If You Want Peace, Prepare for War: Deterrence Today

History shows that an expansionist opponent, and even more so an overpowering one, cannot be dissuaded from launching an attack by ethical arguments alone. This requires military deterrence, i.e. the denial of a successful attack or at least the credible threat of a military retaliation that is intolerable for the opponent. Since the development of nuclear weapons, however, this has been fraught with numerous ethical problems.  

The development of the first atomic bomb was originally based purely on deterrence. However, the development of Soviet nuclear weapons and intercontinental missiles, as well as the conventional superiority of the Warsaw Pact, posed considerable problems for NATO’s strategy. Various solutions were developed by individual countries and within NATO. 

One of these was the strategy of restoring the credibility of deterrence in the event of an attack through a limited first use of nuclear weapons concentrated on military targets, without simultaneously promoting total escalation. Due to the increased precision of weapons technology, this could be achieved with the “Euromissiles” deployed from the end of the 1970s. In the background, there was also, beginning in the 1950s, a change in attitude towards the deliberate bombing of civilians.   

Therefore, and not least in view of further advances in weapons technology, much speaks in favor of relying more heavily on conventional deterrence in the confrontation with an expansionist Russia – as, for example, through the planned deployment of US missiles and cruise missiles in Germany from 2026.