Tailoring Deterrence: What and Why?

Sarah Faris, Tailoring Deterrence:  What and Why?, No. 635, September 2, 2025

Sarah Faris
Sarah Faris graduated with a JD from Michigan State University College of Law, where she was a senior associate editor on the International Law Review and interned with the U.S. Army JAG Corps at Fort Carson. She subsequently served as an Attorney Advisor at the Department of Veterans Affairs. She is currently a graduate student at Missouri State University, School of Defense and Strategic Studies.

The need to adjust U.S. deterrence policy to the particular values and perceptions of the Soviet leadership was well-established during the Cold War.[1]  However, the need for “tailoring” deterrence to a variety of opponents and potential opponents in the “Second Nuclear Age” was recognized soon after the Cold War.  Doing so mandates adjusting U.S. deterrence strategies to a broad range of opponents via a close and ongoing understanding of their respective values, perceptions and calculations—their decision-making frameworks.  This “tailoring” approach to deterrence was introduced very early in the post-Cold War period in a briefing by Professor Keith Payne at U.S. Strategic Command.[2]

This article defines deterrence “tailoring” and identifies factors that should be considered under the tailoring framework. It also addresses why tailoring is necessary—as opposed to basing deterrence planning on generic “rational actor” expectations of opponents’ behavior.  As an illustration of why tailoring is necessary, this article includes several case studies discussing the ways in which leaders’ decision making can be influenced by a variety of factors, including their cultural, ideological, and religious priorities.  The need to tailor U.S. deterrence strategies follows directly from this diversity in decision-making frameworks.

An opponent’s decision-making framework can be informed by a multitude of factors, including, religion; ideology; geopolitics; culture; psychology and cognitive function; domestic politics; government structure of authority and power; and the possession or lack of nuclear weapons.[5]  This is not an exhaustive list of decision-making factors, but they have been shown to be important in past case studies.  An opponent’s decision-making framework may be informed by a combination of factors or highly influenced by one overarching factor.

Religious beliefs, for example, can have a significant impact on a decision maker’s motivations and framework.  For followers of Judaism and Christianity, the Bible can significantly inform the way in which they view goals, risk, costs and benefits, and warfare. The Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) includes many different stories in which the victory of the ancient Israelite armies is attributed to their faith in God, not their military prowess.  As noted by Israeli scholar, Dr. Shmuel Bar, in Understanding Deterrence,  “the religious moral from … stories in the Bible is clear: the true believer should not be deterred by a stronger enemy, as God will give him victory and hence in such situations, deterrence is not a viable option.”[6]  This message is delivered time and time again in the Biblical narratives.

An opponent with such a decision-making framework may believe that, despite any apparent disadvantage, victory in war is guaranteed if it is the will of its deity.  In fact, the risk of offending the deity may be considered much greater than violating a U.S. red line—regardless of the U.S. deterrence threat.  If so, effective tailoring would need to consider if and how to deter in that context.    While religious beliefs may be only one of multiple contributing factors driving decision making, they appear to have contributed significantly in the past.  Two widely divergent examples follow.

General George Washington’s Faith

General George Washington often referred to the importance of his faith during the American Revolution.[7]  His beliefs appear to have informed not only his perception of events as they unfolded but were also foundational to his perspective that the American cause was favored by God.[8]  At both high and low points during the war, Washington’s correspondence included numerous examples of him discussing the hand of Providence in events.

In January 1776, for example, the American armies were facing low supplies and low morale.[9] In a letter to Joseph Reed, his secretary at the time, General Washington expressed the desire to be in the ranks or even out of the war altogether and “retired to the back country.”[10] Ultimately, however, he concluded that, “If I shall be able to rise superior to these, and many other difficulties, which might be enumerated, I shall most religiously believe that the finger of Providence is in it, to blind the eyes of our enemies; for surely if we get well through this month, it must be for want of their knowing the disadvantages we labor under.”[11]

