The Logic of Armageddon – Deterrence Theory

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The physicist Robert Oppenheimer ushered in the beginning of the Atomic Age with a whispered lament from the Hindu text, the Bhagavad Gita. "I am become death," Oppenheimer famously stated, "the destroyer of worlds."

Oppenheimer's years of work had given birth to a second sunrise in the desert of New Mexico that July of 1945. The explosion at Trinity would ultimately bring about the surrender of Japan, an end to the Second World War, and the beginning of the Cold War.

Today, more than sixty years since the conclusion of the Manhattan Project, nuclear weapons still represent the ultimate trump card in international affairs. They have simultaneously formed the foundation of decades of peace between the world's major powers and have brought us to the brink of annihilation. They are at once the most dangerous and most stabilizing weapons in the history of war and among the least understood. As nations like Iran seek these weapons in the face of the recent nuclearization of Pakistan and Israel, and the United States threatens war to prevent Iranian nuclear ambitions from being realized, understanding deterrence and deterrence theory has become imperative.

What is Deterrence?

The Encyclopedia Britannica defies deterrence as: Military strategy whereby one power uses the threat of reprisal to preclude an attack from an adversary. This definition is lacking, however, is that it fails to encompass the problems that deterrence theories tend to create. As in all things, the law of unintended consequences comes into play.

The result of these unintended consequences is brinksmanship - the seeming hell-bent-for-leather race towards nuclear oblivion that pervaded the Cold War era. Understanding why brinkmanship grows out of deterrence and how one balances the other can elucidate a great deal about international affairs, both during the Cold War and today.

The Three Cs and the Law of Unintended Consequences

The act of deterrence requires three actions from a deterring power – generally referred to as "the three Cs." They are, in order of logical consequence: Capability, Communication, and Credibility.

Capability is the material component of deterrence. Iran, at present, seeks the capability to deter Israel, meaning it must obtain nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them to Israel. Moreover, it must find some way to ensure that whatever nuclear weapons it has are sufficiently numerous or sufficiently well protected such that they can survive an Israeli nuclear attack.

The unintended consequence of capability is the arms race. As Soviet nuclear capabilities grew greater, the United States sought, at first more nuclear weapons, and later more sophisticated ways of protecting them. This, in turn, lead to the need for the Soviets to develop yet more weapons to counter US weapons, thus perpetuating the cycle.

Communication is the verbal component of deterrence. As Dr. Strangelove says in Kubric's masterpiece of the same name, "of course, the whole point of a Doomsday Machine is lost, if you keep it a secret! Why didn't you tell the world, Eh?" Strangelove refers specifically to the communication of capability, but deterrence also relies upon the communication of intent. NATO's famous doctrine that "an attack on one is an attack on all" most effectively communicated the intent of the United States to defend Europe from nuclear or conventional attack in the face of the Soviet threat.

The unintended consequence of communication is belligerence. Communicating the intention and capability to destroy a nation is inherently hostile. The result of this simultaneous communication is a state of heightened tension fueled by increasingly vitriolic rhetoric. It is very difficult to find a positive or peaceful side to Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev's most infamous threat, "we will bury you."

Credibility lends the psychological component of deterrence. It is not enough to possess weapons and communicate the intent to use them, the enemy must believe that the political will exists to go to total nuclear war. Credibility is expressed through words as well as doctrine and policy. Standing orders for the US submarine fleet to launch on targets in the event of multiple redundant communications failures would represent such an order.

The unintended consequence of credibility is aggressiveness. Credibility is largely communicated through military posture and action. Pushing military readiness to a higher level during a time of crisis lends credibility to a nuclear deterrent, but also signals a desire to escalate. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, Curtis LeMay ordered the US Strategic Forces to Defcon-2 (just short of open war) to demonstrate the credibility of a US nuclear second strike – a move interpreted by many in the Kremlin as preparation for a preemptive strike.

Implications in the Post Cold War World

Deterrence theory plays heavily into the power dynamic of the Middle East today. Israel's nuclear capability is, perhaps, the worst kept secret in the Middle East. Well known as a nuclear power (but never formally acknowledged as such) Israel's small arsenal keeps her larger, but less technologically sophisticated neighbors at bay.

At the same time, Israel's nuclear trump card also gives her carte blanch to launch air-strikes against Lebanon, inflict whatever misery is politically expedient upon the Palestinians, and treat the rest of the Middle East with a not insubstantial amount of disdain.

Iran's quest for nuclear weapons can be seen as quite logical in this regard. If Iran achieves nuclear parity with Israel it will create a regional Deterrence/Brinksmanship cycle which, in turn, should serve to temper some of Israel's more egregious abuses while enforcing similar restrains on the actions of Iran. This temperance will take place because of a mathematical principal that operates with the predictability and precision of a Swiss watch and which is the topic of the next in this series of articles: Game Theory.

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