Glossary

BALANCE OF POWER theory is the idea that national security is enhanced when military capabilities are distributed so that no one state is strong enough to dominate all others.

GAME THEORY is a study of strategic decision making. More formally, it is "the study of mathematical models of conflict and cooperation between intelligent rational decision-makers".

COOPERATIVE GAME is a game where groups of players ("coalitions") may enforce cooperative behaviour, hence the game is a competition between coalitions of players, rather than between individual players.

NON-COOPERATIVE GAME is one in which players make decisions independently.

NASH EQUILIBRIUM is a solution concept of a non-cooperative game involving two or more players, in which each player is assumed to know the equilibrium strategies of the other players, and no player has anything to gain by changing only their own strategy. If each player has chosen a strategy and no player can benefit by changing strategies while the other players keep theirs unchanged, then the current set of strategy choices and the corresponding payoffs constitute a Nash equilibrium.

SYMMETRIC GAME is a game where the payoffs for playing a particular strategy depend only on the other strategies employed, not on who is playing them. If one can change the identities of the players without changing the payoff to the strategies, then a game is symmetric.

ZERO-SUM GAME is a mathematical representation of a situation in which a participant's gain (or loss) of utility is exactly balanced by the losses (or gains) of the utility of the other participant(s). If the total gains of the participants are added up, and the total losses are subtracted, they will sum to zero.

NON–ZERO SUM describes a situation in which the interacting parties' aggregate gains and losses are either less than or more than zero.

PARETO EFFICIENCY, or Pareto optimality, is a state of allocation of resources in which it is impossible to make any one individual better off without making at least one individual worse off.

STAG HUNT is a game that describes a conflict between safety and social cooperation. Other names for it or its variants include "assurance game", "coordination game", and "trust dilemma". Jean-Jacques Rousseau described a situation in which two individuals go out on a hunt. Each can individually choose to hunt a stag or hunt a hare. Each player must choose an action without knowing the choice of the other. If an individual hunts a stag, he must have the cooperation of his partner in order to succeed. An individual can get a hare by himself, but a hare is worth less than a stag. This is taken to be an important analogy for social cooperation.

CHICKEN game, is an influential model of conflict for two players in game theory. The principle of the game is that while each player prefers not to yield (to give up) to the other, the worst possible outcome occurs when both players do not yield.

STATUS QUO is a Latin term meaning the existing state of affairs. To maintain the status quo is to keep the things the way they presently are.  Status quo ante bellum "the state in which (it was) before war" (indicating the withdrawal of enemy troops and restoration of power to pre-war leadership), as well as other variations such as status quo itself.

DÉTENTE is the easing of strained tensioned relations, especially in a political situation.

ARMS RACE is” the participation of two or more nation-states in apparently competitive or interactive increases in quantity or quality of war material and/or persons under arms."NUCLEAR ARMS RACE was a competition for supremacy in nuclear warfare between the United States, the Soviet Union, and their respective allies during the Cold War. During the Cold War, in addition to the American and Soviet nuclear stockpiles, other countries developed nuclear weapons, though none engaged in warhead production on nearly the same scale as the two superpowers.

BLITZKRIEG is a method of warfare whereby an attacking force spearheaded by a dense concentration of armoured and motorized or mechanized infantry formations, and heavily backed up by close air support, forces a breakthrough into the enemy's line of defense through a series of short, fast, powerful attacks; and once in the enemy's territory, proceeds to dislocate them using speed and surprise, and then encircle them. Through the employment of combined arms in maneuver warfare, the blitzkrieg attempts to unbalance the enemy by making it difficult for them to respond effectively to the continuously changing front, and defeat them through a decisive Vernichtungsschlacht (battle of annihilation).

BATTLE OF ANNIHILATION is a military strategy in which an attacking army seeks to destroy the military capacity of the opposing army in a single planned pivotal battle. This is achieved through the use of tactical surprise, application of overwhelming force at a key point, or other tactics performed immediately before or during the battle.

DETERRENCE is a strategy intended to dissuade an adversary from undertaking an action not yet started, or to prevent them from doing something that another state desires. Deterrence theory gained increased prominence as a military strategy during the Cold War with regard to the use of nuclear weapons. It took on a unique connotation during this time as an inferior nuclear force, by virtue of its extreme destructive power, could deter a more powerful adversary, provided that this force could be protected against destruction by a surprise attack.

