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When Keeping Military Action “On the Table” Is Useless

Jim Arkedis wants the U.S. to keep the option of using force in Ukraine “on the table”: Military force must always ambiguously remain “on the table.” That’s not warmongering, it’s strategy. I suppose you can call it strategy, but it’s bound to fail on its own terms. There are cases where ambiguity about the use […]

Jim Arkedis wants the U.S. to keep the option of using force in Ukraine “on the table”:

Military force must always ambiguously remain “on the table.” That’s not warmongering, it’s strategy.

I suppose you can call it strategy, but it’s bound to fail on its own terms. There are cases where ambiguity about the use of force may act as a deterrent, but in order for that to work the other government has to think that it is likely that the U.S. would go to war over the particular country involved in the conflict. No one, least of all the Russians, has ever believed that the U.S. would fight for Ukraine, because the U.S. has no reason to go to war there. If Obama had not ruled out the use of force, the Russian agitation and incursions would have happened anyway. Keeping the use of force as an option wouldn’t have changed anything because everyone would correctly perceive the implied threat to be an empty one. Pillar made this point in his post on deterrence last month:

If the other side does not believe the threat ever would be executed because doing so would be highly costly and damaging to the side making the threat, there again is no deterrent value.

In this case, ambiguity about the use of force would have gained the U.S. nothing, had no effect on Russian behavior, and would only have given the Ukrainian government additional false hope that military support might still be available. If this is strategy, it is remarkably ineffective and foolish. There are crises and conflicts where the U.S. simply is never going to use force. Nothing is lost by acknowledging what everyone already understands, and nothing is gained by pretending otherwise.

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