Power, Threat, or Military Capabilities by Carmel Davis (review)

Considering its central importance, the topic of when, why, and how states perceive others as threats is remarkably understudied. Taking the period 1970 to 1982 as his set of cases, Carmel Davis looks at how well U.S. perceptions of the extent of the danger posed by the Soviet Union can be explained by one version of balance of power theory, balance of threat, and what he calls the balance of military capabilities. This is an important period of the Cold War, and the summary of the relevant facts, figures, and intelligence judgments is useful. The exposition of the theories, although done without much nuance, raises interesting and important issues. In just 114 pages, the book covers quite a bit of ground very concisely. However, enough issues and questions are missed so that in the end the contribution is limited.

Like many authors before him, Davis argues that balance of power as measured by the size of a country’s economy and armed forces is simply too blunt an instrument to reveal much to scholars or contemporary decision-makers. Not surprisingly, Davis argues that this view does not fit the changing U.S. perceptions of the USSR. For one thing, a state may view another as very powerful and yet friendly, as was largely the case for NATO members’ views of one another. For this reason, Stephen Walt argued that the key factor was whether a state perceived other countries as posing a threat. In this respect, how the others behave is of primary importance, although factors such as their domestic political systems can also play a role. Less convincingly, Davis discards this hypothesis as well, arguing (correctly) that in the late 1970s the Soviet Union did not behave as aggressively as it might have (pp. 64–65) and that under both Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter the U.S. government’s interpretations of Soviet behavior varied. But Davis’s treatment of what the USSR was doing and how this was perceived is too sketchy to bear out his conclusions. He ignores Soviet “adventures” in Africa and the USSR’s generally increased assertiveness during these years, which many contemporary political leaders and subsequent scholars attributed in part to the Soviet military build-up, the U.S. defeat in Vietnam, and U.S. domestic preoccupations.

Davis’s preferred explanation is what he calls the balance of military capabilities. Although it is built on the same variables as balance of power, he believes it is more precise in its measurement of the likely outcome of possible wars by taking into account a more fine-grained treatment of adversary strength and, most importantly, by doing a “net assessment” of the capabilities of both sides. He claims that the extent of U.S. perceptions of the Soviet threat track closely on such net assessments.

This is an argument worth considering, but the treatment is much too brief and superficial to be convincing. Net assessment is a very tricky business and it is hard to trace changes in these judgments over time. Furthermore, Davis does not discuss how politicized the judgments are. When the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) started making net assessments, the Department of Defense strongly objected on the grounds that CIA had no business looking at U.S. capabilities and that the relevant expertise was in the Pentagon. Readers of this journal will not be surprised to learn that the Defense Department estimates were pessimistic about the prevailing situation but implied that, with proper efforts and increased spending, the situation could be rectified. It is also unfortunate that even in a brief treatment Davis ignores the raging debate over Soviet nuclear doctrine particularly the question of whether Soviet leaders believed that nuclear or even large-scale conventional wars could be kept limited. Even if I did not have a personal interest in the subject, I would be aware that this was one of the main battlegrounds between the competing schools of thought in Washington.

More broadly, Davis’s...