ABSTRACT
Theoretically, the number of nations in the twentieth century ought to have decreased in obedience to the Deproliferation Rule. As we have seen, however, the number in fact behaved most perversely: It increased—and it did so as if in obedience to the wrong master so to speak, by increasing proportionally with population, as called for by the Proliferation Rule. This strange result seems to find explanation, we also have seen, in the failure of conquest warfare as a means of forging larger polities.
