Deterrence,uncertainty and cooperative behavior

The paper analyzes deterrence relationships in situations when the relevant forms of behavior are subject to lags such as in the case of foreign interventions and technological arms races. Mutual deterrence is a way of inducing cooperative behavior. Successful deterrence, in the cases considered, can be considered as ways of inducing cooperative behaviors in Prisoners’ Dilemma Supergames, the model used in this paper. It is argued that, in general, deterrence is more likely to be successful and hence cooperative behavior more prevalent in systems where the actors can move between strategies quickly (i.e., are flexible) and which are characterized by low uncertainty. The paper also analyzes the concept of discounting and time preference in the discussion of political phenomena where the concept has no market interpretation. It is analyzed as a rational response to uncertainty.     

The prince of darkness and the evil empire: Richard Perle,the Soviet Union,and U.S. arms control policy

This paper consists of three parts. First, it investigates the rationality assumption behind much deterrence theorizing and arrives at the conclusion that the rationality assumption is not fully compatible with credible retaliation. Moreover, the requirements of central deterrence and of extended deterrence tend to be incompatible with each other. Since theoretical deliberations call the persisting reliability of deterrence into question, alternatives to deterrence have to be considered. The second part of the paper therefore investigates strategic defense as an improvement over deterrence and a possibly stabilizing element in deterrence. The final part refers to conceivable conflicts of interests between the USA and Western Europe concerning SDI. It is argued that such conflicts of interest either arise from parochial concerns or from overlooking the comparative advantages of free and totalitarian systems in the production of military power.     

General Deterrence and International Conflict: Testing Perfect Deterrence Theory

Since general deterrence necessarily precedes immediate deterrence, the analysis of general deterrence is more fundamental to an understanding of international conflict than is an analysis of immediate deterrence. Nonetheless, despite a few exceptions, the quantitative literature has ignored the subject of general deterrence, focusing almost exclusively on situations of immediate deterrence. My purpose in this essay is to fill this evidentiary gap by subjecting a recently developed theory of general deterrence—Perfect Deterrence Theory—to a systematic test by examining general deterrence from 1816–2000. The results indicate that the predictions of perfect deterrence theory are strongly supported by the empirical record.     

Nuclear Weapons and Intergenerational Exploitation

Nuclear weapons' defenders claim that they lower the risk of war, at the price of devastation if war breaks out. Sooner or later, however, on a realist analysis, catastrophic nuclear war is sure to come. Nuclear deterrence thus buys us a better chance of dying in bed, while each post-holocaust generation will have to pick up the pieces. If the nuclear optimists are wrong, hoping to spread or perpetuate nuclear deterrence is foolish; but if they are right, it is exploitative. Like big cars and cheap flights, nuclear deterrence benefits us at the expense of future generations. States that do not already have the bomb should not get it. Britain and France should consider disarmament, while Russia and the United States should slash their arsenals. Minimum deterrence should be equally stable, but most nuclear optimists, being neorealists who hold that war will continue, should want deep cuts even if it is not.     

Theorizing India–US–China strategic triangle

ABSTRACT

In this paper we build on Robert Jervis’ concept of strategic triangles, relations between three states where from the point of view of each state the others are pivotal for its security or foreign policy behavior in a given region. We argue that triangles are important in influencing state behavior in the areas of balance of power, deterrence, arms races and status competition, and consider how these dimensions might interact. In this context, this article examines the US–India–China triangle, while also addressing to a lesser extent how other related triangles interlink with it, taking into account how China’s rise and increasing economic interdependence impact these relations.     

Of Mechanisms and Myths: Conceptualising States’ “Soft Power” Strategies through Sports Mega-Events

ABSTRACT

Joseph Nye’s concept of “soft power” has become an increasingly used term to help explain why states—including so-called “emerging states”—are paying greater attention to acquiring various forms of cultural and political attraction. However, within mainstream International Relations, Political Science, and Sport Studies literature, a continuous debate remains as to what actually constitutes soft power, how national leaders go about acquiring it, and how forms of attraction convert into power outcomes in both the short- and long-term. This analysis endeavours to overcome these issues by offering an “ideal type” model that details states’ soft power strategies, the mechanisms they use, and the tangible future outcomes they gain.     

Selection Effects and Deterrence

The empirical question of how often deterrent threats issued during international disputes succeed has been hotly debated for years, with some researchers arguing that virtually no robust cases of success can be identified. I argue that what appears to be an empirical and methodological debate actually arises from the inadequacy of classical rational deterrence theory, which fails to comprehend the implications of states' strategic self-selection into international disputes. Rational self-selection is shown to imply that in a sample of crises, deterrent threats issued after an initial challenge will tend to fail in precisely those cases where they are relatively most credible signals of an intent to resist with force. The product of a selection effect, this paradoxical implication allows a resolution of the debate on the efficacy of deterrence in crises. And because selection effects can arise whenever a historical "case" is the product of choices by actors who also influence the outcome in question, this example from the study of deterrence has broad relevance for empirical research.     

Countering Violent Extremism: A Realist Review for Assessing What Works,for Whom,in What Circumstances,and How?

