A state's attitude and conduct towards other states can depend on the actions of those states and on their perceived status, in rough terms, on what they do and on what they are. One can order foreign policies based on the extent to which they incorporate one or the other of these criteria. One end of this spectrum is the view that two states for reasons of religion, ethnicity, or political system are natural enemies or natural friends and that no other grounds for war or, conversely, peace and alliance are necessary. An extreme example of this way of judging a state on its status rather than its actions is reported from Tsin China when the Tartars asked for a peace treaty: “‘Amity,’ the prince exclaimed, ‘what do they know of amity? The barbarous savages! Give them war as the portion due to our natural enemies.’” This story, whether accurate or typical or not, illustrates the status-based extreme of our spectrum: a case where no particular action was required to provoke war and where even the request for a peace treaty could not avert “the portion due to our natural enemies.” In contrast, a foreign policy that considered other states' actions only and took no account of political differences or similarities, putative superiority or inferiority, ethnicity or religion would occupy the opposite, action-based end of the spectrum.