Deterrence by punishment seeks to affect the intention of a state to carry out a hostile act through the credible threat of a punitive response, whereas deterrence by denial seeks to affect the capabilities of the target state (either by blocking the acquisition of those means or through the adoption of defensive measures to render them ineffective). [...] The proliferation of ballistic missile programs in the Third World and the Saddam Hussein regime’s use of chemical weapons against Iran during the 1980s symbolized the emerging nexus of terrorism and proliferation. [...] The crucial issue remains the character of the regimes—the persisting policy tension between the objectives of behavior change and regime change, and whether the former can be achieved only through the latter. [...] In launching a preventive war of regime change in Iraq in 2003, the Bush administration argued that the magnitude of the threat—the conjunction of WMD capabilities and the character of the Saddam Hussein regime—negated a reliance on the traditional strategies of containment and deterrence. [...] This new calculus of threat reflected the rise of terrorist groups, notably Al Qaeda, with the intention of carrying out mass-casualty attacks, and increased concern that they could acquire this capability through the sale or handoff (transfer) of a weapon from a state, or the theft (“leakage”) of a nuclear weapon or the weapons-grade fissile material that would permit terrorists to construct a ru.
- Pages
- 156
- Published in
- Canada
