Failure to Deter
Failure to Deter
August 9th, 2026
In his book “Appeasement” author Tim Bouverie perfectly puts the question:
“Of course, the overwhelming responsibility for the Second World War rests with Adolph Hitler. Only he and his most fanatical henchman desired it. Only he willed the series of events that led to it. Yet, while Hitler was uniquely responsible for the tragedy, the question remains: How was he allowed to inflict such misery?”
It’s worth noting that Churchill dubbed World War II the “unnecessary war.”
Arguably, we learned some things about deterring and preventing war in the wake of WWII, but we seem to be forgetting many of the lessons learned. The ongoing war in Ukraine is an object lesson in things we have gotten wrong in the last 35 years. So, what lessons can we learn from the 30 years between Ukrainian independence and the Russian invasion?
In 1948 Permanent Secretary of the Treasury Sir Warren Fisher commented:
“In 1935 we addressed moral platitudes to the Italians about the integrity of Abyssinia without any advantage to the latter and merely driving the Italians into Germany’s arms, and in 1936 we addressed questionnaire after questionnaire to the Germans about their military reoccupation of the Rhineland.
When the Spanish Civil War broke out we deceived ourselves with a non-intervention pact which nobody but us observed. And in 1938 we partitioned Czechoslovakia.
This brief sketch omits many things, including our fatuous performance or non-performance about Manchuria. But the moral for the future is plain…
Had the British Empire, the United States and France squarely faced the facts in unison, the horrors which started up with the rape of Manchuria, followed by the outrage of Abyssinia, the all-out attack on China, the seizure of Austria and Czechoslovakia and culminating in the years from September 1939 could have been prevented; and therefore none of these countries can disclaim or escape a haven measure of responsibility.”
With the Budapest Memorandum (1994) the US, the UK, and Russia gave security assurances to Ukraine, in exchange for Ukraine surrendering the 1600 nuclear weapons on its soil following the break up of the USSR. Of course, the security assurance was directed at Russia, the US and UK representing no conceivable security threat to Ukraine.
It is worth noting that President Clinton, in April 2023, said:
“I feel a personal stake because I got them [Ukraine] to agree to give up their nuclear weapons. And none of them believe that Russia would have pulled this stunt if Ukraine still had their weapons.”
“I knew that President Putin did not support the agreement President Yeltsin made never to interfere with Ukraine’s territorial boundaries – an agreement he made because he wanted Ukraine to give up their nuclear weapons.”
“They [Ukraine] were afraid to give them up because they thought that’s the only thing that protected them from an expansionist Russia.”
“When it became convenient to him, President Putin broke it and first took Crimea. And I feel terrible about it because Ukraine is a very important country.”
It might well be said that the unraveling of deterrence began in September 1991 when President Bush unilaterally moved to reduce US tactical nuclear forces. What followed has been a series of reductions in nuclear forces across the board, both tactical weapons and intercontinental forces.
Consider these numbers: 1992 versus today
ICBMs: 925 / 400
Bombers: 248 / 141
Missile Subs 30 / 14
At the same time there has been a remarkable reduction in conventional force size.
Fighters (USAF) 3,486 / 1,978
Tankers 668 / 510
Transports 1,185 / 633
Aircraft Carriers 14 / 11
Cruisers 49 / 3
DDGs 40 / 74
Frigates 67 / 0
SSN 85 / 54
Amphibious 58 / 32
Army Divisions 16 / 11
Tanks 7700 / 4650
The Marines remain the same size but are in the middle of a major reorganization that has included retiring all their tanks.
While all this was going on, the US became involved in a series of wars that, no matter how it might be argued from the inside, from the outside looked as though they dragged on and on and seemed to reflect a high command that was, from one administration to another, strategically adrift, culminating in the withdrawal from Kabul in the summer of 2021.
If the intention was to send signals of stability to our friends and to deter would be foes, the US seems to have done just the opposite over most of the past 34 years. As with Germany’s actions in the 1930s, Russian actions in the teens, the seizing of Crimea, followed by the seizing of parts of Donetsk and Luhansk, were met with a flurry of sanctions directed at senior individuals in the Russian administration, and little else.
Now, 12 years later, more than 4 years into a brutal war in eastern Ukraine, the west seems to not only have no plan to end the war, but doesn’t seem to have learned much else from the strategic malaise of the last three decades.
Arguably, one concrete step to reshape the future in the right direction - depriving the Shia state of Iran of nuclear weapons, is generally decried in Europe. And the alliance structure envisaged after WWII briefly came together in the 1950s and 1960s but was already well frayed by the mid 1970s and the US was left to uphold the Atlantic Alliance over years of protest.
Europe, with 3 times as many people as Russia, 10 times the economic power, and two nuclear powers as well, ought to be able to secure Europe. But the militaries of the UK, Germany and much of western Europe are crumbling and many expect the US to simply carry the ball.
Meanwhile, US conventional forces are increasingly stretched thin and US weapons stockpiles, while perhaps more robust than many would have us believe, are not a bottomless pit. But conventional forces - large and capable conventional forces - are necessary to contain problems before they escalate; the issue remains the deterrence of the Great Powers - Russia and in particular China.
Eisenhower made the point that conventional forces, no matter how large, will not deter a great power, particularly in its own “theater;” only nuclear forces will do that. True deterrence then means the ability to contain a problem at any level with the understanding that no matter how much the enemy might wish to escalate, at each increment their pain will increase.
But we have not only let our theater nuclear forces wither, we have over the last 30 years continued to cut our conventional forces. And all this went hand in hand with our allies also in many cases cutting their forces even more dramatically.
The US and our Allies failed to deter Putin. We might want to blame this all on Putin but it is hard to blame a cobra from being a cobra. We shouldn’t act shocked that Putin wants more land. Nor should we try to rationalize statements by Xi about Taiwan; cobras are cobras.
We need to contain the damage that has been done in Ukraine and bring that war to an end. We need to take a hard turn on those alliances that can help us achieve our goals and deter Russia and China and others. And we need to rebuild both our conventional forces and our nuclear forces, with due regard to the all the changes in how war is being fought at various options around the world.
But we mustn’t delude ourselves into believing that this is all going to work out. The next great power war is likely to be a great deal more destructive than World War II; we need to deter it. That means being ready to fight it in the air and at sea. But we really need to be strong enough - across the entire spectrum of war - to deter it. And that means acting now.
