"No government admits any longer that it keeps an army to satisfy occasionally the desire for conquest. Rather, the army is supposed to serve for defense, and one invokes the morality that approves of self-defense. But this implies one's own morality and the neighbor's immorality; for the neighbor must be thought of as eager to attack and conquer if our state must think of means of self-defense.Moreover the reasons we give for requiring an army imply that our neighbor, who denies the desire for conquest just as much as our own state does, and who, for his part, also keeps an army only for reasons of self-defense, is a hypocrite and cunning criminal who would like nothing better than to overpower a harmless and awkward victim without any fight. Thus all states are now ranged against each other they presuppose their neighbor's bad disposition and their own good disposition. This presupposition, however, is inhumane, as bad as war and worse. Fundamentally, indeed, it is itself the challenge and the cause of wars, because, as I have said, it attributes immorality to the neighbor, and thus proves a hostile disposition and hostile tactics. We must abjure the doctrine of the army as a means of self-defense just as completely as the desire for foreign conquests."
(Friedrich Nietzsche, Complete Works vol. 2)
"And perhaps the great day will come when a people, distinguished by wars and victories and the highest development of a military order and intelligence, and accustomed to make the heaviest sacrifices for these things, will exclaim of its own free will, 'We break the sword,' an will smash its entire military establishment down to its lowest foundations. Rendering oneself unarmed when one had been the best-armed, out of intense emotion--that is the means to real peace, which must rest on peace of mind; whereas so-called armed peace, as it now exists in all countries, is the absence of peace of mind. One trusts neither oneself nor one's neighbor and , half from hatred, half from fear, does not lay down arms. Rather perish than hate and fear, and twice rather perish than make oneself hated and feared--this must someday become the highest maxim for every single commonwealth too."
(Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil)
