New Warfare Domains and the Deterrence Theory Crisis

2021

Naval War College Review, 2011

With a few brief exceptions, the concept of deterrence has guided U.S. nuclear policy since 1946, the year that Bernard Brodie noted that the purpose of militaries had changed from fighting to deterring wars. Nevertheless, a small but persistent group of deterrence pessimists remain skeptical about many of the policies prompted by this so-called nuclear revolution, especially the U.S. decision in the 1960s to abandon any serious effort at damage limitation by forgoing amissile-defense program. In their view, deterrence is an incredibly risky way to guarantee national survival, because it ultimately turns over decisions about national existence to one’s opponents, who are assumed to be both rational and risk averse. In their view, it would be better to have the capacity to deny one’s opponents the ability to attack in the first place than to rely on the threat of punishment in retaliation for aggressive behavior.

The Nonproliferation Review, 2008

Nuclear deterrence is sometimes treated as a known quantity*a definite thing that keeps us safe and ensures our security. It has also often been used as a justification for possessing nuclear weapons. Nuclear deterrence, however, is based on an unexamined notion: the belief that the threat to destroy cities provides decisive leverage. An examination of history (including recent reinterpretations of the bombing of Hiroshima) shows that destroying cities rarely affects the outcome of wars. How is it possible that an action that is unlikely to be decisive can make an effective threat? Recent work on terrorism suggests that attacks against civilians are often not only ineffective but also counterproductive. And a review of the practical record of nuclear deterrence shows more obvious failures than obvious successes. Given this, the record of nuclear deterrence is far more problematic than most people assume. If no stronger rationale for keeping these dangerous weapons can be contrived, perhaps they should be banned.

Conflict Studies: Inter-State Conflict eJournal, 2022

Although in its core meaning a straightforward and even elementary notion, deterrence as an informing principle of strategy in the nuclear age assumes a subtlety and sophistication that has intrigued some of the best military and scientific minds since the Second World War. This analysis seeks to summarize and assess the major notions associated with nuclear deterrence theory as set out in the contributions of some of the leading strategic thinkers in the 1945-1965 period. Similarities with earlier strategic bombing concepts are outlined but the discontinuity between prenuclear and nuclear thought has been stressed.

There are currently a number of debates worldwide on the appropriateness of adopting a 'first-strike' intent for the use of nuclear weapons; or, at least, not rejecting the possibility of a first-strike nuclear launch in extremis. The military doctrines of many post World War II nations with nuclear capabilities and the preparedness required by the Cold-War conflicts have posed the problem of escalation of non-nuclear conflicts expanding into the Mutual assured destruction (MAD) in which a full-scale use of nuclear weapons by two or more opposing sides would cause the complete annihilation of both the attacker and the defender. The question of maintaining a 'first-strike' capability has, to a large extent, become irrelevant to the nuclear nations of the world as the efficacy of their nuclear deterrent has become overtaken by technological innovation which has vitiated the reliance of these nations on nuclear preparedness. There are a range of new weapons and systems which have been developed which have made nuclear capability a far less important element of national security. There is, and has been, a massive competition for new defence systems which can destroy the nuclear weapons before they can be brought to bear in a conflict. The existence and scope of these new systems has not been an important subject of public debate so most politicians and the general public have not seemed to have an awareness of just how defence strategies have evolved.

1995

Journal of Strategic Security, 2020

The potential for hostilities in the 21st Century is not likely to be deterred by a Cold War deterrence strategy. And while nuclear deterrence remains important, regional powers armed with weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and accompanying long-range delivery capabilities are a rising concern. New technological breakthroughs in the space, cyber, and unforeseen realms could also provide asymmetric means of undermining deterrence. Moreover, the effort to achieve strategic stability in this day and age has become increasingly complicated in light of the changing relationship among the great powers. Today’s world has become one of “security trilemmas.” Actions one state takes to defend against another can, in-turn, make a third state feel insecure. There is great need for both nuclear diversity (theater and low-yield weapons) and increased conventional capabilities in the U.S. deterrent force to provide strategic stability in the decades ahead. In sum, we need a deterrence construct tha...

1980

So much has been done in the name of nuclear deterrence, so much destructive power built by ourselves and the Russians that it may seem rather late in the day, not to say absurd, to wonder whether or not mutual deterrence really occurs and ask what evidence can be adduced to prove it. Yet such a question may be essential

National Security, 2020

In spite of massive reduction in the nuclear weapon holdings in recent years, both Russia and the US hold impressive quantities of nuclear arms. Other nuclear weapon (P5) countries hold relatively limited number and some of them (France and UK)have not added significant numbers. Some of the late entrants in Asia continue to increase their arsenal in significant ways. New weapon systems, geopolitics (including nature of governments, leadership and economic disparity), unsettled borders, non-state actors, technology proliferation, lack of progress in disarmament, etc., are all contributing to the erosion of deterrence and strategic stability factors. As a result, in the world today, there are many unsettling factors, which are not only impacting the nature of deterrence but are also influencing the stabilizing/destabilizing criterion.

