Deterence Strategy
- Deterrence strategies ended up leading to the immediate challenges it seeked to deter through Security Dilemma
Immediate Deterrence
- Immediate Deterrence: attempt to delay the anticipated challenge from an enemy who is well-defined and with pubicized commitment
- Critique: Cognitive Fallacy that makes leaders test opponent’s resolve even risking national suicide. (happened in Cuban Missile Crisis)
- The Cold War ended not because the shift in balance of power, but because Gorbachev’s New Thinking and rational decisions ([[Cold War#Why did the Cold War End 1|Cold War#Why did the Cold War End 1]])
General Deterrence
- When general deterrence fails, the opponent wants to challenge status quo.
- Leading to Immediate Deterrence where both sides try to reassure each other and stepped down from the brink
- Ex: in the case of the Cold War leading to the Cuban Missile Crisis
- The role of General Nuclear Deterrence
- Leaders who try to exploit real or imagined nuclear advantage for political gain are not likely to succeed
- Credible nuclear threats are very difficult to make
- Nuclear threats are “filled” with risk
- Strategic build-ups are more likely to provoke than to restrain adversaries because of their impact on the domestic balance of political power in the target state (Security Dilemma)
- Nuclear deterrence is robust when leaders on both sides fear war and are aware of each other’s fears
Cases of General Deterrence
- US betting on the skill of the enemy Nuclear Weapons Deterrence: in Cold War
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US betted against Vietnam’s willingness to suffer in the Vietnam War: which failed
“The US won every battle, but lost the war because its citizens would not pay the moral, eocnomic, and human cost of victory.” p.396
- The North Vietnamese were able to stomach the fight better than the South Vietnamese
- General Deterrence: in an existing power relationship, to stop an enemy from considering challenging your position by raising the percepted bad consequences