''Whither Deterrence?'' A Brief Synopsis May, 2002

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To most audiences, deterrence has been interconnected with nuclear weapons whose purpose had been to deter a Soviet attack. But, the Soviet Union has been gone for almost a decade. President George W. Bush has stated that Russia is not an enemy of the US and the numbers of nuclear weapons can be dramatically reduced. It is important to note that deterrence has always transcended nuclear weapons. The US' first line of deterrence has been its formidable conventional warfare capability, designed to prevent conflict and win wars if necessary. The role of nuclear weapons has been to deter the,use of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction against U.S. interests during the conduct of conventional warfare and to ensure our ability to inflict massive destruction on any who would use nuclear weapons, or other weapons of mass destruction, against us. With regard to the Soviet Union, the threat of the use of nuclear weapons was a critical component of our deterrent to prevent massive Soviet conventional attack against our allies in Europe. However, the events of September 11, 2001 make clear that we have not convinced all who seek to harm us that we will be able to respondmore » in a manner to make them wish they had not even tried. The September 11 attacks, as well as other past conflicts, do not mean that deterrence has failed-it remains effective against the threats for which it was designed. We have known there are other threats for which we did not have a credible deterrent. The challenge is to sustain deterrence against the classic threats as they evolve in technical sophistication while remaining alert to the need to evaluate continuously our ability to deter previously unforeseen challenges. How then should we be looking at deterrence as we consider fifteen or so years in the future, say to about 2015? What will be the role of nuclear weapons and other instruments of mass destruction in the future? What should the US be doing to prepare for the future? In this study, we present four futures as a tool for planners who must think ahead fifteen years or more, rather than a prediction of the future. None of the four futures will emerge in just the way we have described. Fifteen years from now, some mix of these futures is more likely, or perhaps we will see a trend towards one of the futures, but with the possibility that any of the other three could appear, perhaps quite swiftly. Any future will undoubtedly contain its own kind of unpleasant surprises and, in contrast to the Cold War; the possession of enormous nuclear-response and conventional-response capability may not be sufficient to deter these from happening. However, there are other tools that the US must include as part of its strategy and security policy in addition to deterrence, specifically dissuasion, defense, destruction, and assurance. Rather than rely on the Cold-War concept of deterrence, future security policy should be built upon the appropriate mix of these elements as a way to steer us toward a more favorable future, while ensuring that we are prepared for the kinds of surprises associated with far less favorable futures. In this study, we have defined three unfavorable futures to be avoided, and one future that represents, we believe, a more desirable global situation than the first three, but still not entirely benign. Our security policy should be defined to avoid or prevent the first three, which we have entitled ''Nuclear Giants, Global Terror'', and ''Regional Nuclear Tension and Use'', and steer us toward a more favorable future, ''Dynamic Cooperation''. We have examined the implications for both policy and military capability that are posed by these different futures. The result often raises more questions than we are able to answer without additional study-however, our primary purpose was to clarify the issues, to identify. what we believe we know, what we don't know, and where more study and effort are needed. Nevertheless, in preparing for unfavorable futures, we must also identify and plan the future we want. This study emphasizes that a desirable future in 2015 would be characterized by peaceful resolution of conflict, growing worldwide economic prosperity, an effective non-proliferation regime, the ability of the United States to control its own destiny without conflict, and expansion of political and economic freedom. Security policies, even in the face of unpleasant futures, should be crafted so as enhance, rather than diminish, these desired goals.« less