), 1813: N. Y. Pub. Lib., MS, IV, 191-192

Our lot happens to have been cast in an age when two of the most powerful nations of the world, abusing their force and to whom circumstances have given a temporary superiority over others, the one by land, the other by sea, throwing off all the bonds [and] restraints of morality and all regard to pride of national character, forgetting the mutability of fortune and the inevitable doom which the laws of nature pronounce against departures from justice, individual or national - have dared to treat her reclamations with derision and to substitute force instead of reason as the umpire of nations, degrading themselves thus from the character of lawful societies into lawless bands of robbers and pirates., they are ravaging [and] abusing their brief ascendancy by desolating the world with blood and rapine. Against such banditti, war had become preferable [and] less ruinous than peace, for their peace was a war on one side only.

When the I-O umpiring colors are weakened the world can descend into Y-Ro and Oy-R wars, Y-Ro are wars of attrition such as WW1 while Oy-R are wars of deception such as the cold war. They are like a weak middle of the food chain causing instability and animals eating each other in wasteful ways causing later starvation.