The Two Sides of Deterrence in Ukraine

This quick take is part of our Crisis Crossroads series, which highlights timely analysis by CSIS scholars on the evolving situation in Ukraine and its security, economic, energy, and humanitarian effects.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been hailed as both a triumph and failure for deterrence. Can both be true? Strangely, yes. This fact necessitates a need to revisit the foundational strategic concept in the drafting of the new National Defense Strategy, which is said to include nested revisions of both the Missile Defense Review and Nuclear Posture Review. Integrated deterrence will need to mean more than technological change and partners to provide a framework for competitive strategy in the twenty-first century.

Deterrence traditionally involves two dimensions based on threat proximity (direct vs. extended) and the temporal characteristics (immediate crisis response vs. general, long-term competition). At one level, Ukraine is a direct, immediate deterrence failure. Kyiv didn’t sufficiently deny benefits, impose costs, and/or encourage adversary restraint sufficient to stop Russia from invading. At the same time, the invasion was an extended, general deterrent failure for NATO and EU states who sought ways and means to dissuade Russia from using force to settle territorial disputes.

Yet, Ukraine is a deterrent success in terms of thresholds and confining the war to Ukraine as well as limiting the use of weapons of mass destruction. When great powers compete, to include fighting tragic proxy wars through states ranging from the ancient Greek city-state of Corcyra and the start of the Peloponnesian War to modern Ukraine, they must manage escalation risks. Wars can always assume a more destructive, absolute form. As awful as scenes from Mariupol are, the tragedy would compound—along with refugees flows and risks of a world war—if there were a mushroom cloud. When nuclear states compete, the rungs of the escalation ladder quickly bring states to a point of no return beyond which nuclear weapons lose their deterrent value and become a means of inflicting pain to force capitulation.

The war in Ukraine demonstrates the need for the concept of integrated deterrence to move beyond platitudes about technology and partners. The Biden administration will need to articulate how the concept works to manage escalation thresholds as well as how it provides options that counter the Russian approach to coercion and emerging Chinese concept of war control. Ukraine is the beginning, not the end of a new era of competition. Reframing deterrence and competition to guide competitive strategy is thus the central task for the new National Defense Strategy.

Benjamin Jensen is a senior fellow for future war, gaming, and strategy in the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. 

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