Politics by many other means: The comparative strategic advantages of operational domains

ABSTRACT

The land, sea, air, space, and cyber domains have distinct operational characteristics. Specialization in the means of using or threatening force is not just a technical issue because choices to use different kinds of military instruments have political consequences. Conventional and nuclear capabilities in these domains have comparative advantages and disadvantages for three general types of strategy – coercion, warfighting, and deception. More complex strategies that cross or combine domains may achieve force-multiplying synergies or create significant trade-offs that affect military and political performance. This article describes the strategic constraints and opportunities posed by specialized force structures.

KEYWORDS:

• Strategy
• technology
• cross-domain deterrence
• military operations
• military specialization

Acknowledgements

Jon R. Lindsay is Assistant Professor at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto. Erik Gartzke is Professor of Political Science at the University of California, San Diego and Director of the Center for Peace and Security Studies (cPASS). This research was supported by the Department of Defense Minerva Initiative (Office of Naval Research Grant N00014-14-1-0071). The authors have benefited immensely from conversations with contributors to their volume, Cross-Domain Deterrence: Strategy in an Era of Complexity (Oxford University Press, 2019).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ Carl von Clausewitz, On War, trans. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976), 87.

² Clausewitz, 81.

³ Clausewitz, 84.

⁴ Clausewitz, 285.

⁵ Clausewitz, 287.

⁶ Julian Stafford Corbett, Some Principles of Maritime Strategy (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1911), 45.

⁷ William J. Lynn III, ‘Defending a New Domain: The Pentagon’s Cyberstrategy,’ Foreign Affairs 89/5 (2010), 97–108.

⁸ North Atlantic Treaty Organization, ‘NATO Cyber Defence Factsheet,’ February 2018, https://www.nato.int/nato_static_fl2014/assets/pdf/pdf_2018_02/20180213_1802-factsheet-cyber-defence-en.pdf.

⁹ Jon R. Lindsay and Erik Gartzke, eds., Cross-Domain Deterrence: Strategy in an Era of Complexity (New York: Oxford University Press 2019).

¹⁰ U.S. Army, ‘The U.S. Army in Multi-Domain Operations 2028,’ TRADOC Pamphlet (Fort Eustis, VA: U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, 6 December 2018).

¹¹ Clausewitz, On War, 285.

¹² Classic works include Alfred Thayer Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660–1783 (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co. 1890); H. J. Mackinder, ‘The Geographical Pivot of History,’ The Geographical Journal 23/4 (1904), 421–37; Nicholas J. Spykman, ‘Geography and Foreign Policy, I,’ The American Political Science Review 32/1 (1938), 28–50, https://doi.org/10.2307/1949029. Modern extensions include Robert J. Art, ‘Geopolitics Updated: The Strategy of Selective Engagement,’ International Security 23/3 (1998), 79–113; Robert S. Ross, ‘The Geography of the Peace: East Asia in the Twenty-First Century,’ International Security 23/4 (1999), 81–118; Barry R. Posen, ‘Command of the Commons: The Military Foundation of U.S. Hegemony,’ International Security 28/1 (2003), 5–46; Jack S. Levy and William R. Thompson, ‘Balancing on Land and at Sea: Do States Ally against the Leading Global Power?,’ International Security 35/1 (1 July 2010), 7–43.

¹³ Extended reviews include Beatrice Heuser, The Evolution of Strategy: Thinking War from Antiquity to the Present (New York: Cambridge University Press 2010); Lawrence Freedman, Strategy: A History (New York: Oxford University Press 2013).

¹⁴ There are exceptions, of course, notably J.C. Wylie, Military Strategy: A General Theory of Power Control, ed. John B. Hattendorf (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press 1989). See also the recent special issue in this journal introduced by Todd S. Sechser, Neil Narang, and Caitlin Talmadge, ‘Emerging Technologies and Strategic Stability in Peacetime, Crisis, and War,’ Journal of Strategic Studies 42/6 (19 September 2019), 727–35. Note also that our emphasis is on the strategic utility of different types of military forces rather than the different organizational cultures of military services, i.e., Carl H. Builder, The Masks of War: American Military Styles in Strategy and Analysis (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press 1989).

¹⁵ Clausewitz, On War, 87, 89. See also Alan Beyerchen, ‘Clausewitz, Nonlinearity, and the Unpredictability of War,’ International Security 17/3 (1992), 59–90; Thomas Waldman, War, Clausewitz and the Trinity (New York: Routledge 2016).

