In the begining you had the alpha monkey imposing his will with a big stick.
It is more civilized to get others to do your bidding in exchange for carrots,
and use a big stick to corner the carrot market.
Essentially that is what continues to occur today. The "alpha monkey" still exists though, behind the scenes.
Imagine a death dealing super-alpha monkey in the center of a circle. Surrounded by ashes (disposed of bodies) and scared-of-physical-torture people dispersed. The scared-of-physical-torture people tell an outer ring of people that they rule the world. Now that group is fairly intelligent, but not genius and sell the dogma/doctrine (church, science, finance, law, etc.)
Now, the super-alpha-monkey does not like change. So will kill any of the fairly-intelligent people if they start talking outside known scripts and dogma. Unfortunately, the air force cannot drop bombs on the damn thing. Diplomacy is the only answer. But you better be damned good. Secretary Kerry is not good enough and Secretary Clinton was not prepared or educated enough.
That is essentially the situation.