Deterrence 101: Not Applicable to Big Brothers

Lots of talk about "re-establishing deterrence" with Iran right now.  One can argue about whether it was good or bad to hit Suleimani, but this ain't about deterrence.  The shorthand is: deterrence is about threats, not about the actual use of force.  The longhand is the Big Brother problem.

Let me explain (I am not a deterrence theorist, but I play one on TV):
The basics of deterrence are: if you do x, I will harm you and harm you in ways that are greater than the benefits of you doing x AND (here what is often ignored) I will harm you in ways that are worse than either the current status quo or where you think the status quo is shifting.  The US, for instance, sanctioned Japan in response to its aggression (cutting off oil sales, if I remember correctly) so that the situation was worsening for Japan.  This undercut deterrence because the "doing x" seemed to be more attractive, not less, compared to the shifting status quo.

Much of the focus of deterrence is on the credibility of the threat--will you do the costly thing to create harm for the target (which often creates harm for the deterring country)--but there is the other side of the question--what I call the Big Brother problem.*

For deterrence to work, one has to threaten harm if the target does something you don't want AND one has to assure the target that they will not be harmed if they do something you want.  You have to be able credibly to accept yes as an answer.  Can this administration do that, especially from the Iranian standpoint?  Iran agreed to the nuclear deal which limited its nuclear aspirations (we can argue all day about whether it was good enough, whether it complied fully), and then the Trump Administration said it was not good enough and dropped out of it, threatening maximum pressure. 

For the Iranians, it seems like the US could not take "yes, we agree" as an answer.  For the Trumpers, they can say that they cared more about other behavior, and, yes, other behavior--supporting Hezbollah, doing all other kinds of awful stuff--was problematic.  But in a bargaining situation, when you say, nope, we are not going to take yes for an answer, it changes the dynamic quite a bit.  And, yes, to engage in bargaining, you have to think not just about what you are thinking but what the other side is thinking and preferring.  The whole idea of "strategic" is about getting inside the head of the other dog adversary.

Coming back to the shorthand, to use violence is an admission that deterrence is not working.  It is still coercive diplomacy, but a harder, less successful form: compellence.  Compellence is mostly about using force to get others to change their behavior (see these handy lecture notes from Branislav L. Slantchev).  The Kosovo bombing campaign is a successful example, and there is a lot of regret about that one.  That is much harder for all kinds of reasons:

• It tends to require the other side to make a visible change in policy, losing face, whereas deterrence simply requires the other side to keep not doing something.
• It is not just about losing face--the other side had a reason to be doing what they were doing, so altering their preference structure or changing the costs they face is harder than maintaining the status quo.
• I forget the rest....

While Thomas Schelling was not always right, his classic works about coercive diplomacy remind us that threats vary in how easy/complicated they are (compellence is hard), and that restraint and empathy are required.  Given that this administration is utterly devoid of empathy, is not known for restraint, is also devoid of credibility, and is not very coherent or competent, it is hard to imagine how they can make a compellent strategy work.  This is one of the places where the uncertainty engine comes home to roost--that lying about much stuff and flip flopping a lot has consequences for persuading the Iranians not to escalate. 

So, yes, I am reminded of 2003 in that these are the wrong people seemingly planning the wrong war at the wrong time (the time thing is about how all of this undercutting the ISIS fight).  Any pleasant callbacks or analogies that I am forgetting?


*  No, my big brother didn't abuse me.  Just thinking about a well known kind of dynamic.

Teaching with Pop Culture: Footloose FTW!

I love this tweet as it puts the usual dynamics on their head:

Tip for students going off to college: study 80s/90s pop culture. Particularly Ferris Beuller, Princess Bride, Simpsons seasons 2-5. Your gen x/early millennial profs will try to connect with you through these, and will be confused/sad when you stare blankly at them. Not joking.

— David Mimno (@dmimno) August 2, 2019

Each summer, profs are reminded how much younger the students are and then the onus is on them to update their references.  This tweet nicely makes fun of profs by suggesting the reverse.

As always, I have two reactions to this:
a)  I use Harry Potter, which is timeless.  Or at least, not yet obsolete.  I long ago gave up references to Monty Python.
b)  When a pop culture reference is super-handy, I show it.  I have used Star Trek and Babylon 5 to show the different notions of ethnic identity--ancient hatreds vs. infinitely elastic, for example.  But the go-to reference for me is Footloose.  It shows the power of a fully armed and operational cultural reference.  And, yes, I have discussed this before, but not everybody is going to dig through my old posts where I explain how to make a good pop culture reference for IR.

