Deterrence and overseas stability

Abstract

The use of conventional armed forces in a deterrent role merits close consideration. Instability in weak or failing states can have global ramifications, while efforts to build stability take time. In principle, conventional deterrence can be used to buy the time required for such stabilization efforts. Attempts at deterrence will, however, need to overcome credibility problems stemming from the technical limitations associated with conventional armed forces, and with the likely requirement for multiple external actors to deter multiple intrastate audiences. While deterrence might work under certain circumstances, it will not play as central a role in strategy as it did during the Cold War.

Keywords::

• deterrence
• stabilization
• conventional forces

Notes

^1. ‘Building Stability Overseas Strategy’.

^2. ‘Monocle Soft Power Survey – 2012.’

^3. ‘Building Stability Overseas Strategy’, 23, 31–2; NATO, Active Engagement, Modern Defence, 19–22.

^4. An early distinction along these lines was made by Snyder, Deterrence and Defense, 14–16.

^5. For a valuable review of the literature on conventional deterrence, which addresses many of the issues discussed in this article, see Rhodes, ‘Conventional Deterrence’.

^6.Gallois, Stratégie de l'âge nucléaire, 151–2.

^7.Freedman, Deterrence, 28. A dramatic depiction of communication failure is provided by Stanley Kubrick's film Dr Strangelove, in which the Soviet Union seeks to solve the problem of political will associated with making nuclear threats. It does so by designing a ‘doomsday machine’ (the original idea apparently came from Herman Kahn), which retaliates automatically in the event of an attack and cannot be tampered with once activated. The machine, in other words, provides a technical fix to the problem of political credibility. Unfortunately the Kremlin had yet to inform Washington about the machine, when a US bomber accidentally attacked the Soviet Union, thereby precipitating nuclear war despite both sides' efforts to the contrary.

^8.Crawford, Pivotal Deterrence, 10–12.

^9. An important exception here is Thomas Schelling who argued for the value of ambiguity in helping to make nuclear threats credible. As we shall see later, nuclear threats can lack political credibility if enacting them will elicit retaliation in kind. Schelling argued that the effects of chance and uncertainty could exert an important influence over the likelihood of nuclear use in a crisis situation, that a deterrer's weapons might even be used despite firm intentions to the contrary. It would therefore benefit credibility, he concluded, to frame nuclear threats in terms of what might happen as opposed to what would happen. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, 187–203.

^10. In his most recent version of this argument, Waltz claimed that the acquisition of nuclear weapons by Iran would benefit regional stability. Waltz, ‘Why Iran Should Get the Bomb’. For a critical response by Colin H. Kahl and a reply by Waltz, see ‘Iran and the Bomb’.

^11.Waltz, ‘Spread of Nuclear Weapons,’ 7.

^12. Ibid.

^13.Harknett, ‘Logic of Conventional Deterrence’; Betts, ‘Conventional Deterrence’.

^14.Stone, Military Strategy, 9–11.

^15. For a similar point, see Waltz, ‘Spread of Nuclear Weapons’, 6.

^16. It is for this reason that accounts of deterrence often include the costs of acceding to threats in a deterree's cost–benefit analysis. See, for example, United States Strategic Command, Deterrence Operations, 5.

^17.Rhodes, ‘Conventional Deterrence’, 228.

^18. The ideas of using ‘military deployments’ to boost credibility is mentioned in Cm 7948, Securing Britain, 17.

^19.Rhodes, ‘Conventional Deterrence’, 226.

^20.Physicians for Human Rights, Witness to War Crimes, 19–21.

^21.Johnson, ‘Taliban Adaptations and Innovations’.

^22.Smith, The Utility of Force, 292–7.

^23. This move was heralded in the Quadrennial Defense Review Report (2006), 49 and reiterated in its 2010 successor: Quadrennial Defense Review Report (2010), 13.

^24.United States Strategic Command, Deterrence Operations, 3.

^25.Morgan, Deterrence Now, 66; Morgan, ‘Evaluating Tailored Deterrence’, 39.

^26.Finney, Human Terrain Team Handbook.

^27.Chalmers, ‘The Squeeze Continues’.

^28. This matter is discussed in Ledwidge, Losing Small Wars.

^29.Morgan, ‘Collective-Actor Deterrence’, 158–82; Morgan, ‘The State of Deterrence’, 94–6. The following account of collective-actor deterrence draws on these two sources.

^30. During the Cold War the term ‘extended deterrence’ referred to the situation in which the United States sought to use nuclear threats as a means of deterring aggression against its allies by the Soviet Union. The problem here was considered to stem from the fact that a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union would elicit retaliation in kind against the United States. Therefore US nuclear guarantees to its allies would likely be considered too costly to make good on, and would appear incredible from the Soviet perspective.

^31.Crawford, ‘Pivotal Deterrence’.

^32.Crawford, Pivotal Deterrence, 5.

^33. Ibid., 10–12.

^34. For some similar comments, see Jeffrey W. Knopf's ‘Pivotal Deterrence (review)’.