Para Bellum

“(Herrman) Goering was typically quite wrong, but his errors at least reflected the German sense that the Allies had lost the power of deterrence, which is predicated not just on material strength but the appearance of it and the acknowledged willingness to use it.”

— Victor Davis Hanson, “The Second World Wars“

When I was younger, I thought the saying, “If you want peace, prepare for war,” (Ci vis pacem, para bellum) was dangerously foolish. I think differently now. The phrase is another way to define deterrence and it should be the cornerstone of all foreign policy. The power of deterrence is what keeps humans from killing each other through perpetual wars.

December 7, 1941, also proved that the United States had lost the power of deterrence. The Japanese knew well of the material strength of the United States, but they manifestly doubted our willingness to use it. The Japanese leaders were dead wrong about the willingness of the U.S. to use its vast material wealth in war.

The miscalculation of the Japanese military dictatorship resulted in the horrendous destruction of Japanese cities and the deaths of millions of its citizens. German Fuhrer Adolf Hitler obviously made the same mistake about the Allies, and the Soviet Union, too.

I originally began this piece before Pearl Harbor Day and world events have made the concept of deterrence paramount. This blog is apolitical but in the Clausewitzian sense military events are the continuation of politics by a different means. So military history is never divorced from political consideration and military history teaches us much when analyzing current geopolitical events.

Deterrence is effective if all parties are aware of each other’s capabilities and intentions. That’s why it is so important to maintain alliances and to convey the will to maintain the peace through military vigilance.

Deterrence through military preparedness is proven. The Western allies’ determination to thwart the Soviet Union’s expansion into Western Europe worked because NATO was prepared to fight. I was a part of that effort as a radio operator at a Nike Hercules site in West Germany. To maintain our preparedness our battery was on “hot status” once a month when we worked 24 hours on and 24 hours off. That week was part of our routine. We accepted the need to be able to respond instantly to a Warsaw Pact assault. Our officers and our crews were trained and prepared to launch our missiles, which were nuclear-capable, on a moment’s notice.

The Warsaw Pact is defunct, defeated by deterrence, but new threats always arise. As Russian dictator Vladimir Putin threatens Ukraine’s independence and Communist China looms over Taiwan, military history teaches us that maintaining the power of deterrence requires an acknowledged will to use the West’s military power.

Ukraine and Taiwan are prepared to fight. NATO and the United States are showing welcome strength in support of the Ukrainians, and the United States cannot, and should never, abandon Taiwan. Weakness in the form of appeasement has not worked, and given the human condition, almost certainly never will work. It is pretty well-accepted that if Great Britain and France had stood up earlier to Hitler’s expansionist bullying many lives could have been saved.

War is a terrible, terrible last resort. It goes without saying that war is devastating, horrible and should never be undertaken lightly. Hitler often preached about war being the natural state of things. His social Darwinian nihilism was terrible and destructive, the product of a mind warped by his upbringing and the violence of World War I. Despite his uniquely horrific abilities and hatreds, bullies such as Hitler come and go.

Osama Bin Laden thought the United States was the weak horse and that we would shrink back if attacked. He was wrong, and just like the Japanese military dictatorship, he paid for his mistake with defeat and death.

As ironic as it seems, maintaining military power and resolve in the face of bullying from dictators such as Hitler, Putin, Stalin, Mussolini, Xi Jinping, Tojo, Mao Zedong, Kim Il-sung, and many, many others, is the only way to prevent war.