The Fallacies of Cold War Deterrence and a New Direction [Paperback]

Keith B. Payne (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0813190150 | ISBN-13: 978-0813190150 | Publication Date: July 20, 2001 | Edition: 1

" In 1938, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain hoped that a policy of appeasement would satisfy Adolf Hitler's territorial appetite and structured British policy accordingly. This plan was a failure, chiefly because Hitler was not a statesman who would ultimately conform to familiar norms. Chamberlain's policy was doomed because he had greatly misjudged Hitler's basic beliefs and thus his behavior. U.S. Cold War nuclear deterrence policy was similarly based on the confident but questionable assumption that Soviet leaders would be rational by Washington's standards; they would behave reasonably when presented with nuclear threats. The United States assumed that any sane challenger would be deterred from severe provocations because not to do so would be foolish. Keith B. Payne addresses the question of whether this line of reasoning is adequate for the post-Cold War period. By analyzing past situations and a plausible future scenario, a U.S.-Chinese crisis over Taiwan, he proposes that American policymakers move away from the assumption that all our opponents are comfortably predictable by the standards of our own culture. In order to avoid unexpected and possibly disastrous failures of deterrence, he argues, we should closely examine particular opponents' culture and beliefs in order to better anticipate their likely responses to U.S. deterrence threats.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Payne is so persuasive that readers will cringe, ever after, when they encounter categorical statements such as 'the exact same kinds of nuclear deterrence that have always worked will continue to work' (Jan Lodal)." -- Air and Space Power

"Not many books have the potential to make the difference between war and peace: Keith Payne's latest expedition into deterrence country is one such." -- Colin S. Gray

"So many different communities of scholars and policymakers should read Keith Payne's bracing and sensible new book that it's difficult to know where to begin sending copies." -- H-NET Book Review

"Offers a more comprehensive and empirical methodology for formulating U.S. deterrence postures." -- Military Review

"An essential text for understanding the reasoning behind the administration's push for missile defense. (Asked whom to talk to about the current state of deterrence theory, one nuclear expert quipped, 'If you talked to Keith Payne, you've talked to everyone.')." -- National Review

"Cogently and carefully charts a fresh path through the badly overgrown and cluttered thicket of modern strategic thinking." -- R. James Woolsey

"Payne offers an interesting empirically-based methodology in an attempt to make deterrence a more viable policy than it has been heretofore." -- Virginia Quarterly Review

"Payne forces the reader to recognize how much of America's thinking about military strategy is trapped in the categories of Cold War 'deterrence theory.' His fascinating book, filled with excellent material and provocative argument, offers both a strong academic contribution and much policy relevant analysis. Happily, it is well written, highly accessible." -- William E. Odom

About the Author

Keith B. Payne, president of the National Institute for Public Policy, adjunct professor at Georgetown University, and editor-in-chief of Comparative Strategy, is the author of Deterrence in the Second Nuclear Age.

Product Details

• Paperback: 242 pages
• Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky; 1 edition (July 20, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0813190150
• ISBN-13: 978-0813190150
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #928,187 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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4.0 out of 5 stars Incomplete Critique, July 16, 2008

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This review is from: The Fallacies of Cold War Deterrence and a New Direction (Paperback)

The U.S. prosecution of the Cold War was based on the strategy of containment which was designed to prevent the further expansion of international Communism. Essentially the U.S. and its allies wished to maintain the status quo as it existed in the immediate post-WWII period. The doctrine of deterrence (or mutual deterrence to be precise) was a key component of this containment strategy. Payne argues that this doctrine was based on dangerously incorrect premises.

The doctrine of mutual deterrence was in part a response to the terrible destructiveness of nuclear weapons. The doctrine was predicated on the premise that faced with destructive power of nuclear weapons no rational leader would opt for war. As this book makes abundantly clear there is no empirical basis for this premise. Human behavior is enormously complex and Payne argues that unless both sides have the same definition of rational behavior, mutual deterrence simply will not work. He notes that U.S. strategists assumed that the behavior and thinking of Communist leaders would mirror the U.S. approaches to nuclear war. This Payne notes was wrong. The availability of information since the collapse of the Soviet Union demonstrates that the Communist Leadership had a very different understanding of acceptable damage and rational responses than the U.S. did. He points out that as the Cold War developed the U.S. crated a doctrine of mutual deterrence based on developing accurate counts of the number and type of nuclear weapons possessed by each side. This method reached its logical absurdity, of course, under Robert McNamara and the ultimate deterrence doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). MAD was based entirely on weapon counting and evaluation without any reference to human (leadership) factors and so was in effect irrelevant.

The thesis of this book is that deterrence is effective if, and only if, it is based on a through knowledge of culture, ideologies and personalities of the leadership aggregate that is to be deterred. Payne correctly argues that military decision making is often based on non-empirical factors and is seldom entirely governed by a rational review of military strengths and weaknesses.

Payne is not ready to give up on the concept of deterrence however; he rather wants to build deterrent strategies that reflect actual knowledge of the subjects to be deterred. He does not believe that analysis of arsenals alone can be the basis for a real deterrent strategy. As far as he goes he is right. But one has to ask what about other factors that might affect a nation's strategic choices? Specifically what of the growing 21st Century phenomenon of international economic interdependence and the telecommunications revolution of the Global Network? Both have to be factors in national decision making processes, whether rational or irrational.