Waging Deterrence in the Twenty-First Century

Abstract

In recent years many national security policy scholars and practitioners have questioned whether deterrence remains a relevant, reliable, and realistic national security concept in the twenty-first century. That is a fair question. New threats to American security posed by transnational terrorists, asymmetric military strategies and capabilities, and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) by adversaries who see the world in profoundly different ways than do we have called into question America's reliance on deterrence as a central tenet of our national security strategy. Some experts advocate a move away from deterrence -- and particularly the nuclear element of our deterrent -- toward greater reliance on other approaches to provide for our security in a complex and dangerous environment.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jan 01, 2009
Accession Number
ADA508634

Entities

People

  • Greg Weaver
  • Kevin Chilton

Organizations

  • Air University

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Counter WMD
  • Cyber
  • Human Systems

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Cold War
  • Cyberspace
  • Cyberspace Operations
  • Deterrence
  • Information Operations
  • International Relations
  • Military Operations
  • National Security
  • Nuclear Weapons
  • Security
  • Terrorism
  • United States
  • United States Strategic Command
  • Ussr
  • Warfare
  • Weapons
  • Weapons Of Mass Destruction

Fields of Study

  • Political science

Readers

  • Strategic Security Studies