Didn ' t they mention owning freighters or something in the day 1 update ? <| sep |> I think that most wars are started by politicians who are genuinely trying to achieve certain geopolitical objectives more or less similar to the ones they say they are trying to achieve . However , wars are usually extremely heavily marketed to the population . The actually most important objectives are sometimes deemphasized , the less important ones pushed to the forefront . The enemy is demonized , the history of the conflict is reduced to a simplified cartoon version , the enemy ' s strength is either overstated or downplayed depending on what will fit the demands of propaganda better , everything is supposedly done only for humanitarian reasons , and so on . Other benefits of war include , as uagustinona observed , that it makes authoritarian measures and central leadership more appealing to the population . War also distracts the population from domestic politics and corruption and gives the government a justification to move large amounts of money around . I guess that for the most part , wars aren ' t started to further these ends in a calculated manner . However , it is probably the case that the existence of these as potential benefits sets up a system of incentives which nudges those in power towards war to some extent . And I might be underestimating the degree of calculatedness that those in power possess . I think that in today ' s age , there ' s very little benefit and a great deal of risk , even for those in power , in wars against nations of similar military strength . That ' s why the major world powers mostly only fight much smaller and weaker opponents . Most people know very little about history , geopolitics , or military affairs , so it ' s possible to trick them into thinking that a minor threat is more dangerous than it actually is . For example , the US government has spent the last 15 years fighting the socalled War on Terror . Most of the opponents in this War on Terror have been relatively small groups of poorly armed people with weak economic bases basically light infantry with some level of expertise in terrorist attacks . But if you watched the propaganda that the US government and media put out about this war , you would think that the nation was struggling against Nazi Germany or the USSR big , strong opponents with modern militaries and advanced economies . In reality it ' s nothing of the sort the opponents are outmatched by US military power not only technologically and economically , but probably even in terms of sheer numbers . There is a legitimate threat in that a terrorusing group could potentially , at some point , acquire powerful weapons of mass destruction like nukes or biological weapons . As technology proliferates , the chance of this happening keeps going up . But US propaganda doesn ' t emphasize this as the main danger . And US propaganda also ignores something very important that US military action abroad , by creating more enemies , actually might be putting the nation in more danger of being at some point attacked in such a manner .