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The Anatomy of Deterrence*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Bernard Brodie
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Extract

From the American point of view, the strategy of deterrence, and the related principle of limiting to tolerable proportions whatever conflicts become inevitable, tend to spring from the premise that the favorable results of a total war can never be sufficient to justify its cost. Such a war, according to that conception, would be too big, too allconsuming, to permit the survival even of those final values, like personal freedom, for which alone one could think of waging it. It need not be certain that it would turn out so badly; it is enough that mere is a large chance that it would.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 11 , Issue 2 , January 1959 , pp. 173 - 191
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1959

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References

1 Provided it was coupled also with the threat of very large damage. Historically it has not been true that nations have always regarded ultimate military defeat as more serious than very heavy damage. Defeat has often been accepted in order to avoid such damage, even where victory was far from hopeless. If that were not so, there would be very little hope for limiting war.

2 The pre-hostilities size of one's retaliatory force does have a distinctive and possibly important deterrence effect because of the enemy's concern with what it will mean for him if his attempt to destroy it by surprise attack should fail utterly. Of course, he may grossly misestimate, in either direction, the chance of failure.

3 See especially Colonel Leghorn, Richard S., “No Need to Bomb Cities to Win War,” US. News and World Report, XXXVIII (January 28, 1955), pp. 79–94.Google Scholar

4 For most of the ideas in this section, I am indebted to my RAND colleague, Mr. Herman Kahn. See the booklet prepared under his direction and published by The RAND Corporation under the title, Report on a Study of Non-military Defense, July I, 1958, Report R-322-RC.