Exploring the Nuclear Posture Implications of Extended Deterrence and Assurance

Part of the:

Workshop Proceeding and Key Takeaways

The emerging North Korean and Iranian nuclear capabilities, coupled with ongoing Chinese and Russian strategic modernization programs, have brought increased attention from both practitioners and strategists to U.S. extended nuclear deterrence and the role it plays in assuring allies that the United States is committed to protecting their security. As one element of its consideration of extended deterrence and assurance, the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Policy contracted a CSIS study team, led by Clark Murdock and Jessica Yeats, to examine the implications of extended deterrence in the post-9/11 era for the United States nuclear posture.

The purpose of the report is to identify the characteristics of the U.S. nuclear force posture that support extended deterrence and analyze how changes in the force posture affect the credibility of its assurance, paying particular attention to the competing needs and interests of U.S. allies in Europe, Northeast Asia and the Middle East.

The credibility of deterrence and assurance depends on a spectrum of factors affecting U.S. intent and capability as perceived by three critical audiences: the potential aggressor, the state under the umbrella, and the American public. By analyzing the differences with which each audience perceives and interprets U.S. force posture, the report demonstrates that the nuclear posture implications of extended deterrence and assurance are additive and cumulative, despite some fungibility between them.

The report begins by addressing extended deterrence and assurance at the conceptual level. Chapters III and IV then analyze how these factors affect the requirements, broadly defined, for extended deterrence and assurance, respectively. The analysis of both relationships is then re-integrated in the regional chapters (Europe, Northeast Asia and the Middle East) and a final chapter on longer-term trends and challenges.

Blog

New CSIS Report Analyzes Extended Deterrence and Assurance
Jan 7, 2010

By John K. Warden

Last month, the CSIS Defense and National Security Group, led by Clark Murdock and Jessica Yeats, released a new report dedicated exclusively to extended deterrence and assurance. The report, entitled "Exploring the Nuclear Posture Implications of Extended Deterrence and Assurance," aims to identify the characteristics of the U.S. nuclear force posture that support extended deterrence and generate a strategy for maintaining assurance going forward. The report begins by exploring extended deterrence and assurance at the conceptual level and then more specifically analyzes the competing needs and interests of U.S. allies in Europe, Northeast Asia and the Middle East.

Throughout the report, differences between extended deterrence and assurance are indentified. For example, the difference between how allies and adversaries follow U.S. capabilities:

In contrast to potential adversaries who follow U.S. nuclear posture issues closely and with considerable expertise, U.S. allies’ defense planners may rely on less credible intelligence sources…and have more limited analytic resources for assessing the deterrence effects from changes in force structure…This explains why assurance requirements, at least in the near-term, can exceed the requirements of deterring the ally’s potential aggressor…allies can be more sensitive to certain force structure attributes and less sensitive (than their potential aggressor) to others. For example, ‘symbols’ of deterrence can be important to the credibility of assurance even if they do not affect an adversary’s deterrence calculations.