Deterrence from Cold War to Long War: Lessons from Six Decades of RAND Research
Abstract
A decade after the end of the Cold War, many viewed the attacks of September 11, 2001, as confirming the end of deterrence. Despite overwhelming nuclear and conventional superiority, the United States suffered a major attack on its own soil for the first time since World War II. In response to this atrocity, the 2002 United States national security strategy proclaimed the irrelevance of deterrence to many important challenges from both state and nonstate actors. Yet reports of the demise of deterrence were greatly exaggerated. The 2006 version of the national security strategy returned "deterrence" to the lexicon of U.S. national defense. More importantly, it provides the framework from which this revival of deterrence springs. This framework is that "of a long struggle, similar to what our country faced in the early years of the Cold War." Deterrence, the unpalatable but indispensable strategy of the old Cold War, will be an equally indispensable part of the strategy of the new long war. This book consists of seven main sections. The first presents a brief history of RAND's role in the development of deterrence theory and policy. The second provides an assessment of the relevance of Cold War era deterrence research to the challenges of the long war. The next section discusses the theoretical basis of deterrence and its components as well as some generic policy considerations that are derived from the theory. The fourth section describes why deterrence was the strategy the United States adopted for the Cold War and the benefits that accrued from this choice. The fifth section describes in more detail various technical and doctrinal approaches to making deterrence effective that RAND studied. The next section describes RAND efforts to study the psychological and organizational elements of deterrence. The final section presents three contexts and scenarios related to the long war in which RAND deterrence research might be relevant.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 01, 2008
- Accession Number
- ADA489540
Entities
People
- Austin Long
Organizations
- RAND Corporation