Just got this from Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, and I really got interested in this theory. I really felt like talking about it, so here it goes.

Suppose someone wants to throw a stone at you. If you tell the aggressor that you will throw bread at him if he throws his stone, the chances of him throwing the stone is still at 100%. Of course, the piece of bread won’t even make him flinch. But what if you tell him that you will shoot him with a .45 caliber pistol if he throws that stone. Do you think that he will still throw that stone? Or will that boy piss his pants, then run to mommy?

This is the deterrence theory, used mostly during the Cold War, when the two greatest nuclear powers of the world are the United States and the Soviet Union.

Deterrence theory is a military strategy, wherein one party in threat of an attack by the aggressor (or even an assumed threat) prepares a damage either of the same or greater damage to the aggressor, and makes sure that the aggressor knows the risk of their attack. Retaliation, to put it simply. “If you attack us, we will strike back with a greater force.” And during the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, the weapon they’re threatening each other with are all the nukes at their disposal.

This is most likely why there was the Cold War in the first place. No one wanted to strike the other country with their nukes, with the fear of retaliation from the receivers. During the Cold War, with the use of this deterrence theory, both two countries have the same things in mind, which leads to either of two things: (1) both of them do not attack, leading to continuous “peace,” or (2) one attacks then another retaliates, which now becomes the aggressor and now the other retaliates, leading to a chain reaction of nuclear bombing, fallout, and wipe out (of the human race, that is).

Now there is a problem with this deterrence theory, branching out from the root cause of this problematic: human morality. The question of human morality: Would you be able to kill millions of people? Can you even think of doing such a thing?

Let’s go back to the two kids. Suppose the threat to shoot the aggressor has been made. The aggressor would now think: “will he really shoot me if I threw the stone?” There are many factors of the possibility that the receiving end will not actually shoot, whether he doesn’t really have a gun, that he doesn’t know how to use a gun, etc. But the greatest factor here is that will the boy really shoot, and ultimately kill his aggressor?

If one country launches a nuclear attack to the other. The receiving end still may or may not retaliate, with the thought of millions of lives they will be terminating once they launch a retaliatory strike. Everyone acting in this war are still human, mostly incapable of sleeping knowing that he/she killed millions a while ago.

No one took the chance, leading to the long Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union.

I mentioned peace a while ago, with the quotation marks. This was my question regarding deterrence theory and the cold war. Was the cold war a period of peace? Remember that during the Cold War, no major wars set stage. There may be some small-scale wars, but not wars big enough to drag the whole world.

Was that peace? No one launched a nuke, no one made war, no one went out knowing that they won’t be back. People may consider that a time of no war is a time of peace, but remember that no one attacked because all of them were threatened of being attacked back, in they attack. This is more of a “powerful” state of peace, mostly authoritative, but still controlled. Was this at least the nearest to peace that the world had?

Now, can peace only be gained through a power and authority? Through hierarchies and stratification?

I actually have no answer to this. However, I do believe that the Cold War was the nearest to peace that we had in modern time. I cannot answer whether or not it can be called peace, but it was the closest. Simply because, there was no war.

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