America's post-Cold War modeled behavior killed non-strategic deterrence

Nuclear deterrence was never downwardly transferable anyway

Jim Nuttle illustration from “America’s New Map”

Somewhat mis-targeted Foreign Affairs piece by Carter Malkasian of the Naval Postgraduate School entitled America’s Crisis of Deterrence.

How bad is it? US deterrence, I mean?

China is menacing Philippine vessels in the South China Sea and possibly readying its military for an invasion of Taiwan. Russia shows no sign of giving up its war in Ukraine. In the Middle East, Iran is threatening retaliation against Israel for the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, Hezbollah is ramping up its rocket strikes into Israel, and the Houthis continue to attack—and occasionally sink—commercial ships in the Red Sea. The compounding risks of Iranian missiles killing U.S. military personnel, of a Houthi strike on a U.S. Navy vessel, or of another sinking of a shipping vessel grow with time. Any of these events would force Washington to either get involved in a larger war or back down. Either option would reflect a failure of deterrence.

To me, this is misguided analysis that reifies deterrence to the point of absurdity.

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re·i·fy /ˈrēəˌfī/ verb FORMAL

1. make (something abstract) more concrete or real.

   "these instincts are, in humans, reified as verbal constructs"

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Deterrence is a nuclear/strategic concept that is far more about self-restraint than scaring the other side into non-action.

Because I fear nuclear war, I don’t use nukes. Threaten? Yes. Just not use.

That’s it. There’s really nothing more.

That realization yielding mutual self-restraint doesn’t translate into I can dissuade you from any action I disapprove of by threatening godawful consequences.

Why?

You’re not going to risk nuclear war over non-nuclear war. Why risk your existence when your existence isn’t threatened?

Deterrence just doesn’t work in that direction (downward). It really only works inward (self-restraint).

I don’t use nukes because I don’t want my country to be destroyed by nuclear war.

Thus the adage that nukes are for having — not using.

Their existence, and your possession of the same, essentially rules out direct nuclear-power-on-nuclear-power war involving nukes, and since it’s impossible for one nuclear power to preemptively wipe out another without suffering the same (it’s the second strike capability that truly deters), that capping-off of conflict essentially rules out nuclear-power-on-nuclear-power warfare completely.

You just don’t do it.

As for all these other cited “failures”?

They’re not failures whatsoever. America cannot rattle its nuclear sabers and expect all these other powers to obey across the conflict spectrum.

That’s the equivalent of Mel Brooks’ profane bit from Blazing Saddles:

Why?

Because there won’t be any consequences along those lines.

And yeah, that includes Taiwan.

And yeah, that’s the crux of our problem there. The US can back Taiwan and can support the region’s non-nuclear players supporting Taiwan — even to the point of those nation’s forces directly engaging Chinese forces. But a straight-up US-China conventional war?

It ain’t happening.

We can bluff. We can signal. But direct warfare will go crazy out of control crazy-fast.

And yes, that logic applies to China just as much.

The PLA might “blind” us or dazzle us or disable us all they want, and we’d do the same.

And Taiwan can use our weapons and receive our operational support, but the people pulling the triggers will need to stay Taiwanese.

So, these fantasies about our ships blowing up their ships (and vice versa), and our Marines battling their amphibious forces … just do not compute.

We can project that scenario all we want. We can train for it like crazy. We can exercise and demo it, but we’re not doing it.

Again, everything short of direct kinetics wielded by superpower forces against one another’s personnel (causing casualties) — that’s fine. Blow up stuff all you want, but that’s as far as it goes.

As for the rest of the scenarios cited in the FA piece, point taken. Nuclear powers can’t scare non-nuclear powers into non-action by threatening their use. Just doesn’t work.

The only thing that does work is the willingness to enter into a battlespace and reverse the original gains of the aggressor — like what we did in Desert Storm in 1991. That is how you deter conventionally: conventional consequences of the highest order.

As Malkasian correctly notes, that is a huge commitment of blood and treasure — as a rule, so, not a long-term solution to anything because your enemies are happy to watch you shove yourself into a quagmire for as long and as stupid as you need it to be.

Juraj Mihalik and Tom Zorc data visualization from “America’s New Map”

Conflicts across the world peaked in 1991 and then decreased about 40% until 2008 (Global Financial Crisis), at which point the US essentially hung up its spurs as post-Cold War global policeman. Once that happened — and after all that modeled behavior, it should come as no surprise that “civil conflicts with foreign state intervention” took off rather dramatically.

We modeled the behavior across a period of rising powers, and, once we abandoned the field by and large, those other powers (some nuclear, some not) began emulating that modeled behavior — policing regions on their own, so to speak.

Completely understandable and predictable. It was the choice we made and continue to make.

If you understand that nuclear deterrence doesn’t really apply outside nuclear stand-offs, then there’s no crisis. That’s just the way it’s always been except when a power like the US is willing to play global Leviathan like we did across the years of peak-globalization (1991-2008).

Now that the US no longer thinks or acts along those lines (a fate we were slated to accept at SOME point), other powers feel empowered to do what they decide needs to be done.

[And no, Malkasian’s “PRESSURE THE PATRON” bit at the end of his article doesn’t improve his non-nuclear argument whatsoever. That logic gets you those Axis of Evil dynamics people love to make today: namely, China + Russia + North Korea + Iran represents the BIGGEST STRATEGIC THREAT TO AMERICA EVAH!]