Let me explain, show, and then explain some more:
One of the key concepts for the discussion of international security is the use of threats.  Thomas Schelling did great work to explain the complexities of using threats in competitive situations.  The game of Chicken where two players have the choice of heading directly at each other or swering to avoid disaster.  This can be expressed in a 2x2 of payoffs that help to illustrate the use of threats and their limitss.  Boomer profs might refer to James Dean, but this one scene from Footloose shows lots of the dynamics that Schelling sought to explain and which do play out in many situations in International Relations.  Indeed, Schelling and Kevin Bacon go together like the music in this video with the action:


So, Ren (Kevin Bacon) is driving one tractor, and Rusty is driving another.  The stakes essentially are the girl (Lori Singer), and I will let those using a feminist lens problematize that.  When I show this to the students, they notice the most obvious and important thing: Kevin Bacon is tied to the tractor so he can't swerve.  That one of the ways to win Chicken to surrender one's ability to swerve.  This puts the onus on avoiding disaster on the other player.  Schelling talks about burning bridges beyond oneself, for example.  In IR, tripwires serve the same kind of purpose--that the deaths of many of one's soldiers ties one's hands and create the sense of automaticity.  The idea of a dead man's switch fits in here.

Ah, but this example allows me to point out to the students that Ren did not communicate being tied to the tractor to Rusty, so things get closer than they should have.  That communicating threats and how firmly one is locked in is key.  To be fair to Ren, his mishandling of the tractor itself is useful signalling--that he can't control it as well as Rusty can control his tractor, so, again, the onus for avoiding disaster is on Rusty.

But that is not all.  I point out that both teens (who both look like they are in their mid 20's) have their friends with them.  This is not at night, they are not alone.  In the IR literature, the parallel is audience costs.  That threats are more credibly if there are domestic audiences who might punish a leader for not following through on their threats.  One could even suggest that Ren has more audience costs than Rusty since Ren is more of a consensus seeking (democratic) kind of guy, and Rusty is a bit of a dick (an autocrat) who cares less about his friends' admiration, etc. I never did play this regime type stuff up before, but that is the joy of this short video--each time I watch it, I see another IR dynamic playing out (not sure how making fun of a young Sara Jessica Parker fits, but whatever).

I always ask what did Rusty do wrong, and the students say that he smoked pot (yes, these Canadian kids!)  My response is that the mistake was not smoking pot, but not telling Ren that he is high.  Pot slows reaction times, reduces (perhaps) sensitivity to costs, and makes it more likely he will not swerve (or at least swerve at the last minute).  My point is that Rusty needs to inform Ren so that the latter is more nervous and swerves. This is the equivalent of Schelling's "toss the steering wheel out the window" to signal a loss of control.

Finally, Ren is new to town, his reputation is not clear.  Which makes it harder for Rusty to figure out what Ren would do.

I just realized something I need to ask the next batch of students (yes, I am teaching undergrads IR theory again--woot!): what happens if they play this game a second time.  A third?  Hmmmm.

Nice to be excited about teaching again with, gulp, just one month left before the students come back.

Magic Lines and Escalation Ladders

A colleague asked me if there will be war between the US and North Korea.  I said maybe, which is pretty damned scary, given the likely consequences.  Why am I worried?  Basically for two reasons that intersect in bad ways, besides the Trumpiness and KJU-ness factors:

1. the US seems awfully confident that they knew where the line is between what North Korea will perceive as an exercise and what NK will perceive as the start of an attack
2. Escalation Ladders are finite.

This weekend, the US sent some bombers and fighters to fly near North Korea but not over it.  How do they know the North Koreans would not see this as the opening move of an attack?  Given that North Korea does not have MAD with the US--that a US first strike could possibly destroy NK's ability to hit the US, they are in a "use them or lose them" situation.  Not a great place to be in and why nuclear proliferation is so scary.  Mutual assured destruction is not great, but it is a least bad alternative and a stable one, mostly.  If it ain't mutual, it ain't stable, so Trump's threat to destroy NK is problematic, more so than I suggested last week.  So, my question is: how does the US now what will and will not trigger North Korean fears of preemption?  My guess is that we don't really know, and we need to remember that even under MAD, fears of attack and launch on warning were just a wee bit probelmatic (see the pieces about the death of the Lt. Colonel who prevented WWIII).

