DETERRENCE THEORY: SUCCESS OR FAILURE IN ARAB-ISRAELI WARS
Rational deterrence theory provides scholars with an explanatory framework which specifies the requirements for the success and failure of deterrence.1 Yet, conclusive empirical evidence that deterrence successes occur has eluded deterrence theorists.2 According to Richard N. Lebow and Janice G. Stein, the main critics in the most recent challenge to deterrence theory,3 the empirical evidence suggests that deterrence rarely succeeds.4 They argue that a review of international incidents over the last ninety years reveals only three cases of extended immediate deterrence success. Based on this review, as well as on their own empirical investigations, Lebow and Stein conclude that deterrence rarely succeeds and that leaders, because of political vulnerabilities, challenge deterrence even when the defender's threats are credible. Lebow and Stein argue that "among the most important findings with respect to the dependent variable is the seemingly elusive and fragile nature of the success of immediate deterrence."5
If Lebow and Stein's interpretation of events is correct, then the "weakness thesis," a variation on the "scapegoat hypothesis" or the "diversionary theory of war,"6 poses a serious challenge to deterrence theory. If a challenger is compelled by domestic or international weakness to challenge deterrence despite the credibility of the defender's threat, or to stand firm and not back down during a crisis for fear of losing face, then deterrence policies are indeed irrelevant and even counter-productive; instead of preventing war they lead to war. Under such circumstances deterrence theory would fail to account for deterrence outcomes and would be a poor conflict management tool. This conclusion, if supported by a closer analysis of the evidence, would pose a serious dilemma for decision-makers in status-quo states. It suggests that the international system contains a group of "non-deterrable" states and that a defender's use of deterrence is unlikely to succeed. The implications of this conclusion for U.S. policy makers in the post Cold War era would be serious because the United States is most likely to be confronted, in the immediate future, by so called "non-deterrable" conventional regional powers.
Lebow and Stein's conclusion is based to a large extent on their investigation of cases of deterrence failure in the Middle East--the 1969 War of Attrition and the 1973 Yom Kippur War between Egypt and Israel.
This paper examines Lebow and Stein's conclusion that deterrence successes rarely occur and that leaders challenge deterrence, despite the defender's credible threats, because of political vulnerabilities. It argues that a flawed research design is the reason for Lebow's and Stein's inability to find support for the postulates of deterrence theory. The phenomenon of deterrence, which is temporal, dynamic, and causal, has to be tested by a longitudinal research design and not by research designs that focus on "snapshots" of single deterrence episodes. Stein's analysis of the War of Attrition and the Yom Kippur War ignores the important period between the June 1967 Six Day War and the War of Attrition as well as the larger, enduring Egyptian-Israeli rivalry which goes back to the 1948 war.
By investigating the role that deterrence played in the enduring conflict between Egypt and Israel from 1948 to 1977, and by focusing on the role that reputation and learning play in overcoming the credibility problem, one can demonstrate that, contrary to Lebow and Stein's claim, deterrence stability can be created even in the more difficult cases in which both challenger and defender "seriously" intended to attack and defend.7 Leaders challenge deterrence, or go to war, when there are uncertainties about the capability or will of the defender; and, once these uncertainties are reduced through the creation of specific reputations for capability and will, deterrence stability is created even when political pressures to challenge deterrence continue to exist. The observed correlation between weakness and the decision to challenge deterrence, documented in Lebow and Stein's case-studies, does not reflect a direct causal connection between the two. Rather, this paper argues that weakness (of either state) is not a sufficient cause for war, that leaders do not miscalculate the balance of capability because of political pressures to act, and that challenges occur when weakness and opportunity coincide.
A closer examination of the War of Attrition and the Yom Kippur War suggests that deterrence theory is supported by the evidence and that even highly motivated challengers are deterrable if the defender's threat is credible. The paradoxical, or counter-intuitive, finding that emerges from this study is that, in the conventional world, to prevent wars a state may have to fight wars because the requirements of deterrence--stability (a credible threat based on demonstrated capability and will), can only be created through the ultimate test of capability and resolve--war.
This paper is divided into two main sections.8 In the first section I re-examine Stein's arguments on the War of Attrition; and in the second section I re-examine her arguments on the Yom Kippur War. In the conclusion I consider the theoretical and policy implications of the findings.