Refusing to prepare for limited war can be a deliberate deterrent strategy

Evidence

But all such efforts may suffer from the unwillingness of an adversary to engage in any preparatory steps. Not only may an adversary balk at giving signs of eagerness to come to agreement; it is even possible that one side in a potential war may have a tactical interest in keeping that war unrestrained and aggravating the likelihood of mutual destruction in case it comes. Why? Because of the strategy of threats, bluffs, and deterrents. The willingness to start a war or take steps that may lead to war, whether aggression or retaliation to aggression, may depend on the confidence with which a nation’s leaders think a war could be kept within limits. To be specific, the willingness of America to retaliate against local aggression with atomic attack depends—and the Russians know that it depends—on how likely we consider it that such retaliation could itself remain limited. That is, it depends on how likely it is in our judgment that we and the Russians, when we both desperately need to recognize limits within which either of us is willing to lose the war without enlarging those limits, will find such limits and come to mutually recognized acquiescence in them. If, then, Russian refusal to engage in any activity that might lead to the possibility of limited war deters our own resolution to act, they might risk forgoing such limits for the sake of reducing the threat of American action. One parachutist in our example may know that the other will be careless with the plane if he is sure they can meet and save themselves; so if the first abstains from discussing the contingency, the other will have to ride quietly for fear of precipitating a fatal separation in the terrain below. — Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, 200

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The counterintuitive inversion — deliberate forfeiture of restraint institutions to make war worse and thereby deter retaliation — is a genuinely dense strategic insight.
• XREF: Directly parallels the reader’s thesis: private enforcers’ credibility rests on exactly this logic of making the alternative unbearably bad. — connects to: Limited war deters partly by exposing both sides to uncontrollable risk of escalation — Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, 425; Limited war’s main function is signaling escalation risk, not local military gain. — Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, 431; Deterrent threats can be passive but compellent threats require commitment — Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, 438 (+6 more)

Related

• Limited war deters partly by exposing both sides to uncontrollable risk of escalation (similarity 0.87)
• Unforeseeable escalation risk alone can deter aggression even among cautious rational actors. (similarity 0.84)
• Limited war’s main function is signaling escalation risk, not local military gain. (similarity 0.83)
• Deterrence can operate as an unintended byproduct of other actions (similarity 0.81)
• Threatening a small risk beats threatening certainty when the enemy’s controllability is uncertain. (similarity 0.79)
• Deterrence rests on surviving retaliation capacity, not on existing destructive capacity. (similarity 0.79)
• Governments can enter major wars inadvertently through imperfect decision processes (similarity 0.78)
• A deterrent threat is only credible if control over its triggering is partly surrendered. (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Deterrent threats can be passive but compellent threats require commitment #expands (0.82) — Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, 438
• Deterrence works only when fighters can reliably predict battle outcomes #qualifies (0.80)
• Deterrence operates on graduated probability, not a binary trip-wire logic #expands (0.80) — Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, 460
• Threats fail against irrational adversaries and trapped opponents #qualifies (0.80) — Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, 23
• A deterrence threat often hurts the threatener as much as the threatened #complicates (0.78) — Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, 32
• Bureaucratic war preparation can produce anticlimax rather than combat #qualifies (0.75) — Julien Gracq, Balcony in the Forest, 49
• Threatening a small risk beats threatening certainty when the enemy’s controllability is uncertain. #expands (0.75) — Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, 427