ABSTRACT
Modern states were largely built as military enterprises. Traditional knights and local rulers sought to develop centralized tax collection and a bureaucracywith jurisdiction over large areas in order to finance the increasing costs of warfare. Large states attained military advantage over both vast decentralized empires and small cities or principalities. However, as the size and the power of states extended, the scale and lethality of war also expanded. The “balance of power” system based on the unquestioned sovereignty of the larger states fostered almost permanent interstate conflict, which led to the massacres of World War One and World War Two, as well as to the worldwide terror of the Cold War.
