Alliance Proximity and Effectiveness of Extended Deterrence

This article examines whether geographical proximity between defensive allies and a protégé increases the likelihood of successful extended general deterrence. I argue that proximate allies are better at making a credible deterrent threat because proximate allies are more willing and able to help alliance partners in times of crisis than distant ones. This claim is theorized by examining how geographical distance influences the international and domestic costs of alliance commitments. The empirical tests reveal that a potential aggressor is less likely to initiate a militarized dispute against a target with proximate defensive allies. Furthermore, I find that the power of proximate defensive allies is a more significant determinant of successful extended general deterrence than that of distance allies. Interestingly, I also find that the constraining effects of geographical distance on the effectiveness of extended general deterrence have been alleviated by advancements in military technologies throughout history.     

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.     

Triadic Deterrence: Coercing Strength,Beaten by Weakness

Triadic deterrence is the situation when one state uses threats and/or punishments against another state to coerce it to prevent non-state actors from conducting attacks from its territory. Under what conditions is triadic deterrence successful? Some attribute outcomes to the balance of power between states. By contrast, we argue that the complex asymmetrical structure of this conflict requires attention to the targeted regime's relationship to its own society. The stronger the targeted regime, the more likely deterrent action will prove effective. Moving against non-state actors requires institutional capacity, domestic legitimacy, and territorial control, which only strong regimes are able to furnish. Whereas strong regimes can act to uphold raison d’état, weak regimes lack the political tools and incentives to undertake controversial decisions and enforce them. We illustrate this argument through analysis of between- and within-case variation in Israel's attempts to deter Palestinian groups operating from Egypt between 1949 and 1979, and from Syria since 1963.     

Difficult Europeans: NATO and Tactical/Non-strategic Nuclear Weapons in the Cold War

This analysis examines NATO’s tactical/non-strategic nuclear weapons in the Cold War both for their perceived deterrent value against the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact and as potential war fighting weapons. Within this debate lay questions related to extended deterrence, security guarantees, regional or theatre conflict, and escalatory potential. A central tenet that emerged in Europe was that nuclear weapons needed emplacement on the territory of non-nuclear NATO members to make deterrence more tangible. It raised huge questions of consultation. Once the Soviet Union had intercontinental missiles, the credibility of American readiness to use nuclear weapons in defence of its allies came into question. European alternatives and different consultation mechanisms to facilitate nuclear use became central to intra-NATO relations. Actively debated across NATO, they directly concerned above all the United States, Britain, and France—the nuclear weapons states in the NATO area—and West Germany, the potential main battleground in a Warsaw Pact invasion. Although dormant in NATO since the end of the Cold War, these issues will likely see revisiting in both Europe and other regional trouble spots.     

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.     

Fencing in Warfare: Threats,Punishment, and Intra-war Deterrence in Counterterrorism

New theoretical approaches have been developed that apply deterrence and coercion to counterterrorism. Critics have suggested, however, that in the particular case of deterring terrorism by threats of punishment, a mismatch exists between deterrent goals and counterterrorism intentions: the twin aims of destroying and deterring a single opponent is logically and theoretically incompatible. These criticisms, however, neglect to take two important factors into consideration. First, threats of punishment in counterterrorism can be applied against a wide assortment of actors involved in and associated with terrorism and political violence. Second, the concept of “intra-war deterrence” suggests ways in which a state can deter certain behavior or a specific form of warfare while engaging in open conflict with that same adversary. In exploring both factors, this article posits that states can gain coercive leverage over different actors involved in terrorism, including organizations with which they are actively hoping to defeat.     

中美不对称核稳定与美国战略机会主义论析

中美两国安全关系在两国总体关系中扮演着重要的角色,研究中美之间的战略稳定关系,对于维护两国安全关系的稳定具有重要意义。中国的核威慑实力弱于美国,中美之间呈现出不同于传统战略稳定关系的不对称核稳定态势。中国对美国存在一定的核威慑能力,但有效性仍有差距和不足。这一差距容易使美国产生压制和削弱中国核报复能力的机会主义思想。实施限制损伤战略、发展导弹防御能力、进行战略反潜是美国对中国实施战略机会主义的主要行动。美国谋求削弱中国核报复能力、打破中美不对称核稳定的企图,与中国努力维持核威慑能力、维持中美不对称核稳定的行为形成了两股力量相持的态势。中国应重点提升核武器的质量,提高威慑信号的传递效能,以可信可靠的核威慑和核反击能力打消美国战略机会主义心态,维持两国间的战略稳定,特别是危机稳定性,筑牢遏制战争爆发的基础。     

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.     

