The "D" Word IX: What Is the Failure at the Heart of Deterrence, I of II
Nuclear weapons deter a nuclear holocaust by threatening a nuclear holocaust, and if things go wrong then that is what you get: a nuclear holocaust. If things don’t go wrong, and continue not going wrong for the next millennium of millennia…, you get… What do you get? What are we getting?
Martin Amis, Einstein’s Monsters (1987), p. 30
Deterrence can fail for many reasons.
We see deterrence fail every day, in many different domains: in families, schools, on the streets. It might seem not to have failed in some areas of international relations so far. It has obviously failed in others, however.
What I want to consider now, though, is not what may lead to a “failure of deterrence” but the “failure,” or perhaps we should say the “defect,” at the heart of deterrence itself.
It is this. Deterrence is sterile.
It offers no prospect of improving things. No prospect of leading to a new and better place in our understandings and relations .
The best we can hope for when we are relying on deterrence is to hold in place the status quo. In the Cold War, with the advent of the prospect of Mutual Assured Destruction in the 1960’s, this was called “stability.”
It wasn’t particularly stable. What one side saw as offering greater assurance of its own safety—an increase in its stockpile, for example, or work on an anti-ballistic missile system, or even the construction of shelters—was seen by the other side as undermining “stability.”
In a situation where one side is relying on deterrence, the creative impulse, the inventiveness, will be found on the other side, the side that may be seeking to defeat deterrence. Unfortunately, this inventiveness is likely to be devoted only to defeating deterrence, not to improving relations among the parties.
With the passage of time, would-be deterrers are at a disadvantage without a major and continuing commitment of resources—the building and resourcing and staffing of prisons, let’s say, or the expensive “modernizing” of one’s nuclear weapons.
Ideally, deterrers would always be on alert. But that’s not easy to do. Sometimes we have to rest. Those supposedly to be deterred can just hang out, waiting for an opening. North Vietnam seems to have figured this out in its conflict with the United States.
And because of the inventiveness that will be on the other side, we probably won’t always know just what we need to be watching out for.
In our ordinary lives, a red-light runner will be deterred, if rational, by the presence of a cop at the stoplight if he or she spots the cop in time. But this experience of having been deterred will have no tendency to produce a change in his or her ways, will it? We are glad that the red-light runner was deterred in any instance. But unless we are prepared to put cops at every stoplight, or cameras, we probably shouldn’t expect a helpful change in behavior.
The red light runner may even be thinking of herself as someone who is powerfully exemplifying personal freedom, showing “the man” who’s boss. Maybe even after he or she is pulled over. Maybe even after she or he is ticketed. Maybe even after a court appearance. Will any of that change a red-light runner’s mind about whether it’s okay to run red lights when the cops aren’t around?
A wreck might. And might not.
Drivers of cars have to trust other drivers. Driving is a cooperative undertaking. At this stage of the game, with as many cars on the road as there are now, it could not be otherwise. The protocols for cooperation can vary from city to city, and state to state, and country to country. (In my experience, the drivers from Massachusetts and Texas have the worst protocols. Sorry, you all.) But even if we haven’t learned yet what the protocols are, or ourselves operate according to different ones, we know protocols are in place. Otherwise, driving would not be possible.
Unless we are, as the car ads always suggest, the only ones on the highway or on the mountainside. Which we are only in the car ads.
Those of us who understand the importance of trust and cooperation as enabling the action of driving will be miffed, sometimes enraged, by drivers who violate this trust, passing on the right, cutting us off, and such. That rage must often arise out of an understanding, at some level, of the critical importance of cooperation and respect if the enterprise is have a chance of succeeding.
We become angry with cheaters and those who don’t play fair because of the way their actions threaten the potentials of cooperation. Especially when we are trusting them to monitor themselves and don’t have structures of deterrence in place.
Many sports hire referees to deter players from breaking the rules. In those games, if players cheat in a way the referee doesn’t catch, the players may even take some pride in having gotten away with it. Golf is a sport that takes pride in the fact that the players are expected to call infractions on themselves. If a golfer knowingly doesn’t do that and is caught at it, they don’t just spend time in a penalty box. They can expect never to get back in the game.
Unless, perhaps, they are the 45th president of the United States.
It is obvious, isn’t it, that the most important thing in enabling humans to succeed in establishing the civilizations we have and in (over?)populating the earth as we have is our ability to cooperate with each other. This was true when we were hunting the mammoths that were so much larger than we were and it’s true now when we are building airlines and writing treaties.
With due respect to those who may see themselves as “self-made,” and may in some sense be entitled to, the individual prowess of humans amounts to nothing in comparison to our ability to work together. The achievements of individuals, indeed our individuality itself, are enabled by human community and cooperation.
Cooperation has this power because it opens the door to something that wouldn’t have been possible had we been mere individuals acting alone—something that is greater than any individual accomplishment. Individuals cooperating can create and accomplish something greater than the sum of what they could have accomplished acting alone.
Military service is a place where cooperation is indispensable and the disposition to cooperate is cultivated in training. Veterans and ex-military often look back on their service with deep affection, with longing even, because of the pleasure and satisfaction they experienced when cooperating for a common cause they took to be greater than themselves.
Next: What is the failure at the heart of deterrence? II