POC: For inquiries regarding this work, please contact Sarah Canna (scanna@nsiteam.com).

Description: In response to a series of questions from U.S. Strategic Command, the NSI team employed its expert elicitation capability—the Virtual Think Tank (ViTTa)—to quickly harness the expertise of the strategic deterrence community to assess whether theories of deterrence developed during the Cold War are sufficient for today’s complex operational environment.

In particular, the ViTTa capability—in combination with papers contributed by a number of experts—addressed questions regarding 1) whether deterrence theories holds in the fact of two nuclear-armed, near peer competitors, 2) how competitors undermine US objectives through strategies that leverage non-kinetic and non-nuclear means, 3) what political, economic, social, and/or environmental factors might increase a competitor’s cost of restraint or lead to crisis.

The request highlighted the need to better understand how the number of opponents and their range of capabilities influence, and potentially limit, USSTRATCOM’s and other Combatant Commands’ abilities to mitigate threats to US and ally security.