Si vis pacem, para bellum

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"If you wish for peace, prepare for war"

The embodiment of deterrence - almost everyone in the Western world has heard this at least once.

It's a one-sided advice; it doesn't consider foreign reactions and it doesn't provide guidance about the extent of advisable preparations.

The whole deterrence thinking and the use of this saying have thus become too extreme.
Some U.S.Americans don't feel safe unless their single nation spends more on the military than all other nations (allied, friendly, neutral and hostile) together.
Well, even then some can feel "threatened" and call for more, more, more.

This is - obviously - not my behaviour. I don't call for magic numbers (like 4 % of GDP) as preparation for war; the challenge is too complex to be mastered with rules of thumb only.
We can break our economy and thus our wealth and long-term security by overspending on "defense".

"si vis pacem, para bellum" has gone wrong many times in history by spending too much, too little or for the wrong capabilities.

An example of spending too much (leading to collapse) is the permanent war economy of the Soviet Union, a remarkable feat of their despised planning economy. They prepared for war to survive (by keeping peace; yes, they weren't as bad as depicted during the Cold War and we weren't as good), but neither managed to invest enough into their economy nor did they allocate enough resources for civilian consumption to keep the people content and corruption covered up.

Another example of spending too much was probably the arms race among European armies in 1912-1914 that led to war instead of keeping peace - the result was not triumphant victory, but broken societies.

An example of spending too little was certainly the failure of UK and France to react timely to the German military buildup of 1933-1939. They only became serious in 1937, and gave up their hopes for peace as late as early 1939.

Finally an example for wrong allocation of resources; the German Hochseeflotte (high seas fleet), a battleship-centric navy meant to deter the UK from entering war with Germany ("Risikoflotte"; risk fleet).

The British were able to focus on shipbuilding, while the Germans with their larger economy were not able to do so - they faced the second- and third-strongest armies of Europe (French and Russian) as hostile neighbours.
Admiral Tirpitz' calculation that the British would not dare to enter a war if Germany's fleet was 2/3 as strong as the Royal Navy was a too static thought. The British were uncomfortable with any ratio that was even close to that and a naval arms race yielded huge fleets at very high cost, but the large and expensive German fleet didn't prevent the British from joining the First World War at all.
Most resources for the navy were wasted, Germany presented itself as hostile to the British, manpower/expertise/budget were tied to the navy instead of the army (which had quite lacking funding and wasn't able to fully cope with the French army's buildup until 1912). In the end, most navy resources were mis-allocated; the German army could have been much more powerful and decisive in 1914 - at lower overall defence expenditures pre-1914.

The last example also shows how complex deterrence really is and how important it is to include possible and anticipated reactions into your strategic decision making.


"Si vis pacem, para bellum" has a huge conceptual problem; it doesn't work for all at once apparently. The principle could work for all nations at once if an inferior, but strong enough military had enough deterrence effect. Historical evidence contradicts such an assumption. The risk fleet strategy failed in 1914 and the British/French armies and air forces were equally large as Germany's in 1939/40, still failing to prevent both WW2 and the French campaign of 1940.

Game theory can be used to show this conceptual weakness; "Si vis pacem, para bellum" leads to arms races, not relaxation of tensions in situations of crisis. Every power seeks superiority in order to prepare well enough - but its moves are being countered by the hostile power's preparations.
A strategy of superior readiness (or even "dominance" or "primacy") can hardly succeed for both blocs.

Those powers who fail to be strong enough to deter war can only hope for the niceness of the superior power - or rest on third parties for their security.

Other measures promise better results than an arms race;
arms control treaties, an emphasis on defensive military capabilities, diplomatic solution of conflicts and the creation of geo-strategic buffers, for example.

A proper reaction to a military power buildup somewhere in the world is not to enter an arms race no matter what. Instead, we have to consider many factors; including the suspected intent, the relevance for our security (at our homes), the quality of our relations to that foreign power and our ability to improve the relations to avert war and the military might of our allies.


Finally a note about the peace movement; pacifism is not outright idiotic, but a rather nice idea. Its major weakness is the lack of an alternative to deterrence.
Deterrence in its many forms is still the primary means of securing peace even in face of dangerous people in power. Sometimes it works, sometimes it fails - it's being considered as indispensable by major powers.
Maybe they'll sometime invent such an alternative, or we'll sometime succeed in turning deterrence global (U.N. responding to aggressions instead of mere national/alliance self-defence) to get rid of war.


"Si vis pacem, para bellum" has been exaggerated and mis-used by warmongers in my opinion. It's a simple saying that covers only a small aspect of reality. Its wrong application could hurt us badly.
The protection of peace is a delicate affair that requires a lot of thought and doesn't suit itself well to simple answers.

S O

P.S.:
Another reading about deterrence, otherwise unrelated:
"Military Parades Demonstrate Chinese Concept of Deterrence"
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