So much that Global and European interventions trying to bring peace to Balkans, like attempts for Balkan Pacts or Ententes, either failed or led to more persistent conflicts. War, as one of the constants of history, has not diminished with civilization or progress. We acknowledge war at present as the ultimate form of competition and natural selection in the human species. Peace, on the other hand, is an unstable state of affairs which can be preserved only by a stalemate of equal powers. We Turks still use Ottoman Ziya Pasha's verbatim translation of this maxim into Turkish.
States have our instincts without our human restraints, however.
Individual submit to restraints laid upon them by mores laws and agree to replace combat with dialogue or negotiation, because the state guarantees them basic protections in life, property and Legal rights. The state itself accepts no restraints, either because it feels strong enough to defy any interference with its power or because there is no super state to offer it basic protection and no effective law or moral code wielding deterrent force in prevention of war. In the military interpretation of history, war is the final arbiter, and is accepted as natural and necessary by almost all but cowards and simpletons. Even a philosopher, if he reads history, may admit that a long peace fatally weaken the martial muscles of a nation. In the present inadequacy of international Law and order, a nation must be ready at any moment to defend itself, and when its national interests arc threatened it must be allowed to take all measures and use any means it considers necessary to, or for its survival.