The best critical consideration of the inherent weakness of a federation of states in which the law of the federation has to be enforced on the states who are its members is contained in the Federalist Papers.

War most often promotes the internal unity of each state involved. The state plagued by internal strife may then, instead of waiting for the accidental attack, seek the war that will bring internal peace.

To solve these problems one needs as much an understanding of politics as an understanding of man - and the one cannot be derived from the other.

External pressure seems to produce internal unity.

Is it capitalism or states that must be destroyed in order to get peace, or must both be abolished?

Then what explains war among states? Rousseau's answer is really that war occurs because there is nothing to prevent it.

Asking who won a given war, someone has said, is like asking who won the San Francisco earthquake. That in war there is no victory but only varying degrees of defeat is a proposition that has gained increasing acceptance in the twentieth century.