#4 - The theory of military deterrence was based on a simple

[Rachael Wilkenfeld]

Hi KendrickFrontiers,

You are reading action into this answer choice where none is stated. Letting potential aggressors become aware of their military power does not have to mean attacking someone. There are plenty of nations that are known to have nuclear power without having attacked anyone with that power. The verb used here, "let," is a passive sort of verb. It suggests it allows other countries to find out something.

Hope that helps!

[ericsilvagomez]

Hi,

When completing this question, my thought process was between answer choices C and D. For more clarity, are there any words that show that there are sufficient and necessary conditions in the problem? I had memorized most of those words/phrases when reading through the LG Bible, but that did not help me here and the explanation made it more confusing. Since I did not use any of those words, I could not fully understand the relationships you described in the conclusion.

[Luke Haqq]

Hi ericsilvagomez!

The short answer is that it's somewhat hidden. Take the conditional reasoning in the final sentence: "to maintain military deterrence, a nation would have to be believed to have retaliatory power so great that a potential aggressor nation would have reason to think that it could not defend itself against such retaliation." This could be diagrammed as:

Maintain military deterrence Believed to have great retaliatory power

In other words, if a nation is to maintain military deterrence, then it must be believed to have great retaliatory power. You raise a good point in that sometimes there aren't clear words that identify sufficient or necessary conditions--if that's the case, it can be helpful to try to reword the given reasoning in an if-then statement.

[ericsilvagomez]

Thanks for the explanation! So, when looking for conditional reasoning, I should include if-then statements?

[Dave Killoran]

Absolutely. Every single conditional statement can be reduced to if-then, and so those terms are used. In fact, they are so easy to identify that the test makers resort to using synonymous terms for each in order to hide conditionality. that's why words like "whenever," "unless," "only," and other similar terms are so important to understand.

Thanks!