Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site hou3c.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!hou3c!ka
From: ka@hou3c.UUCP (Kenneth Almquist)
Newsgroups: net.flame
Subject: Re: We need the arms race (well, not quite...)
Message-ID: <984@hou3c.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 14-Jan-85 18:37:43 EST
Article-I.D.: hou3c.984
Posted: Mon Jan 14 18:37:43 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 15-Jan-85 02:26:06 EST
References: <734@loral.UUCP> <43000005@rna.UUCP> <825@watdcsu.UUCP>
Organization: Bell Labs, Holmdel, NJ
Lines: 21

>>> No one has pushed the button yet.

>>That dosen't mean it will never happen.

>No, but our record is pretty damn good.  Think back and figure out
>when was the last time the world had fourty years without a major war
>(ie a confrontation of the world powers).

The last time was the 100 year period from the Conference of Vienna to
WWI.  That peace was ended when people of unexceptional abilities came
to power simultaneously.

WWI was unwinable in the sense that their is no way either side could
expect to gain as much from the war as the war cost it, but that didn't
keep people from fighting it.  Thus the situation prior to WWI was not
much different from the one we are in now.  It may be that the exis-
tence of nuclear weapons makes it more obvious to people that it is not
rational to fight a global war.  I hope so, because I don't like the
suggestion that we may have passed through the first 40 years of a
100 year peace which will be followed a nuclear holocaust.
				Kenneth Almquist