The Oxford Essential Dictionary of the US Military defines deterrence as “the prevention from action by fear of the consequences. Deterrence is a state of mind brought about by the existence of a credible threat of unacceptable counteraction.” From this, readers can deduce that deterrence is a state of mind and a product of rational decision-making.

Basing security policy on either of these assumptions is foolhardy. It is challenging to calibrate deterrence. This requires distinguishing enough deterrence, where credible fear of counteraction keeps the peace, from too much deterrence, where credible fear of an opponent’s motives can lead to a preemptive attack.

First, some practical examples. Returning to October 7, 2023, it is possible to say Israeli deterrence failed. Since 1948 Israel has sought to maintain a level of strength and preparedness sufficient to prevent its enemies from planning and executing attacks, using the threat of overwhelmingly force to maintain deterrence against its enemies.

The first major sign of trouble with this approach came in 1968, months after Israel’s defeat of its Arab neighbors in the Six-Day War, when Egypt began preparing a response. This came in October 1973 with Operation Badr, the attack which kicked off the Yom Kippur War. Similarly, Hamas began planning its 2023 attack immediately after a major defeat nine years before in the Gaza War of July–August 2014.

In both cases, deterrence failed years before the actual attacks. Israel’s overwhelming military superiority simply delayed the inevitable response to a situation its adversaries saw as absolutely unacceptable. Israel, overconfident in its deterrent capability, discounted the danger when intelligence assets began to report trouble. Thus, a single-minded reliance on deterrence actually led to future conflict.

So much for recent practice. On the theoretical side, scholars and practitioners alike have sought to chart the proximate triggers of war. The Athenian general Thucydides offered a multi-dimensional explanation in his History of the Peloponnesian War. He believed conflict resulted from three factors: Phobos (fear), kerdos (self-interest), and/or doxa (honor or reputation).

Deterrence, as we have seen, relies on threats of force which induce phobos, and therein lies a huge problem: it ignores the crucial elements of self-interest and honor or reputation. Thucydides named phobos as a principal trigger for conflict, even as definitions of deterrence, the current paradigm for conflict prevention, cite its reliance on instilling phobos. As the French might say, not only does deterrence fail in practice, but even worse, it does not work in theory.

Nuclear Deterrence and Global Devastation 

The shortcomings of conventional deterrence are well documented. Then there is its younger brother, nuclear deterrence. The story there is much simpler. Recent research on nuclear winter has lowered estimates of the megatonnage of nuclear detonations needed to trigger the phenomenon. Significant global effects leading to the starvation of over a billion people could be triggered by the use of as few as one hundred “small” Hiroshima-sized (total 1.5 megatons) explosions over urban targets.

This is extraordinarily bad news for the nuclear weapons priesthood, which has been chanting slogans of escalation dominance in government ears since the 1960s. The only rational nuclear deterrence that can be relied upon, it now seems, is self-deterrence, where a conflict which seems unwinnable by conventional means is now far more likely to appear unthinkable in nuclear terms.

Seeking a Realistic, Effective Alternative

Eliminating all nuclear weapons is clearly a necessary part of the journey towards lasting peace. But focusing on particular weapons is miscasting the problem and thus misunderstanding the nature of the solution. The world needs a transition away from the deterrence-based para bellum paradigm, the idea that achieving peace requires constant preparation for war, toward a new way of looking at conflict. This article proposes a radically different paradigm, Trinitarian Realism, which rests upon three principal assumptions.

First, in a concept borrowed from the Christian Trinity, one’s individual confession (peccavi) is important, but the collective and universal confession (peccavimus) is crucial in international peacebuilding. All need to recognize that each has sinned and fallen short, that no one comes to the table, any table, anywhere, with completely clean hands. Second, readers must truly grasp Carl von Clausewitz’s “remarkable trinity” in war, combining the irrational (war moves a citizenry to violence, hatred, and enmity); the non-rational (commanders face “the play of chance and probability”); and the über-rational (governments attempt to “subordinat[e war] as an instrument of policy”).

This guarantees wholly unknowable results. As Nassim Nicholas Taleb points out, “What is surprising is not the magnitude of our forecast errors, but our absence of awareness of it. This is all the more worrisome when engaging in deadly conflicts; wars are fundamentally unpredictable (and we do not know it).” Finally, that the July 16, 1945, Trinity event at White Sands, New Mexico, the first nuclear explosion, introduced a global catastrophic risk arising from the multiple and wide-ranging ecological effects of nuclear winter.

A transition away from deterrence can begin by not reflexively demonizing anyone with whom there is a serious disagreement. Softening morality projections and focusing judgment on a better understanding of complex collective emotions is also helpful. We can do this with far greater humility, including recognition that we will get our assessments wrong.

Writing of diplomatic historian and Christian apologist Herbert Butterfield, political scientist Paul Sharp provided the bare bones of a three-dimensional replacement for deterrence which we call strategic compassion: “Butterfield’s writings on Christianity and international relations suggest…the moral principles of self-restraint [as antidote for fear/phobos], empathy [honor/doxa] and charity [self-interest/kerdos] upon which an effective diplomacy should be based.”

