Deterrence Failures: A Second Look

Deterrence Failures IJohn Orme A Second Look I w h e n does deterrence fail to deter? Proponents of traditional deterrence theory would answer: since leaders considering a challenge to another country’s commitment are capable of reckoning the costs of doing so, however imperfectly, as long as the defending state can make the costs and risks high enough, no trouble should ensue. Danger arises only when the defender lacks the capacity or resolve to meet its commitments, or is determined and powerful enough but fails to make this clear to its adversary. In these circumstances, the other side may underestimate the defender and conclude that the commitment can be challenged successfully. Failures of deterrence, in other words, are not inconsistent with deterrence theory, provided that they can be attributed to the absence of a clear commitment or sufficient credibility or capability. A very different answer, and an interesting one, has been given by Richard Ned Lebow. In Between Peace and War, a widely acclaimed study of international conflicts, Lebow examined the origins of thirteen wars and crises since 1898 and found that, in eight of the instances, all four of the conditions usually thought necessary and sufficient for successful deterrence were present . That is, one state defined a commitment, communicated this to its adversary, established that the commitment was defensible, and demonstrated the willingness to defend it. Yet in all eight cases, the challenges occurred nonetheless.* This happens, according to Lebow, when a leader is so desperate to obtain a particular objective that he begins to block out information about the defender’s resolve and military capability that should cause him to hesitate. I would like to thank Stephen Schwark, Robert Jervis, and an anonymous reader for their comments and suggestions on this manuscript, and the Oglethorpe University Faculty Development Committee for its financial support of the research. Iohn Orme is an Assistant Professor of Political Studies at Oglethorpe University in Atlanta, Georgia. He is currently working 011 a book on the foreign policy of the United States regarding political instability in the Third World. 1. The cases are analyzed schematically in Richard Ned Lebow, Between Peaceand War:The Nature of Znternational Crisis (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981), pp. 93-96. International Security, Spring 1987 (Vol. 11, No. 4) 01987 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 96 Deterrence Failures I 97 The problem is not so much that the information is misinterpreted, as it would be under the spiral theory, as that it is shunted aside by psychological mechanisms such as denial or selective attention.*Lebow theorizes that these failures of analysis are most likely to occur either when an especially menacing shift of the international balance of power seems imminent or when the political position of the leadership is seriously threatened by rival elites or discontented masses. In either case, the pressure to do something to stave off the danger is intense-intense enough, Lebow thinks, to produce a breakdown in rational calculation. In such circumstances, an embattled leader will be tempted to engage in wishful thinking, dismiss the costs that the defender can impose, and issue a challenge that his adversaries (and deterrence theorists ) have every reason to think should never occur. Thus, what leads to that failure of deterrence in Lebow's view is not an absence of commitment, credibility, or capability, but a lapse of rationality on the part of the challenger brought on by the overpowering need to escape the dire domestic or international consequences he will face if he does not act.3 If this is so, then one might ask why the deterring side should not err on the side of caution and strengthen its credibility and capabilities to the extent that even the least rational opponent could make no mistake about the costs of aggression. But Lebow warns that "deterrence [may], . . . when it takes the form of a massive military build-up and search for military alliances abroad, . . . evoke similar behavior from an adversary and lead to a rapid escalation of international tensions [and] . . . end up by making mutual fears of war self-fulfilling." Leaders who would employ deterrence, it...