A very pedantic point, but an important one nonetheless.

The writer says that violence is still the instrument that shapes the Arab political world. Fine.

But try not paying your taxes for a while. After a few letters, men will start coming to your house. Eventually, they will try to drag you away. If you resist, they will send more men with guns. If you resist them, you will be shot dead.

Violence is the instrument which underwrites every modern society. Taxation and government is impossible without it. While we may recognise the Platonic need for this system, it is violent and coercive nonetheless.

Mr Smith is admitting to the mechanism by which America is required to use to sustain and prolong its dominion in the Middle East.

And I think this is why war will never be obsolete. All of our rules (local to global) are backed up by force of some kind of another. From the tiny coral polyp that snares drifting organisms to a supernova, our universe will always be a violent one.