Washington maintained this faith in the sovereignty of “Providence” throughout the war.  His correspondence is filled with examples of his belief that “Providence” was in control of the outcome of the events, to the Americans’ benefit.  For example, General Washington made the following statement to Brig. Gen. Thomas Nelson following the Battle of Monmouth:  “The hand of Providence has been so conspicuous in all this that he must be worse than an infidel that lacks faith, and more than wicked, that has not gratitude enough to acknowledge his obligations—but—it will be time enough for me to turn preacher, when my present appointment ceases; and therefore I shall add no more on the Doctrine of Providence….”[12]

Washington was confident in God’s intervention given his belief that the American cause was righteous, and therefore, favored by God.[13]  He is a prime example of a leader whose beliefs significantly informed his viewpoint and decision making in wartime.  His careful optimism and his willingness to make strategic gambles were likely informed by this confidence in the righteousness of the American cause and his belief that all events were ultimately controlled by God.

Adolf Hitler’s Brutal Beliefs

Adolf Hitler’s decision making provides a striking example of a leader whose particular beliefs led to a destructive path—one very different from that trod by General Washington.  Hitler’s beliefs were driven by a dangerous amalgam of factors—including a horrific disregard for human life corresponding to a lethal interpretation of the “laws of nature,” and a strongly held belief that he alone was the appointed savior of Germany.

According to historian Richard Weikart, Hitler is best described as a “pantheist” who believed that nature, or the cosmos, is God.[14] Weikart concludes that, “Hitler’s devotion to nature as a divine being had a grim corollary: the laws of nature became his infallible guide to morality. Whatever conformed to the laws of nature was morally good, and whatever contravened nature and its ways was evil.”[15]  Hitler’s self-revealing text, Mein Kampf, reflects such a dark view.[16]  For example, “Those who want to live, let them fight, and those who do not want to fight in this world of eternal struggle do not deserve to live.”[17]  Hitler’s infamous “Nero orders” of March 18 and 19, 1945, reflected his willingness to destroy surviving Germans whom he deemed had failed him in Germany’s defeat.[18]  Indeed, Hitler’s first mass execution program in 1939, the so-called T-4 program, involved the murder of tens of thousands, and ultimately hundreds of thousands, of Germans with mental and physical disabilities.  Reflecting Hitler’s ghastly view of the “law of nature,” they were deemed “unworthy” of life.[19]

Such ideas were derived from Social Darwinism, which gained popularity within the intellectual community in Germany during the late 1800s.[20]  The central concept of dreadful Nazi racial ideology was that natural selection had created a superior race and forced “euthanasia” (and subsequently mass murder) was justified as furthering its advancement.[21]

In addition, Hitler placed high confidence in guidance from an “inner voice.”[22]  Hitler placed such a value on this perceived guidance that he chose to trust it to the exclusion of outside advice.  Indeed, Hitler scorned confidence in “sober considerations,”[23] believing that “…if the voice speaks, then I know the time has come to act.”[24]  Hitler often described his decision making accordingly.  For example, “The spirit of decision consists simply in not hesitating when an inner conviction commands you to act.”[25]

With this framework for decision making, Hitler dispensed with any pretense of following advisors’ guidance.  He was significantly influenced by his deeply held, horrific beliefs that, for him, ultimately justified mass murder, including Germans—in this regard he said, “Here too I am cold as ice.”[26]  He essentially isolated himself beyond the reach of advisors, answering only to his “inner voice.”  Establishing deterrence against an adversary with such a decision-making framework would require understanding that framework, or possibly concluding that any practicable approach to deterrence would be too uncertain to pursue.

Another important factor for tailoring deterrence strategies is an understanding of the character of the context.  A key historical example of this is the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, in which America’s opponents, Cuba and the Soviet Union, had contrary views regarding both the stakes involved and nuclear employment against the United States.