ABSTRACT

Scientific knowledge on what works in countering violent extremism remains limited. This article argues that we should move away from the “what works?” question and towards: “what works, for whom, in what circumstances, and how?” This method is also known as realist evaluation. This article applies the realist review method to CVE studies, which synthesizes the existing CVE literature and helps us gain insight into relevant contexts, mechanisms, and outcomes for CVE. Realist reviews help to develop and shape more effective policy and contribute to further CVE theory development.     

Preface

ABSTRACT

Although first explicitly coined in Renaissance Italy, the notion of a ‘balance of power’ – the conduct of state actors to meet the logics of power balancing – goes back to pre-modern times. Traditionally, scholars have looked to the Punic Wars and the early modern period as early evidence for the balance. However, the ancient Near East during the second-millennium BC has received far less attention. Yet Western Asia existed as an international arena of states fully integrated in a system based on interdependence and power balancing. In the field of International Relations, systematic analyses of this phase in world history remain under-developed. Accordingly, the question of when a systemic environment for the balancing behaviour existed for the first time has been addressed less in International Relations theory where the literature leans primarily on the European experience.     

The Case of the Missing Hegemon: British Nonintervention in the American Civil War

Balance of power theories have come roaring back into prominence in recent years as international relations theory grapples with new developments, including offshore balancing and soft balancing. Recent works demonstrate the importance of more than just the distribution of power, and have addressed the role that domestic politics plays in balancing. One overlooked aspect of this debate, with implications for offensive realism and the current discussion on the United States and soft balancing, is the role that nonintervention conventions play in decision making. British nonintervention during the American Civil War presents a case at odds with offensive realist theory, as Britain should have intervened to protect its national interests—cotton, trade, and shipping—while also restraining a regional hegemonic power. Domestic cleavages, democratic peace norms, and public opinion pressures do not sufficiently explain this behavior. Instead, this paper posits that nonintervention was a result of British adherence to precedents and conventions.     

Managing the 1986-87 Sino-Indian Sumdorong Chu Crisis

ABSTRACT

How did China and India manage to prevent the 1986-87 Sumdorong Chu Crisis from escalating into a war? I argue that it was a combination of changing geopolitical factors (Sino-Soviet rapprochement and the end of Soviet support for India in the context of Sino-Indian tensions) and military factors (conventional deterrence and perceptions of limited revisionism) that help explain crisis management. While these geopolitical and military factors helped avert immediate escalation, the crisis truly ended only after China and India sought a new modus vivendi during Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s landmark trip to China in December 1988. The absence of great power (Soviet) support meant that India had to make a costly signal to China in the form of Gandhi’s trip that happened during the 1987-89 cycle of protests in Tibet against Chinese rule. Nevertheless, Gandhi’s visit took place after India had demonstrated its military strength and resolve in its ability to defend the status quo on the border, and therefore should not be interpreted as a sign of weakness. In other words, I argue that successful deterrence requires broader foreign policy reorientation. At the same time, considerations of power (in the form of internal/external balancing) are central to strategic stability in the Sino-Indian dyad, and that any recourse to diplomacy that ignores the realities of military power is unlikely to be successful for crisis management.     

Repression,Grievances, Mobilization,and Rebellion: A New Test of Gurr’s Model of Ethnopolitical Rebellion

The concept of polarity has been subject to imprecise and often diverse use. This note explores problems associated with the varied use of the term and proposes an alternative approach to classifying international systems which treats horizontal and vertical dimensions of power as distinct structural variables. In this approach, the present system is distinguished from the classical balance of power system containing pluralized patterns of conflict on the one hand and from the Cold War system with a marked concentration of power on the other. In the contemporary system polarized patterns of conflict coexist with processes of power diffusion. To the extent polarizations persist in a more diffuse power setting, the decentralized power balancing system through which stability was sought in multipower systems cannot function‐nor are the polarized conflicts likely to be controlled as a result of the two‐power effort at balancing power which occurred during the post‐war period. The factors affecting the stability of the present system, it is suggested here, can be better understood by examining analogous structures in which processes of power diffusion occur in the context of polarized conflict and not as a result of spurious comparisons which mistake the diffusion of power for the pluralization of conflict.     

The anticipation of interstate conflict

This study posits a predictive model of crisis escalation—one of the central concerns in the study of conflict. Crises arise in differing contexts, and these contexts are assessed in terms of their varying propensities to develop into open international conflict. The point of departure is the model first developed in “The War Trap Revisited” (Bueno de Mesquita, 1985). Some extensions are made to his theory, aspects of perception and misperception are incorporated, and a previously discontinuous predictive argument is refined into a continuous one. The extensions are tested empirically using data on European disputes between 1815 and 1965.     