Credibility,preferences, and bilateral investment treaties

When is a commitment mechanism employed as a solution to a time-inconsistency problem? This article provides a nuanced answer to this question by studying bilateral investment treaties (BITs). We develop a game theoretic model of BIT signing in which the government of a capital-importing country and an investor from a capital-exporting country strategically interact. The model predicts that, on the one hand, when host states highly value foreign direct investment (FDI), the likelihood of BITs increases as their judicial institutions lack credibility. On the other hand, when their preferences for FDI are only modest, the likelihood of BITs increases as their judicial institutions become more credible. We employ Cox proportional hazard models to test our hypotheses, and the results largely support our theory. Our findings have broad implications for the large literature on credible commitment, which has paid insufficient attention to the interplay between preferences and credibility.     

Weaving Tangled Webs: Offense,Defense, and Deception in Cyberspace

It is widely believed that cyberspace is offense dominant because of technical characteristics that undermine deterrence and defense. This argument mistakes the ease of deception on the Internet for a categorical ease of attack. As intelligence agencies have long known, deception is a double-edged sword. Covert attackers must exercise restraint against complex targets in order to avoid compromises resulting in mission failure or retaliation. More importantly, defenders can also employ deceptive concealment and ruses to confuse or ensnare aggressors. Indeed, deception can reinvigorate traditional strategies of deterrence and defense against cyber threats, as computer security practitioners have already discovered. The strategy of deception has other important implications: as deterrence became foundational in the nuclear era, deception should rise in prominence in a world that increasingly depends on technology to mediate interaction.     

Transatlantic cooperation,alliance politics and extended deterrence: European perceptions of nuclear weapons

This article discusses the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) debate regarding American nonstrategic nuclear weapons (NSNW) in Europe, given the broad spectrum of views on nuclear issues when comparing individual member states. What is striking is the gap between public attitudes – which are broadly hostile to keeping NSNW in Europe – and elite opinion, which privileges the maintenance of NATO commitments to preserve alliance cohesion. To better understand this tension, this article dissects the elements of extended nuclear deterrence in Europe, addressing the difficulties associated with current nuclear-sharing arrangements. For some NATO states, the alliance's nuclear weapons are a political liability, since nuclear sharing clashes with international disarmament and nonproliferation commitments. For other NATO members, maintaining the status quo is preferable, as long as there is no alliance-wide consensus on the question of NSNW. These debates have been put to rest, for now, with NATO's Deterrence and Defense Posture Review, which reaffirmed the purpose of the alliance's nuclear weapons. However, these divisive debates point to more fundamental issues in alliance management, namely the credibility of American commitments, the sustainability of extended nuclear deterrence in Europe and the inevitable political tensions these questions provoke at the domestic level for NATO allies.     

NGO monitoring and the legitimacy of international cooperation: A strategic analysis

States often invite NGOs to monitor international cooperation. Under what circumstances are states likely to take this step? We argue that NGO monitoring allows states to provide domestic publics with credible evidence regarding successful cooperation, but that this credibility carries a cost: if states fail to cooperate, a participating NGO will expose this failure and thus delegitimize the cooperation effort. Our formal analysis indicates that states obtain a dual benefit from NGO participation: in addition to enhanced legitimacy, NGO scrutiny helps states credibly commit to high cooperation levels vis-á-vis each other. The increased costs of failure, however, may deter state use of NGO monitoring. Surprisingly, we find that NGO monitoring is the most useful for states when the cooperation cost is relatively low. We explore the empirical relevance of our theoretical argument in NGO monitoring of World Bank development projects and compliance with the Kyoto Protocol. We also explain why NGO monitoring has been disallowed in the Global Environment Facility. Our analysis provides a firm strategic foundation for the idea that NGO participation sometimes confers benefits to states, and our theory has several empirically falsifiable implications.     

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.     

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.     