The second problem is that the flights are part of an escalation--the US is sending stronger and strong signals that it is not happy.  Likewise, the North Koreans have been escalating--more missile tests, missile tests flying over Japan, an H-bomb test.  What's next?  Maybe sending a nuclear-armed missile into the Pacific?  The US did that once a long time ago--not a great idea since much can go very wrong.  If North Korea does that, what does the US do?  If North Korea tries to or does shoot down a US plane over or near North Korea, what does the US do?  There are not infinite rungs (I originally typed infinite wrongs--Freud at work) on the escalation ladder--we are running out of steps between where we are and war.  And some of those rungs on the ladder are very war-ish and pretty slippery (can one slip up a ladder?).

So, combine those two--we are escalating and we may have more confidence than we should what will and will not trigger North Korea's first strike.  Yeah, I am deeply worried.  And then we get to considering that Trump's ego is involved.  I see folks are hoping for the US military to disobey Trump's orders if he goes too far.  So much for civilian control of the military.  Again, we are left potentially hoping for folks to make decisions that might avert disaster but undermine American democracy.

I think I need to find something to stress eat or stress drink.

Certainly Uncertain: Nuclear Logics Are Still In Play in Northeast Asia

Reading Andrew Coyne's piece on North Korea and the need for Canada to join the American Ballistic Missile Defence System reminded me of lots of old deterrence theory stuff.  The piece raises good questions about the reliability of the key actors, especially Trump, but confuses what is necessary for deterrence.  Still, there are some problems that we need to think about.

The big problem in the piece is that Coyne thinks that the American commitment to defend its East Asia allies is now largely unbelievable with the North Koreans developing the ability to strike the continental US (and Canada).  It is true that the US, under several Presidents, has failed to deter the North Korean effort to develop both nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them.  But deterring their effort to develop some deterrence and deterring an attack on allies are two different things.  Coyne is right to point out that extended deterrence (don't attack my allies or else) is less believable than regular, vanilla deterrence (don't attack me or else).  The threat to start or expand a nuclear war is problematic in either case, but seems a bit more believable if it is in retaliation for a big attack on the homeland.

The key is that for deterrence to work, the side being deterred (North Korea in this case for the moment) does not need to be certain that a counter-strike would happen.  They just need to think that there is some possibility of such a response.  Why?  Because the costs of nuclear war are so very high, if one does the probability math (probability of x times value of x), the prospective costs of attacking first are simply too high compared to the status quo (.01 times infinity = infinity) .... as long as the status quo is bearable (which is why we have to stop threatening regime change).  We do not have to convince North Korea that a retaliatory strike is certain if North Korea attacks South Korea and/or Japan, but that it could happen.  The placement of US troops in South Korea is far more about being a tripwire to raise the probability of the US responding than actually defending South Korea in a conventional attack. 

Again, one might say that this is not sufficient, but the key to nuclear threats is that classic Schelling phrase: a threat that leaves something to chance.  One does not have to threaten, for instance, total nuclear annihilation of North Korea crosses the Demilitarized Zone--one just has to threat to start a process that might lead to things getting out of hand and ultimately leading to nuclear war.  This was the old extended deterrence logic for Europe and Asia during the cold war.

Certainty?  That is for allies.  That is, the tripwires and all the rest over the years are mostly aimed at reassuring allies.  The enemy is deterred by a modest chance of the US responding, of sacrificing Chicago for Bonn or now Seattle for Seoul.  The allies?  They are very nervous and require a great deal of assurance.  Ballistic missile defense both in the region and in the US might assure them somewhat--that the US can stick around and meet its commitments knowing that it is protected.

Except for one thing: BMD may be at best a coin flip.  We have lots of uncertainty about whether the efforts to invest in destroying missiles in flight have produced anything remotely reliable.  Again, that is ok from a deterrence perspective--uncertainty is not bad.

