State and Non-State Deterrence

NSI supported government clients in developing the social scientific and modeling underpinnings of deterrence for state and non-state actors in the 21st century. A broad viewpoint was adopted, namely actions that prevent an adversary from engaging in behaviors that threaten or oppose US national interests. Moreover, instead of focusing on an adversary’s capability as the basis for deterrence planning, our focus was analysis of the actor’s motivations for action, intent, motive, capability, and structure of his decision calculus, from the actor’s perspective. The role of decision theory and social science modeling was paramount – both core competencies of NSI. The results of this work were actualized in a prototype software tool, and follow on efforts of this work have included applying the deterrence concepts and tool to several real world problems.