COERCIVE DIPLOMACY or "forceful persuasion" is the "attempt to get a target, a state, a group (or groups) within a state, or a non-state actor-to change its objectionable behavior through either the threat to use force or the actual use of limited force." Coercive diplomacy "is essentially a diplomatic strategy, one that relies on the threat of force rather than the use of force. If force must be used to strengthen diplomatic efforts at persuasion, it is employed in an exemplary manner, in the form of quite limited military action, to demonstrate resolution and willingness to escalate to high levels of military action if necessary."

GROSS NATIONAL PRODUCT (GNP) is the market value of all the products and services produced in one year by labor and property supplied by the residents of a country.

GROSS DOMESTIC PRODUCT (GDP) is the market value of all officially recognized final goods and services produced within a country in a year, or other given period of time.

SOCIAL DUMPING is a term that is used to describe a practice of employers to use cheaper labour, than what is usually available at their site of production and/or selling. In the first case, migrant workers are employed; in the second, production is moved to a low-wage country or area. The entrepreneur will thus save money and potentially increase their profit.

NUCLEAR STRATEGY involves the development of doctrines and strategies for the production and use of nuclear weapons. As a sub-branch of military strategy, nuclear strategy attempts to match nuclear weapons as means to political ends. In addition to the actual use of nuclear weapons whether in the battlefield or strategically, a large part of nuclear strategy involves their use as a bargaining tool.

FIRST STRIKE CAPABILITY is a country's ability to defeat another nuclear power by destroying its arsenal to the point where the attacking country can survive the weakened retaliation while the

opposing side is left unable to continue war. The preferred methodology is to attack the opponent's launch facilities and storage depots first.

SECOND-STRIKE CAPABILITY is a country's assured ability to respond to a nuclear attack with powerful nuclear retaliation against the attacker. To have such an ability (and to convince an opponent of its viability) is considered vital in nuclear deterrence, as otherwise the other side might be tempted to try to win a nuclear war in one massive first strike against its opponent's own nuclear forces.

NO FIRST USE (NFU) refers to a pledge or a policy by a nuclear power not to use nuclear weapons as a means of warfare unless first attacked by an adversary using nuclear weapons.

MUTUAL ASSURED DESTRUCTION, or mutually assured destruction (MAD), is a doctrine of military strategy and national security policy in which a full-scale use of high-yield weapons of mass destruction by two opposing sides would cause the complete annihilation of both the attacker and the defender.

DOCTRINE is a codification of beliefs or a body of teachings or instructions, taught principles or positions, as the body of teachings in a branch of knowledge or belief system.

COUNTERINTELLIGENCE (CI) refers to information gathered and activities conducted to protect against espionage, other intelligence activities, sabotage, or assassinations conducted for or on behalf of foreign powers, organizations or persons or international terrorist activities, but not including personnel, physical, document or communications security programs.

POWER PROJECTION (or force projection) is a term used in military and political science to refer to the capacity of a state to conduct expeditionary warfare, to intimidate other nations and implement policy by means of force, or the threat thereof, in an area distant from its own territory.

NATION STATE is a state that self-identifies as deriving its political legitimacy from serving as a sovereign entity for a nation as a sovereign territorial unit. The state is a political and geopolitical entity, while the nation is a cultural and/or ethnic one; the term "nation state" implies that the two coincide geographically. Nation state formation took place at different times in different parts of the world, but has become the dominant form of state organization.

"WEAPON OF MASS DESTRUCTION" (WMD or WoMD) is a nuclear, radiological, biological, chemical or other weapon that can kill and bring significant harm to a large number of humans or cause great damage to man-made structures (e.g. buildings), natural structures (e.g. mountains), or the biosphere.

NUCLEAR TRIAD refers to a nuclear arsenal which consists of three components, traditionally strategic bombers, intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), andsubmarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs). The purpose of having a three-branched nuclear capability is to significantly reduce the possibility that an enemy could destroy all of a nation's nuclear forces in a first-strike attack; this, in turn, ensures a credible threat of a second strike, and thus increases a nation's nuclear deterrence.

