Bond-Graham uses the re-formulation of Clauswitz's famous axiom that "war is the continuation of politics by other means", to explain a lot of current political realities.
Thinkers like Foucault, however, turned this aphorism upside down because they were concerned about all kinds of power, not the narrow range of power Clausewitz was looking at: intra-elite struggles to seize state power, state alliances, and exercise of sovereignty over a territory. Looking at everything from the most mundane forms of subjective power, as well as the exercise of state power, Foucault said that politics is basically the continuation of war by other means.I'm sure that if we were able to trace the origins of the rich and powerful we would find their sources in war.