Deterrence Playbook

“This book is an essential deterrence primer.  It addresses wise future policy in how the world deals with conflict and deterrence before we blunder into another avoidable serious confrontation or war……especially in The Arctic.” - Chuck Hagel,  24th Secretary of Defense and U.S. Senator"Like Rip van WInkle before them, experts in the strategy of conflict have awakened after a long slumber.  With the Cold War nothing but a distant memory, they find before them a troubling new landscape, marked by the return of confrontation under the nuclear shadow but in a context that is more multipolar than before and encompasses also new forms of competition for military advantage in the new domains.  Yet a lot of ‘old think’ clutters the effort to come to grasp with the challenges of this new landscape.  Hence Michelle Black-Dirks’s worthy ambition to “modernize” deterrence—that is, to reframe the concepts and practice of deterrence in the contemporary context.  The result is a tour d’force, certain to be of high value to students and practitioners alike." - Brad Roberts, Director, Center for Global Security Research, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory