Contemporary terrorist threats have raised new alarms among deterrence theorists. The old strategy of deterrence, which had long been firmly entrenched in the thinking of international conflict resolution, may not work with many of these terrorists. They sometimes act like lunatics, it is said. They sometimes appear to like violence, it is feared. They are so irrational, so bent on confrontation, that they may fail to make any prudent calculation of the retaliatory destruction they will face if they launch an attack. They may be, in the language of deterrence theorists, "undeterrable threats."
This research examines the applicability and effectiveness of traditional deterrence theory, especially as voiced by Thomas Schelling and critiqued by Janice Gross Stein. Traditional deterrence theory will be analyzed for its explanatory power for conflict resolution by applying its tenets to General William T. Sherman's "March to the Sea" during the course of the Civil War. The basic philosophy of deterrence theory will be described through the works of Schelling and others, and how well this philosophy functioned in reducing conflict will be tested in light of Sherman's military strategy.
"I think there are a lot of threats we wouldn't know how to deter," said Thomas Schelling, a Harvard economist often described as the father of deterrence theory. He cites a chilling string of contemporary crises in which deterrence theory appeared to have failed: the American failure to deter North Korea from attacking South Korea in 1950; China's failure to deter the United States from counter-attacking; the American failure to deter North Vietnam from attacking South Vietnam; Britain's failure to deter Argentina from attacking the Falkland Islands in 1982; and the failure of the United States to deter Saddam Hussein from attempting to annex Kuwait in 1990 (Ignatius, 1992, p. C1).
Contemporary events have aroused suspicions that the widely accept...