Tailored Deterrence; Influencing States and Groups of Concern

viii, 507, [1] pages. Abbreviations. Notes. Contributors. Index. Barry Schneider is associated with The Society for Military History, part of Encyclopaedia Britannica's Publishing Partner Program. He is the former Director, U.S. Air Force Counterproliferation Center, Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama. He has served as a Foreign Affairs Officer and Public Affairs Officer at the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, as a Congressional staffer on arms control and defense issues, and was a Senior Defense Analyst at the National Institute for Public Policy. He has taught at the Air War College. He has a Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University. Author of and contributor to numerous books, including Counterforce Targeting, The Gathering Biological Warfare Storm; The World's Most Threatening Terrorist Networks and Criminal Gangs; and Battlefield of the Future: 21st Century Warfare Issues - Air Theory for the 21st Century. Mr. Ellis is a WMD/Homeland Security analyst at the USAF Center for Strategic Deterrence Studies located on Maxwell AFB, AL. He specializes in WMD terrorism, homeland security, and emergency management issues. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Maryland in Asian Studies/government and politics, a Master of Public Administration degree from the University of Oklahoma, and a Masters degree in International Relations. He co-edited the USAF Counterproliferation Center's 2011 book titled Tailored Deterrence: Influencing States and Groups of Concern, and authored a chapter on "National Resilience as a Deterrence Factor." Deterrence thinking has evolved from the Cold War to the present. During the period from 1945-1991 when the United States sought to deter attacks by the U.S.S.R. and Warsaw Pact, U.S. nuclear forces were fielded primarily to prevent nuclear war or escalation of war During the Cold War, deterrence strategy evolved over time as officials and defense strategists thought through the changes brought by nuclear weapons. Clearly after 1945, warfare had a new component. Long-range airpower gave states an intercontinental reach. The first A-bombs had an explosive power a thousand times more powerful than an equivalent weight of high explosive bombs like TNT. When thermonuclear weapons were created half a decade later, they, in turn, were a thousand times more powerful per unit weight than the A-bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. So in a period of four or five years, bomb explosive yields per unit weight increased a thousand times a thousand. This combination of long-range delivery vehicles coupled with warheads or bombs a million times more powerful than their World War II conventional counterparts led to a revolution in the way wars might be fought in the future if such weapons were employed. This book was written with senior United States government leadership and decision-makers in mind as a key audience. It is meant to help them analyze the best means of deterring future conflicts with state and non-state adversaries in the 21st century. The central focus is on actor-specific tailored deterrence that influences force postures, communications and actions based on contextual and scenario considerations. Any top government decision-makers who formulate policy and strategy to counter nuclear and other WMD threats should read it. In addition, this volume would be instructive to interested national security experts, military officers and informed citizens. Tailored deterrence is, in the words of Dr. Jerrold Post, an actor-specific set of deterrence capabilities designed to influence a specific leader or leader's group. Deterrence strategy may be tailored to the actors to be deterred, the capabilities needed to execute this strategy, and to the points in ongoing scenarios where there are opportunities to deter the adversary. This book looks at all three. We look at tailoring a deterrence strategy to Russia, North Korea, Iran and al-Qaeda. We discuss specific capabilities.…