What would you say this war is about?

More than 40 years after its release, an exchange in the opening scene of Warren Beatty's Academy Award-winning film "Reds" floats to the front of my mind whenever I think about war.

- By THOMAS L. KNAPP

Master of Ceremonies: "I, for one, see no reason why we here at the Liberal Club shouldn't listen to what Jack Reed has to say. What would you say this war is about, Jack Reed?"

Reed, standing, looking a bit confused and annoyed: "Profits."

The one-word answer, while correct -- Reed, as a staunch Communist, held to some fairly silly ideas on economics -- was also incomplete.

World War One was indeed about profits. It was a clash of declining empires: empires purpose-built to rake off a share of profits, taken by imperially protected business enterprises from colonized places and peoples, for the benefit of the imperial political classes.

World War Two largely killed off the old empires, but created new ones for its victors, the US and the Soviet Union.