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Wars began long before the beginning of recorded history, but the subject has been written about from every conceivable angle. After his retirement, Carl von Clausewitz [62], a Prussian veteran of Napoleonic and other wars, wrote a famous book, On War, in which he said, among other notable quotations, “War is merely a continuation of politics by other means – not merely a political act, but a real political instrument.” Politics unquestionably played an important role in many wars, but there are additional reasons why armed men kill innocent people. Clausewitz’s wars were “civilized wars,” fought by officers and gentlemen who fight by rules and who are governed by military discipline and ethical principles. Keegan [63], however, adds that there have also been “non-civilized wars” that have employed atypical military techniques featuring exceptional violence and death. More than a few armies have concentrated on looting, raping, and pillaging, intensified by deliberate cruelty and excessive butchery. A legendary example was Genghis Kahn [64], who created the world’s largest-ever empire in Northeast Asia in the 13th–14th centuries. Kahn specialized in annihilating Mongol tribes using a combination of advanced military tactics and merciless brutality; on one occasion, having defeated an army of Tatars along with their captured chiefs, he had all the chiefs boiled alive.

As stated earlier in this chapter, many experts agreed on the fact that “at least H. sapiens, and possibly earlier prehumans, possess innate, genetically programmed lethal violence.” Genes may contribute, but warfare takes abundant forces, leadership, and considerable resources. Nevertheless, without that apparent, crucial genetic underpinning, it is certainly possible that wars would not be such an inviolable, practically endless feature of human existence.

Of course, the issue is debatable and controversial, but we might someday learn the correct answer. A remarkably new gene-editing technique called CRISPR allows research scientists to remove and substitute pin-pointed genes in experimental animal genomes. Ethical concerns have retarded use of the method in disordered human genomes (e.g., in sickle cell anemia, Huntington disease, and other dominant genetic disorders), but in theory it is possible. Deleting the culprit war-enhancing genes – if present – would solve the genetic role in warfare and contribute to everlasting peace.