While I think that joining the US BMD program makes sense, my reasons do not center on the NK nuclear threat.  The US would try to stop an attack on Vancouver or Toronto since they are very close to American cities whether Canada is in or out of the BMD program.  And North Korea is not going to be gunning for Calgary or Edmonton.  North Korea barely notices Canada, and, given its small supply of nuclear arms, it will not be aiming at Canada.  The BMD arguments I buy have more to do with building a robust NORAD that addresses a variety of threats in the 21st century, and strengthening a key US-Canadian institution in these uncertain times.

While we should all doubt Donald Trump, I am far more worried about his starting a process that leaves something to chance via a small strike at North Korea's missiles or at its leadership than I am about his not responding to a North Korean attack.  Yes, we are now deterred from attacking North Korea, but that has been true since it developed the capability level Seoul with its artillery.  Yes, we have much to worry about, but then so does Kim Jong Un.  If he wants to survive, he will avoid a process that might lead to escalation.  The costs of being wrong are just too high.

Twitter and Extended Deterrence

People gripe about twitter, and deservedly so (evergreen opening line), but it is mighty handy.  Latest examples:

@smsaideman @USArmyEurope @4thInfDiv Some additional details here: https://t.co/lMRiAc4Epk

— US Mission to NATO (@USNATO) January 8, 2017

@smsaideman more info: https://t.co/kEf5fjEtuq

— U.S. Army Europe (@USArmyEurope) January 8, 2017

I had a question, and it got answered quickly: that the US deployment of troops to Europe will close the window of opportunity presented by the gap in how long it will take for the allies to follow through on their Warsaw Summit commitments.  I have been worried since November and was reassured when I saw Obama sending the troops early.

Once I saw that the US was sending a Brigade Combat Team, I began to wonder about where it might go.  A BCT with 3500 troops is larger than the 1k troops that are the US commitment to Poland, as agreed to at the Warsaw Summit.  So, I began to wonder if some of the troops might be going elsewhere to fill out the allies who are moving slower (that would be you, Canada, and nearly everyone else).  That is, there are two needs: now and later.  Now, to deny Putin any faits accompli.  Later, as the allies may not be sending enough to reach the 1k in each spot AND for extended deterrence (the tripwire) to really work, Russia should be concerned about bumping into American troops, not just any NATO soldiers.

So, I am pleased, although I fully recognize that Trump can reverse this.  But to do so, he would first run into SecDef to be Mattis who would certainly support NATO here.  As I discussed before, it would be far easier for Trump to say " the troops are coming sometime, just like my tax returns."  Much harder to pull out troops sent to a NATO mission.  Not impossible, but it would be visible and politically charged in Europe and Washington, DC.  The stakes are high enough that Mattis would be forced to wonder if it made sense to stick around.

So, not perfect, but not bad either.  This US force will be sending troops hither and yon in Eastern Europe to provide stability.  Should Russia be threatened by this?  Frustrated?  Yes, as it weakens their leverage and perhaps denies Putin some opportunities.  But threatened?  One BCT is not capable of invading Russia, and, by the way, Russia has those nuke thingies that are sufficient for deterring any and all peer-states from invading (can't say the same for terrorists/secessionists/domestic challenges).  So, Russia can say it is threatened, but the force here is modest enough that it should not activate any spirals.  Also, Russia moved first, so NATO/US not moving would be provocative in a different way: "here's an open door, I dare you to walk inside."

Anyhow, I am glad that social media allows me to engage with many different kinds of actors, including the units doing the stuff that I have been talking about.

Update: Stars and Stripes has a good piece on this, noting that the deployment is moving so fast that they didn't have time to change the camoflauge on the tanks from desert (Afghanistan, Iraq) to forest green (East Europe).  Gives you a hint that Obama pushed this quickly after the election.

Closing A Window of Vulnerability

When I was in Montreal last month, I learned of a key window of vulnerability for NATO and of opportunity for Putin: that the effort to deploy NATO troops in the Baltics would be taking place later than I expected, several months after Trump takes power.  Given Trump's statements about NATO and his many ties with Putin, I was worried that Putin would take advantage of the months in between Trump's inauguration and the arrival of NATO troops to cause problems, to test NATO.  I was also worried that Trump might delay sending the troops, just as he has delayed releasing his tax returns, for the foreseeable future.  So, I blogged/tweeted/pulled other alarms to encourage the US and Canada to move the troops sooner rather than later.