¹⁶ Overviews include Robert Powell, ‘Bargaining Theory and International Conflict,’ Annual Review of Political Science 5/1 (2002), 1–30; Dan Reiter, ‘Exploring the Bargaining Model of War,’ Perspectives on Politics 1/01 (2003), 27–43; Tami Davis Biddle, ‘Coercion Theory: A Basic Introduction for Practitioners,’ Texas National Security Review 3/2 (20 February 2020).

¹⁷ Harold D. Lasswell, Politics: Who Gets What, When, How (New York: Whittlesey House 1936).

¹⁸ James D. Fearon, ‘Rationalist Explanations for War,’ International Organization 49/3 (1995), 379–414.

¹⁹ Geoffrey Blainey, Causes of War, 3rd Ed. (New York: Simon and Schuster 1988); Erik Gartzke, ‘War Is in the Error Term,’ International Organization 53/03 (1999), 567–87; Adam Meirowitz and Anne E. Sartori, ‘Strategic Uncertainty as a Cause of War,’ Quarterly Journal of Political Science 3/4 (31 December 2008), 327–52; Branislav L. Slantchev and Ahmer Tarar, ‘Mutual Optimism as a Rationalist Explanation of War,’ American Journal of Political Science 55/1 (1 January 2011), 135–48; Kristopher W. Ramsay, ‘Information, Uncertainty, and War,’ Annual Review of Political Science 20/1 (2017).

²⁰ Thomas C. Schelling, Arms and Influence: With a New Preface and Afterword (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press 2008), chap. 2; Robert Jervis, The Logic of Images in International Relations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 1970); James D. Fearon, ‘Signaling Foreign Policy Interests: Tying Hands versus Sinking Costs,’ The Journal of Conflict Resolution 41/1 (1 February 1997), 68–90.

²¹ R. Harrison Wagner, ‘Bargaining and War,’ American Journal of Political Science 44/3 (2000), 469–84; Branislav L. Slantchev, Military Threats: The Costs of Coercion and the Price of Peace (New York: Cambridge University Press 2011).

²² Clausewitz, On War, 585.

²³ Clausewitz, 177.

²⁴ Inter alia, Barry Posen, The Sources of Military Doctrine: France, Britain, and Germany between the World Wars (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press 1984), 13; Richard K. Betts, ‘Is Strategy an Illusion?,’ International Security 25/2 (2000), 5–50. War colleges often differentiate ‘ways’ and ‘means’ to distinguish policies and instruments, but here we will consider the concept of ‘means’ as generally as possible to encompass force structure, posture, and employment.

²⁵ Schelling, Arms and Influence, 3.

²⁶ Schelling, Arms and Influence. On the variety of coercive strategies see Robert J. Art and Kelly M Greenhill, ‘Coercion: An Analytical Overview,’ in Kelly M. Greenhill and Peter J. P. Krause (ed.), Coercion: The Power to Hurt in International Politics (New York: Oxford University Press 2018), 3–32.

²⁷ Fearon, ‘Signaling Foreign Policy Interests.’

²⁸ For further discussion of the distinct strategy of deception see Erik Gartzke and Jon R. Lindsay, ‘Weaving Tangled Webs: Offense, Defense, and Deception in Cyberspace,’ Security Studies 24/2 (2015), 316–48.

²⁹ David Kahn, ‘An Historical Theory of Intelligence,’ Intelligence and National Security 16/3 (1 September 2001), 79–92.

³⁰ Under certain restrictive conditions clandestine capabilities can be revealed for strategic communication; see Austin Carson and Keren Yarhi-Milo, ‘Covert Communication: The Intelligibility and Credibility of Signaling in Secret,’ Security Studies 26/1 (2017), 124–56; Michael Poznansky and Evan Perkoski, ‘Rethinking Secrecy in Cyberspace: The Politics of Voluntary Attribution,’ Journal of Global Security Studies 3/4 (1 October 2018), 402–16; Brendan Rittenhouse Green and Austin Long, ‘Conceal or Reveal? Managing Clandestine Military Capabilities in Peacetime Competition,’ International Security 44/3 (1 January 2020), 48–83.

³¹ We do not consider the cyber ‘domain’ to be a separate ‘virtual’ geographical space but rather the information infrastructure that enables command and control in any physical environment. Territorial metaphors about ‘cyberspace’ are extremely problematic, as discussed by Jordan Branch, ‘What’s in a Name? Metaphors and Cybersecurity’ (Typescript, 2019).

