WARFARE ENACTS A TEMPLATE:  The Desire for Destruction and Self-Destruction by Richard A. Koenigsberg Historians insist that each war has its own reasons. They study specific wars from the perspective of the events that led up to the war, the military strategies employed, the battles and shape of the fighting, who was victorious and who defeated, and the aftermath of the war.   However, what if wars are the manifestation of a single template? Perhaps warfare is best conceptualized through the lens of destruction and self-destruction.   Warfare may be understood as a gigantic form of potlatch-- whereby the bodies of human beings and material goods are given over to the objects they worship, their nations. In the First World War, the gods to which offerings were made had names like France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy—and so forth.   Today we see the template being enacted. Substract the endless babble and what one sees and gets finally--is destruction and self-destruction.   The most prominent historian of the First World War, Jay Winter, concludes his fabulous six-part video series, The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century, in a tone of baffled bewilderment, summing up his reflections: “The war solved no problems. Its effects, both immediate and indirect, were either negative or disastrous. Morally subversive, economically destructive, socially degrading, confused in its course, futile in its result, it is the outstanding example in European history of meaningless conflict.”   In short, the endless battles produced no significant results, apart from the monumental wastage of human lives.   I predict that in five years, some historian will sum up the current war in a similar way. Warfare constitutes a template or collective  desire or fantasy that needs to be enacted from time-to-time.