It turns out that I was not the only one worried about this.  Obama, who knows more and is far smarter, is on it.  In yesterday's news, it was announced that a US Brigade Combat Team was beginning its deployment early to Poland.  The Estonians are thrilled, even as the troops are mostly headed to Poland.  The US commitment was to Poland, Canada to Latvia, Germany to Lithuania, and the UK to Estonia with other NATO countries filling in the various formations.  I don't know the timetables of the non-US contributors.  I urged Canada to speed up as well, but haven't seen or heard any changes in the Canadian schedule.

My basic point has been and remains: the presence of US/NATO troops in the region raises the costs for any Putin adventures, and that Putin is an opportunist.  Denying him easy faits accompli must be the first thing we do.  There is other stuff that should also be going on

• the European Union should be dumping cash into the parts of Latvia and Estonia with large Russian-speaking populations to remind them that living on this side is desirable.  So that they don't go along with any rabble-rousing/little green man hybrid stuff that Putin cooks up.
• more pressure should be placed on Estonia and Latvia to do a better job of incorporating the Russian-speakers into the political, economic, and social systems.  These countries tended to raise barriers when they became independent.  And they got into the EU despite only partially reducing these barriers.  Time to make these countries better democracies and again reduce the ability for outsiders to play games.

Some have raised concerns about brinksmanship--that we are saber rattling and all that.  That is a valid concern, but Putin has acted aggressively when NATO and the US have reduced their forces.  So, the question is: does the risk of antagonizing Putin do more damage than the risk of providing him with open windows of opportunity?  Which is more provocative?  Sending troops or providing an open door?  I very much think the latter is more problematic based on the past few years.

The key, as always, is what kinds of forces are being deployed.  The numbers are so small that they present no offensive threat towards Russia.  They can't stop a Russian invasion, but they change the situation to one where the onus for escalation is now in Putin's hands.  Sure, there is no guarantee that the West would respond to a Russian attack by escalating, but putting Americans (and others eventually) will be in harm's way is "the threat that leaves something to chance."  That is, any escalation by Putin increases the probability that this thing would get out of control, and that should be sufficient to deter.


H/T to Dan Drezner for reminding me of this scene in some of his posts.

And, no, I don't really believe this deployment is happening because I shouted about it.  I am self-centered but not that self-centered.

A Focal Point for Those Who Study Conflict

Thomas Schelling died yesterday.  He was one of the most influential scholars of the past fifty years, complete with a Nobel Prize in economics and tens of thousands of citations.  His work shaped not just that field but that of political science, especially those who study strategy and conflict.  Indeed, those words almost seem to be Schelling's thanks to Strategy of Conflict, the book that informed not just American social scientists but, well, the arms race and then some.  Like Kenneth Waltz's work, Schelling's ideas are now common sense:

• the importance of focal points around which behavior converges
• the power to hurt is the power to bargain
• the importance of signaling
• the dynamics of tying hands and making commitments
• and, for me, what is so key today, the threat that leaves something to chance.

Schelling's work is relevant in so many areas.  Lately, for me, I have focused on its implications for European security and international peace.  That NATO can deter Russia even if no one really wants to sacrifice their national capital for Estonia, Latvia, or Lithuania.   That deployments of NATO troops to the region embody the threat that leaves something to chance.  That is, it is not really a commitment to certainly escalate to nuclear war--that would be ridiculous--incredible in the sense of not being believable.  However, what it does do is this: it puts the onus on taking the next decision, which might lead to a series of moves that would produce escalation, in Putin's hands.  This deterrent threat--building a modest tripwire in the Baltics--builds on Schelling's ideas in a big way.  I should have been citing him every time I blogged about this (although that is one of the joys of blogging--no requirements to cite).

Anyhow, of all the stuff I read in grad school, the concepts that I rely on most often, that give me the most insight into contemporary international relations, are those I found in Strategy of Conflict and Arms and Influence. 

Last Policy Recommendation for Obama

I spent today at a workshop on NATO and Canada after the Warsaw Summit at the Universitế de Montrếal.  The star of the day was General Denis Mercier, SACT--the head of NATO's Transformation Command.  I was brought in at the last minute as one of the planned speakers got invited to go the Halifax International Forum (yes, I am still a bridesmaid for that venue).