³² The interdisciplinary field of Science, Technology, and Society has marshalled sustained criticism on technological determinism, e.g., Wiebe E Bijker et al., eds., The Social Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology (Cambridge, MA: MIT press 1987); Merritt Roe Smith and Leo Marx, eds., Does Technology Drive History? The Dilemma of Technological Determinism (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press 1994); Geoffrey L. Herrera, Technology and International Transformation: The Railroad, the Atom Bomb, and the Politics of Technological Change (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press 2006).

³³ While technology and geography do not determine, they do shape and channel. See, inter alia, Lewis Mumford, Technics and Civilization (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 2010); Langdon Winner, Autonomous Technology: Technics-out-of-Control as a Theme in Political Thought (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press 1977); William H. McNeill, The Pursuit of Power: Technology, Armed Force, and Society since A.D. 1000 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1982); Allan Dafoe, ‘On Technological Determinism: A Typology, Scope Conditions, and a Mechanism,’ Science, Technology, & Human Values 40/6 (1 November 2015), 1047–76.

³⁴ Daniel W Drezner, ‘Economic Sanctions in Theory and Practice: How Smart Are They?’ in Kelly M. Greenhill and Peter Krause (ed.), Coercion: The Power to Hurt in International Politics (New York: Oxford University Press 2018), 251–70; Kelly M. Greenhill, ‘Asymmetric Advantage: Weaponizing People as Nonmilitary Instruments of Cross-Domain Coercion,’ in Jon R. Lindsay and Erik Gartzke (ed.), Cross-Domain Deterrence: Strategy in an Era of Complexity (New York: Oxford University Press 2019), 259–89.

³⁵ In our own terms, we have traded efficiency for effectiveness in this article, but we hope to preserve some credibility!

³⁶ Slantchev, Military Threats; Michael Allen Hunzeker and Alexander Lanoszka, ‘Landpower and American Credibility,’ Parameters 45/4 (2015), 17–26; Erik Gartzke and Koji Kagotani, ‘Being There: U.S. Troop Deployments, Force Posture and Alliance Reliability’ (Working Paper, 2017); Bryan Frederick et al., Understanding the Deterrent Impact of U.S. Overseas Forces (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation 2020).

³⁷ Schelling, Arms and Influence, 47.

³⁸ John J. Mearsheimer, Conventional Deterrence (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press 1985). See also Cathal Nolan, The Allure of Battle: A History of How Wars Have Been Won and Lost (New York: Oxford University Press 2017). We are grateful to a reviewer for pointing out that we are talking about the American distinction between attrition and maneuver here rather than the Prussian distinction between attrition and annihilation, which do not necessarily overlap.

³⁹ Russell F. Weigley, The American Way of War: A History of United States Military Strategy and Policy (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press 1973); Alex Roland, ‘Technology, Ground Warfare, and Strategy: The Paradox of the American Experience,’ Journal of Military History 55/4 (1994), 447–67.

⁴⁰ Stephen D. Biddle, Military Power: Explaining Victory and Defeat in Modern Battle (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 2004).

⁴¹ Clausewitz, On War, 113–21.

⁴² Stephen Biddle, ‘Speed Kills? Reassessing the Role of Speed, Precision, and Situation Awareness in the Fall of Saddam,’ Journal of Strategic Studies 30/1 (2007), 3–46.

⁴³ William H. McRaven, Spec Ops: Case Studies in Special Operations Warfare: Theory and Practice (New York: Presidio Press 1995).

⁴⁴ See for example, Sean Naylor, Not a Good Day to Die: The Untold Story of Operation Anaconda (New York: Penguin 2005).

⁴⁵ U. S. Army, FM 3–24: Counterinsurgency (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office 2006); David H. Ucko, The New Counterinsurgency Era: Transforming the U.S. Military for Modern Wars (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press 2009).

⁴⁶ Paul M. Kennedy, The Rise And Fall of British Naval Mastery, Revised (London: Penguin Random House 2017).

⁴⁷ Francis Bacon, Essays, Civil and Moral: And The New Atlantis (New York: P.F. Collier & Son 1909), 89.

⁴⁸ Hugh White, ‘Losing the War in an Afternoon: Jutland 1916,’ The Strategist (Autralian Strategic Policy Institute, 13 May 2016).

⁴⁹ John J Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: Norton 2001), 114–28.

⁵⁰ Levy and Thompson, ‘Balancing on Land and at Sea.’

