From Late Empire: We all need land to survive and arable land is limited. Sometimes things get ugly and the shaved apes bash each other into meaty pulp for a shitty little potato patch.
With that said, we must also realize that the state is an organism and, like a human being, it requires stress in order to survive and thrive. Nothing is static in nature. Either a living organism is getting stronger (logarithmically) or weaker (exponentially).
If the state is not continuously expanding (or preparing to expand), it is contracting. If a state’s borders appear static, it’s only because it’s pushed up against another state that it cannot conquer. That fixed border is actually being upheld with far more pressure than might be visible to the outside observer. We’re trained to believe that borders are fixed, bold lines on a map, and politicians pay lip service to so-called territorial integrity but, in reality, those lines shift back and forth incrementally each and every day. Think of a duck who looks like he’s serenely floating on the surface of a placid pond when, in actuality, the fucker is fiercely kicking at the water in a battle against gravity.
Looking back throughout history, we see states making all sorts of excuses for expansion. The concept of acquiring Lebensraum didn’t start with the Nazis or the Japanese. It’s essentially been a reality since primates started walking upright. This function of humanity has only recently been denoted with a distinction of exoticism by pencil-necked historians and pre-diabetic 10th grade social studies teachers. The reality that tribes expand in numbers, encounter human (or even animal) adversaries, conquer them, and take resources was regarded as a fact of life by the ancients. It’s not anymore though, and that’s by design.
It’s only in this era of global nuclear capacity that war is no longer an attractive option.
