>>>Perception does mean a lot - you were led to believe so by the spinmeisters. As usual, 90+% of the people just want to be left alone and live their lives in peace (prosperity is welcome but actually optional); the trouble is how to keep the lid on the remainder and keep them below 10%. That's shown historically to be the critical mass to start a war.
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>I don't think that is accurate now. Even if it were accurate, that 10% sure tries to do a lot of damage to the rest of the world...
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>Oops - sorry, this was meant to be to Dragan...

OK, redirect here.

I said "enough to start". Once it's started, people have that nasty habit of pumping adrenalin by themselves, going to defend their village, avenge their dead, liberate their country or just use the situation to liberate someone's car, to right all the wrongs which by miracle of adrenalin get assigned to exactly those guys on the other side, who are now to blame for everything. And so it goes.

Now if you're a nation where more than a third of the people have lost someone in the last few years, where thousands of kids are the bezprizorniye (war orphans left to themselves), the percentage of those willing to fight is much higher. Even if left alone, they'd have very little to do with what they have. And as the logic of the world goes, it's very hard to revive an economy, but always easy to find more money to finance a war.