Counterthreat

Aspect of deterrence in which a defender's potential to retaliate with a blow equal to any that it may receive neutralizes an enemy's ability to strike first. The need for nations to maintain counterthreat capabilities is often cited as the driving force behind arms buildup. Combined with mutual mistrust between rivals, counterthreat poses one of the greatest obstacles to arms control and disarmament efforts. Disarmament in particular is incompatible with the counterthreat principle: For the disarmament process to be effective, rivals must agree to give up arms that they believe give them a military advantage or at least act as an equalizer to their rival. Similarly, although it is easier for a state to agree to eliminate weapons they deem less militarily significant, doing so also represents less of an achievement for disarmament negotiators.

The importance of maintaining counterthreat capabilities drove the military aspect of the Cold War, both in terms of conventional and nuclear weapons. The United States and the Soviet Union engaged in a heated nuclear arms race, each party working to ensure that its rival never achieved a significant edge. Simultaneously, the respective military alliances led by the United States and the Soviets—the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Warsaw Pact—saw a conventional arms buildup of drastic proportions in pursuit of the same strategy of military parity. Both of these arms races were the primary subjects of scholarly military, defense, and political science analyses and debate for decades.

The counterthreat principle applies on a basic level as much as it does on the grand scale of the Cold War. That is, the principle is employed at the battlefield level as armies struggle to develop military hardware that is technologically equal or superior to that of its rivals. As each new generation of combat weapons becomes more complex, more accurate, and more efficient than the last, a modern army must constantly improve and update its equipment to remain competitive. A combat soldier armed with inferior weapons has minimal counterthreat capability and thus is much more vulnerable.

Indeed, the superiority of the U.S. military stems from its technologically superior capabilities, which means that no current army represents a significant counterthreat to it. It has been argued that this seemingly insurmountable superiority in conventional military power leads desperate nations to strive for nuclear capabilities as the only way to achieve a counterthreat to the U.S. military. An example of this is North Korea's determination to create nuclear weapons in the face of what it sees as U.S. aggression against its economic and political interests.