Abstract
The use of military force to achieve foreign policy objectives is an enduring feature of international politics. Force, or the threat of force, may be used either to change the status quo or to maintain it. Threatening the use of force to maintain the status quo often takes the form of deterrence, defined by Patrick Morgan as “the threat to use force in response as a way of preventing the first use of force by someone else.”1 Deterrence sometimes succeeds and sometimes fails. Failures are attested to by numerous international wars of history. In the nuclear age, a failure could cost us our lives. The conditions of successful deterrence thus require thorough logical and empirical analysis.
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Notes
Patrick Morgan, Deterrence: A Conceptual Analysis (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1983, 2nd edition), 11.
Bruce Russett, “The Calculus of Deterrence,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 7 (March 1963), 97–109.
H. K. Tillema and J. R. Van Wingen, “Law and Power in Military Interventions by Major States after World War II,” International Studies Quarterly 26 (June 1982), 220–50
Sources included Robert E. Harkavy, The Arms Trade and International Systems (Cambridge, MA: Ballinger, 1975)
Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, “The War Trap Revisited,” American Political Science Review 79 (March 1985), 157–56.
Paul Kennedy, The Realities Behind Diplomacy: Background Influences in British External Policy, 1865–1980 (London: Allen Unwin, 1981).
Lawerence Freedman, The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy (New York: St. Martin’s, 1981), xv.
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© 2006 Bruce Russett
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Huth, P. (2006). What Makes Deterrence Work? Cases from 1900 to 1980. In: Purpose and Policy in the Global Community. Advances in Foreign Policy Analysis. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-10058-0_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-10058-0_11
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