BANGLADESH INSTITUTE OF INTERNATIONAL AND STRATEGIC STUDIES

COMPLEX DETERRENCE IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY: BANGLADESH ARMED FORCES PERSPECTI

Author: Abul Hasnat Mohammad Mahmud Azam

DOI Link: https://www.doi.org/10.56888/BIISSj2020v41n4a2

ABSTRACT

The 21st century is an era of massive, rapid and all-encompassing global changes. Changes are taking place in almost all spheres of international systems, ranging from international relations to politics and from trade to security. Amid these significant changes around the world, the classical concept of deterrence has experienced a big change and transformation. Once the classical deterrence used to mean that superiority in only military, economic and diplomatic power of nations should determine the deterrence effectiveness. However, the same is not the case today. Because of a host of reasons, in the last seventy years, a steady decline in the ability of stronger actors to effect coercion has taken place in asymmetric conflicts. It has been observed that defeating the weaker actors became difficult whenever they had not fought according to the terms set by the stronger one and had used ingenuity to adopt an indirect and unconventional strategy. In this backdrop, this paper examines the possibilities of achieving credible deterrence by Bangladesh Armed Forces in light of the changing and complex nature of deterrence in the twenty-first century.