PT1.S3.Q4 - The theory of military deterrence

Comments

• BrainiacMS Alum Member

  September 2019 edited March 2021 98 karma

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• swetolawyer Alum Member

  January 2020 46 karma

  Also struggled with this question for a while. Here's my best shot...

  Stimulus:

  "...fear of retaliation makes a would be aggressor nation hesitate before attacking and is often sufficient to deter it altogether from attacking."

  Fear of retaliation ==> deter attack.

  "Clearly, then, to maintain military deterrence, a nation would have to be believed to have retaliatory power so great that a potential aggressor nation would have reason to think that it could not defend it self against such retaliation"

  =

  "if you make people believe that you're so aggressive that another nation can't defend itself against you, then you can maintain military deterrence"

  believed to have retaliatory power ==> deter attack

  (C)

  "One nation's failing to attack another establishes that the nation that fails to attack believes that it could not withstand a retaliatory attack from another nation."

  =

  "if you deterred an attack, that means that you they must have believed you to have retaliatory power"

  deter attack ==> believed to have retaliatory power

  This is sufficiency/necessity confusion.

  (D)

  "It is in the interests of a nation that seeks deterrence and has unsurpassed military power to let potential aggressors against it become aware of its power of retaliatory attack."

  =

  "If you want to deter, then you want your potential aggressors to believe your have retaliatory power"

  deter ==> believed to have retalitory power

  The hardest part about this question is the translation from english to Lawgic. I think if i tried to do this question again, I would ditch completely using lawgic and just use intuition, because intuitively, (C) doesn't make sense (there could be other reasons for not attacking), but (D) is a pretty solid parallel to the stimulus.