The Logic of Deterrence

Ola Tunander
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Ola Tunander: International Peace Research Institute, Oslo (PRIO)

Journal of Peace Research, 1989, vol. 26, issue 4, 353-365

Abstract: This article deals with rules and paradoxes of the modern deterrence system and with its transformation into language. It has always been possible to interpret military activities as a body-language of states, as a show of force with which to threaten or convince an opponent. The development of nuclear forces has made this communicative aspect essential for military activities, because war and preparations for war are now less a question of defeating the opponent, and more a power conversation at the brink of the apocalypse. This has been illustrated by the Cuban Missile Crisis in the 1960s and the deployment of intermediate-range missiles in the 1980s. It is a dialogue or dispute: doctrine versus doctrine and strategy versus strategy using steel and electronics. Furthermore, there is no unified point of reference for this conversation. The paradoxes of the modern deterrence system exclude a defined `reality' that this conversation would refer to. Missiles can be developed with ambiguous interpretations referring to both the possible and the impossible war, to the uncertainty of escalation, but this point of reference has no real meaning outside the discourse of the Flexible Response doctrine. The system of deterrence has become self-referring - a communicative sphere - a reality of its own with specified rules from which nobody is prepared to escape. The only possibility seems to be to redefine some of these rules, giving them another meaning.

Date: 1989
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