On November 12, as part of its ongoing educational lunch eon briefing series, AFPC’s Defense Technology Program featured a presentation by Dr. Jacquelyn K. Davis on the topic of American Deterrence and Future Conflicts. AFPC’s Rich Harrison moderated the event and the briefing content was focused on escalation management and deterrence planning.
Dr. Jacquelyn Davis is executive vice president of the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis. Currently, she is a member of the Chief of Naval Operations’ (CNO’s) Executive Panel and also serves on U.S. European Command’s Senior Advisory Group, and is working with NATO’s SOF Coordination Center on its future evolution. She is an expert on U.S. national security issues, with a focus on military force structure, Allied-coalition planning, defense and deterrence issues, challenges, and concepts, and interagency considerations.
Dr. Davis addressed the problems and challenges associated with deterrence in a multinuclear world. In particular, Dr. Davis examined the issue of catalytic warfare and the role of missile defense and other strategies in future deterrence planning.
She explained how the development of new, non-nuclear strategic technologies and space and cyber warfare capabilities provide states and even non-state actors with the capacity to generate strategic effects, creating new dilemmas for escalation control and management in a crisis.
In addition to these technological developments, rapid nuclear modernization from countries including Russia and China could present major obstacles in the future, Davis noted.
Little thought has been given to how deterrence will work in this new era, in which countries like China pursue a range of strategic force weapons, both nuclear and non-nuclear options, to use in a crisis with the U.S. Chinese access to space and EMP may undermine U.S. ability to deter them. According to Dr. Davis, when contemplating these new threats and challenges the U.S. needs to consider the use of cyber and missile defense in its future deterrence requirements.
