Deterring War without Threatening War: Rehabilitating the West’s Risk-averse Approach to Deterrence
Antulio J. Echevarria II - US Army War College
Professor Antulio J. Echevarria II is the US Army War College General Douglas MacArthur Chair of Research and the Editor in Chief of the Army War College Press. He is currently researching the war in Ukraine for observations that will enhance the US Defense Department’s concept of Integrated Deterrence.
Shortly after Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, defense scholars began asking why the West’s approach to deterrence had failed. Some critics claimed the West never had an official deterrence policy regarding Ukraine, or at least not a consistent one; others maintained the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) took military force “off the table” too soon, relying too much on the coercive power of sanctions.
In truth, the West had both a deterrence policy and a supporting deterrence strategy vis-à-vis Ukraine. US President Joseph Biden and NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg reinforced the policy and the strategy by repeatedly warning Russia’s President Vladimir Putin not to attack Ukraine. However, the West’s approach was too risk-averse to succeed against a major power armed with military capabilities comparable to NATO’s own. It attempted to deter war without threatening war, which in turn rendered it vulnerable to Russian deterrence. By attempting to minimize the risk of a major war, the West made the right call, even though it resulted in the failure of its own deterrence measures. The “value of the political object,” to borrow Clausewitz’s expression, did not warrant risking a potentially ruinous war.[ii] The question now is whether it is possible to rehabilitate the West’s approach to deterrence without requiring NATO to act as irresponsibly with military force as did Putin’s Russia.
This article does two things. First, it provides a detailed account of the deterrence policy and supporting strategy the United States and its NATO allies had in place to deter Russian aggression. Second, it offers a brief outline of a more consequentialist approach to deterrence, one Western leaders can adopt to rehabilitate their own risk-averse model, and thereby improve its prospects of success. A consequentialist model entails moving beyond the traditional “costs versus benefits” calculus to one based on “risks and consequences,” where costs are defined as expenditures and consequences are defined as effects or results, such as tipping the balance of power by adding new members to an alliance.
Traditionally, the way to deter an actor was to ensure the costs of an action exceeded the benefits, thereby dissuading the actor from taking the action. But the costs an actor was willing to pay and the benefits it hoped to gain were often unknown. A risk-consequence model, in contrast, seeks to dissuade an actor by increasing the likelihood an action will fail and the certainty that severe consequences will follow.
https://www.militarystrategymagazine.com/article/deterring-war-without-threatening-war-rehabilitating-the-wests-risk-averse-approach-to-deterrence/
