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Conventionalizing Deterrence? U.S. Prompt Strike Programs and Their Limits

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Proliferation Papers
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About a decade ago, the U.S. started to examine options to develop and acquire Conventional Prompt Global Strike capabilities. This move fits in an effort to conventionalize deterrence, an effort initiated decades before and undertaken for profound and diverse motives. Although it has been renewed under the Obama administration, which aims to reduce the U.S. reliance on nuclear weapons, this ambition has resulted in very little concrete progress.

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Corps analyses

Budget cuts to defense spending and technological obstacles have forced the Pentagon to scale back its plans in terms of conventional strategic strike programs. Despite these setbacks, ten years from now the U.S. may well possess a conventional prompt strike capability in its arsenal. As a consequence, this paper also highlights some longer-term, operational and strategic issues that might arise from a context of crisis or war in which prompt strike capabilities could be used, and attempts to shed new light on the potential values these capabilities might have for U.S. national security.

 

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978-2-36567-340-2

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Conventionalizing Deterrence? U.S. Prompt Strike Programs and Their Limits

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Author(s)
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Corentin BRUSTLEIN

Intitulé du poste

Research fellow, coordinator of the Security Studies Center and head of the Deterrence and Proliferation program

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Security Studies Center
Accroche centre

Heir to a tradition dating back to the founding of Ifri, the Security Studies Center provides public and private decision-makers as well as the general public with the keys to understanding power relations and contemporary modes of conflict as well as those to come. Through its positioning at the juncture of politics and operations, the credibility of its civil-military team and the wide distribution of its publications in French and English, the Center for Security Studies constitutes in the French landscape of think tanks a unique center of research and influence on the national and international defense debate.

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Deterrence and Proliferation
Accroche centre

The conflicts in Europe, Asia and the Middle East demonstrate a return of nuclear power to the balance of power. Arsenals are being modernized and expanded, while arms control is collapsing. This research program aims to analyze these phenomena.

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From Cuba to Ukraine: Strategic Signaling and Nuclear Deterrence

Date de publication
03 December 2024
Accroche

Strategic signaling—the range of signs and maneuvers intended, in peace time, to lend credibility to any threat to use nuclear weapons—is back.

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Return to the East: the Russian Threat and the French Pivot to Europe's Eastern Flank

Date de publication
13 June 2024
Accroche

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, has flung Europe’s Eastern flank into a new phase of strategic confrontation. It has had a major effect on France’s position, which was previously somewhat timid, leading it to significantly reinforce its deterrence and defense posture in support of the collective defense of Europe, in the name of strategic solidarity and the protection of its security interests.

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Military Stockpiles: A Life-Insurance Policy in a High-Intensity Conflict?

Date de publication
06 December 2022
Accroche

The war in Ukraine is a reminder of the place of attrition from high-intensity conflict in European armies that have been cut to the bone after three decades of budget cuts. All European forces have had to reduce their stocks to the bare minimum. As a result, support to Ukraine has meant a significant drain on their operational capabilities. A significant amount of decommissioned systems were also donated, due to the lack of depth in operational fleets.

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France’s Place Within NATO: Toward a Strategic Aggiornamento?

Date de publication
27 June 2023
Accroche

With a rapidly deteriorating security environment, a chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, internal disputes exploding into public view, and questions being raised about the scope of its security responsibilities, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) seemed to be in dire straits at the time of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022.

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Conventionalizing Deterrence? U.S. Prompt Strike Programs and Their Limits