Trip Wires and Faits Accomplis

July 16, 2021

Last week in this space, I discussed the idea that, due to the specific combination of the orientation and posture of Russian forces, combined with deficiencies in Western military capability, posture, and planning, could result in a scenario wherein Moscow attempts to achieve a fait accompli scenario in areas of the Baltic region where there are large concentrations of self-identifying ethnic Russians, such as Narva in Estonia. 

Shortly after publishing that post, I came across a fascinating piece from the Texas National Security Review, “The Truth About Tripwires: Why Small Force Deployments Do Not Deter Aggression”, by Dr. Dan Reiter and Dr. Paul Poast, that touches on some of the elements of the fait accompli scenario discussed last week, while diving deeper into a related topic undergirding overall NATO strategy in eastern Europe. Specifically, Reiter and Poast’s paper takes a look at the historical use of small, tripwire-type forces, and how, contrary to conventionally accepted wisdom, such forces are often insufficient to provoke broader defensive interventions, resulting in needless deaths that do not make attacked countries any safer.

It is useful, therefore, to take a look at both what lessons Reiter and Poast have taken from historical troop deployments, as well as the concept of fait accompli as a military strategy and the role that deployed military forces have in contributing to deterrence. However, before getting into the concept of faits accomplis, one should have a basic understanding of the concepts of deterrence that aggressors wish to get around. Michael J. Mazarr, in the RAND Corporation publication, titled, “Understanding Deterrence” from 2018, defines deterrence as the practice of discouraging someone from taking unwanted actions, such as an armed attack. He further divides deterrence into two fundamental approaches: deterrence by denial, which are strategies that look to deter actions by making them less likely to succeed, making an aggressor less confident of achieving its objectives; and deterrence by punishment, which are strategies that look to offer severe penalties, such as nuclear escalation or severe sanctions, if an attack is undertaken by an aggressor. 

To more fully understand the concept of fait accompli, one can examine two articles by Dr. Dan Altman, the first being, “By Fait Accompli, Not Coercion: How States Wrest Territory from Their Adversaries”, from the journal International Studies Quarterly in 2017, and the second, from the journal International Organization, “The Evolution of Territorial Conquest After 1945 and the Limits of the Territorial Integrity Norm” from 2020. In addition, there is an excellent paper from Dr. Ahmer Tarar in International Studies Quarterly from 2016, entitled, “A Strategic Logic of the MIlitary Fait Accompli” that provides an interesting look at the topic.

Tarar describes a fait accompli as, “a quick, decisive transformation of the situation before the other side can immediately react” which puts the defender in the position of either accepting the status quo or going to war to try and undo the transformation.  Altman’s work, beginning with By Fait Accompli begins by positing that fait accompli tactics are not only more likely to result in territorial gains for the aggressor, they are also the more frequent tactic of choice for aggressor states. In his formulation, the fait accompli is akin to a situation where an attacker has a gun and simply takes a wallet from their victim, with the implicit assumption that the victim will not attempt to attack the gunman in order to retake the wallet. According to Altman’s research, in the period between 1918 and 2016, there were 112 land grabs achieved by fait accompli compared to only 13 coercive threats which elicited territory concessions. However, as Altman states in Evolution of Territorial Conquest, “Observably, faits accomplis target much smaller territories and provoke war less frequently” and that the seizure of one province or merely just a part of one province was the predominant modality for aggressor countries since 1918.

In Evolution of Territorial Conquest, Altman examined the impact of population had on an attacking country, and found that seizing territories with a populated city provoked war on 78% of occasions, whereas seizing a populated region without such a city only provoked war on 36% of occasions. Finally, seizing an unpopulated area only provoked war 9% of the time. This is an important distinction, as a fait accompli thus presents itself as a valid alternative to brute force and coercion for states seeking to make small territorial gains without the violence inherent in a full-fledged military campaign. 

