The problem with the Belli as I see it is that in order to declare war on someone without international consequence, you just move your army to their border and wait for them to snap. Although I suppose the situation is sorta, kinda possible, significantly more likely is the "invasion" - essentially amounting to the Belli Bar being low at the DoW - or a rising tension between two powers leading to one declaring war. Of the two, I think that the second is more likely to be "acceptable" on the world scene - it was only a matter of time, right? - and thus the one the game should try to emulate.
My proposal is to do away with the belli bar and replace it with "tensions", a bar that is shared by two regions (that is to say, they don't have seperate bars). If one nation moves all of its armies to anothers borders, that wouldn't raise the bar - it may be tense, but not in that "one of them was going to attack sooner or later" kind of way that would make it acceptable. What will raise it is when the other region reacts to what seems like a possible invasion by moving his armies to that border. (I don't know precisely what this would do from the AI standpoint, but I imagine they'd be better prepared if anything since more units need to be on the border to raise the bar high enough to have a legitimate DoW.)
This gives two possible solutions to a "defending" region: Stand down and risk an invasion but have the world on your side, or beef up defenses and prepare an invasion or your own. The world may not be on your side since you're both responsible for the conflict, but at least you'll have a better chance to gain if everything goes well (no other powers taking lands if you win).
Possible problems with this are basically limited to beefing up your border and not getting a reaction, forcing you to declare war like the warmonger you are and have the world hate you for it. Other than the reaction of the world being a little too severe (just tone it down a bit to compinsate, so you only get one invasion every once in a while), I fail to see how this is unrealistic. It's better than beefing up your border until the other player declares war for you.
"Tensions" Proposal
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