Deterrence: the Two Bobs

Imagine you lived in a town with two guys named Bob. No one ever used either Bob's last name but just simply said, "Well, Bob got in a snow mobile accident Tuesday." You had to just kind of figure out which Bob was intended. It would make for lots of confusion.

This is roughly what the current situation is with deterrence. There are two different concepts connected with deterrence - as different and distinct from one another as two different Bobs would be. Yet we often use them interchangeably without indicating which deterrence we're talking about.

The first deterrence is the larger, overarching concept of deterrence. Garden variety deterrence. This sort of deterrence could be defined as persuading someone not to do something by using a threat. So the child reaches for a cookie fresh out of the oven - still on the cookie sheet - and the parent says, "Don't touch that cookie or you'll be sorry." This is deterrence plain and simple. The parent doesn't grab the child's arm (preventive attack). The parent doesn't block the child with his hand (defense.) The parent issues a threat which then deters the child. (At least until the parent is out of the room.)

The second deterrence is a less general form of the larger concept. A specific subset. This is deterrence as it relates to nuclear weapons in the Cold War. In the Cold War the US and USSR were adversaries. Both had large arsenals of nuclear weapons. These arsenals were roughly the same size and presumed by most people to balance each other out. Both countries had the capability to obliterate the other.

This second form of deterrence inherits the characteristics of the first type of deterrence, but has three important qualifiers. 1) The presumption of balancing arsenals. 2) The presumption of arsenals large enough to obliterate an enemy. 3) The presumption that fear of obliteration plays a key role in decisions about the confrontation between the two adversaries.

Notice the differences. When I say, "Don't touch those cookies" there is no presumption that I will obliterate the child if the threat is ignored. There is no presumption that the child can mutually obliterate me once I take action. There is no presumption that either of us is thinking about obliteration.

It's worth pointing out that this second kind of deterrence is not "nuclear deterrence." There are any number of cases where nuclear weapons are used to deter that don't match this definition. When Israel uses nuclear weapons to deter invasion, its opponents have no balancing arsenals of nuclear weapons. When China (with its arsenal of 200) deters Russia, there is arguably no presumption that Russia will be obliterated. When North Korea deters South Korea, the fear of obliteration probably doesn't enter into South Korea's calculations. This second form of deterrence is a very specific concept that grew up in the 1960s and applies really only to one case in the current world: confrontation between the US and Russia. It is a very specific sub-case of the overall concept. 

This second kind of deterrence ought to be called something like "matching-large-arsenal-obliterating-deterrence." When people talk about "deterrence" here in the US (and particularly in connection with nuclear weapons), it is often this second type of deterrence that they mean. When I was at the University of Chicago recently we had a long discussion about the difference between deterrence and compellence. I said I was unimpressed with the assertion that deterrence is more likely to work that compellence. They spent the better part of an hour trying to get me to see sense. The problem, I've come to realize, is that we were talking about two different Bobs.

They were actually arguing that matching-large-arsenal-obliterating-deterrence is more likely to work than matching-large-arsenal-obliterating-compellence. They may be right about this. If both of you have the ability to obliterate the other, then it may be easier to maintain the status quo than to try to compel some sort of change. But proving this point has very little to say about the character of deterrence (the first kind, the larger, overarching, more general concept.) It doesn't even really have that much to say about nuclear deterrence, since there are - increasingly - more small arsenals in the world that are not balanced by another arsenal.

I really don't understand this completely. I need to spend some more time with it. But at least I've finally figured out that there are two guys named Bob in this town.

Comments

[Lyle Brecht]

Ward,

I have also been thinking about deterrence, what it means, the different flavors and whether nuclear deterrence is a feasible strategy today. My sense is that nuclear optimists (nukes make us safer) are over-relying on retrospective historicity (no nuclear wars have been fought in the past 64-years and stationarity (the past is a reliable guide to the future) to justify continuance of nuclear deterrence. I believe both of these assumptions are wrong. Nuclear optimism may be justifiable, but not on these grounds.

Likewise, the arguments of some nuclear pessimists (nukes must be eliminated forever) are weak in that the geopolitical value of nuclear weapons is discounted against the probabilistic risk of a nuclear event (accident, nuclear exchange in war, or terrorist act). And, both these ‘values’ are pretty squishy. Do nukes help prevent war? Both nuclear optimism and pessimism rests on an unprovable premise. Faith, or lack thereof, in nukes drive the conversation.

What I propose is to re-look at the game math that described mutual assured destruction. I believe the assumptions no longer hold. Nuclear weapons no longer produce the second type of deterrence you discuss above. The question then becomes: what sort of game (strategy) should we be playing? Who is it that we are trying to deter and from what? Can we invent a new game to play? A game that does not rely on nukes if indeed they are less tan useful?

I have written these ideas up further at: http://www.scribd.com/doc/16490356/

I would appreciate hearing if you see something that I am missing or not explaining fully.