The Cuban Missile Crisis is famously regarded as the time when the United States and the Soviet Union came closest to nuclear conflict.[27]  Although Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev and Cuban leader Fidel Castro had similar ideological goals, their viewpoints diverged in  ways important to the context.  During the crisis, Castro reportedly encouraged the Soviet Union to launch a nuclear strike against the United States.[28]  Che Guevara, the political theoretician to Castro, stated in hindsight that, “If the rockets had remained, we would have used them all and directed them against the heart of the United States, including New York, in our fight against aggression.”[29]  Soviet military leader, Col. Viktor Semykin, recalled that Cubans were urging the Soviets to use nuclear weapons, assuring Moscow that Cuba was willing to sacrifice itself in the name of socialism.[30]

However, the Soviet leadership had a different view of the stakes involved and a different perspective on the consequences of launching a nuclear strike—seeing them as unacceptable.  The Soviet Deputy Premier Anastas Mikoyan responded to Che Guevara’s insistence by saying, “We see your readiness to die beautifully, but we believe that it isn’t worth dying beautifully.”[31]  Soviet and Cuban leaders displayed strikingly different perspectives on the stakes of the crisis, and on acceptable risks and costs.  These differences appear to have shaped the course of events and the effects of U.S. deterrence threats.

Given the above illustrations of diverse decision-making frameworks, it is worth considering why tailoring is necessary.  Are the potential differences in decision-making frameworks and perceptions significant to opponents’ responses to U.S. deterrence strategies and red lines?  Or, is there an alternative approach to deterrence that is generally applicable to all opponents—making tailoring unnecessary?

At its core, tailoring is necessary because human decision making underlying behavior is variable. There is no universal “rationality” that renders diverse leaderships’ calculations of value, priorities, costs and risks generally predictable.  This reality and its implications are addressed in detail in Emanuel Derman’s Models Behaving Badly.  Derman, a physicist turned financial “quant,” concludes that models of decision making based on the expectation of a common rationality perform poorly because rational individuals often make decisions differently than is suggested by the notion of a universal rationality.  While Derman is predominantly discussing models of financial decision making, his discussion fully applies to considerations of deterrence strategies.  He states that, “In physics you’re playing against God, and He doesn’t change his laws very often. In finance you’re playing against God’s creatures, agents who value assets based on their ephemeral opinions.”[32]  “Ephemeral opinions” can shape leadership calculations of risk and benefit regarding deterrence threats and red lines, and thus their responses.

Derman also contrasts the way in which physics can be modeled versus that of social science.  He states that, “It’s not only the past that leaves its trace on humans.  In physics, effects propagate only forward through time, and the future cannot affect the present.  In the social sciences the imagined future can affect the present, and thereby the actual future too.”[33]  As applied to deterrence, this refers to the way opponents behave based on their expectations of future outcomes, which then affect contemporary decision making.

Indeed, deterrence theory presumes that opponents’ imagined outcomes will shape their cost and benefit calculations, decision making, and behavior, i.e., opponents are expected to be deterred from an action when the anticipated costs of that action outweigh the possible benefits.  This is the “crystal ball” effect that enables deterrence.[34]  However, opponents may hold exceedingly varied “ephemeral opinions” regarding imagined costs, benefits and outcomes.  Consequently, deterrence strategies that are informed by the best possible understanding of opponents’ perceptions and decision-making frameworks will likely be more reliable than those that are not so informed.

An historical illustration of how the anticipated future can shape immediate decision making can be found in Japanese decision making during World War II.  The decision to attack Pearl Harbor was a strategic calculation based at least in part on the belief that U.S. actions would lead to Japan’s collapse with or without war and, as such, going to war was the most honorable option.[35]  Historian Louis Morton wrote of Japanese leaders: “In their view, Japan had no alternative but to go to war while she had the power to do so.  She might lose, but defeat was better than humiliation and submission.  ‘Japan entered the war,’ wrote a prince of the Imperial family, ‘with a tragic determination and in desperate self-abandonment.’  If it lost, ‘there will be nothing to regret because she is doomed to collapse even without war.’”[36]

Perceptions of honor also appear to have been instrumental to some Japanese leaders’ fateful behavior at the end of World War II.  Japanese War Minister Korechika Anami opposed surrender even following the U.S. atomic bomb attacks—believing that national honor demanded continuation of the war. Fear of the potential destruction of Japan appears not to have driven General Anami’s thinking in this regard.  Rather, he argued, “Would it not be wondrous for this whole nation [Japan] to be destroyed like a beautiful flower?”[37]

In August 1941, Assistant Secretary of State Dean Acheson assured President Franklin Roosevelt that “no rational Japanese could believe an attack on us could result in anything but disaster for his country.”[38]  Clearly, Acheson did not understand Japanese reasoning.

