ABSTRACT

For decades, the concept of deterrence and the fear for nuclear confrontation withheld large powers from waging aggression against each other. Recent technological developments and the growing interconnectedness however allowed some states to find ways to challenge the West by using so called ‘hybrid threats’. This way of waging war entails the synchronized use of a broad spectrum of instruments that are well-designed to stay below the thresholds of detection, attribution and retaliation. Combining these (relatively cheap) threats with conventional military hard power confronts the liberal democracies with a difficult choice in terms of defence budget allocation. Whereas arms race stability in the conventional and nuclear domain leads to a peaceful stalemate, this article demonstrates that adding hybrid threats to the spectrum of state power projection leads to a gradual shift of the power balance. While hybrid threats have been extensively studied within the international relations literature, we are (to the best of our knowledge) the first to study these changing security paradigms from a defence economic point of view. Moreover, this article is the first to represent this increasingly complicated state power competition in a game theoretic framework.

摘要

几十年来，威慑的概念和对核对抗的恐惧阻止了大国对彼此发动侵略。然而，最近的技术发展和日益增长的相互联系使一些国家找到了通过使用所谓的“混合威胁”来挑战西方的方法。这种发动战争的方式需要同步使用广泛的工具，这些工具经过精心设计，可以保持在检测、归因和报复的阈值以下。将这些（相对便宜的）威胁与常规军事硬实力结合起来，自由民主国家在国防预算分配方面面临着艰难的选择。鉴于常规领域和核领域的军备竞赛稳定导致和平僵局，本文表明，在国家权力投射范围内增加混合威胁会导致权力平衡的逐渐转变。虽然在国际关系文献中已经对混合威胁进行了广泛研究，但我们（据我们所知）是第一个从国防经济角度研究这些不断变化的安全范式的人。此外，本文首次在博弈论框架中表示了这种日益复杂的国家权力竞争。