If you try exterminating your neighbors without being significantly stronger, they will unite and exterminate you. Once you become significantly stronger, infighting begins and you are weak again.
You don't exterminate anyone until you are strong enough. The Romans were strong enough but they chose to be merciful and collect tribute instead.
Destroying the backbone of your nation in the name of glory until you lose the ability to fight and have to placate your enemies in hope they don't destroy you is called "being merciful" now?
The problem is, you can't get "strong enough". All people have their personal aspirations, and dying on a battlefield isn't the most popular one. Once there's no external threat, people naturally switch to infighting.
All people have their personal aspirations, and dying on a battlefield isn't the most popular one.
In the context of history, this assumption is unfounded.
Once there's no external threat, people naturally switch to infighting.
Correct. In the absence of a threat, one will be created or found so the eternal process of natural selection can continue, and the race can evolve through the elimination of its weaker elements and proliferation of its stronger.
In the bigger picture, the stronger element of humanity will be the group that finally figures out that assimilative imperialism is a self-destructive behaviour.
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