The Anatomy of Deterrence

Abstract

From the American point of view, the strategy of deterrence, and the related principle of limiting to tolerable proportions whatever conflicts become inevitable, tend to spring from the premise that the favorable results of a total war can never be sufficient to justify its cost. Such a war, according to that conception, would be too big, too allconsuming, to permit the survival even of those final values, like personal freedom, for which alone one could think of waging it. It need not be certain that it would turn out so badly; it is enough that mere is a large chance that it would.