For all the failings of the Biden administration, none is more clear-cut than the disaster that is its national security policy. The trail of misjudgments, failed negotiations and rank incompetence has no parallel in American history. Team Biden conducting national security policy is like watching a troop of baboons fly an airplane: You know it’s going to hit a mountain, you just don't know when.

It all starts with deterrence, which the new breed of Democratic foreign policy boffins considers a relic.

Deterrence is instilling fear in your opponent, preventing or at least significantly reducing the risk of aggression. It is part of game theory, the study of how multiple actors may act to maximize benefit in a given scenario. The goal may be to “win” or to reach a stable equilibrium, depending on the situation — a geopolitical poker game.

Understanding and applying game theory is fundamental to geopolitics, particularly in times of potential and real conflict. It is not a relic, and the multi-year Biden policy fiasco in Ukraine proves it.

Deterrence gets a bad rap from the Cold War doctrine of "mutual-assured-destruction." American and Soviet policy was to launch a full-scale nuclear response in the face of a nuclear attack. On its surface, that’s crazy —nuking the planet to cinders based on a theory is nonsense. But it worked.

Since the end of World War II, Europe had the longest run of peace between its great powers in history — over 70 years, far beyond its previous record of 43 years (1871 to 1914). That ended with the Obama administration and its dismissal of deterrence in favor of “proportionate response” and economic sanctions.

Why did........

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