⁵¹ Corbett, Some Principles of Maritime Strategy, 52–59.

⁵² This argument is developed further with supporting empirical data in Erik Gartzke and Jon R. Lindsay, ‘The Influence of Seapower on Politics: Domain- and Platform-Specific Attributes of Material Capabilities,’ Security Studies (Forthcoming).

⁵³ Erik Gartzke, Jeffrey M. Kaplow, and Rupal N. Mehta, ‘The Determinants of Nuclear Force Structure,’ Journal of Conflict Resolution 58/3 (2014), 481–508.

⁵⁴ Rupal N. Mehta, ‘Extended Deterrence and Assurance in Multiple Domains,’ in Jon R. Lindsay and Erik Gartzke (ed.), Cross-Domain Deterrence: Strategy in an Era of Complexity (New York: Oxford University Press 2019).

⁵⁵ In this regard, surface-to-air missiles may be considered disposable unmanned aircraft tailored for the mission of aerial denial. SAMs are a cross-domain response to the threat posed by the air domain to the land domain.

⁵⁶ Robert Anthony Pape, Bombing to Win: Air Power and Coercion in War (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press 1996); Tami Davis Biddle, Rhetoric and Reality in Air Warfare: The Evolution of British and American Ideas about Strategic Bombing, 1914–1945 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 2002); Phil M. Haun, Coercion, Survival, and War: Why Weak States Resist the United States (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press 2015); Abigail Post, ‘Flying to Fail: Costly Signals and Air Power in Crisis Bargaining,’ Journal of Conflict Resolution 63/4 (2019), 869–95.

⁵⁷ Phil Haun and Colin Jackson, ‘Breaker of Armies: Air Power in the Easter Offensive and the Myth of Linebacker I and II in the Vietnam War,’ International Security 40/3 (1 January 2016), 139–78; Phil Haun, ‘Air Power Versus Ground Forces – Deterrence at the Operational Level of War,’ in Jon R. Lindsay and Erik Gartzke (ed.), Cross-Domain Deterrence: Strategy in an Era of Complexity (New York: Oxford University Press 2019).

⁵⁸ Gregory S. McNeal, ‘Targeted Killing and Accountability,’ Georgetown Law Journal 102 (March 2014), 681–794; Jason Lyall, ‘Bombing to Lose? Airpower and the Dynamics of Violence in Counterinsurgency Wars,’ Working Paper (Social Science Research Network 3 September 2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2422170.

⁵⁹ James Igoe Walsh, ‘The Effectiveness of Drone Strikes in Counterinsurgency and Counterterrorism Campaigns’ (Carlisle Barracks, PA: Strategic Studies Institute 26 September 2013), http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/display.cfm?pubID=1167; Patrick B. Johnston and Anoop K. Sarbahi, ‘The Impact of US Drone Strikes on Terrorism in Pakistan,’ International Studies Quarterly 60/2 (2016), 203–19; Aqil Shah, ‘Do U.S. Drone Strikes Cause Blowback? Evidence from Pakistan and Beyond,’ International Security 42/04 (1 May 2018), 47–84.

⁶⁰ Erik Gartzke and James Igoe Walsh, ‘The Drawbacks of Drones: The Effects of UAVs on Militant Violence in Pakistan,’ Journal of Peace Research, Forthcoming; Erik Gartzke, ‘Blood and Robots: How Remotely Piloted Vehicles and Related Technologies Affect the Politics of Violence,’ Journal of Strategic Studies 0/0 (3 October 2019), 1–31. For an alternative view that overweights the power to impose costs and underweights the willingness to absorb them, cf. Amy Zegart, ‘Cheap Fights, Credible Threats: The Future of Armed Drones and Coercion,’ Journal of Strategic Studies 43/1 (28 February 2018), 6–46.

⁶¹ Classic statements of nuclear deterrence theory include Bernard Brodie et al., The Absolute Weapon: Atomic Power and World Order (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co. 1946); Herman Kahn, On Thermonuclear War (Princeton University Press 1960); Schelling, Arms and Influence. For a review of this vast literature see Lawrence Freedman, Deterrence (Cambridge: Polity Press,2004).

⁶² Inter alia, Robert Jervis, The Meaning of the Nuclear Revolution: Statecraft and the Prospect of Armageddon (Ithaca: Cornell University Press 1989); Charles L. Glaser, Analyzing Strategic Nuclear Policy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 1990); Charles L. Glaser and Steve Fetter, ‘Should the United States Reject MAD? Damage Limitation and U.S. Nuclear Strategy toward China,’ International Security 41/ 1 (1 July 2016), 49–98, https://doi.org/10.1162/ISEC_a_00248.

