Big Ideas in Brief: 200 World-Changing Concepts Explained in an Instant by Ian Crofton

Author:Ian Crofton
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Quercus
Published: 2012-03-01T00:00:00+00:00

Deterrence

Deterrence is the doctrine that if a country has sufficiently strong armed forces, and a mighty arsenal of weaponry, no other country will dare to attack it, or to endanger its interests. This is generally the justification any country puts forward for spending huge sums on ‘defence’, in the hope that if it does so, it will never need to fight a war.

The trouble with this doctrine is that it leads to arms races, which serve to increase tensions and mutual fear. In the Cold War, the doctrine of deterrence evolved into that of ‘mutually assured destruction’ (MAD for short), which held that neither side would launch a first nuclear strike, because they knew that the other side would be able to respond with a devastating retaliation. The development of anti-ballistic missile systems has always threatened to disturb this delicate ‘balance of terror’, since such systems might enable one side to survive a retaliatory strike.

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