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Deterrence and the Arms Race:The Impotence of Power Jucek w l e r A. F. K. Orgunski, with Daniel 1 .FOX I s o much has been done in the name of nuclear deterrence, so much destructive power built by ourselves and the Russians that it may seem rather late in the day, not to say absurd, to wonder whether or not mutual deterrence really occurs and ask what evidence can be adduced to prove it. Yet such a question may be essential to an understanding of international nuclear politics. The problems thus posed are difficult, however, and cannot be solved by direct means. What one needs to do is to establish empirically whether the conditions necessary for deterrence to be taking place are present. A brief review of the reasons why this should be so ought to, on the other hand, give us some clues as to alternate paths we would need to take in seeking our answers. To view the problem in its proper light we must take a number of steps back. Deterrence means that the other party is frightened away from what it otherwise might wish to do by fear of retaliation by the opposing nation.’ In nuclear deterrence the root causes of this fear are, obviously, the nuclear weapons in the hands of opponents and their threats to use them. One would certainly think that deterrence would work best not in cases where both sides have nuclear weapons, but, precisely, in situations where the nuclear power would need feel no fear of retaliation. Surprisingly enough, deterrence does not seem to work very well precisely in situations where one side to the dispute has nuclear weapons and the other does not. 1. The notion of deterrence was introduced in its modern form by Bernard Brodie in his classic work, The Absolute Weapon: Atomic Power and World Order (New York Harcourt, Brace, 1946). The very substantial literature developed since that day is available in the massive bibliography of Richard Dean Burns, Arms Control and Disarmament (Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio Press, 1977). Two recent overviews that deal extremely well with the problems treated here areJerome Kahan, Security in the Nuclear Age (Washington: Brookings Institution, 1975) and Bernard Brodie, “The Development of Nuclear Strategy,” Center for Arms Control and International Security, UCLA, Working paper no. 1 1 ,February 1978. We would like to gratefully acknowledge the help received from Ronald Tammen and Richard Solomon in acquiring the data for this project. Several colleagues reviewed this paper and contributed to its present form including Lutz Erbring, James Caporaso, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita , and John Gillespie. Michael Horn was an invaluable assistant and critic throughout this project. We are of course responsible for remaining shortcomings. Jacek Kugler is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Boston University and an Associate of the University of Michi an’s Znstitute for Social Research. A . F. K. Orgnnski is Professor of Political Science at the University ofMichigan, and a Program Director at that university’s Center for Political Studies. Daniel Fox is Assistant Director of the Statistical Research Labomtoy at the University of Michigan. 105 International Security 1 106 Incidents of counties without retaliatory nuclear capabilities attacking countries with immense nuclear arsenals have occurred too frequently to be disregarded. We have reviewed fully all such cases elsewhere.* An example will help us make the point. The Russians, for example, blockaded the US and her allies out of Berlin in 1948 and forced the US to run the blockade, and this at a time when the US had absolute hegemony in nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them to Russian targets. Why did the USSR take such a chance? Again, the Chinese attacked and routed the American army in Korea in 1950when the US had nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them, while the Chinese had no nuclear weapons and the Russians, who were China’s allies and were not involved in the war directly, probably still lacked any weapons, and in any case, certainly did not have the means to deliver them to American targets. Still again, the USSR dared invade Hungary in spite of the fact that the US had...

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