Auditing Deterrence Strategies: NATO, Russia and European Security

This event is co-sponsored with the Project on Russian Power and Purpose in the 21st Century

* Please note all CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone

Livestream: Please click here to join the livestream webinar via Zoom or log-in with webinar ID 982 0374 3158.

About the Event: Do more intensive efforts to deter an adversary produce more peace? NATO and Russia have over the past six years intensified mutual efforts to deter the other, including through employing a broader range of military and non-military tools. While the allure of deterrence as security policy is well established, so are the pitfalls of deterrence, including the security dilemmas they produce. Integrated deterrence strategies that employ not only nuclear, but also conventional and non-conventional tools of statecraft may produce even more severe security dilemmas. And yet, security policy actors craft deterrence strategies without paying much attention to assessing their effect. This talk will examine the current deterrent strategies of Russia and NATO, their effect on the policies of the other, and what deterrence policy, as distinct from defense policy, can and cannot do to enhance security and stability in Europe.

About the Speaker: Dr. Kristin Ven Bruusgaard is a Postdoctoral Fellow (Assistant Professor) in Political Science at the University of Oslo, where she is a part of the Oslo Nuclear Project. Previously, she was a Nuclear Security Postdoctoral Fellow and a Stanton Nuclear Security Predoctoral Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), Stanford University, a Research Fellow at the Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies (IFS), and a senior security policy analyst in the Norwegian Armed Forces. She holds a Ph.D in Defence Studies from King’s College London and an MA in Security Studies from Georgetown University. Her work appears in Security Dialogue, Survival, War on the Rocks, Texas National Security Review, and in Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.