A couple months ago, while talking to Valerio, I looked up all the various sets of alliance bp in order to disprove the assertion that Phalanx's attacking ability was the joke everyone always seemed to think. Absolute bp was meaningless, as so many confounding variables (alliance size, position, history) give statistical artifacts. So I used the ratio of offensive/defensive bp, which gives you a general idea of whether an alliance spends most of its wars on the offensive or defensive end. (we had a ratio of 1.463 at the time, which was 8th of the top 15 alliances. Not exactly a mongol horde razing everything in its path, but not something to sneeze at either)
Now this says nothing about skill. A skilled alliance can play defensively, getting a ratio of .3 or .4, while using those gained culture levels to easily absorb ghosts, until the attacker finds himself exhausted, surrounded, and beset by an opponent with full intelligence of his style and capability.
But if you're concerned with bp (which in itself says nothing of skill) this ratio gives you a better idea of whether an alliance should concern you as a potential threat than absolute bp would. At the time of my research, ML had a ratio of 1.735, in 4th. By comparison, Pheno had a ratio of 1.063 and Xmortis had a ratio of .820 in 14th. The only alliance with a lower rank was TeA. Those figures certainly shifted over time, but the shifts wouldn't be major.
So if you contend that ML used other DH as puppets and did not fight in-game themselves, use the map to back your statement. Use border comparison or stats on city turnover. But don't use bp as your metric, as it suggests ML in fact fought disproportionately to their size/position.