The Strategy of Denial: American Defense in an Age of Great Power Conflict

by Elbridge A. Colby

the basic theory of victory remains the same. A fait accompli requires the attacker to persuade its victim, that victim’s allies and partners, or both to accept the new disposition after it has seized part or all of the victim’s territory. The attacker can do this through a number of ways. It can seek to persuade them that reversing its gains would fail, including by hardening its defenses over the seized territory. It can also try to convince them that trying to regain the lost territory would be prohibitively costly and risky, not only by such hardening, but also by explicitly or implicitly threatening escalation if they do mount the kind of counterattack needed to succeed. Last, by using force in as focused a manner as possible, the attacker can try to persuade them that intervening is unnecessary because the attacker does not pose a sufficiently compelling threat to those parties’ other important interests. The attacker can often achieve this last effect by halting its offensive advance somewhere short of what seems likely to trigger an effective intervention. The attacker can also employ these methods in combination. The