The fallacies of Cold War deterrence and a new direction
By: Keith B. Payne.
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Published: 2001
Place of publication: Lexington
Language: eng
Number of pages: 225
Subjects: Deterrence (Strategy); Nuclear weapons -- United States.; Cold War.; Deterrence (Strategy) -- History -- 20th century.; United States -- Military policy.
Description: "In 1938, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain hoped that a policy of appeasement would satisfy Adolf Hitler's territorial appetite, and he structured British policy accordingly. U.S. Cold War nuclear deterrence policy was similarly based on the confident but questionable assumption that Soviet leaders would be rational by Washington's standards.".

"In The Fallacies of Cold War Deterrence and A New Direction, Keith B. Payne addresses the question of whether this line of reasoning is adequate for the post-Cold War period. By analyzing past situations and a plausible future scenario, a U.S.-Chinese crisis over Taiwan, he proposes that American policymakers move away from the assumption that all our opponents are comfortably predictable by the standards of our own culture.

In order to avoid unexpected and possibly disastrous failures of deterrence, he argues, we should closely examine particular opponents' culture and beliefs to better anticipate their likely responses to U.S. deterrence threats."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [197]-219) and index.
Table of contents: title: Cold War deterrence theory and practice; title: Why the Cold War deterrence framework is inadequate; title: Cold War deterrence thought in the post-Cold War world; title: The dilemma of popular usage and a new direction; title: Testing the deterrence framework; title: The new deterrence framework, evidence, and misplaced confidence; title: Lessons of this case study.