Escalation and proliferation reside at the core of the military industrial complex. Much of this has to due with the nature of capitalist economies. Indeed, free market entities from candy shops to arms dealers all face the same imperative to expand or cease to exist. But, where our imaginations are the limit for escalation in candy, total extinction of the human race is the limit for escalation in arms. It would seem that we can find some argument here about why escalation in arms might lead us to never pick up a gun in the first place. This is exactly what I will do here.
Arms escalation is exactly how Riff puts it to Tony in West Side Story, "If they bring bats, we'll bring chains. If they bring chains, we'll bring pipes. If they bring pipes, we'll bring zip guns..." Proliferation is a sort of keeping up with the Joneses: if your neighbors get guns, you get a gun. Together arms escalation and proliferation ensure that every nation is becoming or will become a player in the global competition for military superiority. Some often mistake escalation for sandbox jealousy, where one boy must demonstrate the superiority of his toys over those of his playmates. While this Freudian complex may play some role in escalation, any country holding weapons presents a threat. Even without weapons, and on a smaller scale, one person potentially poses a threat to his neighbor.
Let's suppose there are no guns in the world. You have just caught a delicious meal and have roasted it on the fire. Your neighbors failed to catch anything and they are hungry. One attacks with the intent to steal food, then the next, then the next. What began with conceivably equal strength humans, without weapons, ended as a many-against-one attack. We have established here that even without the influence of escalation, humans potentially threaten each other. Even if you had shared your meal, inevitably, there would not have been enough food for all.
Let's add some guns to the same scenario. Now, before attacking, the first hungry neighbor must consider the strength of his firepower in comparison to yours. He has a pistol, you have an AK-47. Clearly, you poses the advantage. His choices are: starve or get a bigger gun. Now imagine this on a global scale. Also, instead of fighting for necessary things like food, those with guns can take whatever they want. Some describe this practice as Imperialism. Here we have established that because humans potentially pose a threat to each other, any increase in the potential of that threat (say by the introduction of a gun) causes further increases in violence. Now I would like to demonstrate that this is always the case and that the possession of weapons never ensures that your neighbors won't attack.
In a simple system, two humans with reason to fight will do so until one emerges in victory. Whatever the advantage the victor had on his opponent (strength, speed, skill, etc), it was certainly a factor in winning. I will exclude cases where one opponent dies spontaneously or some other extraneous circumstance decided the fight. Now, if one opponent has a gun, no matter what the physical advantage of the other, the one with the gun will always win. In fact, one opponent could be a world-class fighting champion and the other could be a parapalegic. As long as the disabled fighter can operate the gun, he will triumph the clear majority of times. There are two ways for the fighter without a gun to even stand a chance a winning. 1. he could get bullet proof armor or 2 he could get a gun, perhaps faster and more accurate than his opponent's. Either option represents escalation, for to over come the armor or the better gun, the originally armed opponent will either need a better gun or stronger armor. Once a option has been chosen by one opponent, escalation requires that the next opponent choose for himself or accept defeat. Weapons always lead to escalation, but can they ever lead to peace?
Return to the scenario where only one opponent has a gun. Also, let us suppose the fighters equal in physical capacity as well. The fight begins and only two outcomes are possible: the unarmed fighter surrenders or dies. If he dies the example is uninteresting, so let us suppose he surrenders. Now the fighter with the gun can effectively control his unarmed former opponent. This scenario is not peace in the harmonious sense we commonly assume, although there has not been any death yet. This pseudo peaceful situation is more like a dictatorship than a harmonious co-existence. Even though the armed dictator may give commands that the unarmed subject enjoys (such as "go on vacation"), by definition the dictator is deprivig his subject of personal freedom. Some may argue that this in itself is equivalent to physical violence in the amount of harm it causes. So, while there may indeed by a noticeable difference in the amount of people dying when just a small few have guns while others do not, such a situation is hardly what we can comfortably call peace.
For argument's sake, suppose our two fighters assume (incorrectly) that he who holds the most powerful weapon, creates peace and justice, yata yata yata... We replay our escalation scenario from above and realize that at some point the strength of the weapons themselves will not matter, instead how many weapons each fighter possesses will be the determining factor. Additionally, there will come a point when not the quantity of weapons matters, but the willingness to use them. When escalation reaches this stage one can see that the life expectancy for our fighters decreases rapidly. Now imagine each fighter is a country and that there is a world of fighters, each trying to outdo the other. How long until we get caught in the crossfire?
I have tried to demonstrate that before weapons humans of roughly equal physical capability pose a threat to each other. This may not always be the case and the threat may not always lead to action being taken, but the potential to attack remains. With the introduction of weapons comes the forces of escalation driving one to gain the advantage on the other. By continuing on this path, we come to a point where the threat of violence must be demonstrated and escalation, here, requires bigger and bigger demonstrations until one or both opponents lose.
The moral of the story is: don't use guns. Swords are much cooler.
