With heightened tensions among the most powerful countries, the world appears to be sliding into a new Cold War. But with terrorists, anti-government rebels and other non-state forces also threatening international security, is Cold War-style deterrence the best option for preventing conflicts?

The U.S. Department of Defense recently awarded a $1.35 million grant to a UC Davis-led team of political scientists to analyze when deterrence works and why it sometimes fails.

Brandon Kinne, an associate professor of political science, and two colleagues — Juan Tellez, an assistant professor of political science at UC Davis, and Iliyan Iliev, a political scientist at the University of Southern Mississippi — will examine classic deterrence models as well as theories and methods from network science to determine when government actions might deter violence and when they might instead have no effect or even provoke violence.

“Governments all over the world invest considerable resources to deter their enemies from acting against them,” Tellez said. “Yet, as recent events show, deterrence can fail.”

Kinne added: “Russia’s surprising invasion of Ukraine is one striking example, but it’s not an isolated case. Increased aggression by China toward Taiwan, or Iran’s potential development of nuclear weapons, or waves of transnational attacks by Boko Haram in West Africa are all recent examples of actual or potential deterrence failure.”

During the 45-year Cold War that began after World War II, major powers like the United States and the Soviet Union invested massive resources in stockpiling nuclear arms for deterrence based on mutually assured destruction.

“But the problem with Cold War models of deterrence is that they're largely limited to Cold War-like environments — that is, strategic competition between just two or three powerful countries,” Kinne said. “Contemporary world politics is much more complex than that. ... The lines between governmental and nongovernmental actors have grown increasingly blurry.”

Looking at global political networks

The study will analyze datasets of daily interactions of political actors around the world as well as social media data on high-profile political figures.

They will develop network models to organize these actors and their interactions into different network structures. Kinne said this approach will allow them to offer answers to such questions as:

• If a government like Iran relies heavily on support from transnational extremist organizations, is that government more difficult to deter, or does its reliance on external groups make it more vulnerable?
• Does domestic turmoil in a country like Russia deter the government from engaging in aggression against other countries, or incentivize it to drum up support by demonizing external adversaries?
• When terrorist groups are themselves targets of deterrence, does support from sympathetic governments embolden those groups and lead to more extreme attacks, or does government support instead lead to restraint?

Using social sciences to improve world stability

Kinne and colleagues are among 11 faculty teams nationwide to receive funding in the Defense Department’s latest round of Minerva Research Initiative awards. The Initiative was launched by the Office of the Secretary of Defense in 2008 to support social science research aimed at improving basic understanding of international security.

This is Kinne’s third Minerva Research Initiative award. An expert on political violence, international cooperation and global security, he was a co-investigator on a 2019 grant to study how countries share the burdens of security alliances like NATO and a 2015 project examining the effects of wars, tariff increases and other shocks on social and political networks.

Tellez researches and teaches at UC Davis on security, development and research methods. Iliev co-founded the Institute for Advanced Analytics and Security at the University of Mississippi and focuses his research on uncovering complex social and political dynamics.

—Kathleen Holder, content strategist in the UC Davis College of Letters and Science