Just as only a longtime anticommunist like Richard Nixon could convincingly make the opening to China, so only men with the longevity in their conflicts of Rabin, Arafat, De Klerk and Mandela had the credibility to make peace. None of the men much liked his partner. Their negotiations at times resembled nothing so much as the conflict they were trying to resolve. Mandela and De Klerk were at each other's throats even as they accepted the Nobel Peace Prize together. Rabin could barely stand to shake Arafat's hand on the White House lawn.
War is a profound habit - and sometimes a necessity.
But not everyone has absorbed the lesson. Milton's Lucifer in Paradise Lost is much more interesting than Milton's God. War is rich and vivid, with its traditions, its military academies, its ancient regiments and hero stories, its Iliads, its flash. Peace is not exciting. Its accoutrements are, almost by definition, unremarkable if they work well.