Eight Important Lessons on Deterrence from Ukraine

There’s nothing that complicated about deterrence theory.?To successfully deter potential adversaries from doing bad things to you and your friends, they need to believe you are?willing?and?able?to do unacceptably bad things to them and their friends in response.?The degree to which they believe this is the degree to which deterrence is effective. Hence, successful deterrence employs the tactic of?ambiguity?to create doubt in adversaries’ minds over how far you may be?willing?to go, which is where the phrase “all options are on the table” has often been employed through past conflicts and crises.

So, what lessons have we learned about deterrence over the past two months?

1. To the extent it was tried,?deterrence failed to keep Russia from invading Ukraine. Putin did not believe that Ukraine was?able?to thwart its invasion, or that its leaders were?willing?to stay and fight. He also did not believe that NATO nations would be?willing?to provide aid or endure prolonged risk and economic hardship.
2. The?shambolic withdrawal of NATO forces from Afghanistan undermined deterrence?by increasing Putin’s sense that NATO was?unwilling?to fight, and perhaps also that its forces were less?able?than previously believed.
3. ?Our?pre-invasion messaging undermined deterrence, as the U.S. removed?ambiguity?about our?willingness?to fight by clearly stating the limits of how far we would go. In particular, President Biden’s repeated public announcements that the U.S. would not send troops worked directly against deterrence objectives.
4. After the invasion?NATO engaged in acts of?self-deterrence, especially in its way-too-public debate over what to do with Poland’s MiG-29s. By labeling this action “too provocative”, we managed to communicate to both ourselves and Putin that we were afraid of him and drew the circle of our options tighter around ourselves.
5. On the other hand,?Russia’s own conventional deterrent has taken a huge hit?by its abysmal performance on the field of battle. The world’s estimation of what Russia is?able?to do via conventional military means has been drastically reduced.
6. This effect is?marginally offset by Russia’s wanton destruction?of Ukrainian cities and other war crimes, as its adversaries are vividly reminded of the extent to which Russia is?willing?to inflict pain on civilian targets.
7. The failure of Russia’s conventional military gives vastly increased significance to its nuclear deterrent. NATO nations would almost certainly be debating a much more robust and even direct response against Russian forces in Ukraine were Putin not sitting on a pile of nukes; meaning that we believe he remains?able?to inflict unimaginable pain on us, and that we have some reason to believe he might be?willing?to use them (the now infamous “escalate-to-deescalate” doctrine).
8. The importance of nuclear weapons as a deterrent has thus been dramatically elevated?as a result of this war–not only by #7 above, but remember that Ukraine gave up its nukes in ’94 for what turned out to be a sack of magic beans (worthless assurances of Russian non-aggression). This will severely undermine the case for nuclear non-proliferation across the globe, as any country with significant security concerns will now have to recalculate the risks and rewards of having its own nuclear deterrent.