Genocide

It indeed seems that atrocity is no stranger to human civilisation, but rather an embedded part of our behaviour through evolution.
I recently started reading The Prince by Machiavelli, who describes the various methods of taking and holding the domain of another by various means. In this he describes in a most matter of fact manner about how to apply force in the right places to achieve these ends. While he cautions against this for the sake of it, indeed he tends to suggest a hard and fast but brutal extinction of certain potential enemies is a far better method than a long campaign of attrition, he also makes no bones about these methods.

He talks of laying waste to whole cities to extinguish opposition but cautions to strategise to avoid this where possible, but where not to follow through without hesitation or pity, or risk losing power. I have to wonder if more modern rulers (or Princes, as he calls them from those times) now have so much destructive power available, they forgo the methods of taking power that don't use them as the power they may have makes them believe that is sufficient in itself? Machiavelli suggests (to my uneducated reading) this is a false premise, but speaks from those days and maybe no longer is as relevant?

All creatures strive and fight for resources, or become extinct. that's the very nature of evolution. Why would we be different? That we now mostly fight each other for those precious resources is only a factor of our running out of them, and running out of a world to provide them.