Deterrence by punishment versus deterrence by denial
Much of the 20th-century strategic tradition was shaped by the logic of deterrence by punishment. During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union structured their doctrines around the ability to inflict intolerable damage on the adversary, primarily through nuclear power. Even in the conventional field, the idea of deterrence was often associated with offensive capability: bombing critical infrastructure, destroying industrial centres or threatening significant military escalation.
For emerging countries, however, this logic presents clear limitations. Deterrence by punishment requires power projection, expeditionary capacity, logistical depth and sustained technological superiority – attributes typically associated with great powers. Few states possess the fiscal and industrial resources to develop such capabilities credibly and sustainability. To pursue this model regardless is not strategic ambition-it is fiscal illusion.
Defence by denial stems from a different logic. Its central objective is to prevent the aggressor from achieving its objectives quickly, cheaply and predictably. Instead of threatening broad punishment, it seeks to increase the operational cost of aggression. The focus shifts from retaliation to disruption and exhaustion. This has profound implications for military planning.
The central issue becomes the cost imposed on the aggressor. Not necessarily absolute destruction, but accumulated attrition. The greater the ability to prolong operations, degrade enemy logistics, increase casualties and generate political uncertainty, the greater the deterrent potential.
This logic has become particularly relevant because contemporary technological advances, at various levels, favour distributed defensive capabilities. Low-cost drones can threaten much more expensive platforms; precision mobile missiles make it difficult to concentrate forces; commercial sensors enhance situational awareness; cheap electronic warfare can degrade sophisticated command and control systems. Together, these capabilities constitute a new grammar of asymmetric power.
For emerging countries, this transformation creates a rare opportunity: to build relatively effective deterrent capabilities without needing to compete symmetrically on an industrial or technological scale.
Strategic depth without territorial depth
Defence by denial becomes even more relevant for states with low geographic depth. Small or densely populated countries face a classic structural problem: they have little space to absorb initial territorial losses. In many cases, the loss of a few urban centres or critical infrastructure can quickly compromise their resilience.
Historically, great powers have compensated for initial defeats thanks to territorial depth. Russia retreated before Napoleon and Hitler while preserving the capacity for recomposition. China absorbed Japanese invasions while maintaining strategic space for reorganisation. The United States benefits from oceanic isolation and continental vastness.
Taiwan or the Baltic countries do not have this luxury. For them, strategic depth needs to be artificially constructed – through mobility, dispersion, layered defence and social resilience.
In this context, depth ceases to be merely geographic. It comes to include:
- Logistical depth;
- Energy redundancy;
- Communications resilience;
- Social mobilisation capacity;
- Decentralisation of command;
- Institutional survival.
Sovereignty is progressively being understood as something beyond territorial control. It is also coming to depend on the capacity to preserve functionality under prolonged coercion. Energy, digital connectivity, continuity of decision-making, logistical and informational resilience are becoming components as strategic as physical territory.
The war in Ukraine clearly demonstrates this. Although the country possesses significant territory, its initial survival depended less on physical depth and more on its ability to preserve political command, disperse military assets and maintain a continuous flow of information and logistics. The rapid adaptation of civilian and military structures became as important as conventional territorial control. Ukraine’s most decisive early advantage was not firepower, but institutional persistence.
For emerging countries, the main lesson is that national resilience does not complement defensive strategy; it is part of deterrence itself. The greater the perception that a country will continue to function under attack, the greater the perceived political and military cost for the aggressor.
Taiwan and the logic of the “Porcupine Strategy”
Taiwan has become arguably the most discussed example of defence by denial in the 21st century. Faced with growing Chinese military superiority, Taipei gradually recognised the impossibility of competing symmetrically with Beijing in terms of the number of ships, aircraft, or heavy platforms. This recognition, painful as it may have been institutionally, was the beginning of strategic clarity.
The response was the development of the so-called “porcupine strategy”: transforming the island into a difficult, expensive, and time-consuming target to conquer. The logic is simple. Instead of seeking improbable conventional superiority, Taiwan seeks to maximise the potential attrition of an invasion.
This involves mobile coastal missiles; naval mines; drones; distributed air defence; highly mobile light forces; logistical dispersion; and redundancy of critical infrastructure. The priority ceases to be offensive projection and becomes prolonged operational survival. The importance of the Taiwanese case lies less in its regional specificities and more in the conceptual shift it represents. Taiwan has explicitly recognised that its strategic objective is not to militarily defeat China in the traditional sense. The objective is to prevent a quick and cheap victory.
