Richard Smoke argues that there are a variety of strategic, technological, and social aspects of warfare and security that are rooted in the post-World War II and Cold War era. It is crucial to understand how the past has served to set up warfare today because many of the issues of modern warfare started in World War II and Cold War era geopolitics. Technological advancements such as nuclear bombs, radar, airplanes, computers, and calculators are technologies created or rooted in technologies first created leading up to and during the Cold War. These technologies constitute the bulk of military power in the twenty-first century as they changed the nature of warfare by allowing warfare to be waged all around the world. As Smoke says: 

Many other technological aspects of contemporary life, too numerous to mention, derive directly or indirectly from national security research and development. Much of the technology we now accept as a normal part of our existence, in fact, is in one way or another a product of two world wars, a Cold War, and its never-ending arms race. (Smoke, 1993, 4) 

The nature of warfare today stresses the strategy of deterrence and compellence because many state and non-state actors have the capability to inflict great amounts of harm in a variety of ways. It is a necessity to protect one’s interests without engaging in open conflict. This is a product of the arms race started during World War II that has lasted to the post-Cold War era because actors are able to get their hands on more advanced weapons and technology at a much cheaper price and in higher volume. Similarly, warfare is no longer limited to the traditional battlefield. Cyberwarfare, especially, shows how much damage can be done without the use of any weapons at all. Our reliance on computers and the internet is only increasing, further highlighting the vulnerability of our institutions and in effect our society.  

Thomas Schelling’s idea of compellence and deterrence allows us to understand certain strategic moves during post World War II and the Cold War and how states can use these strategies today. A critical piece of compellence and deterrence that is relevant today, more than ever, is credibility. Schelling says, “Because in the West we deal mainly in deterrence, not compellence, and deterrent threats tend to convey their assurances implicitly, we often forget that both sides of the choice, the threatened penalty and the proffered avoidance or reward, need to be credible” (Schelling, 1966, 75). Because warfare is not limited to the traditional battlefield it is even more important for states like the US, China, and Russia to prepare for surprise attacks. Furthermore, those attacks must be met with a response otherwise there is no incentive for one’s attacker to stop. With the advent of cyberwarfare this is especially important because it is extremely difficult to combat cyberwarfare and as such make credible claims about one’s ability to carry out their threats. As Schelling writes, “But if one wants to leave him in no doubt about what will satisfy us, we have to find credible ways of communicating, and communicating both what we want and what we do not want” (Schelling, 1966, 75). This idea is crucial to understanding warfare and security today because oftentimes we find ourselves in conflicts where there are misunderstandings for why we are fighting and what we are hoping to gain.

Avery Goldstein speaking on the nature of warfare today as a result of the creation of the atomic bomb and subsequent nuclear proliferation, writes: 

The possession of nuclear weapons fundamentally challenged the traditional offense/defense calculus in strategic thinking. Among the nuclear armed states the principle focus was no longer on determining how to use military force to win, or avoid losing, war should it occur, but rather how to forestall a conflict in which either party might at any time inflict unacceptable damage on the other (Goldstein, 2000, 41-42).  

The destructive capabilities of nuclear weapons has largely influenced military strategy to include the manipulation of fear of total destruction to achieve a state’s goals without having to initiate a hot conflict (Goldstein, 2000, 42). This ties directly into the strategy of compellence and deterrence because it creates a level of credibility in terms of the ability to harm. The issue with nuclear weapons in terms of their ability to act as a deterrent is, once enemy actors have enough nuclear weapons that their supply cannot be fully destroyed with certainty, there is no credibility to a threat that promises retaliation for an attack (Goldstein, 2000, 46). In effect, a state would not retaliate using nuclear weapons against a bigger state for an attack because they would just garner an even bigger response from their aggressor and probably be destroyed completely. Goldstein highlights this saying, “Where deterrence rests on a competition in the ability to inflict and endure punishment, the side with the more numerous options and the larger array of punishments, would be more likely to prevail” (Goldstein, 2000, 47). 

P. W. Singer and Allen Friedman’s discussion of cyberwarfare echoes the Cold War in that the internet has become the new battleground between western democracy and communism/totalitarianism. Singer and Friedman write that while American leaders see the internet and the free flow of information as a human write, leaders in Russia and China see it not as a human right but as a “‘information attack’ designed to undermine state stability” (Singer et al., 2014, 72). Singer and Friedman go on to say that because these states view the internet differently, their views about cyberattacks also differ. US officials discuss cyberattacks as “assaults on and intrusion of cyber systems and critical infrastructure” while Russia, China, etc. have defined them as part of a “Western ‘information war’ to undermine regimes ‘in the name of democratic reform’” (Singer et al., 2014, 72). The cyberwar highlights how the conflicts of the Cold War have both changed but are still present today.