The early Confucians did not offer a solution to the fragmentation of their times, because they did not see fragmentation per se as a problem. In the Analects, we see that Confucius idealizes the early Zhou rulers and believes the highly-decentralized "feudal" structure of Zhou rule was both good and sustainable, so long as it was held together by shared ethics and social mores, what Confucius refers to as 禮 li or "rites."

The problems that Confucius identified in the society of his day were all cases of people setting aside "rites," which embodied interpersonal ethics and a healthy social order, in pursuit of profit: lords who oppressed their subjects and unjustly made war against their neighbors, ministers who pursued their own interests at the expense of their lords and fellow public servants, a Zhou royal house which neither received the honor and deference it once did nor particularly deserved to, and common people who made choices opportunistically rather than with a concern for their social responsibilities. They identified the problem as one of a breakdown in social bonds rather than as a failure of political structures.

To put this into more relief, let's compare the Confucian perspective to that of the Mohists and the early Legalists. The Mohist position was that, rather than an emphasis on appropriate person-to-person relations, what was needed was 兼愛 jian'ai, sometimes translated as "universal love" but essentially meaning utilitarianism, an equal regard for the well-being of all people without favoritism for friends, relatives or superiors. To them, it was prejudice in favor of loved ones and against all others that was behind the social collapse of the late Zhou period. The Legalists, in contrast, were the first to offer mainly political/institutional solutions, arguing that states should implement a comprehensive set of rewards for "useful" behaviors and harsh punishments for negative behaviors while casting aside antiquated "feudal" elements which constrained the ruler. This was rooted in a belief that human beings are not fully capable of internalizing moral principles but are easily influenced by external incentives.

Only much later, with Xunzi writing during the high Warring States period, do we get a Confucian philosopher who reckons openly with military and foreign policy considerations, the practicalities of administration and politics, and the value of rewards and punishments, having synthesized Confucian attitudes with critiques against them by the Mohists, Legalists and others. By this date the Zhou monarchy was clearly a lost cause and non-military solutions to the chaos of the Warring States no longer seemed viable.