PBW is very peacefull

[Mudshark]

I have found that the play by web games tend to be very friendly. This can be good because you have no huge fleets knocking at your door, but with the fact that if you declare war most other empires tend to side with the "defender", how do you get things jumping? In real life this is great, but for a game this makes for poor roleplaying. what have some of the PBW players done to overcome this? Peace can become rather dull!