Deterring War without Threatening War: Rehabilitating the West’s Risk-averse Approach to Deterrence
Journal: Military Strategy Magazine
Year: 2024

This article contributes to the debate concerning why NATO failed to deter Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. It first describes the deterrence policy and supporting strategy the West implemented; it then offers an alternative to the West’s risk-averse approach to deterrence by replacing the traditional “cost-benefit” decision-calculus with one based on increasing the would-be aggressor’s risks of failure and of suffering severe consequences.