Whenever there’s an international incident, the cry goes up to show restraint in the response. But to demonstrate that a country is showing restraint, sometimes you have to not show restraint. How often should that be?
Yeah, no.
If you have a nuclear arsenal capable of destroying all of your enemies in under an hour, you are demonstrating more than sufficient restraint every second of every day. No further demonstration is needed.
The US and the UK (and, I think, Russia, France, and China) have declared that they won’t use nuclear weapons against a non-WMD enemy, so nuclear weapons aren’t relevant here.
Oh, they made a declaration. That’s a load off my mind.
What kind of crisis are you talking about? Like Turkey shooting down a Russian jet? Mobs ransacking an embassy? Are you thinking of something going on right now.
And I guess I don’t understand what you mean that showing restraint means less restraint. Like, not at all.
Mud, that’s it! This is as clear as mud.
I honestly don’t understand what this means.
If a military option is available to you, not using it is showing restraint.
Not really a difficult concept.
But if you continue to not use it and declare you won’t use it then you’re not showing restraint by never using it. So you need to show restraint - or not - by other means.
Seriously, can you give some sort of example? I don’t often agree with your positions but I honestly have no clue what you’re talking about in this case. Don’t think I’m alone.
I think folks are stumbling over absolute restraint versus relative restraint. The OP is thinking relative and everybody else is thinking absolute.
As I read it:
OP: "Amount of restraint (or lack) is measured versus what you did/do on other similar occasions. If this time you do what you’ve always done, then you’re not acting restrained; you’re acting normally. To demonstrate restraint this time you must do relatively less than you normally do. Which implies that on other occasions you must do relatively more.
The relative amount of restraint you demonstrate is exactly the difference between your response this time and your historical average response."
Everybody else (including me now): "Amount of restraint (or lack) is measured versus what you could/can/might do on this or other similar occasions. Any/everything less than the maximum response you can reliably pull off is demonstrating restraint.
The absolute amount of restraint demonstrated is exactly the difference between what you did do vs. what you could have done.
Bottom line: If, after some international outrage, Obama always sent a sternly worded letter and does so this time instead of invading their country, an absolutist would argue that’s great restraint and a relativist would argue that it’s no restraint at all.
If, after some international outrage, Trump always invades their country and does so this time instead of sending a hysterical tweet, an absolutist would argue that’s no restraint and a relativist would agree.
Wait, what?
“I demonstrate my restraint by not showing any restraint once in a while, so you can tell when I show restraint. When I’m not kicking the everliving crap out of someone, I’m showing restraint.”
Am I translating your statement correctly? 
Perhaps you should slow down and take the time to comprehend my post.
Your posts read like a drunk person wrote them and your “it’s obvious what I mean” replies to everyone’s mutual confusion also sound like what a drunk person would say.
Did I read carefully enough? 
Or did I miss the point too?
Once every generation.
The state should go to war once every generation just to show the world that it is still capable of going to war.
That’s your answer.
I don’t understand the absolutist position. Say the Canadian prime minister says that Americans are a bunch of gun toting rednecks. We could, theoretically, launch a nuke at Ottawa. Would an absolutist say that if we merely sent a few cruise missiles that we were showing restraint?
No. Someone needs in the past to have been deemed not to have shown restraint, and whoever’s crying for restraint now is assuming everyone knows and agrees what that occasion and level of unrestraint was, without actually specifying details.
It’s all subjective.
To show restraint implies that you are restraining yourself. If you claim to be showing restraint when you have no desire, inclination, or motivation to do anything – well, you’re really not restraining yourself, are you?
If my neighbor lets his dog crap on my lawn, and I do not punch him in the face, am I showing restraint? No, I am not. There’s no way in hell I would punch my neighbor in the face, because he is bigger, stronger, younger, fitter, and tougher than I am. And he’s a cop. Or maybe it’s my other neighbor, who is a 75-year-old lady with a sweet disposition and a great sense of humor – it requires no restraint whatsoever not to punch her in the face. Instead, I talk to them when it happens, and in fact they do keep their dogs in line most of the time. But asshole neighbor across the street doesn’t know any of that – he only knows that I didn’t punch anyone when their dogs crapped on my lawn, so he may think it’s safe to let his dog crap on my lawn as well. It will come as a surprise when I punch him in the face. It would have been better had I loudly mentioned that I normally punch people in the face for such an affront, and I am excusing these two neighbors because of our special relationship. He might still doubt, however, if I have actually never ever punched anyone in the face.
In order to make a creditable claim of showing restraint (as a tool of foreign policy), a nation needs to display, from time to time, a willingness to defend its interests by any means necessary – in other words, a lack of restraint, sufficient to discourage other nations from attacking its interests.
The OP’s question is “how often is ‘from time to time’?”