ABSTRACT
An understanding of the quantitative and qualitative factors that shape the military balance can provide considerable insight into the factors that must be considered in moving from peace to arms control, or the possible war fighting consequences if peace fails. At the same time, no assessment of total national military strength—regardless of the mix of quantitative strength and qualitative factors used in the assessment—can accurately measure the military balance, describe its impact on the peace process, or predict the nature and outcome of future wars. Aggression, deterrence, and defense are not products of how leaders and nations calculate total national force strengths. They are products of different calculations about the outcome of war fighting in given contingencies. The outcome of publicized wars has had little to do with prewar force ratios and there has been little correlation between the use of modern technology and the number of casualties in a conflict.
