Rationality, Culture and Deterrence
Abstract
Far from being a relic of the Cold War, questions about deterrence are a recurring feature in U.S. policy debates. In the waning days of summer 2013, the U.S. government found itself wrestling with how to respond to a likely deterrence failure involving the use of chemical weapons in Syria. The Syria case raises important questions about deterrence. Was the Assad regime undeterrable, making it unwise for President Obama to have announced that CW use would cross a red line? Or did deterrence fail because the United States did not take the right steps to make its deterrent threat credible? As with the Syria case, two big questions are typically involved in deterrence debates. First, can some other actor be deterred? Would an Iran with nuclear bombs, for example, be subject to deterrence? Second, if deterrence is possible, how is it best achieved? What will it take to deter the other actor from a particular course of action? This second question can be just as contentious as the first. Right up to the end of the Cold War, western analysts disagreed about what threats would most effectively deter the Soviet Union. Some believed that the ability to convey a risk that a significant percentage of the Soviet population and economy would be destroyed would be sufficient to induce caution in Soviet leaders. Others argued that the Soviet regime cared only about the survival of the Communist Party elite, meaning that deterrent threats would have to find ways to target those elites directly.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Sep 01, 2013
- Accession Number
- ADA587339
Entities
People
- Jeffrey W. Knopf
Organizations
- Naval Postgraduate School