Hoped-for effect of having a big military

Usage examples of deterrence.

History has shown that deterrence works best when decision makers are conservative in their goals, avoid taking risky actions, are content with the status quo, have access to high-quality information about their adversary, and work within an effective decision-making process that considers a range of possibilities and reaches a decision only after each possibility has been subjected to careful scrutiny.

Many supporters of deterrence against Iraq have taken this experience as conclusive that the terror inspired by nuclear weaponry is so overpowering that it trumps all other considerations and produces extremely conservative behavior that creates an uneasy, but durable, peace between the two sides of any nuclear standoff.

All of the arguments in favor of deterrence are flawed in that they overstate the certainty that any leader in possession of nuclear weapons can be deterred at all times.

Nevertheless, even if all of the arguments about the strength of deterrence theory were right in the abstract, the question would still remain: Do we want to base our policy toward Iraq on theories?

United States and the Soviet Union possessed all of those traits, so no one knows if deterrence worked during the Cold War because of those characteristics or because the logic of deterrence is so powerful that it would work even if none of those traits were present on one or both sides.

Although the alternatives are considerably more costly, deterrence is the riskiest of all the policy options available to the United States.

In the case of Iraq, we need to recognize that we have run out of alternatives and our options truly have come down to a dangerous deterrence or a potentially costly invasion.

Only with hindsight is it easy to assume that because the superpowers did not go over the edge it was foreordained by deterrence that they should not.

Saddam is a fundamentally aggressive and risk-taking decision maker, and the available evidence indicates that he subscribes to this dangerous interpretation of the role of nuclear deterrence in enabling conventional offensives.

Other proponents of deterrence base their assessments on misreadings of Iraqi history.

At the very least, we should look hard at deterrence and the other policy options, decide what is best for this country, and pursue that policy with conviction.

This is the difference between deterrence and invasion as policy options, the difference between risks and costs.

While these proponents of deterrence recognize that containment cannot be sustained for much longer in its current form and that reviving it is not a realistic prospect, they are even less sanguine about any of the various regime change options.

First, and for many proponents of the policy, foremost, deterrence removes the need to embark upon a policy of regime change--all of the variants of which entail significant costs and risks.

Some proponents of deterrence theory see in the notion that Saddam is not suicidal sufficient reassurance by itself.