Deterrence

Rational deterrence is a highly influential social science theory. Not only has it dominated postwar academic thinking on strategic affairs, but it has provided the intellectual framework of Western military policy in the same period as well.

The power of rational deterrence theory is conceptual, not mathematical. It derives from the underlying logical cohesion and consistency with a set of simple first principles, not from the particular language in which it is expressed. In consequence, the model has been astonishingly fecund, both for theory and policy.

No other theoretical perspective has had nearly the impact on American foreign policy... Far from being an abstract, deductivistic theory developed in a policy vacuum, rational deterrence theory has repeatedly taken inspiration from the most pressing policy questions of the day, from decision of bomber-basing in the 1950s to SDI [Strategic Defense Initiative] in the 1980s. It has set the terms of the debate, and has often influenced the outcome.

Christopher Achen and Duncan Snidal, 1989¹

So far we have seen that strategic rationality, which endorses the logic of consequences, accepts an underlying philosophical realism about value in the form of interpersonally transferable utility, and rejects joint maximization, seemed tailor-made to address the as yet counterfactual hecatomb of waging

1 Christopher Achen and Duncan Snidal, “Rational Deterrence Theory: Comparative Case Studies, World Politics (1989) 41:2, quotes at 143, 153, 164. Achen and Snidal argue that rational deterrence theory supports escalation equivalence. Robert Jervis makes the same point, associat­ing “deterrence by denial” with the views of the proponents of nuclear utilization targeting strategy who include Albert Wohlstetter, Colin Gray, and Herman Kahn,” in “Security Studies: Ideas, Policy, and Politics,” in The Evolution of Political Knowledge: Democracy, Autonomy, and Conflict in Comparative and International Politics, ed.

99 nuclear war.^[248] Thomas Schelling had sought to defend mutual assured destruc­tion (MAD), reminiscent of reciprocal security under classical liberalism, by modeling a high-stakes nuclear security standoff with the recalcitrant Prisoner’s Dilemma game. Given the existential reality of assured destruction in a nuclear war among superpowers, and the shared goal of avoiding Armageddon, by all counts MAD should have won the theoretical security debate and prevailed over US nuclear strategy.

Yet, with hindsight, observers may now be tempted to conclude both that the nuclear security debate vindicated nuclear utilization targeting selection (NUTS) theoretically and helped the United States win the Cold War in practice. Readers may thus wonder, “Why revisit the nuclear security debate, especially given the successful denouement of the superpower standoff?” The choice of adopting orthodox game theory as the exhaustive statement of coherent action necessarily pronounces escalation dominance logically superior to reciprocal deterrence, despite the fact that maintaining nuclear ascendance over another superpower is impossible. Opting for a policy of disproportional deterrence instead of mutual assurance marks a clear rupture with the classical liberal resolution of a security dilemma. These implications have gone far beyond security itself into the interstices of civil society and the social contract.

This chapter follows how the least likely of US presidents to exercise national sovereignty through wielding nuclear threats, Jimmy Carter, took the biggest step by making NUTS official US strategic policy in his Presidential Direction 59 in 1980.^[249] Against the grain of his initial commitment to deescalate the ColdWar arms race at least maintaining minimum deterrence consistent with assured destruction and possibly even through progressive disarmament, Carter left office having signed into effect the US preparedness to wage and prevail in prolonged nuclear conflict.

This chapter focuses on the nuclear security dilemma that offered the initial proving ground for game theory. Theorists viewed the Prisoner’s Dilemma game as analytically equivalent to the paradox of nuclear deterrence: in both cases, the intractable paradox resides in promising an action that, at the time of its enactment, violates instrumental rationality because at that moment of causal intervention, the action has no power to realize the protagonist’s pre­ferences.

This chapter makes clear the parallel structure of MAD and the PD arises if actors concede that strategic rationality, which upholds consequentialist logic, expected utility theory, and individualistic maximization, necessarily governs all coherent choice. We can understand nuclear strategists’ concern to address the toughest case of national security, and hence their tendency toward accept­ing a realpolitik approach to international relations. This chapter analyzes the logical basis for ignoring the factual reality of mutual assured destruction in favor of pursuing security through adopting a nuclear war fighting posture. Thoroughly understanding how strategic rationality inevitably sustains the counterfactual NUTS approach to deterrence through demonstrating the cap­ability and intention to wage nuclear war is important in itself.^[250] Moreover, this exercise further helps us confront the implications of extending the domain of strategic rationality beyond nuclear politics into social contract theory. The result has been social scientists’ inadvertent embrace of strategic combat as the basis for organization at all levels of interaction throughout the interstices of civil society, markets, and governance. Rather than exit a state of nature, strategic rationality views all social and civilizational order to be built up from acts of individual choice to secure fungible gain irrespective of its reper­cussions for other actors. This envisioned social order, consistent with orthodox game theory, reflects nuclearized sovereignty.

This chapter first discusses the 1970s US nuclear strategy and James R. Schlesinger’s long-term role in securing escalation dominance and flexible response. The next section follows President Carter’s conversion from initially pursuing disarmament to finally leaving office having fully embraced his Presidential Direction 59 (PD 59), which placed the United States on a nuclear war-fighting stance.^[251] The third section examines Carter’s security dilemma, which uniquely issued from his scrupulous moral countenance: no one could believe him possible of presiding over the massive nuclear retaliation on which the deterrent posture of MAD relied. The fourth section discusses the counsel available to Carter in the late 1970s from moral philosophers, who began analyzing the nuclear security dilemma through the lens of rational decision theory. This section clarifies how only NUTS could satisfactorily resolve the nuclear security dilemma once it was modeled by orthodox game theory. The fifth section explores what amounts to a tacit theoretical alliance between the offensive realist school of international relations theory and standard game theory. The concluding section relies on philosophical exposition in the early 1980s to show how the way out of the nuclear security dilemma modeled using the Prisoner’s Dilemma is to clearly perceive that adopting strategic rationality as the final statement of purposive agency rules out alternative modes of action. These types of action include the logic of appropriateness and legitimacy, in addition to incommensurable domains of value and solidar­ity. Where deterrence relies on issuing negative sanctions, classical liberal assurance builds on mutual recognition, self-ratified norms, and voluntary compliance with agreements made.