How International Reputation Matters: Revisiting Alliance Violations in Context

We investigate the role of international reputation in alliance politics by developing a signaling theory linking past alliance violations with the formation of future alliance commitments. In our theory, past violations Are useful signals of future alliance reliability conditional on whether they effectively separate reliable from unreliable alliance partners. It follows that states evaluating potential alliance partners will interpret past violations in their context when deciding to enter a new alliance, attaching less weight to violations in “harder times,” when many states are defaulting on their alliance commitments together, and more weight to violations in “easier times,” when fewer states are defaulting on their alliances. We test our theory and find that states are empirically more likely to form new alliances with states that violated in harder times compared to states that violated in easier times. The results have important implications for how scholars understand and estimate the impact of international reputation.     

State repression and post-conflict peace failure

This paper provides evidence that state repression is a strong predictor of peace failure following civil war. Existing literature fails to examine the possibility that more repressive states are even less likely than their counterparts to escape the ‘conflict trap’. We argue that when states use repressive tactics to achieve their objectives, it signals to the broader population that the state cannot be trusted; and the regime does not believe their rule is to be questioned. These signals polarise citizens into new or existing rebel factions thereby increasing the risk of another civil war. We test our theory using event history analysis. Our results are robust to a series of statistical models and demonstrate that in the tenuous post-conflict environment states that use repression to police their populous experience shorter periods of peace.     

The properties of the distance metric in social field theory

The concept of balancing—joining the weaker party in a conflict—is an important part of the realist literature. The concept has a modern counterpart in the literature on extended deterrence that grew up in the nuclear era. But despite the importance of this concept, it has not been subjected to extensive empirical study. In this paper, we show how the realist and extended deterrence literature are linked, and go on to test for the existence of balancing behavior in serious disputes for the 1816–1976 time period. The results indicate that, while there are many disputes in which no joining occurs, when it does happen, the capability balance is likely to shift to favor the initially smaller side, as the balancing literature would predict.     

Deterring the terrorist: A psychological evaluation of different strategies for deterring terrorism

This article seeks to evaluate different anti‐terrorism strategies from a psychological perspective. Two major deterrent strategies are identified: the Denial Strategy and the Reintegrative Strategy. It is the contention of this article that both these strategies may be thought of as practical applications of different theories of crime deterrence. The Denial Strategy effectively mirrors early theories of crime deterrence, which concentrate on minimising the benefits, and increasing the costs, of crime through legal sanctions. By way of contrast, the Reintegrative Punishment Strategy represents a modern and more sophisticated theory of deterrence, which recognises the cost of non‐legal sanctions to the terrorist and the need to reintegrate the terrorist back into society. This article discusses the relative psychological merits of both these strategies, focusing on the normal psychology of the terrorist. In the course of this examination two major defects of the Denial Strategy are established and it is argued that the Reintegrative Punishment Strategy of deterring terrorism has greater psychological validity because it confronts the issues of the alienation and reintegration of the terrorist. These findings highlight the dangers of policy‐makers neglecting the psychology of the terrorist.     

The Logic of Coercion in Cyberspace

What are the dynamics of coercion in cyberspace? Can states use cyber means as independent tools of coercion to influence the behavior of adversaries? This article critically assesses traditional coercion theory in light of cyberspace's emergence as a domain in which states use force, or its threat, to achieve political objectives. First, we review the core tenets of coercion theory and identify the requisites of successful coercion: clearly communicated threats; a cost–benefit calculus; credibility; and reassurance. We subsequently explore the extent to which each of these is feasible for or applicable to the cyber domain, highlighting how the dynamics of coercion in cyberspace mimic versus diverge from traditional domains of warfare. We demonstrate that cyber power alone has limited effectiveness as a tool of coercion, although it has significant utility when coupled with other elements of national power. Second, this article assesses the viability and effectiveness of six prominent warfighting strategies in the traditional coercion literature as applied to the cyber domain: attrition, denial, decapitation, intimidation, punishment, and risk. We conclude that, based on the current technological state of the field, states are only likely to achieve desired objectives employing attrition, denial, or decapitation strategies. Our analysis also has unique implications for the conduct of warfare in cyberspace. Perhaps counterintuitively, the obstacles to coercion that our analysis identifies may prompt states to reevaluate norms against targeting civilian infrastructure.