In short, decision making and consequent behavior is subject to influence by a variety of factors that can lead opponents to different responses to U.S. deterrence strategies, depending on their particular decision-making frameworks and their particular perceptions and expectations.  Consequently, understanding opponents’ decision-making frameworks, including their possibly unique factors driving decision making, can provide insight into the needed character of U.S. deterrence strategies.

Since an opponent’s assessment of costs and benefits can be driven by “ephemeral opinions,” as well as expectations of the future, confidence in an opponents’ response to U.S. deterrence strategies predicated on the presumption of an opponent’s generic “rationality” will likely lead to mistaken expectations regarding U.S. deterrence threats and red lines.

A generic “rational man” or “economic man” approach to deterrence does not demand tailoring.  It posits a theoretical abstraction in which decisions are based on maximizing one’s self-interest, with the presumption of similarly “ideal decision-makers with complete rationality, perfect access to information, and consistent, self-interested goals.”[39]  U.S. officials and prominent commentators have often advocated such an approach.  For example, following the Cold War, former Principal Deputy Undersecretary of Defense Jan Lodal claimed, “Nuclear deterrence worked throughout the Cold War, it continues to work now, it will work into the future…The exact same kinds of nuclear deterrence calculations that have always worked will continue to work.”[40]

The presumption of such a generic approach to deterrence is that opponents’ decision making will follow a predictably similar pattern that U.S. observers deem “rational” according to familiar standards.[41]  This essentially dismisses the possibility of opponents having vastly divergent decision-making frameworks and perceptions, with some willingly risking the possibility of nuclear war or self-destruction.  It ignores the reality of Cuban decision making during the 1962 Crisis, and General Korechika Anami’s thinking in August 1945, as discussed above.

Since its early post-Cold War introduction, “tailoring” has become a well-established element of the U.S. approach to deterrence, on a bipartisan basis.  The Department of Defense’s 2004 Strategic Deterrence Joint Operating Concept elaborated on the information needed to support tailoring deterrence.[42]  Subsequently, its 2006 Deterrence Operations Joint Operating Concept (DO JOC) states that “DOD must develop strategies, plans and operations that are tailored to the perceptions, values, and interests of specific adversaries.”[43]  The 2018 and 2022 Nuclear Posture Reviews, the 2023 report of the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States, and numerous additional official reports, identify “tailoring” as a necessary requirement for deterrence.[44]

A tailored approach calls for the ability to employ a variety of nuclear deterrence threats flexibly.  The variability of opponents’ perceptions and decision-making frameworks mandates the U.S. ability to deter in a variety of ways to provide the greatest opportunity for effective deterrence.  This flexibility pairs well with tailoring because it provides Washington with the means to deter a spectrum of opponents, which may require diverse means given their unique calculations of cost and benefit.  Specifically, a tailored approach to deterrence provides the fundamental rationale for a diverse arsenal, with both nuclear and non-nuclear capabilities, as a means for deterring multiple opponents simultaneously, including the flexibility of the nuclear Triad and regional nuclear capabilities.  For example, the 2018 NPR says, “the triad’s synergy and overlapping attributes help ensure the enduring survivability of our deterrence capabilities against attack and our capacity to hold at risk a range of adversary targets throughout a crisis or conflict.”[45]

These documents from the early post-Cold War years to the present demonstrate the bipartisan acceptance of tailoring, and the corresponding need for diverse, flexible deterrence capabilities.

Tailoring deterrence requires developing an understanding of opponents’ unique characteristics, including their decision-making frameworks in the context of the engagement.  The unique characteristics that inform decision making can follow from a variety of factors.  Historical case studies demonstrate the variation in the factors driving opponents’ decision making and consequent behavior.

Tailoring has become an accepted principle of U.S. deterrence policy.  It is the alternative to deterrence based on a generic “rational actor model” of decision making which assumes that all rational opponents calculate similarly and can be deterred similarly.  Tailoring mandates deterrence forces that are sufficiently flexible to provide the spectrum of deterrent threats that may be needed given opponents’ unique characteristics and varied decision-making frameworks.  No approach to deterrence is foolproof because opponents’ decision making will always include some elements of uncertainty.  Nevertheless, tailoring, as opposed to presuming opponents’ generic rationality, can reduce those uncertainties and provide a potentially more reliable approach to deterrence.

