A Present From Joe
by Eric Frank Russell
Astounding Science Fiction (February 1949); reprinted Best sf: Science Fiction Stories, ed. Edmund Crispin (Faber and Faber, 1955), pp. 199-213.
SF short story. In his inimitable, puckish manner, Russell attributes mankind’s warlike propensities to the telepathically induced manipulations of a non-spacefaring alien race whose invasion plan requires humanity first to come to them! The aliens’ POV reveals a Machiavellian kinship of thought.