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Evolving Contexts of Deterrence

  • Published
  • By Minerva

Deterrence exists across multiple levels of society, and indeed is part of what regulates various aspects of social behavior. Within the national security context, the concept of deterrence has historically helped inform strategic decisions related to planning, investment, and policy. As the global environment has evolved, the concept of integrated deterrence—which is at the center of the 2022 National Defense Strategy and entails working seamlessly across warfighting domains, theaters, the spectrum of conflict, other instruments of national power, and networks of alliances and partnerships—has become a more holistic way of considering the dynamic relationship across complex sociopolitical domains.

This topic focuses on predictive models of deterrence and/or escalation management strategies. It assumes nuance in how deterrence may be comparatively and cross-culturally understood, and preference will be given to proposals that empirically test such models. We are especially interested in projects that develop and implement innovative causal identification strategies or leverage new measures or data and explicitly address the generalizability of findings and the extent to which similar deterrence logics are applicable across contexts and scale. It is assumed multidisciplinary approaches will be required to advance new understandings of deterrence and the varied sociocultural, economic, and political relationships it influences.

Tailored Deterrence:

• Deterrence is predicated on holding valued objects at risk. What do leaders—national or within ruling coalitions—value and how does this vary across political systems? How does this vary across micro-, meso-, and macro-levels? Are these “valued objects” conditional? How do policy tools influence these objects at risk?

• How do variations in U.S. competitor decision-making processes (e.g., the People’s Republic of China, Russia) influence the likelihood that specific U.S. actions will deter or provoke? With these variations, how and where do competitors make decisions about potential responses across the competition continuum?

• Recent deterrence efforts have attempted to influence the national leader(s) by holding at risk something valuable to elites, sometimes individuals, in the belief that deterrence can work indirectly. What are the dynamics of intra-elite relations and their influence on the national government?

• How can competitors’ public communications be used to understand (or misunderstand) their decision-making processes and the likelihood of deterrence success? In addition to public documents, to what extent might other actions or activities convey information about their decision-making processes?

• What signaling mechanisms are most effective at deterring and in what contexts does this change?

• How do competitors perceive military and non-military deterrent signals differently? How stable are such perceptions (i.e., can they change rapidly and unexpectedly)? Given the lack of complete information, (historically) to what extent have foreign observers been able to accurately understand competitor perceptions and changes in those perceptions?

• What are reliable empirical measures for whether deterrence is being sustained, strengthening, weakening, or at risk of failing? What are the best measures for (adversary) decision-making? Do gain/loss asymmetry, decision making under uncertainty, or other models of economic actors affect the generalizability of deterrence models?

Whole-of-Government Approaches to Deterrence:

• Can military and non-military (diplomatic, informational, economic, or other activities) instruments of power be used in whole or in part to produce effective deterrence? If so, does the use of military and/or non-military instruments of deterrence differ in impact, and how do the effects of one interact with the other? Do the dynamics change when one side has many options with which to deter while its competitor has few or one, e.g. force alone?

• Can historical lessons on successes and failures of coordination between diplomatic and military strategies inform the development of future deterrence strategies? If so, how, and what are the limits of reference class forecasting to understanding contemporary challenges?

• How can whole-of-government approaches best be leveraged to de-escalate tensions while defending important interests? How do such efforts differ across political, social, and economic systems?

State System and Deterrence:

• How do multi-party and multi-level conflicts affect deterrence? How do the different roles—belligerent, audience, bystander, mediator, etc.—assumed by the powers affect deterrence?

• What approaches can governments take to deter multiple adversaries at once? How do steps taken to deter one adversary impact deterrence of another adversary? How often do signals intended for one adversary impact the decision calculus of another (adversary, ally, or partner)? How does attempting to deter multiple adversaries affect the choice of means, strategies, and ends by the deterring power?

• To what extent is value-based messaging or value-based deterrent actions effective across heterogeneous values systems?

Technology and Deterrence:

• How does technology (current and emerging) impact deterrence dynamics? Do emerging technologies pose novel risks and, if so, are new approaches to deterrence necessary to address them?

• How does revealing or concealing capabilities in different technological and strategic contexts influence deterrence outcomes?

• How and to what extent can strengths in some domains offset weaknesses in others?