The Long-Term Future of Deterrence

According to some accounts, it was a response to the public mood, as well as to some of his military advisers’ views that current policies offered little hope of relief in the long term. The Strategic Defense Initiative is only one among a number of relevant utopias that can be compared in terms of their intrinsic desirability, their political and technical conditions for stability, and the relative feasibility of processes for their attainment. It is time that strategic studies move out beyond static models and address more adequately questions about the long-term future of deterrence. Trying to predict long-term change would be foolish, although one can sketch rough outlines of broad paths of change that might lead to a future with less reliance on nuclear weapons. In part, this may be a result of the static nature of deterrence theory; in part, it reflects the vague and unwieldy nature of the subject.