{"id":45,"date":"2020-11-05T09:24:50","date_gmt":"2020-11-05T14:24:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/government-legal-studies-2680-fall-2020-magnificent-bastards\/?page_id=45"},"modified":"2020-12-20T15:19:19","modified_gmt":"2020-12-20T20:19:19","slug":"historical-analysis","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/government-legal-studies-2680-fall-2020-magnificent-bastards\/historical-analysis\/","title":{"rendered":"Historical Analysis"},"content":{"rendered":"

(RomoloTavani\/Getty Images\/iStockphoto)<\/p><\/div>\n

Deterrence with Mutually Assured Destruction<\/strong><\/p>\n

At the conclusion of World War II it was imperative that the U.S. take steps to ensure peace and security for a world devastated by violence.\u00a0 The U.S. decided that the best strategy to accomplish this was \u201cto deter the outbreak of a new war by making a drastic threat (Smoke 1992, 51).\u201d\u00a0 Using their atomic monopoly, the U.S. was determined to make the consequences of Soviet aggression so high that the Soviet Union would not be able to accept the damage done if they invaded Europe.\u00a0 By 1949, the Soviet Union had acquired their own nuclear weapons, signalling to the U.S. their intention to be major players in the international arena.\u00a0 Both countries understood the importance of securing their respective securities by building up their nuclear profiles.\u00a0 Avery Goldstein noted that \u201cdissuasion by deterrence threatens to punish the adversary in ways so terrifying he dares not initiate a challenge, regardless of his ability to actually achieve narrow military objectives (Goldstein 2000, 28).\u201d\u00a0 In order to ensure their survival, the U.S. and the Soviet Union embraced the idea of mutually assured destruction; to move against the other would result in World War III and the end of human civilization.\u00a0 After the emergence of a nuclear Soviet Union the number of nuclear weapons, and the havoc they were capable of wreaking, rose remarkably.\u00a0 Hydrogen fusion bombs, capable of devastating \u201call of Manhattan and\u2026 the entire New York City and harbor area (Smoke 1992, 56),\u201d raised the cost of nuclear warfare to unimaginable.\u00a0 While many countries experienced civil wars and unrest in the second half of the 20th century, a major war between the U.S. and Soviet Union never happened.\u00a0 Local conflicts were kept local and world peace was largely preserved.\u00a0 The strategy of deterrence ultimately worked, with neither side ever crossing the threshold that would require nuclear reprisal.<\/span><\/p>\n

Compellence in the Cuban Missile Crisis<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Cuban Missile Crisis \u201craised the prospect of a very different species of \u2018limited war\u2019… the competition in risk-taking, a military-diplomatic maneuver with or without military engagement but with the outcome determined more by manipulation of risk than by an actual contest of force (Schelling 1966, 166)\u201d In the lead up to the Cuban Missile Crisis, the U.S. failed to maintain their deterrent position against the Russians.\u00a0 Although the U.S. made numerous threats against any Soviet nuclear installations in Cuba, \u201csome part of the threat was unclear or lacked credibility and it was transgressed (Schelling 1966, 80)\u201d\u00a0 Thomas Schelling speculated that the deterrent threat of the U.S. lacked \u201cautomaticity (Schelling 1966, 80),\u201d and this caused neither side to understand where the final threshold really was.\u00a0 This crossing of the threshold required U.S. leadership to now make a threat, knowing that verbal threats and deterrence had already failed to secure their objectives.\u00a0 The decision to blockade Cuba was a compellent act that had clear and obvious consequences for both the Cubans and the Russians.\u00a0 Schelling notes that in eras of less technology the blockade almost certainly would have led to an inevitable military confrontation, but \u201cwith modern communications the ships were not beyond recall, and the Russians were given the last clear chance to turn aside (Schelling 1966, 81).\u201d\u00a0 The U.S. Navy put themselves in a position they could not remove themselves from, forcing the Russians to make the final decision.\u00a0 In this case a compellent threat, carefully crafted, covered for the failure of a deterrent threat, and allowed the U.S. to regain its foothold in the region.\u00a0 The strategy of mutually assured destruction and the possibility of nuclear war compelled the Russians to halt their activities in Cuba.\u00a0 Even though mutually assured destruction was originally a deterrent strategy, the U.S. was able to use it as a compellent strategy after deterrence failed. <\/span><\/p>\n

(Paul Schutzer\/The LIFE Picture Collection\/Getty Images)<\/p><\/div>\n

Proxy Wars In Place of Global Conflict<\/strong><\/p>\n

With the world\u2019s major powers unable to directly confront each other on the battlefield, new strategies were necessary to preserve influence and control.\u00a0 Similarly, threats and actions had to be communicated in less direct ways so as not to inflame already existing tensions.\u00a0 The U.S. and the Soviet Union began a pattern of conflict in proxy wars between local communist and capitalist governments.\u00a0 The first notable example of such a war can be seen in the Korean War, which was a conflict between the Soviet-backed North Korea and the U.S.-backed South Korea.\u00a0 When North Korean forces invaded South Korea, the U.S. gave support to South Korea knowing that the North was backed by the Soviets.\u00a0 The U.S. likely made such a move to show willingness to protect their allies from the Soviet Union.\u00a0 This decision reinforced Schelling\u2019s assertion that \u201cwar itself, then, can have deterrent or compellent intent, just as it can have defensive or offensive aims (Schelling 1966, 80).\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The U.S. made a similar decision in supporting the South Vietnamese government during the Vietnam War.\u00a0 The decision to become involved in Vietnam carried the same deterrent intent that the decision to become involved in Korea did, but the conflict was notably less centralized and less conventionally tactical.\u00a0 Faced with the prospect of losing the war, the U.S. attempted to use coercive force to compel the North Vietnamese.\u00a0 Operation Rolling Thunder, a bombing campaign designed to wear down the North Vietnamese, ultimately failed, because the U.S. wasn\u2019t able to coerce the North Vietnamese into surrendering.\u00a0 Unlike in the Cuban Missile Crisis, the U.S. were unable to compel their adversary because the price for non-cooperation wasn\u2019t high enough.\u00a0 However, the presence of the war itself still communicated a deterrent message that the Soviet Union could not, and did not, ignore.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Deterrence with Mutually Assured Destruction At the conclusion of World War II it was imperative that the U.S. take steps to ensure peace and security for a world devastated by violence.\u00a0 The U.S. decided that the best strategy to accomplish this was \u201cto deter the outbreak of a new war by making a drastic threat […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-45","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/government-legal-studies-2680-fall-2020-magnificent-bastards\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/45","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/government-legal-studies-2680-fall-2020-magnificent-bastards\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/government-legal-studies-2680-fall-2020-magnificent-bastards\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/government-legal-studies-2680-fall-2020-magnificent-bastards\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/government-legal-studies-2680-fall-2020-magnificent-bastards\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/government-legal-studies-2680-fall-2020-magnificent-bastards\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/45\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/government-legal-studies-2680-fall-2020-magnificent-bastards\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}