Deterrence is the effort to avoid war by creating such strength on one side of the conflict that the other side does not challenge, and so peace is maintained. The various ways of attempting deterrence, and at different times, we have characterized in different terms. Sometimes we have been successful in deterring aggression and in preventing war, while perhaps just as often we have failed to deter as desired and have become embroiled in a war we tried to prevent. Three of the failures of this century are seen in the onset of World War II, the Korean War, and Serbia. Three successes can be seen in the Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the threat that China would attack Taiwan.
The question of whether World War II was avoidable or inevitable has been debated for decades, but clearly the victorious side sought to deter Germany from undertaking any further expansionist policies. Some believe that the war would have been avoidable had the victorious forces treated Germany differently at the end of World War I. The policy of appeasement undertaken by Britain in the 1930s is also often cited as a policy that, had it been different, might have led to a different outcome.
A.J.P. Taylor writes: "The Second World War was, in large part, a repeat performance of the first" (Taylor 18). The end of the First World War was an occasion for the victors to try to assure themselves that Germany could never wage war again. The Germans were forced to surrender large amounts of war material, to withdraw their forces behind the Rhine, and to hand over their fleet for internment. The armistice was an occasion for the Allies to change the shape of Europe and to shift power away from Germany: "They were anxious to ensure that the German nation acknowledged defeat..." (Taylor 23). Taylor states that the Allies did not accomplish their task, for the treaty and other conditions, while they seemed to force Germany to acknowledge defeat, als...