Doctrine of credible restraint: Rebuilding trust in an age of endless wars

“Many of the means by which a state tries to increase its security decrease the security of others,” wrote international diplomacy and security analyst Robert Jervis.

The wars of the present decade are no longer confined to geography. They ripple through energy markets, supply chains, financial systems and global diplomacy, creating a climate of insecurity that transcends regions and threatens the international order itself. The defining challenge of our time is no longer how wars are fought, but how trust can be rebuilt in a world where conflict has become structurally normalized. Traditional frameworks of collective security and crisis management are increasingly struggling to contain the systemic effects of modern conflict, revealing a widening gap between global interdependence and the mechanisms designed to safeguard it.

For decades, international politics has been shaped by the belief that insecurity results from a lack of stabilizing power. Yet the contemporary international system increasingly demonstrates the opposite dynamic: insecurity often emerges from the interaction of competing security providers. The classic “security dilemma” helps explain this paradox.

When states attempt to increase their own security, others perceive those moves as threatening, prompting countermeasures that deepen mistrust and accelerate escalation. In today’s multipolar environment, this dynamic has expanded beyond regional rivalries and evolved into a global condition of systemic mistrust.

The promise of collective security once rested on the assumption that the international community could act in unison to deter aggression. In practice, however, the major conflicts of the past decade have revealed the limits of this ideal. This is most evident in the strategic neutrality or strategic non-participation of the majority, their refusal to take definitive sides and the growing non-alignment of the Global South.

Great powers rarely agree on who the aggressor is, enforcement becomes selective, and international institutions struggle to act decisively when geopolitical interests collide. The result is a growing perception that the rules-based order is procedural but not protective. International law still exists, but confidence in its ability to restrain power during crises has weakened.

If modern mistrust is structural, the mechanisms to rebuild trust must be equally structural. During the Cold War, this reality birthed “Confidence-Building Measures” (CBMs), frameworks designed to rebuild trust without requiring political friendship through military transparency, hotlines and arms-control verification. The underlying lesson was counterintuitive but effective: When states understand each other’s capabilities and red lines, fear-driven escalation decreases.

However, as economist and professor Thomas Schelling famously noted, “The power to hurt is bargaining power.” In the modern era, great powers, including the U.S., have increasingly leaned into coercive diplomacy, leveraging the threat of harm to gain negotiating leverage. Because modern coercion relies heavily on ambiguity, hybrid tactics and weaponized interdependence, the rigid, military-focused CBMs of the Cold War era are no longer sufficient to maintain stability.

This credibility gap is one of the most significant sources of contemporary global insecurity. Recent conflicts demonstrate a recurring and troubling pattern: Diplomacy continues while military escalation unfolds in parallel, ultimately betraying the diplomatic process. Negotiations no longer suspend confrontation. Legal justifications become politicized, and institutions designed to enforce compliance often reach an impasse when major powers are involved.

The resulting perception is deeply corrosive: That rules apply unevenly, and that diplomacy may coexist with force rather than prevent it. Whether entirely accurate or not, this perception erodes trust, knowing that trust is the foundation upon which international order depends.

How to rebuild trust

Yet the answer is not to abandon international law. Its foundational principles, such as the prohibition of the use of force and the peaceful settlement of disputes, remain indispensable. What is required is doctrinal evolution.

The post-1945 legal framework was designed for a bipolar world emerging from global war. Today’s environment is multipolar, technologically interconnected and characterized by simultaneous cooperation and rivalry. Contemporary international relations defy binary categorizations of peace and war. Rather, they are a complex mixture of two opposing conditions that operate simultaneously.

The legal architecture has not fully adapted to this new reality of an environment with features such as permanent geopolitical rivalry, hybrid warfare, economic coercion, cyber conflict and weaponized interdependence, which is used as an instrument of power and political pressure.

Thus, the real need is doctrinal expansion. To rebuild trust, international law must evolve from simply prohibiting war to actively protecting the credibility of diplomacy.

This moment calls for a new approach that may be framed as a doctrine of credible restraint. The core idea is “international law must move beyond merely prohibiting war and instead focus on making restraint credible, verifiable and reciprocal,” wrote political theorist. States should calibrate their behavior during crises so that restraint, the avoidance of escalation or the use of force is not simply declared, but is also observable, credible and verifiable.

Today, international law stipulates that states must not use force except under conditions defined by the United Nations. Yet it does not sufficiently address a crucial set of questions: What happens when trust collapses? How can diplomacy be prevented from becoming a cover for force? How can negotiations be protected from unfolding alongside military escalation? This gap is precisely what recent conflicts have exposed.

The premise of a doctrine of credible restraint is straightforward: Diplomacy cannot function if it unfolds alongside escalating military pressure. When negotiations occur in the shadow of active escalation, trust collapses and agreements lose legitimacy.

Doctrine of credible restraint

A doctrine of credible restraint would therefore prioritize three practical policy principles.

First, escalation should be frozen during active negotiations, ensuring that diplomacy serves as a genuine alternative to force rather than a tactical cover for military positioning. While defining “escalation” in a hybrid era is complex, a credible restraint freeze must prioritize verifiable kinetic movements like naval surges to prevent the immediate physical pressure that collapses diplomatic space.

Second, states must commit to proactive communication during military buildups to reduce fear-driven miscalculation. Sudden mobilizations of troops, naval assets, or missile systems during diplomatic initiatives inevitably trigger worst-case assumptions from adversaries. By proactively communicating intent and establishing clear operational boundaries during a crisis, states can short-circuit the accidental chain reactions that frequently push rivals toward unintended war.

Third, this restraint must be institutionalized through a “Mandatory Enforcement Mechanism” that guarantees reciprocity. Unilateral transparency is often perceived as a strategic vulnerability; therefore, restraint must be mutually binding, observable and strictly verified. By ensuring that no asymmetry exists between negotiating parties, preventing a scenario where one side operates with opacity while the other exercises restraint, these structural mechanisms would prevent exploitation and safeguard confidence. The objective is not to eliminate rivalry but to ensure that diplomacy regains its credibility as a tool of conflict prevention.

To move beyond the deadlock of traditional institutions, this enforcement could rely on technical verification, such as shared satellite data or neutral third-party monitoring, ensuring that reciprocity is data-driven rather than purely political.

To be sure, implementing such a doctrine is not without friction. In an era of hybrid warfare, defining the threshold of “escalation” is a technical challenge, and great powers are notoriously resistant to mandatory enforcement. However, the alternative, a global order where diplomacy is merely a tactical cover for force, is far more dangerous.

Rebuilding global trust also requires recognizing a deeper transformation in the “nature of security” itself. Globalization has created a condition of mutual vulnerability. Energy disruptions, cyberattacks, pandemics and financial instability spread across borders with unprecedented speed. No state can isolate itself from systemic disruption.

In such an environment, stability cannot be achieved through domination alone. It must emerge from structured coexistence and institutionalized crisis management. Rival powers may compete, but they also share an interest in preventing systemic collapse.

The crisis of the current international order is not the collapse of law, but the erosion of trust in the ability of international law to restrain power during moments of tension. Rebuilding that trust requires more than reaffirming old principles; it demands updating them for an age in which diplomacy and confrontation unfold simultaneously. A doctrine of credible restraint, one that protects negotiations, institutionalizes transparency and makes restraint reciprocal, offers one path toward bridging the widening gap between law and power.

The future of international order will not be determined solely by the outcome of wars but by the willingness of states to rebuild trust in the mechanisms designed to prevent them. In an age of interconnected crises, the most urgent strategic task is no longer winning conflicts, but preventing the next spiral of mistrust from taking hold.