Richard Koenigsberg: Warfare is about killing and dying. This much we know. We ordinarily emphasize the role of killing. Soldiers of one nation kill soldiers (and civilians) of another nation. This is the conventional view.

 I suggest, rather, that the essence of war is the death of human beings: the production of death. This is why killing occurs: to produce dead bodies. Warfare is an institution whose purpose is produce corpses.

Dead human beings testify to the existence of nation-states.