Did I talk about NATO after Warsaw?  A bit, but mostly I talked about NATO in the Age of Trump.  I scared the crowd with my dark assessment--that Trump creates uncertainty, and uncertainty is deadly for alliances.  Good times.

In the course of the day, I was reminded of something I sort of knew but had not thought about: that the Baltic persistent presence mission--NATO sending four thousand troops to Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland--does not really start until this spring/summer.  Oh my.  This means that Putin would have at least four or more months between Trump taking office and the arrival of a force that would make faits accompli much harder.  WINDOW OF OPPORTUNITY.  And Putin is nothing if not an opportunist.

So, I have recommendations for UK/Germany/Canada and for Obama.  For the former, they should accelerate their deployments so that they get some troops on the ground before Trump becomes President.  The tripwire should be erected before Trump becomes President, to make it harder for Putin to do something especially aggressive.

For Obama? The same advice but with FAR MORE EMPHASIS.  Why?  Because if American troops are deployed in the next two months (and, yes, the armed forces should be able to do that despite whatever complications there might be), Trump would have to make a very visible effort to yank those troops home.  He could do that, but it would be costly, perhaps not too costly, but more costly than the alternative.  What is that?  Saying that the US will deploy troops but delaying and deferring and basically saying that the US troops will arrive in East Europe about the same time that Trump releases his tax returns.  Acting is far more visible than not acting, so Obama's going away gift for the alliance would be to tie Trump's hands just a bit.  Yes, Trump could break the binding, but it would get noticed.

So, please, Mr. President, for the sake of European (and global) peace and stability, move a very small portion of the US armed forces to Poland and elsewhere in the Baltics.  It will be of modest cost now, kind of like most vaccines--an ounce of prevention is far cheaper than a pound of cure.

Provoking vs. Tempting: Preferring the Former

I wrote a piece in today's Globe and Mail where I advocate Canada take a significant role in NATO's new "persistent presence" mission on the Eastern Front (the Baltics plus Poland).  I didn't spend much time arguing for the NATO mission itself, as it is a done deal to be announced at the Warsaw Summit in July.  Instead, I argued for Canada's participation, which is really the decision up for grabs this week.

Still, folks in the first few comments were upset that I am a war mongerer.  Ooops.  More importantly, some took issue with my quick mention of how this effort will affect Russia--that Putin might be provoked.  So, here's a bit more of an explanation/argument.

Yes, Russia has made a series of statements about how offputting it would be for NATO to put troops in the Baltics, that this violates the old NATO Russia Founding Acto, and that it is a waste of resources that should be dedicated towards the common enemy of ISIS.  All this is hogwash, of course.  The NATO Russia Founding Act is dead, dead, dead.  If Russia is sincere in its assertion about the primacy of the ISIS threat, then it would drop its support for Assad or at least stop spending most of its military effort against Assad's non-ISIS adversaries.

It comes down to this: what is more likely to lead to an unfortunate Russian move that might spiral out of control?  The presence of NATO troops in the Baltics or their absence?  Given that Putin has repeatedly demonstrated that he is an opportunist, I think the first move is to deny him opportunities.  A Baltic country with no NATO troops is a temptation--a quick Russian move would then force NATO countries into a difficult position: act second by reinforcing that country through Russia's anti-access/area denial defences (anti-air and anti-ship missiles already set up in Kaliningrad) or fail to act, and thus greatly undermining the essence of NATO--that an attack upon one is equal to attack upon all.  Given Putin's statements about NATO, this is an objective that he does seek, and it would give some solace to those in Russia who are upset that they lost the Cold War.

Thus, I find the absence of NATO troops to be more provocative, more tempting than their presence.  As Russia has escalated its threatening behavior over the past couple of years, including a simulation of attacking the Swedish parliament while it was in session, many more overflights over NATO countries, near misses with ships and planes, we have to return to the old playbook: creating tripwires in the East to provide credible guarantees to the allies and deterring Russia.

With NATO troops in the East, the onus shifts from NATO having to respond to a Russian attack to the Russians having to consider what their move would mean--a process that could get out of control.  As I argue in my piece, prevention is cheaper than war, so let's deploy some military units to make sure that war does not happen, eh?

The Most Important Corpses

I was on twitter today talking with some folks about what Canada might promise at the Warsaw Summit, with the focus on who is going to provide the troops for the four battalions that will be based in the Baltics and Poland.  The conversation went into a bunch of directions, so I had an epiphany while shopping--it is not about proximity or folks who have ties to the Baltics--it is about whose corpses would have the greatest international political relevance.

