DETERRENCE AS A FORM OF INTER-NATION INFLUENCE

The awesome destructive capacity of nuclear weapons has rendered the cost of their use prohibitive except in cases of extreme provocation. Because few, if any, political ends can be gained through nuclear war, the primary function of these weapons is that of posing a threat to potential enemies. Deterrence, by which decision makers in one nation seek to prevent certain actions by poten­tial adversaries by threatening them with military retaliation, can be considered one of the means by which nations attempt to influence others.

Deterrence is not an invention of the nuclear age, as attempts to influence others through threats of sanctions are as old as diplomacy. By posing a threat to the values of a potential attacker, the defender seeks to preclude certain types of behavior—specifically, unacceptable threats to the status quo. Deter­rence can also be viewed as a process of communication; decision makers of one nation seek to communicate to their counterparts abroad, "If you undertake activities X, Y, or Z, we shall surely retaliate with actions whose costs to you will outweigh any gains you may achieve." It is generally assumed that the threat of nuclear retaliation is severe enough to deter any nation from attempting an all-out attack on the defender. Some deterrence theorists have also suggested that a powerful nuclear capability will suffice to deter aggression at lower levels

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of violence, such as conventional attacks, guerrilla incursions, and the like. In the colorful words of Sir John Slessor, former British chief of the air staff, "The dog that we keep to take care of the cat can also take care of the kittens." But, as we shall discuss in more detail later, the assumption that strategic deter­rence might deal with a much broader range of challenges is open to serious question.

The premises underlying strategic deterrence are that (1) decisions by both the defender and the challenger will be based on rational calculations of probable costs and gains, accurate evaluations of the situation, and careful assess­ments of relative capabilities; (2) a high level of threat, such as that posed by nuclear weapons, inhibits rather than provokes aggressive behavior; (3) the value hierarchies of both the defender and the challenger are similar, at least to the point that each places the avoidance of large-scale violence at or near the top; and (4) both sides maintain tight centralized control over decisions that might involve or provoke the use of strategic weapons. Deterrence thus presupposes rational and predictable decision processes. Put somewhat differently, most de­terrence theories assume that the nation-state can be thought of as a unitary rational actor. Later we shall consider whether these premises are valid in all circumstances.

Credibility

One obvious requirement for effective deterrence is possession of sufficient capabilities to carry out the threatened retaliation. But influence over the behav­ior of others is not merely a function of weapon characteristics, as can be illus­trated by the case of the bandit who uses a realistic-looking toy pistol to convince a bank teller to hand over some money. Success should be attributed, not to the robber's weapon, but rather to the teller's perception of it. Communicating to potential adversaries about one's strategic capabilities is usually relatively easy. Because weapons and military personnel are tangible objects and their attributes (speed, range, destructive capacity, number, accuracy, and the like) are relatively easy to measure, probabilities of misperceptions are reduced; and any distortions are likely to be on the side of overestimating rather than underes­timating the adversary's capabilities—"just to be on the safe side." Also, there are usually ample opportunities for communicating about military capabilities; for example, the annual May Day parade in Moscow provides Soviet leaders an opportunity to impress foreigners with the latest weapons in their arsenal. Objectively speaking, the destructive capacity of modern weapons and the potentially catastrophic costs of general war should ensure sufficient caution in foreign-policy decisions to make their use unnecessary. Certainly this should be true of nuclear weapons. But success in avoiding general war to date should give rise to only the mildest optimism; the frequency of war indicates that the threat to use force and even the possession of superior military capabilities

77 Weapons, War, and Political Influence

have often failed to deter.¹⁰ To explain these failures, as well as to understand the conditions for successful deterrence, we must look beyond the attributes of weapons systems. First, as in many diplomatic bargaining situations, the de­fender must be able to establish the credibility of the threat; that is, potential aggressors must be impressed that in case of provocation, the threatened retalia­tion will in fact be carried out. Mere possession of powerful weapons, even an overwhelming superiority of capabilities, does not ensure credibility, just as in a series of negotiations, threats need more than merely their enunciation to be made believable. Consider again our example of the bank robber, who in this case enters the bank with a genuine weapon. If, for whatever reason, the teller were convinced that the threat was a bluff, she would not meet the bandit's demands. His failure could not be attributed to characteristics of his weapon— in fact, a more powerful weapon might more readily be seen as a bluff—but rather to the low credibility (as perceived by the teller) of his threat to use it. This simple example illustrates the point that credibility is not inherent in the weapon but is rather a function of the challenger's perception of the weapon and of its owner's intentions and motivations. That is:

