Military Strategy Magazine –
Immediately after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, defense scholars began asking why Western approaches to deterrence were failing. Some critics have argued that Western countries have never had an official deterrence policy with respect to Ukraine, or at least do not have a consistent policy. Others argued that the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) were too quick to take military power “off the table” and relied too much on sanctions enforcement. (i) In fact, Western countries had both deterrence and counterattack policies. Supports deterrence strategy against Ukraine. US President Joseph Biden and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg have repeatedly warned Russian President Vladimir Putin not to attack Ukraine and strengthened their policies and strategies. But the West’s approach was too risk-averse to succeed against a great power with a military power comparable to NATO. It tried to deter war without threatening war, which left it vulnerable to Russian deterrence. The West made the right decision by trying to minimize the risk of a major war, even if its own deterrence methods failed. To use Clausewitz’s expression, the “value of political ends” did not justify risking a potentially disastrous war. (ii) The question now is whether it is possible to restore the Western deterrence approach without requiring NATO to act militarily irresponsible. Use coercive force as in Putin’s Russia
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