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.

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.

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

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.

According to the first image of international relations, the locus of the important causes of war is found in the nature and behavior of man. Wars result from selfishness, from misdirected aggressive impulses, from stupidity.

To build a theory of international relations on accidents of geography and history is dangerous.

No system of balance functions automatically.