The theory of military deterrence was based on a simple psychological truth, that fear of retaliation makes a would b...
jonah-Mead-VancortJuly 16, 2019
please clarify
I was struggling to choose answer A or D. I landed on a because it didn't have an assumption. D says "it is in the best Interest" However this question was a set of facts. We don't have any idea what the interests of the nation are. The Nations Interest might be that it rather be attacked then stock weapon.
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This is a must be true question, meaning we are looking for a statement that must be true assuming all the statements in the stimulus are true. Let's look at the passage:
The theory of military deterrence was based on a simple psychological truth, that fear of retaliation makes a would be aggressor hesitate before attacking and is often sufficient to deter it altogether from attacking. Clearly, then, to maintain military deterrence, a nation would have to be believed to have retaliatory power so great that a potential national would have reason to think that it could not defend itself against such retaliation.
What the author is saying here is that the theory of military deterrence only works if the aggressor BELIEVES that he is unable to defend against a retaliatory attack.
Let's look at the answer choices.
(A) is an attractive answer choice but it is too strong, nowhere in the passage it says that a nation must have certain knowledge - belief is sufficient - and it need not to believe it will be destroyed, rather that it would not be able to defend itself, which does not necessary equal total destruction.
(B) is irrelevant, we are only interested in defense not retaliatory capabilities;
(C) is wrong because it ignores the fact that there might be other reasons for a nation choosing not to attack another aside from the military deterrence theory;
(D) is the correct answer choice. If what we concluded above is true and the theory only works if the aggressor believes that he is unable to defend against a retaliatory attack, it is in the best interest of a nation to make a potential aggressor aware of its power of retaliatory attack. The fact that it possesses such military capability alone is insufficient to deter a potential attack if the attacker is unaware of it, rendering military deterrence theory inapplicable in this scenario;
(E) is wrong because the theory is only concerned by perceived retaliatory power, it does not matter whether it is in fact greater than that of any other nation or not.
