Varieties of Assurance

Abstract

Strategies that seek to assure other states about their security have the potential to reduce international conflict and dissuade states from seeking nuclear weapons. Yet, relative to other tools of statecraft such as deterrence, assurance remains understudied. To facilitate further empirical research on assurance strategies, this article identifies variations in the terminology scholars and policymakers have used to refer to such strategies and describes the concept of assurance associated with each variant. It seeks to clarify and standardize usage and show that there is a general, overarching concept of assurance that links the different variants. It also summarizes existing bodies of empirical research that are relevant to assessing the utility of different forms of assurance.

Key Words:

• Assurance
• Reassurance
• Deterrence
• Influence Strategies
• Nuclear Nonproliferation

Notes

¹For an analysis of the role of assurance in deterring intra-state conflict, see Stephen M. Saideman and Marie-Joëlle Zahar (eds), Intra-State Conflict, Governments and Security: Dilemmas of Deterrence and Assurance (London: Routledge 2008).

²The literature dealing with deterrence is far too vast to cite even just the ‘greatest hits’ in a reference note. For good overviews of the empirical research on deterrence, see Paul K. Huth, ‘Deterrence and International Conflict: Empirical Findings and Theoretical Debates’, Annual Review of Political Science, Vol. 2 (1999), 25–48; Patrick M. Morgan, Deterrence Now (Cambridge, UK: CUP 2003); and Vesna Danilovic and Joe Clare, ‘Deterrence and Crisis Bargaining’, in Robert A. Denemark (ed.), The International Studies Encyclopedia, (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing 2010), <www.isacompendium.com/subscriber/tocnode?id=g9781444336597_chunk_g97814443365976_ss1-5>.

³Alexander L. George and William E. Simons, The Limits of Coercive Diplomacy, 2nd ed. (Boulder, CO: Westview Press 1994); Robert J. Art and Patrick M. Cronin (eds), The United States and Coercive Diplomacy (Washington DC: United States Institute of Peace 2003); Peter Viggo Jakobsen, ‘Coercive Diplomacy’, in Alan Collins (ed.), Contemporary Security Studies (New York: OUP 2007), 225–47.

⁴Here again the literature is too vast to cite comprehensively. Two widely cited studies of economic sanctions, which reach contrasting conclusions, are Gary Clyde Hufbauer, Jeffrey J. Schott, Kimberly Ann Elliott and Barbara Oegg, Economic Sanctions Reconsidered, 3rd ed. (Washington DC: Peterson Institute for International Economics 2007) and Robert A. Pape, ‘Why Economic Sanctions Do Not Work’, International Security 22/2 (1997), 90–136.

⁵For a review, see Han Dorussen, ‘Mixing Carrots with Sticks: Evaluating the Effectiveness of Positive Incentives’, Journal of Peace Research 38/2 (2001), 251–62. For a study that focuses on nonproliferation, see Thomas Bernauer and Dieter Ruloff (eds), The Politics of Positive Incentives in Arms Control (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press 1999).

⁶Richard N. Haass and Meghan L. O'Sullivan, Honey and Vinegar: Incentives, Sanctions, and Foreign Policy (Washington DC: Brookings Institution Press 2000).

⁷Joseph S. Nye Jr, Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics (Boulder, CO: Perseus Books 2004). For an effort to empirically evaluate the effectiveness of soft power, see Matthew Kroenig, Melissa McAdam and Steven Weber, ‘Taking Soft Power Seriously’, Comparative Strategy 29/5 (2010), 412–31.

⁸I have a forthcoming study that attempts to take some steps in this direction, focusing on state decisions about whether to seek nuclear arms. See Jeffrey W. Knopf (ed.), Security Assurances and Nuclear Nonproliferation (Stanford, CA: Stanford UP forthcoming).

⁹Thomas C. Schelling, Arms and Influence (New Haven: Yale UP 1966), 74. Schelling actually made this point even earlier, but without terming it ‘assurance’. In The Strategy of Conflict, he wrote, ‘the threat of massive destruction may deter an enemy only if there is a corresponding implicit promise of non-destruction in the event he complies…’ (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP 1960), 6–7.

