Peace Through Strength?

I was recently reading some comments that followed an Internet article concerning how many nuclear weapons we need, and from some of the comments, I have solidified my belief we are insane.  Here is a comment paraphrased: "Through strength comes peace". This is of course the philosophy held that as long as we have thousands of nuclear war heads we will have peace because nobody in their right mind would attack us knowing we would blast them from the face of the earth. There are only two things wrong with this position. One is "that anybody in their right mind" rules out those that could care less about their lives and are not in their right mind. Second, is that we have had thousands of nuclear weapons since the early 1950's and we have not been at peace. There was Korea, Viet Nam, Iraq, and now Afghanistan, not to mention a few others. What do we make of this? For one thing, all of these wars, or conflicts if you prefer, were of our own volition, so I guess we could say that having thousands of nuclear weapons have prevented us from being attacked, except for the attacks of 9/11. And since 9/11 wasn't obviously perpetrated by a country we couldn't nuke them out of existence. And even if we had been able to identify one culpable country we still would not have nuked them out of existence. We would have used conventional weaponry to defend our honor. So do we want peace?

It is obvious that our nuclear arsenal is being held only to prevent those countries that also have a nuclear arsenal from attacking us. But since we have been in at least four major conflicts since the end of WWII then it is also obvious that we do not want peace. And it is also obvious that strength does not bring peace. Strength through the posession of nuclear armament is a false sense of security and certainly not an avenue to peace.

And this brings me to the question, "What is peace?" Certainly there have been nations in the history of civilization that have possessed superior strength to all the nations of the earth, and yet we have been warring with each other for thousands of years. Is it that our definition of peace is somehow convoluted and it is not really peace that we seek or want? Taking a closer look at peace through strength it appears that by having superior strength is nothing more than scaring our adversaries to the point they fall in line with our way of thinking. And if they don't we will attack them as is evident from Korea, Viet Name, Iraq, etc. This does not work because to fall in line with our way of thinking is asking them to give up their way of thinking, and their culture, and their traditions, etc. That will never work! If you have become over weight, look at how hard it is to lose it. If you have become addicted look at how hard it is to get off your addiction. Now the peace we seek is asking an entire nation or country to give up its ways. Under this situation peace is unobtainable and it appears our desire for peace has always been a defective goal as it is not really peace, but rather subjugation.

True peace has not come to this earth because true peace is a disolving of boundries, a melding of ways, which appears to us as a sense of loss. Even if we had the magic wand and dissolved all boundries, made everybody the same race and spoke the same language, we would still not have world peace. We would have conflicts over imaginary territories and the the fact that speaking accents have developed and "those" people sound funny. There would be conflicts over natural resource, methods of education, and for sure, religion and politics, and the list can go on and on. The point here is that no matter our situation here on earth we will have conflict because we want conflict. And the reason we want conflict is to assure a state of separation continues to exist between us, for becoming one is what scares us to death. Even to the point we bring death to each other.

Later...