Dispensa+- 4- Deterrence -General Theory Flashcards
School of Thoughts on military capacity and peace
- Spiral School (Jervis): Military capacity can’t bring peace
- Deterrence School (Scheling): Military capacity can dissuade rivals from starting crises
Basic Logic of Deterrence
- Two actors – A and B
- A, the deterrer, wants to prevent B, the deterree, from taking an undesirable action (For B, this action is beneficial)
- A can use punishments
- Successful deterrence if
• without punishment, B takes the action
• with punishment B does not take the action - Punishment imposes:
• Costs that exceed benefits of the action
• Reduction of benefits of the action so that it is not worth taking it anymore
Applied to International Relations
- A has an interest in maintaining the status quo and can retaliate
- B has an interest in changing the status quo and can attack
- A andB’s moves and retaliations: military (invasion) or non-military (tariffs)
Dimensions of deterrence
matrix
- Immediate (respond to short-term threats) vs. General (prevent short-term crises)
- Direct (against a direct threat) vs. Extended (against an actor threatening a third actor)
How to Determine deterrence success
it is very complex, we need to know:
• What action the deterrer wants to prevent
• If the deterree would have done the action without threat
Deterrence: how does it work
Deterree compares the utility generated by two actions:
- initiate a crisis
* stick to the status quo
mathematical successful deterrence
Benefit of initiation conditional on retaliation
After action of the deterree, deterrer considers
Utility following retaliation and of initiation>(Cost to retaliate+Utility following initiation and no retaliation)
- The threat of retaliation needs to be credible
Classical Deterrence Theory
- Theory assumes that conflict is the worst outcome
- Deterrer does not want to retaliate
- Anticipating this, deterree will attack
- Deterrence is then bound to fail
Significant factors in Deterrence Success
3
- Signalling and Bargaining Behaviour
- Reputations for Resolve
- Interests at stake: value of the status quo
Signalling and Bargaining Behaviour
- All deterrers want deterree to believe they are willing to retaliate
- Use costly actions to signal resolve
- Increase cost of backing down/not retaliate
- Democracies and audience costs - politicians don’t want to back down
- Sometimes it is optimal not to signal very high resolve: allies will start acting recklessly, there might not be enough support domestically for such policies, these policies might make it hard for the attacker to back down
Reputations for Resolve
- different views on if behaviour in previous crises affects credibility of threats in future crises
- some argue that the dependence of current reputation on previous behaviour is strong
- other argue that each crisis has its own peculiarities,
- other argue that behaviour in past crises can offer information only when it runs contrary to the deterree’s prior expectations
Interests at stake - value of the status quo
- if deterrer has vital interests at stake, it will be willing to engage in a costly retaliation effort
- if status quo is particularly undesirable for deterree, it will be more willing to initiate a crisis
Challenges to Deterrence
Multiple enemies
Cyberattacks
Challenges to Deterrence
Multiple enemies
How deterrer interacts with one enemy can be informative to the other enemy:
- If deterrer does not retaliate, it can signal lack of resolve and encourage more conflicts
- Resources to confront enemies are not infinite; committing many resources to one conflict can affect credibility of threats toward another enemy
Challenges to Deterrence
Cyberattacks
- Attribution problem: difficulty in determining who is responsible for an attack
• false alarm: deterrer perceives an attack when no attack occurred
• detection failure: deterrer fails to detect an attack that did occur
• misidentification: deterrer assigns responsibility to the wrong attacker - Attribution problem renders deterrence multilateral:
• If an attacker becomes aggressive, deterrer will consider he’s responsible for an attack. Other attackers have incentive to attack and hide behind the more aggressive attacker.
Empirical assessment of Deterrence
Issues:
- Identifying an attempt of deterrence
- Identifying the factors for deterrence failure
Empirical assessment of Deterrence
evidence for the following propositions/hypotheses:
- Deterrer’s military capability improves deterrence prospects
- Military and diplomatic actions of defenders affect success of deterrence
- Combination of threats and accommodation is more effective than threats alone
- Reputations have some effect on deterrence
- Deterrence failures:
- initiation of crises: general failure
- escalation of crises to war: immediate failure
- deterrer makes far-reaching concessions to deterree to avoid initiation/escalation: both general and immediate failures
- Deterrence as a continuum (i.e. partial deterrence)
The threat of retaliation needs to be capable
The deterree compares the utility generated by two actions
- initiate a crisis / escalate a crisis
- stick to the status quo
Assumption: if the deterree initiates/escalates a crisis, the deterrer retaliates
Deterrence will be successful if
Benefit of initiation/escalation conditional on retaliation < Cost of retaliation + Benefit of status quo
The threat of retaliation needs to be credible
Deterree moves before deterrer
Before we assumed that if deteree initiates/escalates a crisis, the deterrer retaliates
But once deterrer initiates/escalates, does deterrer actually want to retaliate?
It does if
Utility following retaliation and of initiation/escalation > Cost to retaliate + Utility following initiation/escalation and no retaliation
