Initial Officer Selection

[Fuchs]

Back to the year 2011...

But today (91 to present) Portuguese military as a deterrent ranks where ?

Could they even muster a viable threat to say keep the Spaniards at bay ?

They've either been supported by the British and Belgians, or, similar to today, lead by the Italians.

This has been off-topic for a while...


Today they have good relations with all potential threats, the international system adds deterrence (every aggressor would have a severe political loss) and its military is strong enough to signal sovereignty.

On top of that they're in NATO and EU, the two most powerful alliances in human history. What endangers them the most today is the excessive disrespect and aggressiveness of their allies, which can drag Portugal into conflicts just as excessive disrespect and aggressiveness of an ally dragged Germany into the First World War.


I suspect you have an exaggerated idea of deterrence.
Deterrence does not require to ensure defeat or destruction of an aggressor. It merely needs to turn an aggression into an undesirable scenario for the potential aggressor.

In some cases this means that the mere fact that an aggression wouldn't directly turn into an occupation (~Czechoslovakia), but instead lead to a messy resistance (official and covert, ~Finland and ~Iraq) would deter. You gotta get this into the potential aggressor's head, of course.
Stupid aggressors are stupid - some people only learn through pain.

[Stan]

I suspect you have an exaggerated idea of deterrence.
Deterrence does not require to ensure defeat or destruction of an aggressor. It merely needs to turn an aggression into an undesirable scenario for the potential aggressor.

Nope, not at all exaggerated. I simply used your version since it was you telling me the role of the military in a sovereign state.

In fact, I doubt that Portugal could do much if Spain decided to come across her border - similar in shear size to say Russia if they once again decided on invading Estonia.

This is just not and probably never will be the whole of the job description of the U.S. Military.

Don't go telling anyone that I actually agree 1,000% with Ganulv... But I do. We have never been content with sitting at home watching the Europeans get into wars and screwing things up

[Fuchs]

Nope, not at all exaggerated. I simply used your version since it was you telling me the role of the military in a sovereign state.

So what's the military's purpose in peacetime?
Support the policy in its quest for good outcomes by making war and sovereignty violations less likely. This can be pursued by putting a hefty risk premium on all foreign aggressions. This risk premium is the visible and widely known probability that an aggression would fail to overcome the resistance (at costs that appear to be acceptable to the aggressor's top decisionmakers).

I emphasised the possibly overlooked part now.

Deterrence works also if a potential aggressor estimates that he will succeed to disarm and occupy the country, but concludes that it's not worth it because it would be too costly.