ABSTRACT
Humans' war against humans is embedded in their nature in a much more complex way than as mere expression of instinct. Desire is neither a complex need nor an inessential need but the specifically human way of experiencing, and of trying to satisfy, the wants of the flesh and the mind we all feel. Desire profoundly affects the cycle of self-preservation. Hence, the root of war is coiled inside desire like a snake; and because there is no human being who is without desire, there is no human community without war. History is the tale of desires imposed and resisted, and politics is always and necessarily a confrontation, a struggle, a clash of strengths of which civil and foreign war are the extreme manifestations. Although Niccolo Machiavelli does not systematically work out a theory of the relation between desire and war, he makes a remarkable analysis of its complexity.
