Modeling Deterrence by Denial and by Punishment

Keisuke Nakao

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: We explore a defender's prewar allocation of military resources between denial and punishment strategies for deterrence. While denial disproportionately raises the probability to countervail aggression by disrupting military forces ("guns"), punishment proportionately raises costs on the aggressor by damaging civilian values ("butter"). Because these countervailing and deterrence effects are so divergent, the deployment that minimizes the risk of war can vary, depending on the defender's military capacity relative to the aggressor's. Namely, inferior parties resort only to punishment (e.g., post-Cold War North Korea), competitive parties concentrate solely on denial (e.g., Germany, Italy, and Japan), and superior parties develop both denial and punishment capabilities (e.g., Permanent Five).

Keywords: denial vs. punishment; countervailing vs. deterrence effects; guns vs. butter; military strategy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D30 D74 F51 F52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-07-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mic and nep-ore
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