Professor Antulio J. Echevarria II - Conflict & strategic policy failure

As part of the IAS Festival of Failure, IAS Visiting Fellow Professor Antulio J. Echevarria II delivers a seminar on their area of research - This presentation draws from a monograph (under development) that contributes to debates concerning the West's failure to deter Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and the implications for Integrated Deterrence. First, it describes the deterrence policy and supporting strategy the US and NATO implemented vis-à-vis Ukraine. If the West had no deterrence strategy in place, there's no point critiquing it. Second, it offers an alternative to the West's risk-averse approach to deterrence. This alternative uses a risk-consequence decision-calculus rather than a traditional cost-benefit one, since authoritarian regimes may not have cost ceilings that democracies can threaten given moral and material constraints. Finally, it offers some initial recommendations for NATO/EU militaries. For more information about the IAS, please visit - https://www.lboro.ac.uk/research/ias