Quote Originally Posted by R.D.735 View Post
Because you specifically mention self-defense separately, am I to assume that you are saying initiating an aggressive war can allow countries, in certain instances, to achieve far more than they could if they had only peace? I'd like to point out that peace is not a matter of degree. Countries are either at peace or at war. Similarly, though justice has degrees, it can never increase beyond the point that justice is fully carried out. Prosperity, on the other hand, is limitless, a direct consequence of the average volume of resources being used to better the conditions of each person. It is, however, mathematically impossible to sacrifice resources destructively and end up with more resources to spread around the same number of people, so perhaps you are referring to the cynical conclusion that there are less people sharing a proportionately greater amount of resources, so that average prosperity increases after a war.
I disagree. I believe there are degrees of peace. There are several categories of when war can increase the overall peace in the long run. A population may or may not go down during the war (It depends on birth rate), but either way the overall peace can be greatly increased for the long run. Do you deny that that has ever happened? The Civil War ended slavery and united the country. The Revolutionary War gave us freedom from unfair English rulership. World War II prevented the Nazis from taking over the world and wiping out the majority of the human race. The list goes on. The fact that fewer people are living in the countries for the short term as a result of the war does not change the fact that the level of peace can be far greater than otherwise as a result of war.

Quote Originally Posted by R.D.735 View Post
I don't believe you're that cynical, so I'm assuming that you were only referring to self-defense, which you explicitly mention in the next quote.
No, I don't think self-defense is the only justification for war. I believe in helping other nations, and I believe in preventing relatively greater disaster before it happens.

Quote Originally Posted by R.D.735 View Post
Fortunately, I already addressed self-defense. Pointing this out as an exception to my statement completely misses the vast majority of the content in my recent posts.
No, I mentioned it to acknowledge the fact that you had mentioned it more than once and to show that I agree. I listed various justifications for war, and self-defense is of course one of them.