¹⁰Todd Sechser, ‘Goliath's Curse: Coercive Threats and Asymmetric Power’, International Organization 64/4 (2010), 627–60.

¹¹Bruce W. Jentleson and Christopher A. Whytock, ‘Who “Won” Libya? The Force-Diplomacy Debate and its Implications for Theory and Policy’, International Security 30/3 (2005/06), 47–86.

¹²Future efforts to use coercive diplomacy to get authoritarian regimes to abandon WMD programs may be made more difficult by the Libyan example however. Authoritarian leaders may fear that without WMD they are more likely to be subject to military intervention in the event of a popular uprising against their rule.

¹³Robert L. Jervis, ‘The Confrontation between Iraq and the US: Implications for the Theory and Practice of Deterrence’, European Journal of International Relations 9/2 (2003), 325.

¹⁴US Department of Defense, Quadrennial Defense Review Report (Washington DC: DoD 2001).

¹⁵US Department of Defense, Nuclear Posture Review Report (Washington DC: DoD 2010), <www.defense.gov/npr/>.

¹⁶Glenn H. Snyder, ‘The Security Dilemma in Alliance Politics’, World Politics 36/4 (1984), 461–95.

¹⁷Michael Howard, ‘Reassurance and Deterrence: Western Defense in the 1980s’, Foreign Affairs 61/2 (1982/83), 309–24.

¹⁸Instead, most of the literature seeks to explain state alliance choices, i.e. why states join the alliances they do. The most influential study in this field remains Stephen M. Walt, The Origins of Alliances (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP 1987). There is also a long-running stream of research that treats alliances as the independent variable and investigates whether they tend more to prevent war or to cause it. See for example Patricia A. Weitsman, Dangerous Alliances: Proponents of Peace, Weapons of War (Stanford: Stanford UP 2004).

¹⁹Good examples include Paul Huth and Bruce Russett, ‘What Makes Deterrence Work? Cases from 1900 to 1980’, World Politics 36/4 (1984), 496–526; and Vesna Danilovic, When the Stakes are High: Deterrence and Conflict among Major Powers (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press 2002).

²⁰David S. Yost, ‘Assurance and US Extended Deterrence in NATO’, International Affairs 85/4 (2009), 755–80; Clark A. Murdock and Jessica M. Yeats, Exploring the Nuclear Posture Implications of Extended Deterrence and Assurance (Washington DC: Center for Strategic & International Studies 2009), 5–15; James M. Acton, ‘Extended Deterrence and Communicating Resolve’, Strategic Insights 8/5 (2009), 5–15; Knopf, Security Assurances.

²¹Howard, ‘Reassurance and Deterrence’.

²²Richard Ned Lebow, ‘The Deterrrence Deadlock: Is There a Way Out?’ and ‘Conclusions’, in Robert Jervis, Richard Ned Lebow and Janice Gross Stein, Psychology and Deterrence (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins UP 1985), 180–202 and 203–32.

²³Charles E. Osgood, An Alternative to War or Surrender (Urbana: University of Illinois Press 1962); Amitai Etzioni, The Hard Way to Peace: A New Strategy (New York: The Crowell-Collier Press 1962).

²⁴Richard Ned Lebow and Janice Gross Stein, ‘Beyond Deterrence’, Journal of Social Issues 43/4 (1987), 5–71; Janice Stein, ‘Deterrence and Reassurance’, in Philip Tetlock et al. (eds), Behavior, Society and Nuclear War, vol. 2 (New York: Oxford UP 1991), 8–72; Richard Ned Lebow, ‘Deterrence and Reassurance: Lessons from the Cold War’, Global Dialogue 3/4 (2001), 119–32.

²⁵Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton: Princeton UP 1976), Ch. 3; Charles L. Glaser, ‘Political Consequences of Military Strategy: Expanding and Refining the Spiral and Deterrence Models’, World Politics 44/4 (1992), 497–538; Charles L. Glaser, Rational Theory of International Politics: The Logic of Competition and Cooperation (Princeton: Princeton UP 2010).

²⁶Jervis, Perception and Misperception, 84.

