A military threat, sometimes expressed as danger of military action, a military challenge, or a military risk, is a concept in military intelligence that identifies an imminent capability for use of military force in resolving diplomatic or economic disputes. It is the ultimate escalation in international relations conflicts, and follows explicit diplomatic threat to use force as a means of coercion.
In general a military threat is identified when military personnel are detected conducting operations that can be interpreted as a phase that precedes combat, i.e. occupying positions, preparing weapons for use, and concentrating forces in an offensive manner.
Famous quotes containing the words military and/or threat:
“War both needs and generates certain virtues; not the highest, but what may be called the preliminary virtues, as valour, veracity, the spirit of obedience, the habit of discipline. Any of these, and of others like them, when possessed by a nation, and no matter how generated, will give them a military advantage, and make them more likely to stay in the race of nations.”
—Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)
“The reduction of nuclear arsenals and the removal of the threat of worldwide nuclear destruction is a measure, in my judgment, of the power and strength of a great nation.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)