Perubahan Konsep dan Strategi Deterens Amerika Serikat Saat dan Pasca Perang Dingin

Rya Stevani G, Muhadi Sugiono

2016 | Skripsi | Ilmu Hubungan Internasional

ABSTRACT Deterrence began to flourish after President John F. Kennedy, in order to achieve genuine peace, had explicitly said that America’s weapons were designed only to deter Soviet’s. This speech was well received by Nikita Khrushchev and laid a rather strong ground for both countries to open mutual agreements to limit strategic weapons. Before the Cuban Missile Crisis, the United States used compellence, a much more aggressive measure, as their main strategy. The logic of MAD (mutually assured destruction), however, showed both the United States and the Soviet Union that nuclear weapon could never actually be used to physically attack other states because both the deterrer and the deterred would experience the same devastating impact as the other if one of them chose to launch a nuclear attack. Once the Cold War had ended and the Soviet Union had fallen, the United States’ primary concern shifted to the proliferation of nuclear weapons by much smaller countries they claimed as rogue states, such as Irak, Iran, and North Korea. The tragedy of 9/11 enhanced the United States’ fear of nuclear weapons, especially if those destructive weapons fell into the hands of terrorists and were used to spread terror around the world. President George W. Bush then used preemption to unilaterally invade Irak in fear of Irak’s relationship with al Qaeda and Irak handing over their nuclear weapons to the latter. President Bush also made it sure that the United States’ military power was not only meant to defend the state from conventional forces; their military power must have been able to dissuade/discourage others’ from even trying (to beat the United States’). President Bush stated that it would be difficult for the United States to deter their adversaries, rogue states mainly, if these dangerous states were to obtain nuclear weapons. We could see that deterrence, a concept that was born during the era of Cold War, was still used and believed by the United States although the context and even the international structure had changed—from bipolar to multipolar. That was why this thesis was created to answer the question of how deterrence was being used by the United States in the post-Cold War era and to show the readers more of the changing concept and strategy of deterrence. Keyword: deterrence, nuclear weapon, rogue states, preemption, bipolar, multipolar.

Kata Kunci : Senjata Nuklir - Amerika Serikat