As Altman states, the fait accompli is therefore a calculated risk, and success depends largely upon whether the attacker has correctly gauged how much loss the defender is willing to accept; i.e. how much territory needs to be ceded before a defender sees no choice but to fight back against even a much-better-equipped adversary. Another defining element of a fait accompli is that while surprise is often an element of successful faits accomplis, such actions tend not to come out of nowhere, as states that seize territory usually predicate their fait accompli seizure on some type of historical claim that is under dispute, such as Russian claims to Crimea or Donbas. 

Another important element of the fait accompli model of territorial gain is that, according to Altman, it raises questions about the role of signaling in crisis bargaining. He argues that because international relations literature regards uncertainty as the foremost cause of bargaining failure—and thus, war—it therefore puts emphasis on crisis signaling such as military deployments which are intended as shows of force and methods to signal commitment in ways that raise the audience costs for decision makers. (This idea of audience cost will be touched upon more in the section on the Texas National Security Review paper on tripwire troops.)

In Altman’s estimation, there are four reasons for the prevalence of fait accompli land grabs relative to incidences of states giving up land due to coercion. The first is that states are unable to find signals costly enough to convince their adversaries of their resolve. For example, in Crimea, Russia may have doubted that an ultimatum and forces massed on the border would convince Ukraine that they would truly seize the land by force. Therefore, if signaling is that difficult to perform, then its role in a crisis is overstated. 

A second reason for the prevalence of faits accomplis could be the element of surprise. If surprise is so vital to a fait accompli strategy, then signalling and threats would undermine that surprise. Therefore, states may eschew signals that would compromise a fait accompli scenario’s secrecy. Tarar’s paper, A Strategic Logic of the Military Fait Accompli, also considers this issue of surprise, stating that, “the mere act of initiating a crisis by making threats often causes the potential defender to engage in military preparations that eliminate the option of a quick fait accompli.” Furthermore, he states that military options which are usually seen as conducive to deterrence, such as the U.S. sending warships to the Taiwan Strait during periods of tension could ultimately have a counterproductive effect, as China may instead choose to initiate a fait accompli instead of starting a crisis first. 

A third reason for the prevalence of faits accomplis given by Altman is that threats can be viewed as signs of low resolve, in that a defending state may simply choose to believe that an attacker would not make a threat if they felt that they could reasonably be successful in an attack. In the case of Russia and Crimea, if Russia believed that Ukraine would interpret a threat as a lack of Russian resolve to actually follow-through with that threat, they may have refrained from issuing the threat in the first place and thus proceeded with the seizure instead. Tarar’s paper also touches on the issue of credibility, though in his case, on the credibility of defenders actions, stating, “the costly fait accompli ultimately occurs due to a commitment problem. This is because it is the defender’s inability to credibly commit to not engaging in…military preparations that causes the dissatisfied leader to engage in an immediate fait accompli rather than initiate a crisis in which a bargain could be reached.” 

Finally, Altman proposes a fourth explanation, that, to a defending state, losing territory in a military action is not significantly more costly to decision makers than losing the same land to a coercive threat. In Crimea, the idea would be that Ukraine preferred the chance of retaining Crimea by rejecting Russian demands to the certainty of losing Crimea after agreeing to a coercive demand. Therefore, Russia merely anticipated such a scenario and therefore pursued a fait accompli instead. 

As Altman says in Evolution of Territorial Conquest,

 “Across the world, the most worrisome scenarios for interstate conflict tend to return, time and again, to consequest attempts. Seizing a small piece of territory will likely serve as a crucial step toward war…Successfully preventing or properly managing the response to a sudden fait accompli in a seemingly unimportant peripheral area may well determine whether war begins…attempts to get away with seizing small territories may prove to be a defining feature of the twenty-first century interstate security landscape.”

