At the present day, the laws of victory and defeat are so well understood, and the miseries resulting from defeat are so thoroughly realized, that no civilized country will voluntarily go to war, except for extraneous reasons, if it realizes that the chances of success are small.

And as the cumulative consequences of defeats are also realized, and as no country is apt to assume that the morale and skill of its forces are measurably greater than those of a probable antagonist, no country and no alliance is apt to provoke war with a nation whose armed forces are superior in number of units of personnel and material; unless, of course, the nation is markedly inferior in morale and skill, as the Persians were to the legions of Alexander.
It is often insisted that superadequacy in armed force tends to war instead of peace, by inducing a country to make war itself; that the very principles which deter a weak country from attacking a strong country tend to make a strong country attack a weak one.
There is some truth in this, of course, and history shows many cases of strong countries deliberately attacking weak ones for the purpose of conquest.
Analysis of wars, however, in which strong countries have done this, shows that as a rule, the "strong" country was one which was strong in a military sense only; and that the "weak" country was a country which was weak only militarily, but which was potentially strong in that it was possessed of wealth in land and goods.

Most of the great conquests of history were made by such "strong" over such "weak" countries.

Such were notably those wars by which Persia, Assyria, Egypt, Greece, Rome, and Spain gained their pre-eminence; and such were the wars by which they later fell.

Such were the wars of Ghenghis Khan, Tamerlane, Mahomet, and Napoleon; such were the wars by which most tribes grew to be great nations, and by which as nations they subsequently fell.