constrained to act nonviolently and with basic civility" in domestic civil society but "feel relatively unconstrained in using brute force when . . . prosecuting their conflicts with other nations."
What such explanations for violence along these lines share is a psychoemotional component that Brown says is "a necessary part of the understanding of the violent behavior of nations." This does not mean that human psychology is a sufficient explanation of such behavior; however, Brown's view of communal and national motivations for fighting is that they include a component meant to provide some species of psychological satisfaction. Reasons of state, therefore, come down to formulations of national interest in abstract terms,
such as a religion, an ethno-linguistic culture, or a political system, without which life itself presumably would have drastically diminished value.
Other interests that may be deemed worth a war are derived, by strategic reasoning or psychologically, from the basic material and ideational interests of the nation-state. Foreign milita
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