MINIMAL DETERRENCE (also called minimum deterrence) is an application of deterrence theory in which a state possesses no more nuclear weapons than is necessary to deter an adversary from attacking.[1] Pure minimal deterrence is a doctrine of no first use, holding that the only mission of nuclear weapons is to deter a nuclear adversary by making the cost of a first strike unacceptably high.

COUNTERVALUE is the targeting of an opponent's assets which are of value but not actually a military threat, such as cities and civilian populations.

COUNTERFORCE target is one that has a military value, such as a launch silo for intercontinental ballistic missiles, an airbase at which nuclear-armed bombers are stationed, a homeport for ballistic missile submarines, or a command and control installation.

COUNTERFORCE STRATEGY (i.e., attacking counterforce targets with nuclear weapons) is to disarm an adversary by destroying its nuclear weapons before they can be launched, thereby minimizing the impact of a retaliatory second strike.

FAIL-SAFE OR FAIL-SECURE device is one that, in the event of failure, responds in a way that will cause no harm, or at least a minimum of harm, to other devices or danger to personnel. Fail-safe and fail-secure are similar but distinct concepts. Fail-safe means that a device will not endanger lives or properties when it fails. Fail-secure means that access or data will not fall into the wrong hands in a failure. 

DEAD MAN'S SWITCH (for other names, see alternative names) is a switch that is automatically operated if the human operator becomes incapacitated, such as through death, loss of consciousness or being physically removed from control.

FAIL-DEADLY is a concept in nuclear military strategy that encourages deterrence by guaranteeing an immediate, automatic, and overwhelming response to an attack.

NUCLEAR HOLOCAUST refers to a possible nearly complete annihilation of human civilization by nuclear warfare. Under such a scenario, all or most of the Earth is made uninhabitable by nuclear weapons in future world wars.

STRATEGY is a high level plan to achieve one or more goals under conditions of uncertainty. Strategy is important because the resources available to achieve these goals are usually limited.

VIOLENT NON-STATE ACTOR (VNSA) is an organization that uses illegal violence (i.e. force not officially approved of by the state) to reach its goals.

BANDWAGON EFFECT is a form of groupthink in behavioral science. The general rule is that conduct or beliefs spread among people, as  trends clearly do, with "the probability of any individual adopting it increasing with the proportion who have already done so". As more people come to believe in something, others also "hop on the bandwagon" regardless of the underlying evidence. The tendency to follow the actions or beliefs of others can occur because individuals directly prefer to conform, or because individuals derive information from others. Both explanations have been used for evidence of conformity in psychological experiments. This is an example of social pressure.

ANDROCRACY (PHALLOCRACY) is a form of government in which the government rulers are male.

FAILED STATE is a state perceived as having failed at some of the basic conditions and responsibilities of a sovereign government. It can present the following characteristics: loss of control of its territory, or of the monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force therein, erosion of legitimate authority to make collective decisions, an inability to provide public services, an inability to interact with other states as a full member of the international community, a central government so weak or ineffective that it has little practical control over much of its territory, non-provision of public services, widespread corruption and criminality, refugees and involuntary movement of populations and sharp economic decline.

ROGUE STATE is a controversial term meaning states they consider threatening to the world's peace. This means meeting certain criteria, such as being ruled by authoritarian regimes that

severely restrict human rights, sponsor terrorism, and seek to proliferate weapons of mass destruction.

PARIAH STATE, who allegedly abuse the human rights of their populations while not being considered a tangible threat beyond their own borders, is a nation whose conduct is considered to be out of line with international norms of behavior by either the rest of the international community, or by some of its most powerful states. A pariah state may face International isolation, sanctions or even an invasion by nations who find its policies or actions unacceptable.

RESISTANCE or ORGANISED RESISTANCE refers to the ability of a military unit to continue to oppose an attack. Resistance ends when a unit surrenders, when all members of unit are killed or captured, or when a unit disperses. The term is used in the phrase "organized resistance has ceased" to describe the end of a battle or campaign when no formal surrender occurs after a unit is defeated.

