ABSTRACT
The war trap is the most immediate and urgent. The movement in technology in this area is so rapid that a strong case can be made that this is a problem which must be solved in this generation, for consequences of failure may be fatal. A strong case can be made for the proposition that war is essentially a phenomenon of the age of civilization and that it is inappropriate both to precivilized and postcivilized societies. It represents an interlude in man’s development, dated 3000 b.c. to, say, 2000 a.d. War is peculiarly a property of a system of deterrence under urban—that is, civilized—conditions. The cyclic character of war is clearly a product of a system of deterrence which will be stable for a while but will eventually break down into war. In the age of civilization war was a stable social institution, and for mankind as a whole, a tolerable one.
