POLI 360 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Deterrence Theory, Mikhail Gorbachev, Massive Retaliation

• School: McGill University
• Department: Political Science
• Course: POLI 360
• Professor: T.V.Paul

Document Summary

If opponent executes it threat, and war breaks out, than deterrence fails. Deterrence is a military approach to securing what one wants in a security situation. Deterrence by denial v. punishment: deterrence by denial is mostly through conventional weapons (cid:507)non wmd"s(cid:508) idea is to influence the estimate of the opponent in terms of probability of gaining the objectives (denying victory) Threatening to destroy large portions of opponents" civilian population and industry. Attacker sees it as not worth starting a war as resources could be destroyed entirely. Immediate deterrence concerns relationship between opposing states where one side is seriously considering an attack, while the other is mounting the threat of retaliation. Because of the possibility of retaliation, state that planned an attack backed off (cid:507)enemy realizes opponent is mobilizing and objective won"t be won(cid:508) Patrick morgan conditions for id: two hostile states, one is seriously considering attacking the other.