Cross-domain deterrence: strategy in an era of complexity

In 1929, Lt Col Schley in his essay ‘Some notes on the World War’ noted that ‘it has been said critically that there is a tendency in many armies to spend the peace time studying how to fight the last war’. Ninety years later, we are still trying to fully comprehend this lesson. The idea that we overanalyse the recent past at the expense of a more thorough review of all available history has taken hold across a range of fields, and has deep roots in psychology through the theory of recency bias. Examples of this phenomenon are found in fields from political science to environmental studies. Eric Gartzke and Jon Lindsay's edited volume makes a convincing case that debates surrounding cross domain deterrence (CDD) suffer from this same recency bias. The editors begin with a simple and straightforward question, whether CDD provides any additional analytical traction beyond classical notions of deterrence. The various case-studies are organized around this central theme. The contributors make a convincing argument, first, that deterrence theory in the United States has been hijacked by discussions about nuclear deterrence, and second, that this hijacking is largely a US phenomenon (Russian and Chinese concepts of strategic integrated deterrence have always been more CDD-focused). Furthermore, the current multidomain, apples to oranges, strategic deterrence environment is the norm, that is to say nuclear deterrence as theorized was the simplified aberration. Therefore, the answer to the editors' original question is no, CDD does not provide additional analytical traction. This is due not to a lack of efficacy, however, but to a misunderstanding of classical notions of deterrence within the narrow scope of nuclear deterrence. The editors note that while deterrence in practice is an ancient political problem, deterrence in theory arose in response to weapons of unmitigated horror. The future mission for classical notions of deterrence is the better merger of practice and theory. The future mission of researchers is to fully embrace classical notions, rather than narrow nuclear deterrence-driven ones.