²⁷Robert Jervis, ‘Cooperation under the Security Dilemma’, World Politics 30/2 (1978), 167–214; Jack L. Snyder, ‘Perceptions of the Security Dilemma in 1914’, in Jervis et al., Psychology and Deterrence, 153–79; Glaser, ‘Political Consequences of Military Strategy’. Writing from a realist perspective, Michael Mastanduno also emphasizes the value of committing to multilateral institutions as a way to signal self-restraint and thereby convey reassurance to weaker states (‘Preserving the Unipolar Moment: Realist Theories and US Grand Strategy after the Cold War’, International Security 21/4 (1997), 49–88).

²⁸For an effort to integrate realist and psychological approaches to reassurance, see Paul Midford, ‘The Logic of Reassurance and Japan's Grand Strategy’, Security Studies 11/3 (2002), 1–43.

²⁹Lebow, ‘Conclusions’, 227.

³⁰Stein, ‘Deterrence and Reassurance’.

³¹Andrew H. Kydd, Trust and Mistrust in International Relations (Princeton: Princeton UP 2005).

³²Martin Patchen, Disputes between Nations: Coercion or Conciliation? (Durham, NC: Duke UP 1988), 285–90.

³³Deborah Welch Larson, ‘Crisis Prevention and the Austrian State Treaty’, International Organization 41/1 (1987), 27–60.

³⁴Richard A. Bitzinger, ‘Gorbachev and GRIT, 1985–1989: Did Arms Control Succeed Because of Unilateral Actions or in Spite of Them?’ Contemporary Security Policy 15/1 (1994), 68–79; Alan R. Collins, ‘GRIT, Gorbachev and the End of the Cold War’, Review of International Studies 24/2 (1998), 201–19.

³⁵Janice Gross Stein, ‘Image, Identity, and the Resolution of Violent Conflict’, in Chester A. Crocker, Fen Osler Hampson and Pamela Aall (eds), Turbulent Peace: The Challenges of Managing International Conflict (Washington DC: USIP Press 2001), 189–208.

³⁶Kydd, Trust and Mistrust, Ch. 8.

³⁷Evan Braden Montgomery, ‘Breaking Out of the Security Dilemma: Realism, Reassurance, and the Problem of Uncertainty’, International Security 31/2 (2006), 151–85.

³⁸Michael A. Glosny, ‘The Grand Strategies of Rising Powers: Reassurance, Coercion, and Balancing Responses’, PhD dissertation, MIT 2012; Jungsoo Kim, ‘Reassurance Strategy: Incentives for Use and Conditions for Success’, PhD dissertation, Naval Postgraduate School 2010.

³⁹I owe recognition of this fact to a discussion with Joshua Rovner.

⁴⁰Ariel Ilan Roth, ‘Reassurance: A Strategic Basis of US Support for Israel’, International Studies Perspectives 10/4 (2009), 378–93.

⁴¹If positive security assurances include more than just extended nuclear deterrence, then non-nuclear states could offer certain types of positive assurances as well.

⁴²Virginia I. Foran (ed.), Security Assurances: Implications for the NPT and Beyond (Washington DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace 1995), 4.

⁴³Michael O. Wheeler, ‘Positive and Negative Security Assurances’, Project on Rethinking Arms Control (PRAC) Paper No. 9 (College Park, MD: Center for International and Security Studies, University of Maryland 1994); George Bunn and Roland Timerbaev, ‘Security Assurances to Non-Nuclear-Weapon States: Possible Options for Change’, Programme for Promoting Nuclear Non-Proliferation, Issue Review 7 (1996), <www.ppnn.soton.ac.uk/ir07.pdf>.

⁴⁴Leonard S. Spector and Aubrie Ohlde, ‘Negative Security Assurances: Revisiting the Nuclear-Weapon-Free-Zone Option’, Arms Control Today 35/3 (2005), 13–19.

⁴⁵George Bunn and Jean du Preez, ‘More than Words: The Value of US Non-Nuclear-Use Promises’, Arms Control Today 37/6 (2007), 16–21.

⁴⁶US Department of Defense, Nuclear Posture Review Report (2010), 15.

⁴⁷Bunn and Timerbaev, ‘Security Assurances’; Thomas Graham and Leonor Tomero, ‘“Obligations for Us All”: NATO and Negative Security Assurances’, Disarmament Diplomacy 49 (2000), <www.acronym.org.uk/dd/dd49/49nato.htm>; Bunn and du Preez, ‘More than Words’.

