Foxy,

Since the fall of the Soviet empire the number of nuclear weapons has fallen by nearly 1/2 and the number deployed by nearly 80% since the threat of war has fallen substantially.

The theory of deterrence as first defined by Bismark is necessarily to build up superior forces, but have sufficient force to ensure that any attacking force suffered out of proportion to any potential benefit.

This is where nuclear weapons come in. For example, in comparing the UK to the Soviet Union, the USSR would easily win any conventional or nuclear exchange, but would lose every major Russian city, several times the population of the UK and would take decades before it could recover. This is the issue that the mutton headed mugwump in the UK fails to understand. That and the fact that it takes decades to build a viable defense force.

With the build up of China, its attempted annexation of the South China Sea, the threat of war looms again.

SM
That's a bit confusing. Reducing nukes lessens the threat but nuke war is impossible to win . Which is true? Who is needing decades to become equipped ? If nukes are deterring war why is south China sea a problem? Each bit is valid but how do you join them up?

NNN,

Sorry that you are struggling with the concepts.

The nuclear deterrent makes the cost of major conflict intolerable, however, the incremental invasion of the South China Sea (SCS) is a territorial annexation of the waters of the other south asian countries, and while it is bullying and stopping only these other nations from fishing in these waters it can largely get away with it.

The problem is that the US and most other countries don't recognise China's claims and use the SCS as a major trading route with their planes and ships refusing to recognise China's claims of sovereignty, occasionally sending military ships and aircraft through the area and ignoring China's protests.

With the increasing militarisation of these fabricated islands, there only needs to be one instance where the faux confrontations of the chinese goes too far and a US ship or plane is fired on and there will be a military response, and probably a short limited engagement that the chinese will lose badly.

Where it goes from there is anyone's guess.

Trade, travel, and telecommunications have made the
nations of the modern world more interdependent than
ever before. Yet today's societies entered the nuclear
age with political institutions inherited from a
previous era. The human population is spread among a
series of sovereign independent states - most of them
with their own armed forces and so there is a built-in
potential for warfare whenever two nations have conflicting
interests.

Lets not forget that before the twentieth century, there
were few institutionalised ways for hostile nations to
achieve peaceful settlements. When negotiations took place,
they often occurred only after a war - for the purpose of
agreeing to a peace treaty that would specify the spoils
for the victor. We now have infinitely better prospects for
helping nations to avoid war.

We have two vital elements for international peace-making
that are in place. The first is the United Nations, which
provides a forum for world opinion and a mechanism for conflict
resolution. The second is a growing body of international
law that specifies the rights and obligations that nations
have toward one another - particularly with respect to
aggression.

A major difficulty with international peace-making of course,
is that compliance with the resolutions of the United Nations
and the rulings of its World Court are voluntary, for no
country is willing to surrender its sovereignty to an
international body. The United Nations is most effective, in
fact, when the superpowers are able to agree on a course of
action and mobilise their blocs to support it.

Even so, the organisation provides an influential forum for
world opinion, and while it does not always prevent war, it
surely helps make it less likely.

Foxy,

As you mentioned, there are mechanisms in place to prevent wars, but when they are ignored as China has done, then there is a far higher chance of conflict.

Dear Shadow Minister,

Over the centuries, the number of people involved in,
and killed by, warfare has increased dramatically.

Alexander the Great set out to conquer the world as he
knew it with an army of less than 40,000 men. William
the Conqueror invaded England with 50,000 men. The
Napoleonic Wars involved hundreds of thousands of
soldiers. In the American Civil War, nearly 2 million
men were under arms. During World War I, some 65 million
troops were mobilized, and 19 million people were killed.
The carnage of that pointless and dreadful conflict so
stunned the world that people called it "the war to end all
wars," for they knew humanity would never commit such folly
again. World War II followed a mere twenty-one years later -
and this time, almost 100 million people took up arms, and
an estimated 38 million soldiers and citizens were killed.

All told in the last century there have been so many wars
resulting in so many deaths. Today, the major powers maintain
huge standing armies. Of course, in nuclear war, the size
of armies would be irrelevant, for the entire civilian
populations of the countries concerned would be brought into
the arena of battle - along with much of the rest of the
world's population.

To a visitor from another planet, it would seem that the
modern world is obsessed with preparations for "defense" (it's
never called "offense"). Many countries spend more of their
budgets for military purposes than they do for education or
medical care. This represents a colossal diversion of funds from
socially useful goals, for example, a single hour's worth of
these expenditures would suffice to save, through immunisation,
hundreds of thousands of children around the world who die
each day from preventable infectious diseases.

Regarding China? It is still determinedly socialist and
authoritarian. It will be interesting to see how far this
country will stray in the future from the socialist path and
whether economic liberalisation will at sometime lead to
political democratisation. Given China's size and potential,
its economic future will continue to be of world historical
significance.