I believe this is turning into a bit of a straw man fallacy(humbletrees posts aside), i believe cooler has put forward a sound argument, good premise followed by a good claim, however, i don't believe this analogy stands when comparing real life to tribal wars, there's countries that would intervene in real life(not always so in TW), there could be groups like that in TW but most of the time it will be to get a piece of the pie(understandibly so), comparing real life politics to TW politics doesn't work(maybe if you kicked real life back to a point when politics weren't so prevalent).
Regarding your actual claim ("The true caliber of a tribe will always be measured on the quality of the fights they are involved in.") i don't believe this is true, you can in no way control the quality of your enemies, and if you could, why would you make them better? (if anything this skirmish might teach some of BFAM how to up their game and see where they went wrong for future worlds) Easy food is good food(imo), minimize your losses and save those troops for another day, all the while expanding your territory(good times for any tribe).
I think theres a ton of factors that go into a good tribe, regarding the quality of your opposition though, i don't believe so(that logic would make BFAM a super tribe), 4PLAY made a good choice, though i would have declared on a certain tribe before Ill did (but thats another story). In a nutshell, the world of TW isn't fair and its partly what makes the game interesting, anything can happen, even your own allies can turn on you, what to do about this? Suck it up, take notes on what went wrong and learn from it, take each wrasslin match as a way to hone your skills and don't grab your ankles at the first sign of destruction, even better if you are against the odds, challenge breeds excellence and will make you a better player, if BFAM had fought it out to the end then they would have gained some respect. Sorry for the long post