In this episode, Antulio J. Echevarria II discusses how NATO might better leverage risk to strengthen the alliance’s extended deterrence. Can NATO increase the risks and costs of war for an adversary without unduly raising the alliance’s own? Can the alliance strengthen the credibility of NATO’s extended deterrence through a proxy strategy of “waging war without going to war”?  Keywords: risk-benefit models, cost-benefit models, military risk, political risk, Russian deterrence, risk aversion, self-deterrence, deterrence by denial, deterrence by punishment, proxy warfareStephanie Crider (Host)You are listening to Conversations on Strategy. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the guests and are not necessarily those of the Department of the Army, the US Army War College, or any other agency of the US government.I’m in the studio with Professor Antulio J. Echevarria II.Echevarria is currently a professor of strategy at the US Army War College and the editor in chief of the US Army War College Press, which includes Parameters. He’s held the General Douglas MacArthur Chair of Research and the Elihu Root Chair of Military Studies and is the author of six books on military strategy.He’s the author of Weaponizing Risk: Calibrating Western Deterrence, which was published by the US Army War College Press in July 2025.Welcome to Conversations on Strategy, Dr. Echevarria.Antulio J. Echevarria IIThank you. I’m pleased to be here.HostI’d like to start with understanding risk in strategic thinking. You introduce the idea of weaponizing risk. Please explain how risk-benefit models differ from traditional cost-benefit approaches.EchevarriaTraditionally, cost-benefit models are designed to persuade an adversary, an aggressor, [or] potential aggressor, that the costs of a particular action are going to outweigh its benefits. The problem has always been that we don’t necessarily know where the cost ceiling is for that adversary, so we don’t know how far we have to go in order to dissuade them from doing the action we don’t want them to take. And the other problem is we don’t really know how much they value that particular object or piece of territory that they might be after.We do the best we can with our intelligence analysis, and we develop a model that we hope will work. Where, opposed to risk-based deterrence models, risk-benefit models actually allow us to go right at the heart of what an aggressor regime values most, which is its political survival. So, we step back, look at the calculations and, instead of trying to drive up costs in terms of economics or military materiel destroyed and personnel loss, we look at what about this particular situation will pose a direct threat to the regime and its political survival.Although every regime has a cost ceiling—Putin, for instance, certainly does, but it may be a lot higher [than we expected], as we have seen in recent times—the Russian cost ceiling is much higher than it is for the West and certainly for Ukraine. So, we need a method to get around just a basic cost-benefit approach. So, the risk-benefit approach does help us do that because we have to answer our own question, which is: Are the costs we are about to impose, or threatening to impose, really going to get at the heart of what the regime actually cares about? If so, how long will it take?HostI’m glad you brought up Putin and Russia.