[psychoslave]

>Why would a country act against its interest or just randomly?

Because country as an entity is a mental construction for which "interest" is a categorical error. It’s certainly a useful concept, but pretending it has interests like some human individual can have have interests. Sure it can serve as rhetorical facility to sell some arguments.

Countries don’t have interests. Some people willing to take control of other people encompassed in that "country" groups have interests, and they don’t necessarily align with best interests of everyone or even majority in each of these groups.

[dgellow]

I mostly agree, but there is some limit to that line of argument: a corporation is also a human, social concept, and we do accept that they act in their own interests (meaning they do have interests, sort of like humans do)

[psychoslave]

Well, you might agree with that, but on my side corporation are pure legal fictions, they don’t have have any intrinsics will and interest. That doesn’t mean they don’t have any existence, just that that there are have a different ontological status from a human person. Just like novel fictional characters, the fact they don’t map to any actual entity doesn’t mean they can’t entice affects they are supposed to convey between narrators and readers.