So maybe I’m just getting old, but I find myself more and more enjoying ridiculous memes on Facebook and Twitter.  I know, I know, how lame, right?  But every once in a while, I run across one that is just so … well … perfect.  Today was one of those days and I tripped upon the following offering to social media and just had to write about it.

This might be my new all time favorite cartoon!  You see, everyone right now is wondering exactly what lessons should be learned from the Russian invasion of Ukraine.  Folks in the Indo-Pacific region are wondering as well how the invasion might be perceived in places like China and North Korea.  They’re asking both what lessons should be and are being learned.  And yet, when it comes down to it, what we’re really all talking about—what this cartoon is wonderfully illustrating—is the need to establish credible deterrence to prevent the human tragedy we see playing out on our screens each night in places like Kyiv, Lviv, and Mariupol.

At first glance, the concept of deterrence seems laughably simple, right?  Putting up a strong front, essentially, so that potential aggressors won’t mess with you.  But it’s a bit more complicated than that, isn’t it?  If nothing else, Ukraine has taught us all that lesson.  You see, there are component parts to credible deterrence that must come together to achieve the desired effect.

Let’s start there.  What is the desired effect of deterrence?  It’s not just convincing an enemy not to attack.  That can be temporary, and deterrence—at the national level—seeks something more lasting.  The goal of deterrence then is ensuring that a potential enemy’s desire to achieve the material benefits associated with invasion or attack is overpowered by his fear of the consequences if he does so.  The wolf REALLY likes bacon, yet the sight that greets him makes a successful, pork-infused breakfast seem unlikely and not worth the risk to his own noggin.  The wolf is thus deterred from attacking piggy number four.

With the goal of deterrence defined, let’s move on to component parts.  First, the defender must have the technical capability to inflict harm upon his enemy.  This is the obvious one, of course, and the one that is easiest to deal with.  Need to deter an air attack?  Buy multi-million dollar fighter aircraft—or state-of-the-art air defense systems—and let the world see you do it.  Yet the Russian failure before Kyiv makes clear the folly of relying upon the purchase of sexy war toys.  Just having the equipment does not in any way promise success in military conflict.

On to the second part, then; posture.  Military capability must be arrayed in such a way as to employ those systems to complicate the calculus of enemy strategic and operational planners.  Unfortunately, this is where many defense enterprises stop.  They spend billions to procure the latest and greatest weapons of war, then place them in locations of clear interest to their enemies.  Yet this too is not enough, as the senior leadership of Egypt’s Air Force in 1967 might attest.  The most technologically advanced air force in the region—over 500 combat aircraft—was completely destroyed by the Israeli Air Force in just three hours.

So much for capability and posture alone.  On to more difficult to understand elements like readiness.  Combat readiness is achieved through a combination of sub-elements, including things like morale, professionalism, and leadership, but the single most important of these is training.  And not just check-the-block, showing up and painting by numbers, but realistic training that forces leaders and units at multiple echelons to face and overcome complex challenges.  This is critical, and if done well enough, can create a tough, resilient force long before it ever meets the enemy on the field of battle. 

Prior to 1991, U.S. armored formations hadn’t fought a high intensity conflict since 1945, but they underwent brutally realistic training at the National Training Center.  Consequently, at the Battle of 73 Easting U.S. tankers faced Iraqi Republican Guards fielding the latest Soviet equipment.  Most of you know the story, the U.S. VII Corps cut through its opponent like a hot knife through butter, destroying 160 tanks, 180 APCs, and 80 wheeled vehicles for the loss of just one M3 Bradley.  The vast majority of U.S. Army tankers involved in the swirling melee credit the tough desert training at the NTC for their overwhelming victory. The concept is not new, and echoes the old Roman maxim that training is bloodless battle and battles are bloody training.

Finally, the most difficult part, perhaps, is that the enemy must be convinced there is an intent to use force to defend oneself.  This can be tricky, especially for countries like Japan wherein anything but purely defensive warfare is all but outlawed by their constitution.  Yet intent is clearly a critical part of establishing credible deterrence.  Buying cool weapons, placing them in strategically important locations, and training with them until their use becomes second nature, buys a nation nothing if nobody believes it intends to actually fight.  Oddly enough, that may have been what undercut credible deterrence in the case of Ukraine, as Putin seemed to believe his adversaries wouldn’t defend themselves.  We all know now how wrong he was, but Ukraine’s intent clearly wasn’t conveyed as strongly as it needed to be to ward off Russian invasion.

In simplest terms then, credible deterrence requires four statements be made clear to an adversary. 

1.      My weapons can physically hurt you.

2.      I’m positioned to hurt you.

3.      I’m ready (right now if need be) to hurt you.

4.      I’m willing to hurt you.

Going back to our cartoon, and being suitably tongue-in-cheek, let’s look at whether or not our fourth piggy has achieved credible deterrence.  The wolf skull masonry makes clear that the piggy has the capability to kill wolves—by the dozen.  While we’re not clear exactly what weaponry our intrepid oinker has employed, he’s obviously got more range than the wolves he’s fighting.  Standing atop his domicile, it’s clear he’s ready to deal with wolves … a point made all the more poignant by the number of trophies worked into his wall.  And finally, the piggy’s intent to defend himself is clear, in this case through demonstration of past conduct.  Hungry or not, it is highly likely Mr. Wolf decides the risk outweighs the potential reward … and lopes off to find Little Red Riding Hood instead.

Funny, perhaps, but not conceptually all that different from what strategists and military experts around the world are looking at right now when considering potential flashpoints like Taiwan.  The benefits of achieving credible deterrence are obvious, aren’t they?  Deterrence acts as a forcing function for diplomacy … or at least economic competition, which brings its own rewards almost no matter how cutthroat that competition becomes.  Most importantly, it discourages military adventurism of the type we’re now seeing in Ukraine, and encourages peaceful co-existence, to the ultimate benefit of us all.

None of these elements of credible deterrence is enough on its own.  All must be accounted for—stirred into the security cocktail, so-to-speak—in order to achieve lasting success. And this is an outcome worth striving for.

M. G. Haynes