This distinction is crucial for emerging countries. Deterrence does not require absolute equivalence. It requires the ability to alter the adversary's cost-benefit calculation.
Ukraine and the democratisation of attrition
The war in Ukraine accelerated doctrinal transformations that were already underway. The conflict demonstrated that relatively inexpensive technologies can produce disproportionate strategic advantages when combined with mobility, improvisation and network integration.
Low-cost first-person-view (FPV) drones became a symbol of this transformation. Equipment originally intended for the commercial market began to destroy armoured vehicles, artillery systems, and much more expensive logistical assets. The difference was not only technological but also economic. For the first time on a large scale, extremely low-cost systems began to impose systematic attrition on modern mechanised forces.
Ukraine also demonstrated the value of distributed logistics, decentralised command, rapid adaptation, commercial intelligence, social resilience and the military use of civilian infrastructure. The use of commercial satellites, civilian communication platforms and decentralised digital networks has reduced some of the traditional vulnerability of centralised command systems. The boundary between the civilian and military spheres became irrelevant
Another important aspect was electronic warfare. Both sides invested heavily in jamming, spoofing and sensor degradation. Once again, relatively affordable capabilities produced a high operational impact. It is not that expensive systems are obsolete, but their battlefield dominance can no longer be assumed.
For emerging countries, the main lesson may be that contemporary military effectiveness depends less and less on isolated platforms and more on the ability to integrate sensors, mobility, communications and distributed attrition in a coherent, adaptive and affordable whole.
Total defence: Finland, Sweden, and the integration of society
The Nordic experience offers a dimension often neglected in defence debates: the integration between civil society and military planning.
Finland and Sweden have developed "total defence" models based on the principle that national security depends on the collective resistance capacity of society as a whole, which is not understood solely as mandatory military service. In this model, critical infrastructure, the energy system, telecommunications, industry, education, and local governments participate in the defence architecture.
Finland, in particular, has preserved for decades a culture of broad national mobilisation, combining large trained reserves, strategic stockpiles, civilian preparedness, logistical decentralisation and government continuity planning. The Finnish model is remarkable not for its technological sophistication but for its institutional depth. A society that has internalised the possibility of a conflict and organised itself accordingly.
This model reduces strategic vulnerabilities without necessarily requiring expenditures proportional to those of major powers. More importantly, it strengthens deterrence credibility. A country whose society is prepared to resist conveys to the aggressor the expectation of a prolonged and costly conflict.
For emerging countries, this suggests that defence by denial is not just a matter of military technology. It depends on institutional resilience, civil-military coordination and national mobilisation capacity.
Technology, cost and military democratisation
Perhaps the most important transformation in contemporary warfare is the reduction of the monopolistic advantage of great powers.
During the monopolistic era of the 20th century, advanced military technology required gigantic industrial bases and complex production chains. Today, some of these capabilities have become relatively accessible, especially due to the civil-military duality of contemporary digital technologies. Adapted commercial drones, civilian sensors, open-source intelligence, private satellites, and navigation software have drastically reduced the cost of certain military functions.
This does not eliminate the superiority of great powers. The United States and China continue to dominate critical areas such as submarine warfare, strategic air power and advanced space systems. However, the barrier to entry for denial capabilities has decreased significantly.
This change has profound implications for emerging countries, while altering the political economy of defence. Modest investments in drones, electronic warfare, distributed intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR), and mobile missiles can produce superior deterrent effects compared to extremely expensive traditional platforms.
The institutional problem
Despite these transformations, many armed forces remain structurally oriented toward prestige platforms. This occurs for several reasons, such as institutional identity, doctrinal tradition, bureaucratic incentives, political visibility and economic interests, in addition to organisational inertia. Large ships, advanced fighter jets and heavy systems often possess enormous political and institutional value. They are visible, prestigious and associated with the international status of the State.
Distributed denial capabilities, in contrast, tend to be less visible. Inexpensive drones, dispersed sensors, trained reserves and electronic warfare hardly produce the same symbolic impact of displaying parades. It is precisely this invisibility that makes them strategically impactful: they are acquired for war, not for pageantry.
