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the general objective of reassurance, then some very useful mutual constraints on force operations can be introduced with reasonable assurance. Tactical warning can and should be made a collaborative venture. If there were a desire to do so, arrangements could be devised to give controlled access to targeting plans without revealing their full details. If the normal pattern of force operations is made transparent, then nefarious alternatives that might be secreted away are forced to carry the considerable burden of detachment. If military forces are precluded from training for an operation, there is reasonable assurance that they will not attempt to do it.

CONCLUDING PERSPECTIVE

There are two simple conclusions that emerge from this assessment. If the practice of deterrence is liberation from the belligerent political attitudes that originally inspired it, then it can be made a good deal safer than it has historically been. The process of making this adjustment, moreover, is one of the things that must be done in responding to the security imperatives of the emerging era. The determining fact is that any identifiable actor can be readily deterred. It is the impersonal processes and the actors that cannot be identified that we most need to worry about.