If this conception of fait accompli and their increasing role in territorial gains during crises is correct, then it is important to understand the ways in which states can counter such strategies. As Altman says in closing of By Fait Accompli, “For statesman contemplating potential crises, it is vital to identify and prepare for potential adversary fait accompli, both to deter them and to respond effectively if deterrence fails.” Going further, Tarar’s conclusion states that, “[M]y analysis suggests that initiators wanting to change the status quo will usually engage in sudden faits accomplis rather than attempt coercion through threats. Hence, potential defenders will often best achieve deterrence by permanently stationing military forces in forward positions that enable them to repel an attempted fait accompli (‘deterrence by denial’), rather than relying on the initiator’s fear of all-out war with the defender (‘deterrence by punishment’).” 

Indeed, as the Texas National Security Review article aptly points out, the current NATO force posture in eastern Europe does a poor job with both deterring and responding effectively to a potential fait accompli scenario with Russia. 

Why Small Force Deployments Do Not Deter Aggression

Therefore, if a fait accompli is the most likely method through which an adversary is going to attempt to unlawfully seize territory, it is important to understand the best methods to counter a fait accompli. As seen in the article by Reiter and Poast, the use of so-called “tripwire” forces are unlikely to deter an aggressor for several reasons, and therefore are of little use as a potential deterrent. 

As Reiter and Poast explain, the United States makes use of tripwire forces for a variety of stated reasons. One oft used reason is reassurance to allies, as treaties frequently contain loopholes that give states the ability to find legal reasons not to follow-through on their commitments and intervene in the case of a war. Another reason that is given is that tripwire forces provide credibility to U.S. promises to go to war on behalf of their allies, with the idea being that the deaths of U.S. troops would carry with it a high reputational cost if it simply decided to write off those losses. This reputational cost is similar to other game theory-related explanations for the use of tripwire forces, that such forces build “audience costs” into the equation, wherein leaders’ domestic audiences are so displeased with a failure to react to the deaths of their troops, that leaders therefore have their hands tied and are forced to intervene in the event of an attack on tripwire forces. 

However, according to Reiter and Poast, there are a number of flaws in this line of thinking, with important ramifications on U.S. force posture in eastern Europe and beyond. For the authors, the first key problem with the use of tripwire forces is that the reputational damage or audience costs of not responding to the overrun of tripwire forces are often not enough to outweigh the costs of war. For instance, the authors point to a body of research which shows that as a war goes on, support for it decreases as casualties begin to add up. In addition, the authors point to the deaths of U.S. peacekeepers in Mogadishu in 1993 during the Battle of Mogadishu and how it negatively impacted the U.S. public’s and leadership’s desire for broader or continued intervention. In addition, the authors feel that a potential aggressor can use the defender’s domestic audiences’ reticence to endure casualties against them, even if it involves overrunning tripwire forces. This is because a public that is sensitive to the deaths of tripwire forces will therefore be even more concerned about the deaths of further combat troops in an eventual escalation, meaning that an aggressor can therefore count on a hesitancy to avenge dead tripwire troops if the result would be even more dead troops. 

More relevant to the discussion on faits accomplis, the authors state that tripwire forces do not deter an aggressor in a potential fait accompli scenario, as aggressors can be tempted to launch such attacks if they believes that such an attack will strengthen their overall defensive position, thus altering the balance of power in a region. Such an altering of the balance of power can weigh on the calculus of a defender, prompting them to conclude that retaliation is either impossible or not worth the cost. In other words, if China felt that seizing Taiwan would extend their anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) curtain enough to render a U.S. retaliation moot, then they would have to consider such an attack even if it meant the deaths of American servicemembers. 

The authors discount oft-discussed historical examples of the efficacy of tripwire forces, such as the 12,000 Allied troops stationed in West Berlin during the Cold War. Reiter and Poast demonstrate how recently unearthed archives show that neither Stalin nor Kruschev had any plans to invade West Berlin, meaning that the tripwire forces, despite common perception, had nothing to do with the avoidance of conflict. In a more current-day analysis, the authors claim that flawed assumptions underlie NATO force posture in the Baltic region. They point to a recent Atlantic Council report which described NATO’s strategy of relying on tripwires and “rapid reinforcement” of being inadequate to address Russia’s, “time, space, and mass advantages” which give them the chance to execute a rapid fait accompli in the region. 

