>Countries used to routinely go on domination quests for land and resources. They used to go find exotic lands and claim them as their own. They used to harvest resources and enslave the losers.
This is not a golden age to look back on fondly. That was colonialism. That was the world wars. That was the bleakest era in human history.
That doesn't mean power games don't exist anymore though. The order that prevents regression to the above is held in place by peaceful competition and a threat that nobody wants to relive those horrific experiences. Yet the leaders lived through these horrors are gone, replaced by their children who seem to not have a healthy fear of the depths of depravity humans can fall to. Instead focused on personal wealth accumulation to the exclusion of all else, and if the structures that prevent global war are in the way of that well they need to go.
This is not a golden age to look back on fondly. That was colonialism. That was the world wars. That was the bleakest era in human history.
That doesn't mean power games don't exist anymore though. The order that prevents regression to the above is held in place by peaceful competition and a threat that nobody wants to relive those horrific experiences. Yet the leaders lived through these horrors are gone, replaced by their children who seem to not have a healthy fear of the depths of depravity humans can fall to. Instead focused on personal wealth accumulation to the exclusion of all else, and if the structures that prevent global war are in the way of that well they need to go.