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Calculating Credibility: How Leaders Assess Military Threats and Deterrence by Diplomacy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2006

Patrick M. Morgan
Affiliation:
University of California, Irvine

Extract

Calculating Credibility: How Leaders Assess Military Threats. By Daryl G. Press. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005. 218p. $32.50.

Deterrence by Diplomacy. By Anne E. Sartori. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005. 176p. $32.50.

In Cold War deterrence, nothing was more important or disturbing than the credibility problem. Success depended on conveying credible threats, yet it was hard to see how to make retaliatory threats credible in mutual nuclear deterrence, particularly in extended deterrence or to prevent conventional attacks. It was also hard to make nuclear retaliation threats credible against nonnuclear powers; nuclear use would arouse condemnation, set an awful precedent, and stimulate nuclear proliferation. In fact, how were retaliatory threats of any sort made credible?

Type
BOOK REVIEWS: INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
Copyright
2006 American Political Science Association

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