2020

Effectiveness of nuclear weapons substantially attached to their effectiveness in terms of deterrence. What we mean by deterrence is usually attributed to their political power, as political deterrence, rather than practical or militaristic one. Despite that, in this article, we will approach nuclear deterrence is terms of practical lenses which will be based on military doctrines and strategic stability. In the first part, we will assess doctrinal problems that nuclear weapons could face in the 21 st Century battlefields. In the following part, we will discuss the new technologies like cyber capabilities, hypersonic missiles, artificial intelligence/automation, and their possible effects over the strategic stability that we already have in terms of nuclear deterrence. Such kind of doctrinal and practical analysis of nuclear weapons will help us to understand, rather than the political side of deterrence, whether nuclear weapons could have a place in actual battlefield planning and deterrence in the 21 st Century wars.

Security Dialogue, 2010

In recent considerations of deterrence in strategic studies, there are almost no works that would systematically link deterrence to one of the most important current issue areas of contemporary strategic studies: ballistic missile defence (BMD). In an attempt to address this lacuna, this article considers ways in which missile defence has been -and can be -intertwined with deterrence of the 21st century. The article begins with a historical outline of the relationship between nuclear deterrence and BMD, and continues by comparing and contrasting US political and strategic-planning discourses in how they have addressed the examined relationship. What follows is the recasting of traditional understanding of deterrence as a set of disparate modalities underpinned by different principles and organizing logics. The article will show the role and function of BMD in three relevant modalities of deterrence in the 21st century: first, in a renewed strategic deterrence between the USA and Russia based on an axiomatic logic of MAD; second, in the deterrence of rogue states in reaction to their asymmetric nuclear threats; and, finally, in a reverse deterrence from intervention in regional conflicts. Consequently, the presented outline of the three modalities will be theoretically furthered to allow for conceptualization of possible links to BMD in ways in which practical implications for future research, strategic planning and political action can be seen.

2015

In this paper, I address three of the most frequently used arguments for maintaining a significant measure of dependence for international security on nuclear deterrence both globally and regionally: Nuclear weapons have deterred great powers from waging war against each other, so a world without nuclear weapons will lead to, or at least might encourage, great-power war. The US nuclear umbrella has deterred nuclear proliferation, so the reduction of the US nuclear arsenal will undermine the credibility of US extended deterrence and create additional incentives for nuclear proliferation. Nuclear weapons have deterred other powers from invading the territory of those states that possess nuclear weapons and thus leaders of countries with relatively weak conventional capabilities will keep their weapons as an equalizer. A version of this argument focuses on dictatorial regimes or “rogue states” whose very existence depends on their having nuclear weapons. After showing that these arguments are not as convincing as their frequency suggests, I delineate opportunities that advocates for a nuclear-free world or a world with few nuclear weapons should exploit on their way to advancing their goal, based on the decoupling of nuclear weapons and deterrence.

Science, 1961

How can the world avoid the ultimate catastrophe of nuclear war? There is a simple and suggestive answer: get rid of nuclear weapons. But this is easier said than done. The East and West have debated nuclear disarmament since the end of World War II, but so far these debates have produced no tangible result. Disarmament remains in the realm of talk. And in the field of practical policy, there is instead, a nuclear armament race. It is a frustrating situation.

Influence and War: Fighting for Minds, War Studies University, Warsaw, 2016

Policy-oriented conceptualizations of how best to operationalize nuclear deterrence within the Euro-Atlantic theatre, after a hiatus of more than two decades as NATO emphasized out-of-area missions in support of collective-security mandates rather than the Alliance’s traditional territorial-defence focus, have reassumed prominence in official allied declarations of intent and principle as well as in a substantial range of commissioned or sponsored studies and in academic commentary and analysis. By the same token, it can be argued persuasively that Russia’s annexation of Crimea and invasion of eastern Ukraine, and their follow-on chain-reaction effects across the politico-military spectrum, have been heavily conditioned by, even structured by, official declarations emanating from Moscow affirming the viability of nuclear weaponry as an integral functioning component of the Russian Federation’s operational capabilities. Further, field deployments of Russian nuclear forces have served to reinforce the credibility of the governmental messaging in this regard. The Paper posits, given these introductory observations, that nuclear equations and calculations are central to the current Euro-Atlantic operational environment. It then proposes an analytical framework that begins by disaggregating the deterrence mechanism into its classical duality of declaratory and action policy. In other words, in the first instance – declaratory policy, what is stated to be doctrinal and thus a guideline to future probable actions under a set, or sets, of given circumstances, and in the latter instance – action policy, what is planned for and designed within operational deployments under that same set, or those same sets, of given circumstances. Action policy includes such non-trivial components of the deterrence matrix as pre-set computerized target-sets, degrees of readiness, component supply-and-replacement logistics and infrastructure, and war-gamed threat-suppression operational planning and design. It can be argued then in turn that the ultimate stakes involved in this declaratory-action duality within nuclear deterrence mechanisms are high indeed and that the descriptor ‘existential’, elsewhere frequently overused in conflict analyses, is most assuredly not out of place. By conceptually disaggregating declaratory from action policy, and vice versa, the Paper highlights the Janus-like characteristics of nuclear-deterrence planning and policies.