History up until... when? The last 60 years has seen considerable advances in inter-race politics, and it's improving all the time. Why wouldn't exopolitics be an advanced form of this?
I would not deny the possible that, for reasons I don't understand, any species advanced enough to be capable of interstellar travel behaves like a cross between Bono and Peter Singer. But I would not stake the survival of my species on it.
And there is a reason to believe that they probably won't be - they will be the product of Darwinian evolution, just like us, which is really not a very nice thing.
I completely agree on not staking the survival of the species on it, I just think that it's an overly cynical view. Same as I think most people are good people, but I still lock my car because a very few of them are thieves.
except of course, when the "advanced" species wants something that the "lower" species has. What if liquid water is a rarity, and the earth happens to have a lot of it?
