Does deterrence work?

>>1942759
Somewhat. But destroy everything is only a response to total war.

>>1942759

It works for the same reason no one picks on the biggest guy in high school.

Answer me this, we never had WW3 correct?

>>1942765
Because punching a principal gets you expelled?

>>1942824
Yes, that's called deterrence

>>1942759
Of course it does. To an extent though, it can be seen as an active threat rather than a passive one if you're not careful.

It does also call cost efficiency into question.

>>1942759
Only if you can use the deterrent in question. In the case of your pic, unless they got Goliath to help them out, it would not work.

As for modern deterrence (aka nukes), as long as their willingness to use nukes is assumed to be existent, then it will work in almost all cases. However, if there is ever a case where their willingness to use nukes is shown to be non-existent, the deterrence is doomed to fail.

Deterrence is the fact that if you hit me, I'll hit you three times as hard four times as long. It is an extreme overreaction specifically designed to be as such, because nobody is going to punch someone if they know they're gonna get stabbed for it.

At that point they either nut up and get their own knife, increase the threat (escalation/brinkmanship) and get a gun either hoping to overpower their opponent or have them back down, or they back down themselves.
Deterrance works so long as you can respond stronger than your opponent is willing to initiate. It's why nuclear weapons are so attractive to small or technologically backwards countries. Their deterrence against the meddling or even invasions of a first world country, a la Iraq 1 and 2, are a non factor. If Iraq had nuclear capabilities before 1991 I can guarantee there would have been no Desert Storm, and if Kuwait had nuclear weaponry then there would have been no invasion of Kuwait either.

>>1942759

Sometimes it does, other times it doesn't. It relies on an enormous number of factors specific to each and every instance of political interaction, including how different polities calculate costs and benefits.

>>1942759

Generally yes. Of course it's hard to gauge how much a deterrence has actually done because you can't count unfought battles.

>>1942852
The nuclear deterrent is absolute bullshit unless you're psychopathic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKbDKsNsjac

>>1942883
>Cold War US and USSR
>not psychopathic with their hate boners for each other until the space race

>>1942896
They're not suicidal though. Russia had the Dead Man's hand (might still even have it) so attacking it, even if you could eliminate Moscow in the first strike accomplishes jack shit.

What happens when either Murika or Russia develop a perfect air missile defense technology? Wouldn't they be able to nuke whoever the fuck they want with impunity?

>>1942883

States ARE psychopathic.

>>1942923

Well, to be honest, given the amount of research and time to implement something like that would be, you'd probably get a nuclear strike before it's up and running, unless everyone got them at around the same time.

>>1942923
Any preparations for winning a nuclear war would dramatically increase the chance of such a war occurring before said preparations are complete.

Deterrence doesn't work. It's completely flawed concept and was basically debunked in 1990s due to Kargil when both Pakistan and India went to conventional war and then had an agreement that they would use nukes on eachother "Tactically" as in, bombing military targets, not civilian cities. Srsly.

Deterrence has many flaws, first you have to believe your enemy will engage in world ending mass murder if they felt threatened, something most countries outside of the US probably wouldn't do even if they had nukes. Deterrence does nothing against really a overwhelming first strike. It assumes that wars will naturally escalate to Nuclear but that isn't the case.

There are also numerous times when Nukes became them major problem themselves, like North Korea today or the Cuban/Turkish missile Crisis that almost wiped all life out on earth except the sub commander refused orders to launch.

There are also many other reasons for WW3. Largely, the USSR had no appetite for war and couldn't give a single fuck about Western Europe. Losing millions of troops is deterrence enough for most.

>>1943267
for no WW3*

>>1942788
Nope, but that doesn't mean it's not a possibility.
The future is a long ass time, and if we leave nuclear war as a possibility in it, then the laws of probability may not look favorably upon us.

>>1942903
Perimiter is still operational.

>>1942759
It's worked so far, hasn't it?

The point of MAD is committing to a suboptimal action so that you never have to take said action. The best choice once the nukes are flying is not to launch, but being willing to launch means they won't launch at you.

>>1943341

MAD is no longer the dominant theory of deterrence. The US government prefers NUTS now.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_utilization_target_selection

>>1942759
Assuming rational actors on both sides and accurate information, yes.