Cold war and after April 14 2014 Making deterrence work In order to persuade an actor to not take some action they must believe your threat Convince them that costs will exceed benefits of the action Threat must be capable state must possess capabilities to carry out threat The problem with nuclear deterrence Threatened states belief crucial to deterrence success Suggests deterrence suffers from credibility problem B has incentive to threaten damaging punitive action Threat capability Nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima unleashed destructive force equivalent to 15 kilotons of tnt Modern hydrogen bombs can reach 50 megatons Even in conventional war there is an incentive to retaliate and strike back But if retaliation is credible mutually assured destruction should prevent the use of nukes in a general deterrence situation Even when retaliation is in doubt offensive use of nuclear weapons is unlikely De Gaulle France concerned that US promise to defend western Europe was not credible The decision to build US first to develop bomb soviets second Once US had acquired weapon imperative for soviets that they needed one as well Large quantities were built 31k in US and 45k in USSR Decision to build represents collaboration problem Even if us and soviets agreed to limit weapons not at all clear they would trust one another Very similar to prisoners dilemma