War, it was never a good thing.
But when two groups, whether actively or passively, enter the "war" state, no one will voluntarily call a halt before the cost of war becomes unbearable.
"That's because war, as the most extreme form of politics, is often a winner-takes-all scenario, where the loser not only loses everything at present but may even bring disaster upon their offspring."
In Lu Ping'an's view, war can also be seen as a form of "investment" or even "gambling".
Both sides kept raising the stakes, bearing costs, and depleting their national strength, manpower and even the future...and the victor could extract nourishment from the corpse of the loser to compensate for their own losses.
It's not that wars don't have victors, but not every war necessarily has what you'd call "beneficiaries", mutual loss was a common outcome too.
