Huth russett what makes deterrence work

The second conclusion that ran contrary to my intuition was that formal alliances actually had a slight negative influence on deterrence success. Low bar, I know. This kind of mathematical modeling of the past in order to predict the future is fraught with statistical pitfalls. The fact that, in this paper, formal alliances had a small negative influence on successful deterrence as opposed to just no effect should raise a flag.

Does a formal alliance really contribute to deterrence failure? Huth and Russett, to their credit, acknowledge this likelihood. Models are tools to aid thinking, not license to turn off your brain.

So after reading Huth and Russett, I went looking for contrary studies. One that took them on directly you can read it with a free account found that the characteristics that Huth and Russett highlighted do matter for deterrence, but that overall military strength and alliances also matter. That might be an unsatisfactory conclusion, but the inquiry that led me to these papers has me thinking more critically about the news.

Come up with a question that might prompt productive searching instead. You might be surprised by what you find, just like I was. Just a reminder: in coming weeks, this newsletter will relaunch on another platform.

Citation Type. Has PDF. Publication Type. More Filters. Successful deterrence, it is argued, requires a combination of military capabilities and bargaining behavior that enhances a defender's credibility without provoking a potential attacker. Hypotheses … Expand. Deterrence Now: Deterrence in the post-Cold War world. This chapter offers an overview of how the nature and functions of deterrence in international politics have begun to change, applying themes of preceding chapters to contemporary concerns.

To more … Expand. This paper hypothesizes two pacifying effects of superpower control on international relations: 1 If the superpowers deter each other from going to war against each other, and if they largely … Expand. Signaling Versus the Balance of Power and Interests. Conventional wisdom holds that in international disputes, a state's military threast are more likely to work the more the state is favored by the balance of power or the balance of interests. Highly Influenced.

View 5 excerpts, cites background and methods. The defender … Expand. Deterrence Now: Collective actor deterrence. We turn now to a topic seldom addressed in analyses of deterrence. Few analysts who examine collective actor peacekeeping and peace enforcement endeavors employ a deterrence perspective. Until … Expand. Rethinking Civil War Onset and Escalation. Why do some civil conflicts simmer at low-intensity, while others escalate to war?

This paper challenges traditional approaches to the start of intrastate conflict by arguing the need to distinguish … Expand. View 1 excerpt, cites background. Crisis escalation: An empirical test in the context of extended deterrence. Publication Type. More Filters. Successful deterrence, it is argued, requires a combination of military capabilities and bargaining behavior that enhances a defender's credibility without provoking a potential attacker.

Hypotheses … Expand. Deterrence: A Political and Psychological Critique. Postwar American security policy was built on a foundation of deterrence. In the early Cold War period, American leaders relied on nuclear deterrence to discourage Soviet or Chinese attacks against … Expand. Conventional deterrence. Studies of conventional deterrence, although differing in methodology and underlying assumptions, have yielded three key findings: Many potential adversaries are, at least at times, undeterrable; in … Expand.

Force and Influence in International Crises. Given the high degree of scholarly interest in the political use of military force and its prominence in international relations, I believe the time is ripe to develop a framework for analyzing the … Expand. Deterrence Now: Deterrence in the post-Cold War world. This chapter offers an overview of how the nature and functions of deterrence in international politics have begun to change, applying themes of preceding chapters to contemporary concerns.

To more … Expand. Deterrence by mutual assured destruction or strategic defense. This paper consists of three parts. First, it investigates the rationality assumption behind much deterrence theorizing and arrives at the conclusion that the rationality assumption is not fully … Expand. Rational choice models have provided the … Expand. It is … Expand. Deterrence Failure Revisited. Deterrence and Foreign Policy.

The article by Christopher Achen and Duncan Snidal in this issue, however provocative some of its observations, has the merit of raising an important question: How should we think about the … Expand.