387 Daniel Rajmil The middle east; deterrence and nuclear deterrence relations, or more recently, within the Russian engagement with the Iranian nuclear aspirations or the ongoing Syrian crisis. In all cases, deterrence strategy can be done through “immediate deterrence, as a short term threat or a longer strategy to prevent a threat to develop into a military conflict, known as general deterrence”.19 To finish with this introductory theory review is of interest to mention the new contributions to the theory that happened since the emergence of the fourth wave, which have been centered on the role of non-state actors. As Morgan’s expresses, the main reason is due to the fact that when deterrence theory was developed during the 50’s and 60’s actors involved were states.20 The ongoing reality in the Middle East makes impossible to give complete credit to a theory which presents a reality that is going further and further away from the current geopolitical scenario. In addition, it should be noted that when the deterrence theory was designed, states operated in an environment that could be regarded as an anarchic system. The “absence of any overall government within the international system did give freedom to the different states to be their ultimate authority”.21 Today, most of the countries, into different extents, are attached to the international relations normative scenario, which even if constantly defied, still constitutes a big limitation to deterrence theory deployment and the concept of self interest. II. NUCLEAR DETERRENCE http://revista.ieee.es/index.php/ieee II.I. Definition As already presented, the deterrence concept should be understood as a strategy to persuade an adversary from not initiating an unwanted action, which could be achieved by different means. Looking into a much more concrete deterrence power, the nuclear deterrence logic is based on the presumption that nuclear weapons can be the best dissuasive tool in order to protect the country integrity’s by the use or threat of a nuclear attack. In this sense, nuclear deterrence takes the optimistic view of rational deterrence theory on the assumption that the possession of nuclear weapons 19 Ibid. 20 MORGAN, Patrick. Non-State Actors, Nuclear Next Use, and Deterrence, University of California Irvine, 2011, p. 8. 21 MORGAN, Patrick. Deterrence Now, Cambridge: Cambridge Studies in International Relations, Cambridge University Press, 2003, p. 65.
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