Quote Originally Posted by Wraith View Post
I don't think you can write it off that easily. The distance would mean fewer reasons for conflict, sure, but the lack of communication also means less chance to talk-out differences, and more time for fear and hatred to fester without challenge. You don't need to have a real reason for conflict, just a perceived reason. It also means the declaration of war is likely to be written on the nose of a relativistic kill vehicle, because that's the safest way to start a war if you can make one. I think the distances involved might make war less likely, but also more devastating if it happens.
It's just about the only way to wage an sublight interstellar war at all (excluding one-way invasion migrations, abandoning a prior planet due to disaster, depletion, quest for Zion, etc) and I just don't see the impulse for it with any kind of real frequency in the first place. The fear/hatred of the Other is all well and good but to reach the point of expending resources to do something about it almost always requires some type of competition in some way first, otherwise it mostly just leads to isolationism. And it's damn hard to effectively compete over things with round-trips running it at a minimum of 10 years.