Debate Desk
Is Peace Through Strength Just Another Name for Warmongering?
Strength deters because aggressors weigh costs; history from the 1930s to the Cold War shows weakness invites war, and strength keeps the peace.
The claim
Critics say that building up forces and threatening to use them leads to arms races and wars, that diplomacy and restraint are the real roads to peace and that the military buildup of the 1980s only risked disaster.
The answer in three points
- Aggressors weigh costs. A government that expects to lose or to pay a price it cannot bear is less likely to attack. The strong keep the peace because those who might break it can see what would follow. Deterrence works when the threat is credible and the will to use it is believed.
- The record of weakness is bad. The democracies' disarmament and appeasement in the 1930s did not prevent a world war, and the failure of Britain and France to resist Hitler early made the war larger. Strength alone does not guarantee peace, and weakness has often invited war.
- Strength and diplomacy work together. Reagan rebuilt American forces and also negotiated arms reductions with the Soviet Union, including the INF Treaty of 1987, because the Soviets came to the table facing a rival they could not outspend. Treaties made from weakness give little.
The aim of strength is to make war less likely, and when it is kept in good order it is rarely used. That is the measure of success.
The numbers
- The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty was signed in December 1987 and eliminated an entire class of U.S. and Soviet missiles, according to the State Department's Office of the Historian.
- The Soviet Union dissolved in December 1991, according to the State Department's Office of the Historian.
- NSC-68, a 1950 national security paper, argued that the United States needed to build up its forces to contain Soviet power, according to the Truman Library.
What they will say next
"Arms races cause wars." Some have, and others ended with a rival that could not keep up. The lesson is to be strong enough to deter and wise enough to talk.
"Spending on arms is wasteful." It can be, and it is the price of insurance. A war costs vastly more.
"The Cold War ended by itself." Soviet archives opened after 1991 show the pressure of the arms competition and the weakness of its economy.
"The Iraq war was an example of strength failing." It was a war of choice with mistakes about intelligence. Strength includes judgment about when to use force.
Peace is not the absence of defense. It is the product of it, and of wisdom in using it.
"Strength led to the Vietnam and Iraq wars." Those wars show the risks of poor strategy and bad intelligence. They are lessons in how to use strength wisely, which is why conservatives debate the use of force with care.