phl@druxy.UUCP (09/12/84)
I read in the ROCKY MOUNTAIN NEWS a while back that some historian had
calculated that there had been some 1700 arms races in the recorded
history of the human species. Of these, only about 15 ended without
a war.
About the only situation I can remember from my high school history is
the one in which the US backed down from its plan to annex part of western
Canada ("Fifty four- forty or fight") after considering the possibility
of another war with England and established the longest unfortified border
in the modern world.
Can anyone name any of these negotiated settlements in this century? In
the last five centuries? What did they do right? How did those involved
come to a workable peace or did one side belly-up and surrender to avoid
the coming conflict? If that historian is even approximately right, does
experience suggest that wars should be fought immediately with relatively
primative weapons or delayed until more deadly weaponry is developed?