The ‘New Look’ in Nuclear Deterrence Strategy

Abstract

The basic mechanism of deterrence is psychological, that is the threat that ‘creates’ in an opponent ‘fear, anxiety, doubt’ — ‘although you can hurt us terribly, if you do we will pay you back by hurting you worse.’1 Deterrence was by no means a new concept to postwar American policy makers and strategists. Franklin Roosevelt told his close advisers at a White House meeting on 14 November 1938 that the expansion of American air power would deter Hitler and Japan. The president was well aware of the advantages of utilising the concept of deterrence as a means of furthering his foreign policy goals.2 Similarly, the United States Army Air Department spelled out the strategic role of air power on 15 September 1939: ‘the only reasonable hope of avoiding air attack is in the possession of such power of retaliation as to deter an enemy from initiating air warfare.’3