This article appeared originally at National Institute for Public Policy (NIPP).

[1] See, for example, President’s Commission on Strategic Forces, Report of the President’s Commission on Strategic Forces (April 1983), available at http://web.mit.edu/chemistry/deutch/policy/1983-ReportPresCommStrategic.pdf.  See also, Kyle Balzer, “‘Knowing Your Enemy’: James R. Schlesinger and the Rise of Tailored Deterrence,” Journal of Policy & Strategy, Vol. 4, No. 3 (2024), pp. 39-54.

[2] Keith B. Payne, “Deterring Emerging Nuclear Actors?”, Presentation at the Strategic Options Assessment Conference, sponsored by U.S. Strategic Command, Dougherty Conference Center, Offutt Air Force Base, July 7, 1993.   Payne also discussed the need for “tailoring” deterrence and how to do so in, Deterrence in the Second Nuclear Age (Lexington, KY:  University Press of Kentucky, 1996), pp. 123-129, and The Fallacies of Cold War Deterrence (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2001), pp. 97-111.

[3] Keith B. Payne, “Deterrence is not Rocket Science, it is More Difficult,” National Institute for Public Policy, Information Series, No. 527 (July 6, 2022), p. 9.

[4] See, for example, Peter Karsten, et al., Military Threats: A Systematic Historical Analysis of the Determinants of Success (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1984), passim.  See also, Therese Delpech, Nuclear Deterrence In the 21^st Century (Santa Monica, CA:  RAND Corp., 2012), p. 88, https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/monographs/2012/RAND_MG1103.pdf.

[5] Keith B. Payne, “Understanding Deterrence,” in, Understanding Deterrence, Keith B. Payne, ed.  (New York: Routledge, 2013), p. 9.

[6] Shmuel Bar, “God, Nations, and Deterrence: The Impact of Religion on Deterrence,” in, Payne, Understanding Deterrence, op. cit., pp. 39-63, p. 49.

[7] John C. Fitzpatrick, “George Washington and Religion,” The Catholic Historical Review, Vol. 15, No. 1 (April 1929), pp. 23-42.

[8] Ibid.

[9] David McCullough, 1776 (New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2005), p. 79.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Ibid.

[12] “George Washington to Brigadier General Thomas Nelson, Jr., 20 August 1778,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-16-02-0373. [Original source: The Papers of George Washington, Revolutionary War Series, Vol. 16, 1 July–14 September 1778, David R. Hoth, ed. (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2006), pp. 340–342.]

[13] See, Fitzpatrick, “George Washington and Religion,” op. cit., p. 36.

[14] Richard Weikart, Hitler’s Religion: The Twisted Beliefs that Drove the Third Reich (Washington, D.C.: Regnery History, 2016), p. xiii.

[15] Ibid.

[16] See, for example, Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Translated by Ralph Manheim (Boston:  Houghton Mifflin Company, 1971), pp. 131-132, 134, 151, 153, 288, 403-408.

[17] Ibid., p. 289.

[18] See the discussion in, Sebastian Haffner, The Meaning of Hitler (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979), pp. 158-160.  See also, Whitney Harris, Tyranny on Trial (Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1999), pp. 472-473.

[19] See, James M. Glass, “Life Unworthy of Life” (New York: Basic Books, 1997), pp. 61-62.  See also, Haffner, The Meaning of Hitler, op. cit., pp. 132-133; and, Eberhard Jäckel, Hitler in History (London: University Press of New England, 1984), pp. 12, 50, 90.

[20] Richard Weikart, “Social Darwinism in Germany 1859-1895,” Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 54, No. 3 (July 1993), pp. 469-488.

[21] Richard Weikart, “The Role of Darwinism in Nazi Racial Thought,” German Studies Review, Vol. 36, No. 3 (October 2013), pp. 551-552.

[22] Quoted in Payne, The Fallacies of Cold War Deterrence and a New Direction, op. cit., p. 69.  See also, Weikart, Hitler’s Religion, op. cit., p. 64.

