Week 2 - Coercion, Deterrence and Compellence Flashcards
(18 cards)
Rational Actors
In general, players in IR are seen as rational actors
- Actors choose actions so as to achieve their interests (goals) as much as possible, conditioned by:
o available information
o other constraints → environment
o (expected) actions of others
- Action is strategic when it is (partially) influenced by expected actions of others
->Alternative: people make choices blindly, without regard to what they want
What are interests?
- What actors want to achieve through political action; their preferences over outcomes that might result from their political choices.
o Power and security
o Economic or material welfare
o Ideological goals
-> Roughly correspond to realism, liberalism, and constructivism
What are national interests?
Interests attributed to the state itself, usually security and power.
What are the assumptions of rational actor approaches of decision making?
- Actors are purposive: they behave with the intention of producing a desired result.
- Actors adopt strategies to obtain desired outcomes given what they believe to be the interests and likely actions of others.
In other words
- “Rationality” refers to the instrumental process of decision making, not the goals or preferences that actors adapt or to their estimates of success
What do rational actor assumptions NOT mean
- We assume that actors respond to incentives
- We do not assume that people or states are hyper-calculating rationality machines
Key takeaway: Even if it feels morally reprehensible: if we want to understand an actor’s positions and choices, we have to adopt their mindset to understand their goals, interests, and constraints.
What is bargaining?
interaction in which actors must choose a policy that makes one better off at the expense of the other (zero-sum or negative sum). ← our focus
What is coercion?
The threat or imposition of costs to get an actor– a state, a leader of a state, a terrorist group, a transnational or international organization, a private actor– to do something it does not want to do
- Coercion always involves some cost or pain to the target or explicit threat thereof.
What are the two types of coercive bargaining?
Compellence and Deterrence
What is compellence?
- An effort to change the status quo through the threat of force.
- A compellent threat is used to coerce the target state into making a concession or changing policy: ‘Give me Y or else,’; ‘Stop doing X, or else’
What is deterrence?
An effort to preserve the status quo by threatening the other side with unacceptable costs if it seeks to alter the current relationship.: ‘Don’t do X, or else’; ‘Don’t attack me, or I’ll fight back’
What are the two types of deterrence?
- Deterrence by denial (ex ante): lowering the likelihood that an adversary will achieve its aims
- Deterrence by punishment (ex post): imposing costs on the adversary in the event of an attack
Both types play out in the mind of the adversary.
Explain deterrence vs. defense
- Defense is the action of defending from or resisting attack when an attack has begun.
- Defense capabilities therefore play into the deterrence equation.
- Defense occurs when deterrence has failed.
What are the two core questions of nuclear deterrence theory?
- How to prevent attacks on the U.S. (homeland deterrence) and its allies abroad (extended deterrence)?
- How to leverage nuclear threats to gain bargaining advantages over the Soviet Union?
What are the key components of nuclear deterrence? Also explain.
- Rationality
a. Leaders must be minimally rational and value their own survival and the survival of their nation enough to consider war unacceptably costly - Means, perception and communication
a. Mutual assured destruction (MAD): each superpower was able to destroy the other even after absorbing a first strike (second-strike capability)
b. Deterrence only works if the threats intended to cause fear are communicated to the adversary. - Credibility
a. Under MAD, if anyone attacks, all get clobbered.
b. MAD fundamentally challenges the idea of deterrence (Schelling 1960).
What are the two paradoxes of nuclear deterrence?
PI: - Under MAD, the threat of nuclear retaliation implies suicide and is therefore hardly credible, i.e., not a straightforward deterrent.
-> Ironically, MAD makes nuclear weapons so illogical that deterrence may actually suffer unless the credibility is restored.
P2: Nuclear war must be made more likely for it to become less likely.
What are the two solutions to the first paradox of nuclear deterrence?
Solution I: Irrevocable commitment
1. Doomsday machine
Automatically launch nuclear weapons if the country is attacked — with no human input.
2. Burning bridges
metaphor for eliminating the option to back down.
Solution II: introduce illogic and uncertainty
- Key idea: “leave something to chance” (Schelling 1960)
- Even if retaliation was irrational, the possibility of retaliation would prevent an attack in the first place. Possibility meaning, e.g.
o E.g., the chance that the president would react emotionally to a Soviet first strike or believe that he had no alternative but to respond in kind
o Devolution of authority: Wing attack plan R (Lower tier commander may order nuclear retaliation if there is an emergency war plan, when the head of state is incapable of ordering a strike)
o Brinkmanship (Game of chickens, google before exam)
What are the reasons for deterrence procedures?
- Why did the U.S. have bombers airborne at all times?
o Submarines - Why might individual base commanders have had the authority to use nuclear weapons at their discretion?
- Why were forces on hair-trigger alert?
- Why might a doomsday machine seem to be a logical step?
All to make deterrence credible!
Explain deterrence as a game of chickens w regard to nuclear deterrence
Deterrence as a game of chickens:
- Cooperate (stay peaceful)
- Defect (nuclear escalation)
- State B will always cooperate (2 > 1), therefore State A will always defect (4 > 3)
