ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with the international system as it is and tries to indicate which of its characteristics makes it the setting for recurrent war. One of the more important but less obvious characteristics of modern international politics is the fact that a single set of individuals finds itself playing the dominant role in both national and international politics. One consequence of this state of affairs is that national elites constitute the major actors in both national and international politics. The chapter shows where the self-aggravating tendencies are greatest, and suggests some possible feedback mechanisms whose effects might tend more in the self-correcting, and less in the self-aggravating, direction. Scholars need to identify which points are most critical in different classes of conflict and which behavioral patterns account for most of the self-aggravating as well as self-correcting tendencies.