Finally, we believe that nations must abandon their attachment to nuclear deterrence postures for the reasons outlined above and must accept the eradication of all nuclear weapons—before they eradicate all of us.

Paul Ingram is a Research Affiliate and former Academic Programme Manager with the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER) at Cambridge University. Edmond E. (Ted) Seay III is a retired Foreign Service Officer with 26 years’ experience in arms control, disarmament, and nonproliferation. His final assignment was as principal arms control advisor to US NATO Permanent Representative to the North Atlantic Council Ivo Daalder.

Deconstructing Deterrence was originally published on Global Security Review.

It is straightforward to see that beyond the deterrent or “last defense” aspect of possessing a nuclear arsenal these weapons are one tool among other strategic options. It is the duty of a military planner to plan for outcomes with the instruments that adversaries possess, however distasteful those weapons (nuclear weapons). It does not require reams of classified intelligence nor deep policy experience to recognize the appeal of a nuclear weapon to achieve winning outcomes. Even the technical specifications of specific weapons, their delivery method, and the effects achieved by their use can take a second seat to the appealing utility of their use in the mind of a foe.

A brief look at two kinds of adversary is instructive. First, there is the ideologically driven actor who seeks to remake the international state system and its associated norms, behaviors, and morals. Second, there is a leader or state-party that seeks to climb politically, economically, and cultural-informationally within the extant Western-built international system.

For the antagonist motivated by an ideology whose primary ambition is the destruction of contemporary norms or who desires to trigger a millenarian kind of resorting, whether secular or religious, a nuclear weapon heralds to fellow adherents the breaking of the status quo by the offer of a new, radicalized future. To achieve such an outcome a nuclear weapon targeted at a populated area, especially a political capital or major religious center, would offer the radical damage and chaos sought.

The size of the nuclear device need not be large. The purpose is to tear down a targeted society by inflicting as many casualties as possible and to wreck the symbols and sinews that symbolized the victims’ way of life and station in the international order. There is no doubt many terrorist organizations that would leap at the chance to exploit a nuclear weapon in this fashion. And there are state challengers who no doubt see the same appeal. The only risk to such leaders is the repercussions they may face. But to the radicalized actor, the repercussions are just another aspect of martyrdom—religious or ideological. One imagines that such a scenario has not occurred more due to lack of opportunity than to a lack of desire.

A nuclear weapon fired by a state’s armed forces is even more likely to occur if for no other reason than governments possess the world’s nuclear arms. State arsenals and their delivery systems continue to proliferate in both number and capability, thus expanding the scenarios for weapons use. The danger of the “mutually assured destruction” problem that occupied many deterrence thinkers during the Cold War is still a threat, but the logic of employment success points towards battlefield use.

A nuclear weapon that struck a key military target could decisively alter the course of a battle and a campaign by inflicting damage at a scale that conventional weapons can only achieve over much longer periods of time. The historical record informs us that winning quickly is a tremendous advantage for an adversary.

The one sure way to suffer a military defeat by the US and any American-led coalition is to wait for American joint and combined forces to deploy, assemble, and wage a maneuver campaign. If the Normandy landings of World War II are too distant, then the overwhelming success of the United States in the Gulf War (1991) is a more recent reminder of the fate of any adversary that simply waits for the United States to come to them. The war in Ukraine is an ongoing example of the grinding, almost interminable, result of fighting when early wins do not occur. Despite the many technological advances that modern armed forces possess, speed in multi-domain operations is still decisive, and elusive.

America’s adversaries are certainly aware that speed matters. Alongside the imperatives of increasing range and the convergence of lethal effects, the rapid way a nuclear weapon can alter battlefield geometries and the correlation of forces gives so called “battlefield nukes” tremendous appeal. There are many creative ways to benefit from a nuclear weapon, not just on land, but also in the maritime and air domains. Sealing an area off from maneuver; denying communications, targeting, and surveillance systems; destroying logistical nodes and stockpiles; damaging vehicles and equipment; and inflicting casualties on the adversary are all additional ways nuclear weapons are useful. This is not to mention the escalatory advantage of skipping rungs on the escalation ladder, thereby intimidating America’s partners and neutral states—foreclosing incremental steps from American policymakers.

Simply put, nuclear weapons present an urgent operational challenge to the joint force of the United States and its military partners. Whether the scenario is in Asia, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, or globally, the United States must imagine that adversaries are thinking about, and at least gaming if not planning, nuclear weapons use to achieve their objectives.

Americans must admit that there is a problem and stop hiding behind sincere wishes that nuclear weapons are never used again. The logic of their employment demands that the nation act on the facts as they are. Nuclear weapons are present. They are plentiful. It is also almost certainly only a matter of time before an adversary exploits American reticence to prepare for their use. It is time to prepare for that day.

Major General (Ret.) Bradley T. Gericke, PhD, is a Senior Fellow at the National Institute for Deterrence Studies.

The Operational Logic of Nuclear Weapons Use by an Adversary was originally published on Global Security Review.