For Reiter and Poast, there are ways that such forward-deployed troops can be used to deter aggression, but acting as a tripwire is not one of them. The first, of three ways, that the authors propose using forward deployed troops as a deterrent is only if such forward deployed troops give local forces a better chance of defeating attackers through a combination of increased numbers, improved military tech, and good strategy. Numerical advantage is self-explanatory, but even if such supremacy is impracticable, force multipliers like armor or long-range fires could act as a way to counteract an enemy’s troop-count advantage. A second way that forward-deployed troops can be useful is that they can slow down an enemy attack, buying time for reinforcements. Essentially, this is what is being proposed by the NATO Readiness Initiative, known as the Four Thirties. Forward deployed troops are therefore focused on the idea of deterrence through military mobility wherein Allies commit to having 30 battalions, 30 air squadrons, and 30 naval combat vessels deployed within 30 days to reinforce those forward deployed forces. However, as the authors argue, a small tripwire force is unlikely to buy a lot of time, meaning by the time NATO’s 30 days have passed, its forward deployed troops could have been annihilated. Finally, there is the idea that such forward deployed troops can preserve peace by making faits accomplis less attractive to an attacker, as a fait accompli relies heavily on surprise and speed to achieve its goals of capturing territory before a response can occur. 

Overall, the main problem with all of these conceptions of tripwire force utility is that a small force will not shift the balance of power, slow down an attack, or make a fait accompli less attractive. For Reiter and Poast, there is not a fundamental problem with the concept of forward deployed troops, but there is a problem with deployments that are too small to fundamentally alter the balance of power in a given area. However, the authors do acknowledge some limitations on the idea that larger deployments can bolster deterrence. These drawbacks include the idea that an attacker that is less focused on a quick victory will be undeterred by the delay caused by a larger tripwire force; that deployments need to be done in the right location and with the correct strategy; and that if an ally is armed well enough on their own, deployments during peacetime are unnecessary. 

The Limitations of Small Tripwire Deployments – Historical Examples

Reiter and Poast proceed to offer three historical examples for the use of tripwire forces, showing that in all cases, small U.S. tripwire deployments were insufficient to deter aggression. For example, though U.S. troop presence in South Korea in early 1949 may have deterred Kim Il-Sung and Stalin from invading, it was only because, at 20,000 troops, the deployment was large enough to provide real pause for Communist planners and prevent a North Korean attack. It was not until those forces were reduced in the summer of 1949 that Stalin began to warm to the idea of a North Korean attack on the South. However, despite the reductions in troop levels, Stalin focus was on achieving a rapid fait accompli, stating that, “The war should be quick and speedy. Southerners and Americans should not have time to come to their senses. They won’t have time to put up a strong resistance and to mobilize international support.” 

Another historical example offered by the authors was German plans for a fait accompli with France in World War I. As the Schlieffen Plan proposed eradicating the French army in a quick, decisive battle before pivoting to confront Russia, German planners were relying on a fait accompli to not only shift a potential two-front war down to just one, but to keep potential belligerents such as the United Kingdom out of the conflict. Schlieffen and German Chief of the General Staff von Moltke realized that control of the Channel coast of France would enable German naval and air forces to use their might to persuade the British to accept the new status quo. In this way, the Germans counted on the fait accompli not only achieving the objective of knocking France out of the war quickly, but in giving Germany a better defensive position from which to conduct the rest of the war. 