⁶³ The precedent of nuclear non-use appears to have a weak but nonzero effect on public preferences, which may not reflect policymaker preferences: Daryl G. Press, Scott D. Sagan, and Benjamin A. Valentino, ‘Atomic Aversion: Experimental Evidence on Taboos, Traditions, and the Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons,’ American Political Science Review 107/1 (February 2013), 188–206.

⁶⁴ Todd S. Sechser and Matthew Fuhrmann, Nuclear Weapons and Coercive Diplomacy (New York: Cambridge University Press 2017). Cf. Matthew Kroenig, The Logic of American Nuclear Strategy: Why Strategic Superiority Matters (New York: Oxford University Press 2018).

⁶⁵ Robert Jervis, Richard Ned Lebow, and Janice Gross Stein, Psychology and Deterrence (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press 1985).

⁶⁶ Glenn H. Snyder, ‘The Balance of Power and the Balance of Terror,’ in Paul Seabury (ed.), The Balance of Power (San Francisco, CA: Chandler 1965).

⁶⁷ ‘Flexible Response’ was never actually implemented as an operational nuclear doctrine during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations according to Francis J. Gavin, Nuclear Statecraft: History and Strategy in America’s Atomic Age (Ithaca: Cornell University Press 2012), chap. 2.

⁶⁸ Inter alia, Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G. Press, ‘The End of MAD? The Nuclear Dimension of U.S. Primacy,’ International Security 30/4 (1 April 2006), 7–44; Austin Long and Brendan Rittenhouse Green, ‘Stalking the Secure Second Strike: Intelligence, Counterforce, and Nuclear Strategy,’ Journal of Strategic Studies 38/1–2 (2014), 38–73; Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G. Press, ‘The New Era of Counterforce: Technological Change and the Future of Nuclear Deterrence,’ International Security 41/4 (1 April 2017), 9–49; Kroenig, The Logic of American Nuclear Strategy.

⁶⁹ A single weapon test by China in 2007 and an accidental satellite collision in 2009 increased the amount of trackable space debris by 40%; see Nicholas L. Johnson, ‘Orbital Debris: The Growing Threat to Space Operations’ (33rd Annual Guidance and Control Conference, Breckenridge, CO, 2010), https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=20100004498.

⁷⁰ Benjamin Bahney and Jonathan Pearl, ‘Why Creating a Space Force Changes Nothing,’ Foreign Affairs, 26 March 2019.

⁷¹ James Clay Moltz, Crowded Orbits: Conflict and Cooperation in Space (New York: Columbia University Press 2014).

⁷² The metaphor of space as a global littoral area is developed by Bleddyn E. Bowen, War in Space: Strategy, Spacepower, Geopolitics (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press 2020).

⁷³ Daniel Deudney, Whole Earth Security: A Geopolitics of Peace, Worldwatch Paper 55 (Washington, DC: Worldwatch Institute 1983).

⁷⁴ This is especially true of the operational (theater) level of war, but tactical detection of individual platforms from space became increasingly feasible throughout the Cold War. See Norman Friedman, Seapower and Space: From the Dawn of the Missile Age to Net-Centric Warfare (Naval Institute Press 2000).

⁷⁵ Benjamin Bahney, Jonathan Pearl, and Michael Markey, ‘Anti-Satellite Weapons and the Instability of Deterrence,’ in Jon R. Lindsay and Erik Gartzke (ed.), Cross-Domain Deterrence: Strategy in an Era of Complexity (New York: Oxford University Press 2019).

⁷⁶ An excellent primer on ASAT operations, still relevant despite considerable technological change and thus reflecting the important physical constraints on the space domain, is Ashton B. Carter, ‘Satellites and Anti-Satellites: The Limits of the Possible,’ International Security 10/4 (1986), 46–98. On Cold War stability see Paul B. Stares, The Militarization of Space: U.S. Policy, 1945–1984 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press 1985); James Clay Moltz, The Politics of Space Security: Strategic Restraint and the Pursuit of National Interests (Stanford, Calif: Stanford Security Studies 2008).

⁷⁷ Bryan R. Early and Erik Gartzke, ‘Spying from Space: Reconnaissance Satellites and Interstate Disputes’ (Typescript, 20 August 2017).

