External pressure seems to produce internal unity.

The transitory interests of royal houses may be advanced in war; the real interests of all people are furthered by the peace.

Each state pursues its own interest's, however defined, in ways it judges best. Force is a means of achieving the external ends of states because there exists no consistent, reliable process of reconciling the conflicts of interest that inevitably arise among similar units in a condition of anarchy.

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.

In anarchy there is no automatic harmony .

If we gather more and more data and establish more and more associations, however, we will not finally find that we know something. We will simply end up having more and more data and larger sets of correlations.

It is not true that were the Soviet Union to disappear the remaining states could easily live in peace.