Deterrent effect = Estimated capability X Estimated intent

Although this formula¹¹ oversimplifies a complex relationship (a point to which we will return later in considering the deterrent effect of "overkill" capacity), it does highlight the key point that if either perceived capability or intent is zero, deterrent effect is also zero.

Because credibility depends upon the challenger's beliefs and percep­tions, a crucial problem is that of communicating intent. Compounding the problem is the very real difficulty of gaining hard and verifiable evidence about such elusive and sometimes mercurial attributes as motivations. History is not barren of instances in which disaster arose from faulty assessments of others' capabilities—witness the American estimates of Japanese and Chinese military strength in 1941 and 1950, respectively—but the decidedly more difficult task of adducing intentions has no doubt created far more problems. George Kennan has observed that "in everything that can be statistically expressed—expressed, that is, in such a way as not to imply any judgment on our motivation—I believe the Soviet Government to be excellently informed about us. I am sure that their information on the development of our economies, on the state of our military preparations, on our scientific progress, etc., is absolutely first-rate.

¹⁰ Bernard Brodie, "The Anatomy of Deterrence," World Politics, 11 (1959), 14-15. Excel­lent case studies of deterrence failure may be found in Roberta Wohlstetter, Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1962); and Alexander L. George and Richard Smoke, Deterrence in American Foreign Policy: Theory and Practice (New York: Columbia University Press, 1974).

¹¹ Adopted in somewhat modified form from J. David Singer, Deterrence, Arms Control, and Disarmament (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1962), p. 162.

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But when it comes to the analysis of our motives, to the things that make our life tick as it does, I think this whole great system of intelligence-gathering breaks down seriously."¹² This disability is not, of course, limited to the Soviet Union, or even to totalitarian nations. The Munich Conference, Pearl Harbor, the Korean invasion, the Suez crisis, the American responses to installation of Soviet missiles in Cuba, and the Vietnam War are only a few of the more promi­nent cases in which leaders of democratic nations seriously misread the motiva­tions and determination of their adversaires. In general, the more ambiguous the information, the greater the likelihood of distortion between the intent be­hind the sender's message and the meaning assigned to it by the intended audi­ence. Thus, it is much easier to impress opponents about tangible objects such as weapons than about one's motivations to use them in various circumstances.

One method of communicating with potential adversaries is through declaratory policy. Since World War II, American leaders have repeatedly as­serted that a Soviet attack on Western Europe would evoke the same response as a direct attack on the United States; Soviet leaders have made similar proclama­tions with respect to Eastern Europe. But it is difficult to communicate intent by words only; because "actions speak louder than words," visible actions that convey a relatively unambiguous message are usually necessary to buttress policy declarations. During the early 1960s, when Premier Khrushchev was apparently unconvinced of the credibility of certain American defense commitments, Presi­dent Kennedy is reported to have complained, "That son of a bitch won't pay any attention to words. He has to see you move."¹³ Despite repeated American pronouncements concerning the intent to defend West Berlin against Soviet encroachment, the USSR was not deterred from undertaking various efforts to undermine the status of that city. Even such actions as the Berlin airlift of 1948-1949, while adding credibility to the American commitment, did not per­manently deter the Soviet Union. On the other hand, repeated failure to carry out a threatened retaliation rapidly erodes credibility. Assertions by British and French leaders that they would support Poland in case of Nazi attack had little deterrent effect, in part owing to their previous failure to act against Italian and German aggression in Ethiopia, Albania, Austria, and Czechoslovakia.

