War, as Clausewitz reminds, is the most uncertain of human political and social activities. It also imposes burdens. In an alliance among states for the promotion of collective defense or security, such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), burdens have to be shared. This study looks at the experience of the United States and other member states of NATO in four situations of multinational military intervention - Lebanon, the Persian Gulf, the Balkans, and South Asia - and considers the implications of nuclear arms reductions and nonproliferation for the US and NATO. Each case study represents an important period in the distribution of power, interest, and values, amounting to more than a sequential consideration of incidents of military intervention and/or conflict prevention. These politico-military challenges include a major coalition war, a traditional peacekeeping operation, an exercise in peace enforcement, and a conflict that combines counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism with stability and security operations.

A head of title: Council on Foreign Relations, International Institutions and Global Governance Program.

This open access volume surveys the state of the field to examine whether a fifth wave of deterrence theory is emerging. Bringing together insights from world-leading experts from three continents, the volume identifies the most pressing strategic challenges, frames theoretical concepts, and describes new strategies. The use and utility of deterrence in today’s strategic environment is a topic of paramount concern to scholars, strategists and policymakers. Ours is a period of considerable strategic turbulence, which in recent years has featured a renewed emphasis on nuclear weapons used in defence postures across different theatres; a dramatic growth in the scale of military cyber capabilities and the frequency with which these are used; and rapid technological progress including the proliferation of long-range strike and unmanned systems. These military-strategic developments occur in a polarized international system, where cooperation between leading powers on arms control regimes is breaking down, states widely make use of hybrid conflict strategies, and the number of internationalized intrastate proxy conflicts has quintupled over the past two decades. Contemporary conflict actors exploit a wider gamut of coercive instruments, which they apply across a wider range of domains. The prevalence of multi-domain coercion across but also beyond traditional dimensions of armed conflict raises an important question: what does effective deterrence look like in the 21st century? Answering that question requires a re-appraisal of key theoretical concepts and dominant strategies of Western and non-Western actors in order to assess how they hold up in today’s world. Air Commodore Professor Dr. Frans Osinga is the Chair of the War Studies Department of the Netherlands Defence Academy and the Special Chair in War Studies at the University Leiden. Dr. Tim Sweijs is the Director of Research at The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies and a Research Fellow at the Faculty of Military Sciences of the Netherlands Defence Academy in Breda.

War, as Clausewitz reminds, is the most uncertain of human political and social activities. It also imposes burdens. In an alliance among states for the promotion of collective defense or security, such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), burdens have to be shared. This study looks at the experience of the United States and other member states of NATO in four situations of multinational military intervention - Lebanon, the Persian Gulf, the Balkans, and South Asia - and considers the implications of nuclear arms reductions and nonproliferation for the US and NATO. Each case study represents an important period in the distribution of power, interest, and values, amounting to more than a sequential consideration of incidents of military intervention and/or conflict prevention. These politico-military challenges include a major coalition war, a traditional peacekeeping operation, an exercise in peace enforcement, and a conflict that combines counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism with stability and security operations.

Now in its third edition, The Defense Policies of Nations has been thoroughly updated to take into account the dramatic developments of recent years: the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the resurgence of East Asian powers, the emergence of newly independent nations in Eastern Europe, the continuing instability of the Middle East, and the growing importance of third world nations in global security matters. "For those dealing with national defense issues on a daily basis, or even for those interested in the subject because of its current relevance, The Defense Policy of Nations is must reading." -- Gen. Theodore J. Conway, Military Review. American Academy of Political and Social Science.