1. Deterrence, Compellence, and Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD)
Lecture #5
Deterrence, Compellence, and Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD)

2. Pair-Share Prompt
Look at the two quotes on the following slides from Albert Einstein.
What is the main point he is making about foreign policy and International Relations?
Do you agree or disagree? Why?

3. Albert Einstein Quotes for Pair-Share
"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones." -- Albert Einstein
“You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war." --Albert Einstein

4. Deterrence

5. Takes the form: “Don’t do X, or else…” X is the undesired behavior
Deterrence
Definition: using threats to prevent an actor from taking an undesired action
Takes the form: “Don’t do X, or else…”
X is the undesired behavior
“or else” is the threatened punishment

6. Deterrence Aims to persuade the opponent not to initiate action
We make the demand, explain the consequences of acting, and then wait (Success is measured by whether something happens.)
If the opponent “crosses the line” we have drawn, there will be punitive action.
Example: Jails as a form of punishment are to deter criminals. The success of prisons is thus measured by how empty they are.
Deterrence is a conservative strategy, because it seeks to protect the status quo.
It is a waiting game: the opponent has to move before a reaction is triggered.
It does not have a timeline.

7. Conventional Deterrence:
Having military forces ready and stationed around the world and in key areas of conflict
Example: Operation Desert Shield (buildup of U.S. forces in attempt to deter Iraqi invasion of Saudi Arabia)

8. Deterrence Nuclear Deterrence: Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD)
Critical to Cold War era security strategy, still applies today among some nuclear states (e.g., U.S. and Russia)
Assumes minimal level of rationality
Destabilizing nature of first-strike capabilities
Importance of survivable second-strike capabilities
Impact of missile defense on MAD

9. Under President Truman, nuclear weapons were only a last resort.

10. President Eisenhower changed the rules.

11. Mutually Assured Destruction
The ultimate outgrowth of the Arms Race was to shift US foreign policy.
Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD)
Balance of Terror
Absence of War (but not
peace per se) assured because
each side knows that if they
go to war, it will lead to their
complete annihilation
Irony: The creation of more
and more deadly weapons actually
leads to the avoidance of war

12. Mutually Assured Destruction
RETALIATION
1ST STRIKE
United States
Soviet Union

13. And So A Balance Is Maintained

14. But Each Side Fears The Other Will Gain An Advantage
But Each Side Fears The Other Will Gain An Advantage . . .Which Leads To Arms Race

15. Destructive Capabilities
1979 estimates by the US Office of Technology Assessment
One small nuclear weapon exploded over Detroit or Leningrad would kill 400,000 people immediately
Full-scale nuclear war would kill over 100 million Americans and 75 million Soviets within 30 days
The American deaths alone would approximately equal the 9/11 terrorist attacks every day for 55 years.

16. The Arms Race
By 1987, the United States and the Soviet Union had around 50,000 nuclear weapons between them.
Their explosive power was equal to 15 billion tons of TNT.
Both sides had enough nuclear bombs to kill the entire human race several times over.

18. Deterrence
Limits of Deterrence:
Non-state actors with no defined territory?
Actors with apocalyptic goals/insensitivity to cost manipulations?
Rigid/inappropriate organizational routines undermining rationality? (Sagan)

19. Compellence

20. Compellence
Goal: To change opponent behavior
To stop an opponent from doing something they are doing
To get an opponent to do something they are not doing

21. Compellence Aims to persuade the opponent to change his behavior
We make a demand of action, then initiate our own, and continue doing it until the opponent ceases.
We can get the opponent to:
Stop short of the goal
Undo the action like withdraw from the land
Change policy by changing the government
Success of Compellence is easy to see because it entails the reversal or halt of ongoing behavior.
Compellence is active and seeks to change the status quo.
It takes the initiative and engages the opponent until the opponent relents.
It does have a timeline.

22. Compellence Definition: using threats to change an actor’s behavior
Takes the form: “Do X, or else…”
X is the desired behavior
“or else” is the threatened punishment (could also involve positive inducements: “Do X, and then you’ll receive reward Y…”)
NOTE: some use the word compellence to mean action to change behavior (not just threats)—but it is here defined as coercive diplomacy
Examples:
1991 U.N. Security Council deadline for Iraq to pull out of Kuwait
President Bush’s 2003 Iraq ultimatum (Saddam & sons must leave in 48 hours)

23. Basic Elements of Compellence
Brute force won’t work
Assumes rationality
War is bargaining
The power to hurt allows you to enter the bargaining

24. Compellence Success
Cuban Missile Crisis

25. Compellence Failure
F-105s over Vietnam

26. Credible Threat

27. Making an Incredible Threat Credible
Successful deterrence and compellence both require a credible (believable) threat.
The target actor must believe that you have the capability and the willingness to inflict the threatened punishment if they fail to comply.
But some threats are inherently not credible
Example: “massive retaliation” (nuclear retaliation against USSR for conventional invasion of Western Europe)

28. Making an Incredible Threat Credible
Strategies for making incredible threats credible:
Strategically self-imposed constraints or “tying your hands”
“Rocking the boat”
Bringing in other actors who do have credibility

29. Making an Incredible Threat Credible
Strategically self-imposed constraints (“tying your hands”)
Example: game of chicken: throwing steering wheel out the window
Example: political leaders going public with threats/promises and creating audience costs for backing down (e.g., JFK’s public threat of nuclear retaliation against the USSR during the Cuban Missile Crisis)

30. Making an Incredible Threat Credible
“Rocking the boat”: starting a chain of events that might spiral out of control, thereby raising the stakes and frightening the opponent into backing down
Example: U.S. naval quarantine of Cuba during Cuban Missile Crisis

31. Making an Incredible Threat Credible
Bringing in other actors who do have credibility (e.g., solution to credible commitment problem discussed in previous lecture)
See Lecture Four

32. Commitment Example
Berlin Airlift 1948

33. Credibility Example
Continue the pain

34. Relationship Between Credibility and Commitment
.Interdependence of credibility and commitment
Reputation
Was Vietnam about Europe?
“Doctrine of Credibility”
See with dealings in Syria