Undersea cables and deterring sub-threshold state attacks against the UK Homeland – is ‘narrow deterrence’ achievable?

Undersea cables and deterring sub-threshold state attacks against the UK Homeland – is ‘narrow deterrence’ achievable?

20 Dec 23
Posted by: Brig Richard Cantrill
21 minutes, 2 seconds read
Message from the Editor

The author questions the ability of the Allies to successfully deter future Russian sub-threshold or hybrid operations, with narrow deterrence having failed both in Syria and Salisbury. The deniability of attacks on vulnerable undersea cables and infrastructure has been clearly demonstrated over the past two years. A 20 minute read.

Deterrence has been extensively researched and is highly theorized, but of course it is more than just theory. The House of Commons Defence Committee stated in 2014 that “deterrence remains fundamental to the way in which the UK seeks to manage the threats to its security.”[1] The central theme of this article is what Freedman describes as “narrow deterrence,”[2] seeking to deter against specific types of operation. Whilst narrow deterrence has been defined, with the desire to prevent the use of chemical weapons given as the obvious example, it has not been as extensively analysed as general d…

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