(Whosoever desires peace prepares for war; no one provokes, nor dares to offend, those who they know know to be superior in battle) 

From this maxim of the 4th century Roman general Vegetius Flavius Maximus was born an enduring cliche, perhaps the most influential Big Lie of the departing century. On Friday, speaking to an audience of Winnipeg high school students and antiwar protestors, Prime Minister Chretien trotted it out once again. 

Old V.F. was a lousy general; the Germans usually beat him unless he hired them as mercenaries. And what has become known as his "para bellum principle" has been proven completely WRONG by scientific, empirical, very academically respectable research. 

Twenty years ago I first published a study which examined hundreds of conflicts between states. I found that those conflicts preceded by an arms buildup almost always (87%) escalated to all-out war; those NOT preceded by an arms race seldom did (11%). Since my paper (Journal of Conflict Resolution, 1979) was published right at the beginning of Reagan's campaign, American academic Cold Warriors turned attacking my findings into a minor cottage industry. Despite this, my work won me an academic prize, and, much more important, my results have been strongly confirmed by subsequent studies. In the next issue of the Journal of Peace Research, a young professor from Vanderbilt not only confirms my conclusions with her own data and statistics, but states that had I used different methods, my refutation of "para bellum" would have been even stronger!

Now this is all very nice for the academic ego, but of course almost everyone reading this will have already come to this same conclusion intuitively. But now, when someone repeats the old cliche, you can do more than say: "that's b.s." You can say, "that's b.s., AND THERE IS SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE TO PROVE IT IS B.S.!" 

I will supply on request all necessary detailed academic references for the scholar-squirrels. In the meantime, keep reminding everyone in every medium you can access: MILITARY BUILDUPS DON'T STOP WARS, THEY START THEM. And, to end with some more Latin, "non illegitime carborundum" (don't let the bastards wear you down). 

Pax vobiscum. 
 
 

Michael D. Wallace 
Department of Political Science 
University of British Columbia 
phone:(604)822-4550, fax:822-5540 

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