Undermining Adversaries: Unipolarity,Threat Perception,and Negative Balancing Strategies after the Cold War

This paper engages the ongoing soft balancing debate by suggesting a new analytical framework for states’ countervailing strategies—a negative balancing model—to explain why states do not form alliances and conduct arms races to balance against power or threats as they previously did. Negative balancing refers to a state's strategies or diplomatic efforts aiming to undermine a rival's power. By contrast, positive balancing means to strengthen a state's own power in world politics. I argue that a state's balancing strategies are shaped by the level of threat perception regarding its rival. The higher the threat perception, the more likely it is for a state to choose positive balancing. The lower the threat perception, the more likely it is for a state to choose negative balancing. I suggest that the hegemon provides security as a public good to the international system in a unipolar world in which the relatively low-threat propensity of the system renders positive balancing strategies incompatible with state interests after the Cold War. Instead, states have employed various negative balancing strategies to undermine each other's power, especially when dealing with us primacy. China's negative balancing strategy against the United States and the us negative balancing strategy against Russia are two case studies that test the validity of the negative balancing model.     

On Extended Nuclear Deterrence

This analysis discusses the central challenges that countries face when they practice extended nuclear deterrence. One key problem has to do with credibility: potential aggressors may not believe that a country would fight to defend an ally, particularly if doing so risks a nuclear attack against its homeland. Countries might be able to address this issue by forging formal alliances with protégés or by stationing nuclear forces on the protégé’s territory. Do these measures discourage third-party aggression? Defence pacts involving nuclear-armed states effectively bolster extended deterrence. One risk of extending nuclear protection from the American perspective, however, is that it might pull the United States into unwanted wars by risk-acceptant protégés. Yet, in a nuclear context, the risk of alliance entrapment is generally overblown. Placing nuclear weapons on an ally’s territory does much less to bolster extended deterrence than one might initially think. Although foreign nuclear deployments may reassure allies and promote non-proliferation to some degree, their value for extended deterrence is fairly minimal. The United States continues to deploy nuclear weapons in five European countries, but the case for maintaining these deployments is decidedly weak.     

Divided Priorities: Why and When Allies Differ Over Military Intervention

Abstract

Scholars have vigorously debated whether adversaries carefully scrutinize if states have, in the past, demonstrated toughness and whether adversaries base present and future crisis-bargaining behavior on this record. If they do—as a central strain of deterrence theory, and its contemporary defenders, maintain—hard-line policies, including limited military interventions, can bolster deterrence. We know much less about a second audience that is presumably attentive to demonstrations of resolve: allies. A common view, derived from the same logic, and which we call Hawkish Reassurance Theory, suggests that states should support and find reassuring their allies’ faraway military interventions. In contrast, we argue that such interventions call into doubt the intervener’s will and capacity to fulfill its core alliance commitments, undermine the credibility of the alliance, and threaten allies’ security in both the short and long run. Allies thus ultimately oppose powerful partners’ hawkish postures in distant conflicts, and they may even consequently explore routes to security beyond the alliance. To assess this argument, we examine the varied stances leading US allies took from the start of the US intervention in Vietnam through its end. Allied behavior was largely consistent with our expectations. We conclude that, if one reason to deploy force is to signal to allies that you will come to their aid when they call, states should not bother.     

Deterrence games and social choice: Asymmetry,aggregation of preferences,and a conjecture about uncertainty

Rational choice principles of mutual deterrence in 2 × 2 games elaborated for Prisoner's Dilemma and for Chicken are generalized to a variety of other, asymmetric games in which players’ preferences satisfy a Condition for Mutual Deterrence. Players’ preferences are taken to be aggregations from the preferences of subsidiary participants. It is shown that, unless all subsidiary actors hold deterrable preferences, the ordering of the player cannot be guaranteed to be deterrable. Uncertainty regarding the preferences of subsidiary actors is conjectured to make it more likely a player will adopt a deterrence strategy, no matter the opponent's preferences in fact.     

GUUAM and the future of CIS military cooperation

This study analyses the establishment and development of the GUUAM cooperation and offers an assessment of the future implications of this regional grouping for the CIS military alliance. It presents three key arguments. First, that the GUUAM members have bandwagoned with western states at the system level and balanced against Russia at the regional level. Second, that there is a dialectical relationship between these two policies, with one getting added momentum from the other. And finally, that on this background we should expect to see increased future balancing by the GUUAM states — and possibly by other CIS members as well — causing a further undermining of the CIS military cooperation.     

U.S.—Soviet relations: The global village and the free flow of information∗

For the past sixty‐seven years, the Council on Foreign Relations has dedicated itself to enlarging the public dialogue on matters affecting U.S. foreign policy and international affairs. This effort is to be commended. It stands as a testimony to your strong sense of civic responsibility, and it illustrates yet another way in which America's private and public sectors cooperate in matters of national concern.

Forty‐one years ago, Foreign Affairs published the landmark article—"Mr. X"— calling for a bold new approach to the challenges of the post‐war world. At that time, the international structure and order inherited from the nineteenth century had collapsed, and attempts to replace it were directed from two philosophically distinct and antagonistic power centers. This was the era of the Cold War.

America met those challenges with a sense of daring and determination. The Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, NATO—these stand as testimonials to imaginative leadership and effort. The renewed vitality of Western Europe and Japan—protected by the shield of a strong and effective deterrence—are a measure of its success.

Today, America faces another historic challenge occasioned neither by war nor post‐war dislocations. Rather, it results from changes set in motion by a new and powerful dynamic which in recent years has exploded onto the world scene—the grand spectacle of the Information Revolution.