The problem is that institutional prestige does not always correspond with strategic effectiveness. For emerging countries, this dilemma is particularly serious, as resources are scarce. Each high-cost acquisition implies renouncing dozens of potentially more useful alternative capabilities for deterrence.
This does not mean abandoning traditional platforms completely. It does, however, mean reassessing priorities in light of the contemporary operational environment.
Defence by denial also challenges established economic interests. On one hand, Defence industries often depend on large national programs for political and financial survival, and on other hand, governments often use military projects as instruments of industrial policy, job creation and international prestige. This arrangement creates incentives to prioritise expensive programs, even when their strategic utility is questionable. In many cases, political-industrial coalitions are formed with the aim of preserving programs of high symbolic value, regardless of their effectiveness.
The central question is not just how much to spend, but how to spend it. In this context, regional cooperation can act as an important multiplier. Sharing of ISR, joint training, logistical standardisation and partial industrial integration can expand capabilities without excessive cost duplication.
Defence by denial and non-alignment
Another frequently overlooked aspect is the geopolitical dimension of doctrinal choice.
Military structures communicate strategic intentions and shape regional perceptions of threat, ambition and strategic alignment. In geopolitics, perhaps more than in any other context, actions generate reactions. Large offensive capabilities can create perceptions of regional revisionism or power projection. Denial-oriented postures, in contrast, tend to signal a more defensive orientation. This is particularly relevant for emerging countries seeking to preserve strategic autonomy without rigid alignment with major powers.
Defence by denial can function as an instrument compatible with active non-alignment strategies. Instead of relying entirely on external security guarantees, states can build their own capacity to resist coercion and raise its costs.
At the same time, excessively fragile countries run the opposite risk: being perceived as "vulnerable sanctuaries" by more powerful actors. Thus, insufficient deterrence can increase, rather than reduce, strategic risks.
The challenge is to find a balance between autonomy, defensive credibility and regional stability.
Limitations of the approach
Despite its advantages, defence by denial has important limitations. It may not be sufficient in prolonged conflicts of attrition. Countries with limited productive bases remain vulnerable to economic blockades and sustained industrial attrition. External dependence on munitions, energy or technological components can compromise long-term resilience. A denial strategy built on important components is only as credible as the supply chain that sustains it.
Furthermore, overly defensive strategies can reduce operational flexibility. Without a minimum offensive capability, it becomes difficult to degrade enemy platforms or regain strategic initiative.
There is also the problem of escalation. Highly effective denial systems can create incentives for pre-emptive attacks or rapid escalation by the aggressor, especially when the latter perceives that the military balance tends to deteriorate over time.
Finally, not all strategic contexts require the same model. Countries without clear conventional threats may prioritise other security dimensions, such as cyber defence, protection of critical infrastructure or maritime security.
Defence by denial is not a universal formula. This is an adaptive strategic logic whose value depends on the geopolitical context, geography, economic structure, and threat perception. Its application demands rigorous self-assessment, not doctrinal fashion.
Conclusion
Throughout history, major technological transformations have altered not only the instruments of war, but the very relationship between territory, power and sovereignty. The contemporary revolution in distributed warfare may represent precisely such an historical rupture, in which the decisive variable is no longer mass or firepower, but the organisational intelligence to use limited means with systemic effect.
Defence by denial offers emerging countries a relatively sustainable way to transform material limitations into operational, political, and economic costs for potential aggressors.
The cases of Taiwan, Ukraine and Finland suggest that resilience, dispersion, civil-military integration and technological adaptation can generate credible deterrence even in the face of superior adversaries.
The great challenge is, however, the change of mindset, structure, and design of the Armed Forces. What we are experiencing is not just the improvement of some technology that already equipped troops, but a true innovative reconfiguration of the means used in warfare. This requires a complete rethinking of force design. Drones are not just infantry accessories. Distributed sensors are not communication upgrades. These are architectural changes that require not just new procurement lines but new doctrines, new training cultures, new conceptions of command, and new definitions of what a soldier, a unit and a force are for.
For emerging countries, the central question may not be how much to spend on defence, but how to convert limited resources into effective deterrence. In an international environment marked by increasing competition, fiscal constraints and rapid technological transformation, denying can be more realistic – and strategically smarter – than trying to copy.