Justified Wars? -GS

I was asked to write about how or when war is ok. I think that war is not good, but that it can be justified, for example, if you're being attacked or if your quality of life is endangered.

 In my game, Japan was blocking my way to the rest of the world. This made my Civs life's hard, limiting me to my small part of land. This meant war because we wanted and needed to explore. I needed to explore in order to find the other Civs, to have a better chance at spreading my religion and to establish better trade routes. This war ended with two of their cities razed and a clear path for me to pass.

Now that I look back, I can see the strategic advantages that this war gave me. Before I attacked them, they were surrounding my Civ. That was not good from a strategic standpoint because they could attack me from almost all around, making it difficult to defend my Civ. So destroying some of their cities gave me a great strategic advantage, making them less powerful and as a bonus they feared me now.  It also gave me the possibility to conquer more land, making it possible for me to build more cities around the world. This, I think, is a justified war because my quality of life was threatened, and they would have declared war on us anyway if we did not attack them first.

I think that war should not be declared in real life except as a last resort. War should only be defensive and not offensive. This, I think, would reduce the number of wars a lot because multiple ways can be used to make things like the quality of life better. Some examples include making trade deals or establishing alliances. As I look back on my game, I see that I lost a possible powerful ally which would have made a wall for me in times of war.