The basing of NATO troops in the East (the Eastern Front is what people are calling it) is all about two things: reassuring the allies and deterring Russia.  And, no, the forces to be deployed would not stop a Russian invasion.  Just like the old days, the point of the troops would be to serve as a tripwire--that any invasion of West Germany in the Cold War would almost automatically produce an American/West European response because any such invasion would kill Americans and Brits and Canadians and on and on.

Four battalions/one brigade is not a lot of troops and divided among four countries (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland) means that there is actually not a very complicated force generation problem.  The current commitments thus far are one American battalion, one German, one British (I think), and one TBA.  Today's conversation was about Norway and Denmark possibly jointly providing the fourth, with, of course, other NATO countries sending smaller numbers to complement the bigger American, German, and British units. 

For me, going back to whose dead bodies are most important, I would like to see US, UK, Germany and France make the bigger commitments.  Why?  Three of those countries have nuclear weapons and all four are the major decision-makers at NATO.  France and Germany are often viewed as the most reluctant to assent to various decisions (France, which is always sensitive to the costs it pays; Germany, because it does not want to provoke Russia and has a bit of a history problem).  One could imagine a scenario where some NATO soldiers have been harmed, and then a decision has to be made at the North Atlantic Council (NATO's decision-making body).  Since there is no automaticity to Article V, we would want those countries who have the greatest heft and most likely tendency to block action to have a direct stake in the form of soldiers who are hit in the first wave.

Tying French and German hands as well as tying British and American hands would be important both to assure the Baltics AND to send a clear signal to Russia that an attack would lead to World War III via an uncertain but potentially uncontrollable process that starts with a Russian attack on territory held by Americans, Germans, Brits, French and others.  Italians?  Not so important?  Canadians?  Only important to those who study/pundit Canadian defence (guilty!). 

It is brutal but necessary to think in these terms--what would it take to deter Russia?  Which countries matter to Russia's decision-making?  How do we make the commitment to escalate credible?  Politicians are more likely to react if their soldiers have been harmed than if the soldiers of their allies have been harmed.  So, tripwire that has the usual major force contribution countries present and accounted for.  

Surveys and Realities of NATO's Past and Future: Fun with Numbers

I got into a fun conversation with Roland Paris (@rolandparis) on twitter today about the survey that came out last week that raised questions about the commitment of much of NATO to the heart of NATO: an attack upon one is equal to an attack upon all.

#NATO's central problem, in one hard-hitting blog post: http://t.co/fuC1PdWxVd via @Judy_Dempsey

— Roland Paris (@rolandparis) June 15, 2015

 Despite my post last week where I concurred with the survey that NATO has a weenie problem, I pushed back a bit.  Why?  Partly because of Dan Nexon's excellent post raising doubts about the survey--that if people were asked more directly whether they would want to help an ally if attacked by Russia, they might have answered differently.  And partly because I have been thinking of the lessons of Afghanistan--that every NATO ally (and then some) showed up even though no one cared about the place and nearly all stuck around until 2013-14 (Canada and the Netherlands as notable exceptions). 

What really got me going was Roland's assertion that public opinion and willingness to fight in Afghanistan were correlated.  Really?  Because I have been saying otherwise for years.  I invoked both Sarah Krep's work and the Dave and Steve project plus this handy slide:

Sarah Kreps argued in her article that elite consensus kept the alliance together despite public opinion--that the elites of the various parties shared an interest in supporting NATO and were mutually implicated in the mission so that it could not be a campaign issue.  My take (with Dave) is that institutions mediate this stuff, so that public opinion only matters indirectly. I also mentioned that countries actually became more willing to fight as time went on and as public support fell. 

What does "more willing to fight" mean?  In my view, it refers mostly to the restrictions/discretion granted to the troops.  If troops could fight in the south or east, which were far more "kinetic" than north or west of Afghanistan, then their country is "more willing to fight."  The other potential caveat we focus on in the article and book is offensive operations--some countries would not do such stuff, some did.  Together, "loose" caveats, coded by willingness to fight in dangerous areas and by willingness to engage in offensive ops, is my quick and dirty way to code willingness to fight.  Medium is a mix--Norway was based in the north but was more willing to engage in offensive operations and fudged the lines of its area of operations.  Germany was always in the less violent north, but changed its rules to engage in offensive ops in 2009. 

