Submission through Strength?

FOR OVER THIRTEEN CENTURIES IN THE WESTERN WORLD, ‘Peace through Strength’ has been a slogan for emperors, kings, and presidents, embodying the urge to be stronger militarily than any potential enemy.
In recent American history, President Ronald Regan popularized the phrase and made it a plank of his ideological platform. Peace through Strength continues to be a slogan of the American Republican Party and like-minded groups. 

But there is a flip side to this coin. We ensure our peace by having a strong military that no one can dare attack us. In other words, those who might try to attack us must consider our military might before they dare. For all practical purposes, the principle in play here, for the potential adversaries, is not Peace through Strength, but Submission through Strength. Their submission, our strength. 

Nations of the world were horrified by the consequences of World War II, following the devastation of World War I. They envisioned a new world, a world in which nations would live in peace, regardless of their strength or size. With all its limitations, the United Nations aspired to become a vehicle for keeping peace among the strong and the weak, not the submission of the weak to the strong. 

Article 1.1 of Chapter 1 of the United Nations Charter says:

1. To maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace;

There is no reference to a strong military to maintain peace, only to “justice and international law”.

It is not a far fetched conclusion that what we, and powerful nations of the world, seek is not (our) peace through (our) strength, but (their) submission through (our) strength, in contradiction to a commitment to “suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace,…”

It follows that the slogan “Peace through Strength” is hypocritical in the least, in violation of our commitment though the United Nations “to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace,…”

What the mighty nations of the world, such as the United States, are truly seeking is not “Peace through Strength” but “Submission through Strength.”

Let’s just admit it so we can sleep peacefully at night.