[23] Adolf Hitler, Hitler’s Secret Book (New York: Bramhall House, 1986), pp. 5-7.

[24] Quoted in, Hermann Rauschning, Hitler Speaks (London: Thornton Butterworth, 1939), p. 181. See also, Weikart, Hitler’s Religion, op. cit., p. 61.

[25] Quoted in, Rauschning, Hitler Speaks, op. cit., p. 184.

[26] Quoted in, Jäckel, Hitler in History, op. cit., p. 89.

[27] “The Cuban Missile Crisis, October 1962,” The Department of State, The Office of the Historian, available at https://history.state.gov/milestones/1961-1968/cuban-missile-crisis.

[28] Payne, The Fallacies of Cold War Deterrence, op. cit., pp. 50-51.

[29] Quoted in, Enrique Krauze, “The Return of Che Guevara,” The New Republic¸ Vol. 218, No. 6 (February 9, 1998), p. 34.

[30] Payne, Fallacies of Cold War Deterrence, op. cit., p. 51.

[31] Quoted in, Krauze, op. cit., p. 34.

[32] Emanual Derman, Models Behaving Badly: Why Confusing Illusion with Reality Can Lead to Disaster, on Wall Street and in Life (New York: Free Press, 2011), p. 140.  (Emphasis added).

[33] Ibid., p. 156.  (Emphasis added).

[34] Albert Carnesale, et al., Living with Nuclear Weapons (New York: Bantam Books, 1983), p. 44.

[35] Keith B. Payne, The Great American Gamble (Fairfax, VA: National Institute Press, 2008), p. 267.

[36] Quoted in, Louis Morton, “Japan’s Decision for War,” in Command Decisions, Kent Greenfield, ed. (Washington D.C.: USGPO, 1990), p. 122.

[37] See the discussion in, David McCullough, Truman (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992), p. 459.

[38] Quoted in, Scott Sagan, “The Origins of the Pacific War,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 18, No. 4 (Spring 1988), p. 906.

[39] James Chen, “What is Homo Economicus? Definition, Meaning, and Origins,” Investopedia.com, Updated July 31, 2021.  Available at https://www.investopedia.com/terms/h/homoeconomicus.asp. Last accessed March 22, 2025.

[40] Jan Lodal in, Jan Lodal (P)DUSD and Ashton Carter ASD (International Security), with selected reporters, 31 July 1995, Washington, D.C., News Conference Transcript, pp. 9-10 (mimeographed).  Found in Keith B. Payne, Shadows on the Wall: Deterrence and Disarmament (Fairfax, VA: National Institute Press, 2023), p. 73.

[41] Payne, “Understanding Deterrence,” op. cit., p. 3.

[42] See, Director, Policy, Resources and Requirements, United States Strategic Command, Offutt Air Force Base, Department of Defense, Strategic Deterrence Joint Operating Concept, February 2004, Appendix B.  This references Payne’s earlier work in, Deterrence in the Second Nuclear Age, op. cit., pp. 126-127.

[43] Department of Defense, Deterrence Operations: Joint Operating Concept (DO JOC), Version 2.0 (August 2006), p. 3, available at https://www.jcs.mil/Portals/36/Documents/Doctrine/concepts/joc_deterrence.pdf.

[44] See, for example, Department of Defense, Nuclear Posture Review, 2018, pp. VIII, XII, available at https://media.defense.gov/2018/feb/02/2001872886/-1/-1/1/2018-nuclear-posture-review-final-report.pdf.  See also, Department of Defense, Nuclear Posture Review, 2022, pp. 9-10, available at https://media.defense.gov/2022/Oct/27/2003103845/-1/-1/1/2022-NATIONAL-DEFENSE-STRATEGY-NPR-MDR.pdf; and, Madelyn R. Creedon, Jon L. Kyl, et al., The Final Report of the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States, October 2023, available at https://www.ida.org/-/media/feature/publications/a/am/americas-strategic-posture/strategic-posture-commission-report.ashx. Accessed on April 27, 2025.

[45] Nuclear Posture Review, 2018, op. cit., p. X.

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