Fully Informed and on the Road to Ruin: The Perfect Failure of Asymmetric Deterrence

Abstract

Most theoretical and formal arguments about rational deterrence assume that war is a game-ending move. In the asymmetric case, the logic of deterrent threats then rests on the relative merits of war and submission. Perfectly informed rivals ensure that immediate deterrence always succeeds although general deterrence may not. Does this strong result survive the repetition of the standard one-shot deterrence game? We show that an unbundling of the war outcome, and the resulting possible recurrence of a challenge to the status quo, changes the very nature of deterrent threats and can lead to the failure of immediate deterrence. If the status quo can be challenged repeatedly, it is rational, in case of challenge, for the rivals to threaten probabilistic escalation of the crisis to war with the following consequences: the challenger will challenge the status quo now and then; the defender finds it rational to resist at least for a while; the resulting recurrence of challenge, resistance, and escalation can lead the rivals to threaten, with some likelihood, wars that are long enough to be catastrophic for all parties.Most theoretical and formal arguments about rational deterrence assume that war is a game-ending move. The logic of deterrent threats then rests on the relative merits of war and submission, and perfectly informed rivals will never fight, although the defender may fail to deter a challenger from upsetting the status quo if she cannot credibly threaten war. 1 Perfectly informed rivals therefore ensure that immediate deterrence always succeeds although general deterrence may not. Does this strong result survive the repetition of the standard one-shot deterrence game? In this paper, we show that an unbundling of the war outcome, and the resulting possible recurrence of a challenge to the status quo, changes the very nature of deterrent threats and can lead to the failure of immediate deterrence. If the status Author's note: The listing order of authors' names is not indicative of their respective contributions, which they consider to be equal. We thank an anonymous reviewer for valuable feedback.

Bargaining and the Failure of Asymmetric Deterrence: Trading off the Risk of War for the Promise of a Better Deal

“…But broader approaches abound from the classic work of Morgan (1977), to Ordershook (1989), Wagner (1992), and Zagare (1990). A more formal analysis can be traced to Brams and Kilgour (1988), Langlois (1991), Morrow (1989), and Powell (1990), among others, and more recently to Langlois and Langlois (2005), Zagare (2004), and Zagare and Kilgour (2000). O'Neill (1994) and Morrow (2000) also offer comprehensive reviews of the vast game-theoretic literature on deterrence.…”

“…Langlois and Langlois (2005) show that asymmetric deterrence can fail between fully informed rivals if the war node is unbundled to allow the players to fight for some time, return to the status quo, and subsequently challenge again.3 Kilgour (1993, 2000, Ch. 5).…”