⁷⁸ David C. Gompert and Phillip C. Saunders, The Paradox of Power: Sino-American Strategic Restraint in an Age of Vulnerability (Washington DC: National Defense University Press 2011).

⁷⁹ Laura DeNardis, The Global War for Internet Governance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014); Nazli Choucri and David D. Clark, International Relations in the Cyber Age: The Co-Evolution Dilemma (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press 2018).

⁸⁰ Sean Bodmer et al., Reverse Deception: Organized Cyber Threat Counter-Exploitation (New York: McGraw-Hill 2012); Richard Bejtlich, The Practice of Network Security Monitoring: Understanding Incident Detection and Monitoring (San Francisco: No Starch Press 2013).

⁸¹ Tim Benbow, The Magic Bullet? Understanding the Revolution in Military Affairs (London: Brassey’s 2004); Jacquelyn Schneider, ‘The Capability/Vulnerability Paradox and Military Revolutions: Implications for Computing, Cyber, and the Onset of War,’ Journal of Strategic Studies 42/6 (19 September 2019), 841–63; Jon R. Lindsay, Information Technology and Military Power (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press 2020).

⁸² Thomas Rid, Cyber War Will Not Take Place (London: Hurst 2013); Joshua Rovner, ‘Cyber War as an Intelligence Contest,’ War on the Rocks (blog), 16 September 2019, https://warontherocks.com/2019/09/cyber-war-as-an-intelligence-contest/.

⁸³ Martin C. Libicki, Cyberdeterrence and Cyberwar (Santa Monica, CA: RAND 2009); Tim Stevens, ‘A Cyberwar of Ideas? Deterrence and Norms in Cyberspace,’ Contemporary Security Policy 33/1 (1 April 2012), 148–70; Joseph S. Nye, ‘Deterrence and Dissuasion in Cyberspace,’ International Security 41/3 (1 January 2017), 44–71; Erica D. Borghard and Shawn W. Lonergan, ‘The Logic of Coercion in Cyberspace,’ Security Studies 26/3 (3 July 2017), 452–81.

⁸⁴ Jon R. Lindsay, ‘Restrained by Design: The Political Economy of Cybersecurity,’ Digital Policy, Regulation and Governance 19/ 6 (2017), 493–514; Jon R. Lindsay and Erik Gartzke, ‘Coercion through Cyberspace: The Stability-Instability Paradox Revisited,’ in Kelly M. Greenhill and Peter Krause (ed.), Coercion: The Power to Hurt in International Politics (New York: Oxford University Press 2018), 179–203; Brandon Valeriano, Benjamin M. Jensen, and Ryan C. Maness, Cyber Strategy: The Evolving Character of Power and Coercion (Oxford University Press 2018).

⁸⁵ United States, ‘National Security Strategy of the United States of America’ (White House Office December 2017), 7, https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/NSS-Final-12-18-2017-0905.pdf.

⁸⁶ State Council Information Office, ‘China’s Military Strategy’ (Beijing: The State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China May 2015), http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2015-05/26/content_20820628.htm.

⁸⁷ Barry R. Posen, Inadvertent Escalation: Conventional War and Nuclear Risks (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press 1991); Avery Goldstein, ‘First Things First: The Pressing Danger of Crisis Instability in U.S.-China Relations,’ International Security 37/ 4 (2013), 49–89; Caitlin Talmadge, ‘Would China Go Nuclear? Assessing the Risk of Chinese Nuclear Escalation in a Conventional War with the United States,’ International Security 41/ 4 (1 April 2017), 50–92; James M. Acton, ‘Escalation through Entanglement: How the Vulnerability of Command-and-Control Systems Raises the Risks of an Inadvertent Nuclear War,’ International Security 43/ 1 (1 August 2018), 56–99.

⁸⁸ Schneider, ‘The Capability/Vulnerability Paradox and Military Revolutions.’

⁸⁹ Erik Gartzke and Jon R. Lindsay, ‘Thermonuclear Cyberwar,’ Journal of Cybersecurity 3/1 (February 2017), 37–48.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Department of Defense Minerva Initiative and the Office of Naval Research [N00014-14-1-0071].

Notes on contributors

Jon R. Lindsay

Jon R. Lindsay is Assistant Professor at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy and the Department of Political at the University of Toronto.

Erik Gartzke

Erik Gartzke is Professor of Political Science at the University of California, San Diego and Director of the Center for Peace and Security Studies (cPASS).