Extended Deterrence Dilemmas in the Grey Zone: Trans-Atlantic Insights on Baltic Security Challenges

Murauskaite, Egle; Quinn, David; Ellis, Devin H.; Wilkenfeld, Jonathan; Gartzke, Erik; Thomson, Catarina P.

Journal on Baltic Security

Volume 5, Issue 2 (2019), pp. 5–16

Egle Murauskaite David Quinn Devin H. Ellis All authors (6)

Pub. online: 15 December 2019 Type: Research Article

Open Access

Received
12 April 2019

Accepted
14 November 2019

Published
15 December 2019

Abstract

Should the U.S. respond with military means to a limited Russian incursion in the Baltics? This paper explores Western attitudes towards such a hypothetical grey zone crisis. Using survey experiments and crisis simulations we find considerable reluctance to use military tools in order to support a Baltic ally, and surprisingly little variation across the audiences. The underlying reluctance to get the U.S. involved in an armed conflict with Russia in the hopes that such acquiescence may help preserve global stability indicates that the conflict in Ukraine only had a fundamentally limited impact on Western strategic thought on deterring Russia.

References

Notes

[1] 1 The paper focuses on Latvia and Lithuania, as these two Baltic countries seemed to experience the most serious gaps in defense preparedness prior to 2014. In addition, historically, the Western publics seem somewhat more familiar with the developments in Estonia and it is frequently chosen as a single regional case study; as the discourse concerning the other two Baltic states was rapidly gaining in intensity, it was interesting to see whether greater familiarity would be developed.

[2] 2 Excellent summaries of the latest advances in the field are provided by Zagare and Kilgour (2009), Signorino and Tarrar (2006), and Quackenbush (2011).

[3] In addition to the issuing of verbal ultimatums, the concept of threat tends to include economic, diplomatic, and other means of pressure, and some even treat limited military action as a threat (Gochman and Maoz 1984; Danilovic, 2001).

[4] Considerable controversy exists over whether certain threats are deterrence or compellence, reflecting some of the ambiguity in the basic conceptual distinction between the two. Here, we consider a more timely (immediate) threat following from general deterrence failure to be immediate deterrence, since the quid pro quo is status quo ante.

[5] A small state protégé, whose very survival might be at risk, may be myopically inclined to equate a counter-threat with abandonment. However, the global power defender tends to operate under a longer time horizon, including the prospect of repeated interactions with the challenger, and must therefore use a more nuanced reaction scale.

[6] In our research experiment, we focus on military actions, in order to zero in on a meaningful comparison with the option of counter-threats we introduce.

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