7.4.2  Military Deterrence and Threats

(This is an archived extract from the book Patterns of Power: Edition 2)

Military Deterrence has been a major feature in preventing large-scale conflict, particularly since the Second World War.  The Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1968 was intended to restrict nuclear weapons to the five nuclear powers which then had them; these nuclear powers undertook to negotiate to achieve complete disarmament; the non-nuclear signatories to the treaty would submit to inspections to prevent proliferation.[1]  This was very effective during the Cold War period but the treaty began to unravel towards the end of the century:

·      The nuclear powers didn't scale down their arsenals.

·      Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea all made nuclear weapons.

It has been argued that this happened at least partly because the nuclear powers made insufficient progress towards disarmament,[2] but for whatever reason the treaty now appears to have crumbled completely.  And a world in which many countries have nuclear weapons is vulnerable to mistakes being made and to weapons falling into the hands of people who would use them without qualms.  It is now debatable whether disarmament can ever be confidently achieved, but some new arrangements need to be negotiated to reduce what otherwise looks like an exponentially increasing risk.

A policy of deterrence is a response to specific threats.  North Korea's nuclear weapons programme can be directly traced to its response to George W Bush's State of the Union address in January 2002, in which he characterised Iraq, Iran and North Korea as constituting an "axis of evil" and pledged that "America will do what is necessary to ensure our nation's security”.[3]  North Korea’s Foreign Ministry reacted by saying "This is, in fact, little short of declaring war against the Democratic People's Republic of Korea”.[4]  Bush invaded Iraq the following year, so it can be seen that North Korea's acquisition of a nuclear deterrent was a logical response to the American threat; Iran's nuclear programme can be seen in the same light.

At first sight, the ability to threaten would appear to be an argument for having overwhelming defence forces at one's disposal, as some writers still urge,[5] but this thinking is outdated.  The psychology of deterrence depends upon “mutually assured destruction”:[6]  If one country attacks another with a nuclear weapon there will be a symmetrical retaliation and hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people will be killed in both countries.  But a symmetrical retaliation would not be possible if a terrorist organisation were to obtain a nuclear weapon and use it – there would be no target to aim at.  Small numbers of terrorists might be dispersed over a wide area and be living anonymously among people who were unaware of their presence.  Nuclear weapons and overwhelming force are therefore not a credible threat against guerrillas and terrorists.  America's nuclear arsenal did not deter Al-Qaeda from bombing the twin towers.

© PatternsofPower.org, 2014