PT1.S3.Q4 - The theory of military deterrence was based

A Girl Knows Nothing

I know there is an answer to this question out there, but I am really confused on the conditional logic here. If someone can break that down for me, it would greatly help me understand when the other answer choices are wrong and further help me see why D is right.

help

drbrown2

There is conditional language in the stem, but that is not needed to make an inference based on what is stated. "Often sufficient" is also not conditional language we can bank on the same way "is sufficient" would be. The last sentence is really the only sentence that you could map out, but it's really just A-->B.

The answer choices make use of some conditional language, but if you come at them from a common sense approach it is probably faster than a mechanical approach.

A says "only if"it knows it would be destroyed, meaning that is necessary for being deterred. But think about it like this. Aren't there a ton of different reasons a country might be deterred from attacking another? This can't be the only scenario. This is sort of confusing sufficient for necessary, but even then you couldn't prove that knowing they would be destroyed is sufficient for being deterred. Fear of retaliation is often sufficient, but not necessarily always. Another gap I see here: what if they know they would be destroyed by retaliation, but they know the country won't retaliate because of some other conflict they are engaged in? A is wrong for those reasons, and is not provable.

B talks about retaliatory power vs retaliatory power, which is not talked about in the stimulus. We only know about defense against retaliation. B is wrong.

C says that if country A does not attack country B, it is because of B's retaliatory power and A's inability to defend against it. There are a ton of reasons why a country would not attack another, just like I pointed out in answer choice A.

D is provable because it says the country wants deterrence and has unsurpassed military power, so they should make other countries aware. We know from the second sentence that the nation would have to be believed to have retaliatory power, so of course you wouldn't keep that a secret if you wanted deterrence.

E is wrong because it compares retaliatory force to the retaliatory forces of every other nation again, like in answer choice B.