The basic pattern of the slide above is that there is no correlation between public support of the mission and what the troops were doing. 

Roland pushed back with a few slides of his own:

Troops as % of Active Military

France is hinky in the chart, but let's focus on a few key things here.  First, what drives this is mostly the denominator as most countries had roughly similar numbers of troops (500-3000) with Italy, Germany, and the UK being above that and the US way above that.  Canada, the Dutch, the Danes, etc all have smaller militaries.  So, any effort they commit will be a larger % of their capabilities.  This speaks more to population size and % of GDP spent on defense.  Public opinion is not correlated much with this as UK had roughly the same percentage of support as Italy and Germany.  Moreover, the idea that size of contingent measures willingness to fight is strange in this case.  For most countries, each sent as small a continent as possible (to save money) and then reinforced once they found that their zones were hotter than expected, especially those in the south and east.  So, size of force is actually not just a function of will but of the risks chosen (that which shaped caveats also shapes size, more or less). 

His next slide was of fatalities per population:

And, yes, the Danes led (well, once you discount the small Estonians) in how much they bled, with Canada second, UK third, US fourth.  What do they share in common?  Willingness to serve in south/east.  To repeat, casualties were a function of where one was willing to serve and how they served--caveat variance is what shaped the fatalities outcomes.




After I said that I had done some correlation tests and found none for caveats and public opinion, Roland's big move is to follow my instructions and build a two by two:

He chose to add the percentages of fatalities/population and Afghan commitment/size of military to get high or low on one dimension and public support on the other.  And it looks good for his argument--that UK and Poland were outliers with low/low and high/high serving as the primary axis of the relationship.  So, should I submit to Roland's argument?  Nah, that would make for a boring post.  I think there are a few key things to say about this two by two:

1. I still have no idea what size of contingent/size of military says about willingness to fight..  Again, Italy and Germany and Spain did not need to reinforce and send more troops since they were not as pressured as other places.  The first two still had the third and fourth largest contingents and agreed to lead 1/4 of the country each (RC-W and RC-N).  They committed a whole lot despite weak support at home.  The denominator may also be deceptive because size of military and what is actually deployable are two different things.  Every country had to sustain their force, and a larger force would be harder to sustain.  Italy and Germany stayed the entire time unlike the Canadians and Dutch who look good in these figures but left combat before everyone else.   Finally, I am also not sure adding the two %'s make sense (reviewer #3 would hate it).
2. Again, the basic reality was that most countries reduced their restrictions and became more willing to fight as the conflict continued and as public opinion went down.  It is hard to square that dynamic reality with the idea that public opinion served as a major brake.  France's willingness to fight changed dramatically in 2007 when a bitter Chirac (still miffed due to the US invasion of Iraq) was replaced by the NATO fan Sarkozy.  So, I would code France differently depending on the time frame.
3. Roland set high and low of public opinion at 40% which is a mighty low threshold for "high public support."  Set it five points lower and nearly everyone is high.  Set it five points higher, and Canada is in the wrong box.  More importantly, what Roland considers to be high is actually mostly lower than the public opinion on the Pew survey that started this conversation.  That is, using Roland's standards, the "weenies" include only one country below 40%: Germany.  Which is a bit of a problem.  Still, Germany's attitude about using force to defend an ally that is attacked (however it is worded) is actually pretty damn close to what its attitude was during the Afghanistan war--where the Germans remained even after nearly everyone has left.  

The point again is that NATO countries were willing to fight and die in a place that no one cared about, where Article V was only loosely attached.  NATO's history shows that its members dig in and stay resolved when the alliance itself is threatened--Bosnia 1995, Kosovo 1999.  If an ally were attacked by Russia (well, maybe not Turkey), it would compel each leader to ponder whether they want to break NATO and face a revanchist Russia alone.  Their publics might not be enthusiastic, but as Sarah Kreps would point out, the political vulnerability would be low if politicians across the spectrum agreed to the same stance.  Still, I have been and will continue to ask for real commitments of real troops and not just bases and based materials to demonstrate to both Russia and the allies that an attack on the Baltics would mean war between NATO and Russia.