Both Reiter and Poast argue that if Britain had deployed a significant enough number of troops to alter the balance of power in Belgium, which Germany would have to invade to execute its fait accompli against France, it could have prevented the outbreak of hostility, as Germany would never have invaded through their own border with France due to the high amount of casualties they would receive. As such, the dearth of Belgian defenders at the fortresses of Liege, coupled with their poor training and equipment, meant that they were quickly overrun, and British reinforcements arrived too late to counter the German invasion. While history will never know if a larger British deployment to Belgium that summer would have slowed down the attacking Germans enough to disrupt the Schlieffen Plan, the authors correctly point out that had Germany not been convinced of the British’s irrelevance to their conquest of Belgium, they may have restrained Austria from attacking Serbia, altering the entire course of the war. Reiter and Poast point out that German military leaders were unconcerned with whether or not Britain would remain neutral after their invasion. Their only concern was whether Britain would keep a balance-of-power shifting force off of the continent until after they had made their attack on Liege. 

Implications for the United States and NATO

Reiter and Poast state that forward deployments of tripwire forces are misunderstood in two main ways. The first is that small deployments do not have the credibility and audience cost impact that they are commonly thought to have. The authors argue that this is due to the fact that it is not certain that the deaths of those tripwire forces would shift public opinion towards broader U.S. intervention. Furthermore, the authors argue that the advantage of larger, forward deployed forces are underestimated. They feel that deployments that substantially shift the local balance of power, even if it just means slowing down an attacker, can complicate plans, and reduce the chances of aggression.

However, they argue that as currently envisioned, tripwire deployments serve little to no value. Instead, they propose either scaling down U.S. international commitments, which is vanishingly unlikely; or recognizing that deterrence requires larger troop deployments. In the specific example of a Baltic fait accompli, NATO troop commitments of about 1,200 to each Baltic state and Poland are not enough to either shift the local balance of power or impede Rusisan advances enough to give their military planners pause. While it would be hard to argue that NATO’s Enhanced Forward Presence troops in the region fundamentally alters the local balance of power, there is an argument to be made that they might do enough to slow down a Russian overrun of a Baltic nation. As stated in the 2016 RAND Report, “Reinforcing Deterrence on NATO’s Eastern Flank: Wargaming the Defense of the Baltics”, by David A Shlapak and Michael Johnson:

“Providing adequate heavy armor early enough to make a difference is the biggest challenge to NATO’s ability to prevent a rapid Russian overrun of Estonia and Latvia. It is critical to emphasize that this relatively modest force is not sufficient to mount a forward defense of the Baltic states or to sustain a defense indefinitely. It is intended to keep NATO from losing the war early…”

While the RAND report was written before the commitments made at the 2016 Warsaw Summit, wherein NATO allies agreed to the Enhanced Forward Presence deployments, its main point remains. Enhanced Forward Presence is not about counter offensives or even indefinite defense, but rather to buy time for the NATO Readiness Initiative to deliver reinforcements. 

Final Thoughts

Overall, Reiter and Poast offer a compelling argument that, as constructed, tripwire-type forces are unlikely to have their intended effect vis-à-vis a potential aggressor, and that only forces that are large enough to significantly alter the local balance of power can be truly effective. This has implications from eastern the Baltics to Taiwan to South Korea and on the number of troops that are required to provide a real deterrent to would-be attackers. Furthermore, it has ramifications for NATO’s Readiness Initiative insofar that there needs to be a real examination of whether its forward deployed troops are truly enough to impede an invasion or whether they will simply be slaughtered to no real gain. 
There are tremendous costs involved with deploying large amounts of troops, with Department of Defense figures putting the cost of overseas bases and deployments at $24.4 billion last year alone. However, the cost of failing to protect an ally could have tremendous reputational effects and damage overall U.S. and NATO credibility. If the U.S. and its allies are truly committed to the idea of the “Four Thirties” and their strategy of using small forces which are rapidly reinforced, military planners need to make sure that forward deployed forces are robust enough in number, equipment, training, and strategy to truly survive and slow down an invading force long enough for reinforcements to arrive. If forward deployed troops are merely tripwire forces, there to tie the hands of decision makers back home, then they are being put at risk for no provable benefit at all.