Our theme for today is power.

State power in the international arena.

A nation's power depends on its capacities, its material wealth, its military weaponry,

its technological advantage, the skill and intelligence

of its military personnel, and the wisdom and judgment of its political leadership. And in addition to

those capacities, power also depends on will. The desire to undertake some action of consequence. In a democracy, that means overwhelming

popular support will be needed for anything more than the most limited projections of state power.

Then there's the psychological dimension, the creation in the mind of your adversaries, that you

have the capacity and the will to act and react in

certain ways. A nation will want its enemies to believe that aggression against it, or its

allies, will exact a cost that is heavier than whatever rewards could have been gained.

We need for our adversaries to believe that our defensive capacities are so sound,

that any attempt to breach them would be so futile and expensive and so unlikely to work

that it's not worth whatever gains could conceivably have been won.

And we need our adversaries to believe that our offensive capacities

are so overwhelming and our will to deploy them so resolute that our retaliation would cause more harm

than the gains they might expect. This psychological dimension, fostering the belief of our

own capability and will in the mind of our

adversaries is known as deterrence. Deterance, in turn, rests on the credibility of the deterring nation.

Any parent knows this if you announce a clear consequence for a child who breaks the rules, and despite that

warning, your child crosses the street without looking or hits their sister, then you only have two

choices. You can enforce the consequence, maintain your credibility, and disincentivize future behavior like that. Or else you can let it go. But you will lose your credibility and disincentivize future behavior like that.

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