Ritual Action: Making Deterrence Matter in International Security and Memory Politics

Deterrence is the strategy of dissuading an opponent from taking an unwanted action for its prospective costs would outweigh the anticipated benefits either by the threat of effective defence or that of retaliation.

The role of ritual in making deterrence effective, affectively charged and credible in the eyes of its practitioners has remained below the radar of the existing research.

RITUAL DETERRENCE is the first project to pursue a ritual-centred investigation of deterrence in order to advance the understanding of the political and psychological functions of this newly foregrounded practice in international security and memory politics.

Theoretically, the project breaks new ground in fostering the understanding of ritual action in international relations, the symbolic logic of which remains neglected compared to the logics of consequences, appropriateness, practice, and habit in the study of world politics.

Empirically, it addresses the imperative for systematic cross-cultural and cross-domain research on deterrence as a multi-modal social practice.

In delivering a new description of the practice of deterrence and an overhaul of the theory of deterrence, the project offers a comprehensive rethinking of the performance, credibility and the presumed effect of deterrence.

The project will provide an innovative ritual theory of deterrence in the contexts of international security and memory politics on the example of a vital historical (NATO-Warsaw Pact) and different contemporary cases (NATO-Russia, USA-Russia, USA-China; memory laws in Eastern Europe).

The study combines discourse and practice analysis with expert interviews, participant observation of military exercises and wargaming, encompassing both direct and extended deterrence along traditional and emerging domains of deterrence.

Tracing and historicising the interaction ritual chains of deterrence will generate crucial knowledge about how deterrence performances enact and legitimise political communities.