⁴⁸Yost, ‘Assurance and US Extended Deterrence’; Murdock and Yeats, Exploring the Nuclear Posture Implications; Keith B. Payne, ‘On Nuclear Deterrence and Assurance’, Strategic Studies Quarterly 3/1 (2009), 43–80.

⁴⁹Joseph F. Pilat, ‘Reassessing Security Assurances in a Unipolar World’, Washington Quarterly 28/2 (2005), 159–70.

⁵⁰Sonali Singh and Christopher R. Way, ‘The Correlates of Nuclear Proliferation: A Quantitative Test’, Journal of Conflict Resolution 48/6 (2004), 859–85; Dong-Joon Jo and Erik Gartzke, ‘Determinants of Nuclear Weapons Proliferation’, Journal of Conflict Resolution 51/1 (2007), 167–94; Matthew Kroenig, ‘Importing the Bomb: Sensitive Nuclear Assistance and Nuclear Proliferation’, Journal of Conflict Resolution 53/2 (2009), 161–80; Philipp C. Bleek, ‘Why Do States Proliferate? Quantitative Analysis of the Exploration, Pursuit, and Acquisition of Nuclear Weapons’, in William Potter and Gaukhar Mukhatzhanova (eds), Forecasting Nuclear Proliferation in the 21st Century, Vol. 1 (Stanford: Stanford UP 2010), 159–92.

⁵¹Christopher Way and Karthika Sasikumar, ‘Leaders and Laggards: When and Why Do Countries Sign the NPT?’ Working Paper 16, Research Group in International Security (REGIS), McGill University and Université de Montreal (2004); Daniel Verdier, ‘Multilateralism, Bilateralism, and Exclusion in the Nuclear Proliferation Regime’, International Organization 67/3 (2008), 439–76.

⁵²Alexander H. Montgomery and Scott D. Sagan, ‘The Perils of Predicting Proliferation’, Journal of Conflict Resolution 53/2 (2009), 302–28.

⁵³Matthew Fuhrmann, ‘Spreading Temptation: Proliferation and Peaceful Nuclear Cooperation Agreements’, International Security 34/1 (2009), 7–41; Harald Müller and Andreas Schmidt, ‘The Little Known Story of De-Proliferation: Why States Give Up Nuclear Weapon Activities’, in Potter and Mukhatzhanova (eds), Forecasting Nuclear Proliferation in the 21st Century (Stanford: Stanford UP 2010), 124–58.

⁵⁴Jacques E.C. Hymans, ‘Theories of Nuclear Proliferation: The State of the Field’, Nonproliferation Review 13/3 (2006), 456.

⁵⁵Etel Solingen, Nuclear Logics: Contrasting Paths in East Asia and the Middle East (Princeton: Princeton UP 2007), 12–14, 25–7, 256.

⁵⁶T.V. Paul, Power versus Prudence: Why Nations Forgo Nuclear Weapons (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's UP 2000), 153–54.

⁵⁷Jacques E.C. Hymans, The Psychology of Nuclear Proliferation (Cambridge, UK: CUP 2006), 42–3, n79.

⁵⁸Maria Rost Rublee, Nonproliferation Norms: Why States Choose Nuclear Restraint (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press 2009), 202–3.

⁵⁹Ariel E. Levite, ‘Never Say Never Again: Nuclear Reversal Revisited’, International Security 27/3 (2002/03), 66.

⁶⁰Anthony DiFilippo, Japan's Nuclear Disarmament Policy and the US Security Umbrella (New York: Palgrave Macmillan 2006).

⁶¹Andrew B. Kennedy, ‘India's Nuclear Odyssey: Implicit Umbrellas, Diplomatic Disappointments, and the Bomb’, International Security 36/2 (2011), 120–53.

⁶²Bruno Tertrais, ‘Security Assurances and the Future of Proliferation’, in James J. Wirtz and Peter R. Lavoy (eds), Over the Horizon Proliferation Threats (Stanford: Stanford UP forthcoming).

⁶³Knopf, Security Assurances.

⁶⁴For preliminary evidence supporting such a conclusion, see Knopf, Security Assurances.