Deterrence: how can a state prevent war without fighting it?
In its Ankara Summit Declaration of 8 July 2026, NATO linked deterrence to military and industrial capabilities and announced new procurement worth more than US$50 billion. The announcement establishes a decision and a commitment. It does not establish that the equipment has arrived or that an adversary has changed course because of it. The distance between announcing strength and influencing behaviour is often lost when deterrence is reduced to the size of an arsenal or the severity of public rhetoric. Summit declaration
For Iraq, this raises a harder question than what weapons to buy: how can a state prevent war when it faces actors of unequal strength, exposed economic interests and competing demands on public resources? What makes a warning credible without turning it into a promise of escalation the state cannot sustain? An answer begins by identifying the conduct to be prevented and the actor capable of choosing it, then matching both capability and communication to that conduct.
From possessing force to changing a calculation
Michael Mazarr's study distinguishes deterring an action before it occurs from compelling a change in existing behaviour. It also distinguishes denying an aggressor its objective from threatening subsequent punishment. These distinctions have practical consequences: preventing an incursion and reversing one after it has become established require different instruments, just as protecting a vital function differs from promising to punish whoever disrupts it. RAND study
A hypothetical example makes the difference clearer without entering operational detail. If an actor expects pressure on a single supply source to interrupt a public function and force a concession, a tested alternative reduces the expected gain. A threat of later punishment instead depends on that actor believing both that the government will act and that the resulting cost outweighs its objective. One changes the prospect of success; the other changes the price of trying. A state may need both, but substituting a warning for usable capability leaves the original vulnerability intact.
Such calculations do not occur in a vacuum. An adversary may accept substantial losses if it believes its political survival is at stake, or if it expects retreat to carry greater domestic costs than confrontation. Deterrence therefore cannot be converted into a fixed equation combining troop numbers and procurement expenditure. Assessing the other actor's motives and information is itself a necessary capability, and that assessment must remain open to the possibility of error.
This also explains why the same message can be interpreted differently by different audiences. A defensive announcement intended to reassure domestic opinion may be read abroad as preparation for attack. A sweeping public commitment may later narrow the scope for settlement. The implication is not silence. It is to distinguish what the state needs to show its population from what it needs to explain to another actor to prevent misunderstanding. Clarity about the objective and its limits can be more useful than ambiguity about everything.
What can be transferred from alliance experience?
The Ankara declaration combines collective defence commitments with multiple capabilities and industrial support. The transferable lesson for Iraq is limited: capability requires production, maintenance, funding and political communication. The collective guarantee itself rests on commitments between alliance members. Another country does not acquire that guarantee simply by purchasing similar equipment. Transferring weapons is easier than transferring the institutions and obligations that make their use predictable.
Any defence partnership should therefore be assessed by distinguishing the value of training or supply from assumptions about a partner's involvement in a future crisis. A published agreement establishes what its parties have undertaken. Treating every technical cooperation arrangement as a security guarantee adds something the agreement may not contain. Iraqi decision-makers need to compare the limits of possible support with capabilities that can be operated and sustained nationally, avoiding dependence of an essential function on an undocumented promise.
This returns us to comprehensive national power. Advanced equipment without maintenance, personnel or reliable finance may increase costs without adding equivalent capacity. Spending is an input into some capabilities, not a direct measure of their effect. A choice between systems cannot be settled by acquisition price alone: operating life, training, repair, dependence on a single supplier and the public functions displaced by the expenditure all matter.
Iraqi deterrence begins with clear responsibility
Article 9 of Iraq's Constitution places the armed forces and security services under civilian authority, links their mission to defending Iraq and prohibits military militias outside the armed forces. This is a legal foundation for organising force, not evidence that all its requirements have been fulfilled in practice. Iraqi Constitution
The strategic implication is that a message becomes intelligible when its recipient can identify who controls the decision and bears responsibility for it. Multiple public statements do not by themselves prove multiple centres of command. But contradictory commitments by actors whose conduct the state cannot control may undermine confidence in the government's ability to implement an agreement or prevent an incident. Clarifying responsibility and authority is therefore part of credibility, rather than an administrative detail to be addressed after equipment is acquired.
The approach proposed here starts with defined interests that can be defended legally and institutionally: protecting people, territorial integrity, continuity of public functions and preventing decisions from being imposed on the state by force. It then asks which vulnerability exposes each interest to coercion and what proportionate means would address it. The response need not always be military. Diversifying supplies or maintaining a financial contingency may be more directly relevant to a particular source of pressure.
Service resilience is nevertheless no substitute for defence, just as defence is no substitute for resilience. Civilian alternatives alone do not prevent an armed violation, while a military may protect borders even as financial or logistical disruption paralyses the state. The value lies in connecting these functions while preserving the responsibilities of each institution. The proposal on defence policy and civilian oversight provides a basis for discussing that organisation as a proposal, rather than as enacted law or a description of current performance.
Assessing a success defined by the absence of war
The absence of war is desirable, but does not alone prove that deterrence worked. There may have been no intention to attack, or priorities may have changed for other reasons. Conversely, a limited incident does not establish the collapse of every element of a deterrence policy. Assessment should identify the conduct the state sought to prevent, compare the other actor's behaviour before and after the message, and consider competing explanations. Information about intentions remains incomplete, so qualified judgments are more defensible than declaring victory over an undefined threat.
Elements of preparedness can be examined more directly. Is responsibility for the decision clear? Has continuity of essential functions been tested in an institutional exercise? Are financial commitments reviewed over the capability's operating life? Do communication channels function during tension? These are proposed evaluation questions, not published test results for Iraq. They require no disclosure of sensitive operational details, but help prevent the completion of a purchase from being mistaken for the completion of a capability.
No weapon eliminates the remaining political trade-off. An unlimited threat may appear strong while making retreat costly and exposing the state to a test larger than the interest at stake. A defined deterrent position gives the other actor a clear route to restraint and connects its warning to genuine preparation proportionate to the harm being prevented. A state with moderate resources can thereby improve its chances of preventing war without claiming it can win every confrontation: it reduces the expected gains from aggression, maintains coherent decision-making and preserves settlement as a possible outcome of disciplined strength.