The important point is that peace and war as facts differ formally rather than materially, and are distinguishable by their locus and implements rather than by their intrinsic qualities as human behavior. Peace, it would appear, is the aggregation of chronic, diffuse, unorganized domestic conflicts: war is conflict, acute, organized, unified and concentrated at the peripheries of a society’s habitat. (Kallen, 1939)
War and peace differ not in the goals pursued, only in the means used to attain them. (Barbera, 1973)
Clausewitz’s formula - war is the continuation of policy by other means - has been replaced by its opposite: policy is the continuation of war by other means. But these two formulas are, formally, equivalent. They both express the continuity of competition and the use of alternately violent and non-violent means towards ends which do not differ in essence. (Aron, 1966)
... the nature of war itself has changed. In particular there is no longer a dividing line between a state of peace and a state of war. (Eccles, 1965)
Behind both phenomena, war and peace, lies the same dimension of power. (Barbera, 1973)
Many political realists point out that the common basis of policy in both peace and war, namely the quest for power, makes them two inseparable parts of the same social activity. Blainey (1973)
contends that the causes of war and peace dovetail into one another: “War and peace are not separate compartments. Peace depends on threats and force; often peace is the crystallization of past force.” Or formulated most succinctly: “In a system of power politics, there is no difference in kind between peace and war”. (Schwartzenberger, 1950)
War is a means of achieving an end, a weapon which can be used for good or for bad purposes. Some of these purposes for which war has been used have been accepted by humanity as worthwhile ends: indeed, war performs functions which are essential in any human society. It has been used to settle disputes, to uphold rights, to remedy wrongs: and these are surely functions which must be served... One may say, without exaggeration, that no more stupid, brutal, wasteful or unfair method could ever have been imagined for such purposes, but this does not alter the situation. (Eagleton, 1948)
These formulations are reminiscent of Ambrose Bierce’s sardonic definition of “peace” as: “a period of cheating between two periods of fighting” (Devil’s Dictionary), or Orwell’s famous dictum from 1984: “Peace is War”.
Diametrically opposed to the vista of peace and war as a bipolar continuum is the view of a sharp and clear-cut borderline existing between the two conditions, thus implying a boundary-transgression in the transition from one state of affairs to the other. Brodie (1973), for example, states:
Although war represents human violence in its most intensive form, it is not simply human violence. It is something else besides, something with a distinctive and quite special configuration. The characteristics of this configuration cover a wide variety of phenomena, including the following: First, wars have tended, since antiquity, to have a clear and sharp beginning and an equally clear and sharp ending; and various ceremonials have been involved both in the initiation and the termination of war.
The most outspoken advocate, perhaps, of this view is Wells (1967), who succinctly affirms: “Notions of some limbo between war and peace are either contradictory or unintelligible”.
Or, as it was stated in classical times: “Inter bellum et pacem nihil medium”.