LEBENSRAUM (German for "habitat" or literally "living space") was an important component of Nazi ideology in Germany. The Nazis supported territorial expansionism to gain Lebensraum as being a law of nature for all healthy and vigorous peoples of superior races to displace people of inferior races, especially if the people of a superior race were facing overpopulation in their given territories.

ANARCHY is the concept that the world system is leaderless: there is no universal sovereign or worldwide government. There is thus no hierarchically superior, coercive power that can resolve disputes, enforce law, or order the system like there is in domestic politics. In International Relations, anarchy is widely accepted as the starting point for international relations theory.

CHAIN GANGING is a term in the field of international relations describing the elevated probability for interstate conflict or conflagration due to several states having joined together in alliances or coalitions. The agreed principles of such alliances typically include mutual defence clauses requiring that, in the case of one member state suffering military attack from another power, all members must declare hostilities against that offending power. The result of such an arrangement is an elevated probability for an international conflagration.

BUCK PASSING or passing the buck is the act of attributing another person or group with responsibility for one's own actions. It is often used to refer to a strategy in power politics whereby a state tries to get another state to deter, or possibly fight, an aggressor state while it remains on the sidelines.

BAIT AND BLEED strategy means the state causes two rivals to engage in a protracted war while the baiter remains on the sideline. This form of buck passing enables the state to increase in relative strength at the expense of the two rivals.

BIPOLARITY is a distribution of power in which two states have the majority of economic, military, and cultural influence internationally or regionally. Often, spheres of influence would develop. For example, in the Cold War, most Western and capitalist states would fall under the influence of the USA, while most Communist states would fall under the influence of the USSR. After this, the two powers will normally maneuver for the support of the unclaimed areas.

MULTIPOLARITY is a distribution of power in which more than two nation-states have nearly equal amounts of military, cultural, and economic influence.

NONPOLARITY is an international system with numerous centers of power but no center dominates any other centre. Centers of power can be nation-states, corporations, non-governmental organizations, terrorist groups, and such.

NUCLEAR WAR is a war in which countries fight with nuclear weapons. A nuclear war has never happened, but because nuclear weapons are extremely powerful and could cause destruction throughout the world, the possibility of nuclear war has had a great effect on international politics.

NUCLEAR PROLIFERATION is when a country starts making nuclear objects. When a country starts making nuclear weapons, they become a nuclear power.

DUAL USE TECHNOLOGY means to the possibility of military use of civilian nuclear technology for generating electricity. Many technologies and materials associated with the creation of a nuclear electricity program have a dual-use capability. These items can be used to makenuclear weapons if a country chooses to do so. When this happens a nuclear electricity program can lead to making atomic bombs. The crisis over Iran’s nuclear activities is an example.

SINATRA DOCTRINE was the name that the Soviet government of Mikhail Gorbachev used jokingly to describe its policy of allowing neighboring Warsaw Pact nations to determine their own internal affairs. The name alluded to the Frank Sinatra song "My Way"—the Soviet Union was allowing these nations to go their own way.

ASYMMETRIC WARFARE is war between belligerents whose relative military power differs significantly, or whose strategy or tactics differ significantly. Asymmetric warfare can describe a conflict in which the resources of two belligerents differ in essence and in the struggle, interact and attempt to exploit each other's characteristic weaknesses. Such struggles often involve strategies and tactics of unconventional warfare, the weaker combatants attempting to use strategy to offset deficiencies in quantity or quality.

UNCONVENTIONAL WARFARE (abbreviated UW) is the opposite of conventional warfare. Where conventional warfare is used to reduce an opponent'smilitary capability, unconventional warfare is an attempt to achieve military victory through acquiescence, capitulation, or clandestine support for one side of an existing conflict. On the surface, UW contrasts with conventional warfare in that forces or objectives are covert or not well-defined, tactics and weapons intensify environments of subversion or intimidation, and the general or long-term goals are coercive or subversive to a political body.

TOTAL WAR is a war in which a belligerent engages in the complete mobilization of all available resources and population. In a total war, there is less differentiation between combatants and civilians than in other conflicts, and sometimes no such differentiation at all, as nearly every human resource, combatants and civilians alike, can be considered to be part of the belligerent war effort.