Within a society, the population is forced to follow the rules because they are urged by a higher authority. When these laws fail, correcting this deficiency becomes a state priority; murderers are arrested, riots are put down, new regulations and safe controls are imposed to discourage future renegades from victimizing the system. These actions of the sovereign power of the State ensure that the community remains harmonious and balanced. Within the international community a single state is unable to defer to a higher authority to demand that justice be applied, as there is no authority higher than the state itself. The consequence of this is that independent nations are forced to rely on themselves for security within international society. These facts lead to a question that has been at the center of debates about just war theory; How should states that are all facing the same security dilemma interact with each other? The various theoretical answers to this question lead to two fundamentally opposite conclusions; nations will seek to expand their individual power to facilitate their security, or they will build an international union to ensure mutual defense. While the latter promotes an international community based on cooperation, the former envisions perpetual conflict. To carry out an analysis of these conflicting predictions we will turn to Thucydides, who provides a historical example of this debate in his account of the Melian Dialogue. Within this dialogue, the powerful Athenians assert that force alone justifies their demand for the subjugation of the weaker island of Melos. The Melians counter with their demand for justice, arguing that the advancement of Athenian power and Melian autonomy in...... middle of paper ......living life and avoiding death demonstrates that the law of Nature is better suited to cooperation than conflict. Using power to maintain it ensures the need for the continued use of force to repress those whom a state's power is used to oppress. While the Athenians looked to history to demonstrate that “nature always forces men to rule over whomever they can control,” they fail to recognize that nature also forces men to be free, and that the violence of the oppressor will be met with violence of the oppressed. Even if the most powerful state succeeds in conquering, it will always be at war with those whose freedom it violates. The force that a nation uses to enable it to conquer today will be the same force that forces it to fight tomorrow and the day after. For these reasons the Athenian's arguments must be rejected in favor of those of the Melian.