Dispensa+- 4- Deterrence -General Theory

Question 1

School of Thoughts on military capacity and peace

Answer 1

• Spiral School (Jervis): Military capacity can’t bring peace
• Deterrence School (Scheling): Military capacity can dissuade rivals from starting crises

Question 2

Basic Logic of Deterrence

Answer 2

• 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

Question 3

Applied to International Relations

Answer 3

• 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)

Question 4

Dimensions of deterrence

Answer 4

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)

Question 5

How to Determine deterrence success

Answer 5

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

Question 6

Deterrence: how does it work

Deterree compares the utility generated by two actions:

Answer 6

• initiate a crisis

* stick to the status quo

Question 7

mathematical successful deterrence

Answer 7

Benefit of initiation conditional on retaliation

Question 8

After action of the deterree, deterrer considers

Answer 8

Utility following retaliation and of initiation>(Cost to retaliate+Utility following initiation and no retaliation)
- The threat of retaliation needs to be credible

Question 9

Classical Deterrence Theory

Answer 9

• 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

Question 10

Significant factors in Deterrence Success

3

Answer 10

• Signalling and Bargaining Behaviour
• Reputations for Resolve
• Interests at stake: value of the status quo

Question 11

Signalling and Bargaining Behaviour

Answer 11

• 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

Question 12

Reputations for Resolve

Answer 12

• 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

Question 13

Interests at stake - value of the status quo

Answer 13

• 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

Question 14

Challenges to Deterrence

Answer 14

Multiple enemies

Cyberattacks

Question 15

Challenges to Deterrence

Multiple enemies

Answer 15

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

Question 16

Challenges to Deterrence

Cyberattacks

Answer 16

• 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.

Question 17

Empirical assessment of Deterrence

Issues:

Answer 17

• Identifying an attempt of deterrence

- Identifying the factors for deterrence failure

Question 18

Empirical assessment of Deterrence

evidence for the following propositions/hypotheses:

Answer 18

• 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

Question 19

• Deterrence failures:

Answer 19

• 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)

Question 20

The threat of retaliation needs to be capable

Answer 20

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

Question 21

The threat of retaliation needs to be credible

Answer 21

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