In our discussion of diplomatic bargaining, we pointed out that credibility is enhanced if the threat is roughly commensurate with the importance of the issue in contention. Similarly, in the area of deterrence, it is generally recognized today that the threat to unleash a massive thermonuclear response to aggression, even if supported by the necessary capabilities, is not apt to be credible in cases of limited provocation (such as guerrilla raids). But in the years immediately following World War II, it was widely assumed that the threat of nuclear retalia­tion would automatically deter aggression at any level. This premise underlay the defense policies of the British Conservative government on its return to

¹² George Kennan, Russia, The Atom, and the West (New York: Harper & Row, 1957), pp. 21-22.

¹³ Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., A Thousand Days (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965), p. 391

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office in 1951. The invasion of Korea, despite American nuclear superiority and concern for the costs of maintaining large conventional forces, led the Eisenhower administration to adopt a new deterrent posture. In January 1954, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles announced a major change in American defense policy, declaring that henceforth, Soviet-sponsored aggression on the periphery of the free world might be met not in kind (as in the Korean War), but perhaps with "massive retaliatory power" delivered "by means and at places of our own choosing."¹⁴

In other words, limited aggression might be met with direct retaliation against its presumed sponsor—Moscow. Whatever credibility a policy of massive retaliation might have had during the period of American nuclear monopoly (1945-1949) was drastically reduced after the Soviet Union attained nuclear capabilities. By 1954, both the United States and the Soviet Union could unleash a massive nuclear attack on each other, but neither could escape the frightful costs of a retaliatory attack. Under these circumstances, a threat to respond to any aggressive act with a thermonuclear strike might well be questioned. By 1957, a few months after the successful launching of Sputnik I, even Secretary Dulles accepted the view that Western security would rest in part on local defense, although he stressed the use of tactical nuclear weapons rather than conventional means.¹⁵ By 1961, the doctrine had been abandoned in favor of strategies that could better cope with the full range of warlike acts by an opponent.

Stability

Effective deterrence must be stable as well as credible. Adversaries must not only be able to communicate a resolve to carry out a threat if the provocation is severe enough; they must also impress enemy leaders of their intentions with­out provoking a preventive or preemptive strike out of fear. The possible conse­quences of the "reciprocal fear of surprise attack" can be illustrated by an anal­ogy:

If I go downstairs to investigate a noise at night, with a gun in my hand, and find myself face to face with a burglar who has a gun in his hand, there is danger of an outcome that neither of us desires. Even if he prefers just to leave quietly, and I wish him to, there is danger that he may think I want to shoot, and shoot first. Worse, there is danger that he may think that I think he wants to shoot. Or he may think that I think he thinks I want to shoot. And so on. "Self-defense" is ambiguous, when one is only trying to preclude being shot in self-defense.¹⁶

¹⁴ John Foster Dulles, "The Evolution of Foreign Policy," U.S. Department of State, Bulletin 30 (January 25, 1954), pp. 107-10.

¹⁵John Foster Dulles, "Challenge and Response in United States Policy," Foreign Affairs, 36 (October 1957), 25-43.

¹⁶ Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1960), p. 207.

280Weapons, War, and Political Influence

Leaders of two mutually hostile nations, each possessing powerful military forces that might be capable of destroying the adversary with a surprise attack, may find themselves in a similar situation. Each may prefer to back off but may be unable to convince the other of his preference.

In summary, then, an effective deterrence system requires more than merely possession of powerful military forces—even if they include nuclear weap­ons. Before 1945, the effectiveness of weapons was measured primarily by their performance against those of enemies and only secondarily for their deterrent effects. The contribution of nuclear weapons to national security is assessed less by their capacity to inflict devastating damage on enemies than according to their ability to influence the behavior of potential adversaries so that the occasion for using them will not arise. The outbreak of war, necessitating actual use of military capabilities, represents a failure of deterrence.¹⁷ Thus, an effective deterrent must be both threatening (sufficiently credible that adversaries are not tempted to undertake prohibited actions) and stable (reassuring enough to reduce any incentives to launch a preemptive strike out of fear).

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