Literature Survey

“Speak softly and carry a big stick.”[1]
--President Theodore Roosevelt, Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine

Alexander George was among the first to formalize the theories behind the factors that lead to successful outcomes of coercive diplomacy[2]. His research, and that of many of his adherents, focuses on a small set of cases during or just after the Cold War in an attempt to extract “lessons learned.” Five of these are summarized as follows:

The coercer must:

1. make the motive abundantly clear;
2. create a sense of urgency for meeting the demands;
3. convey a credible threat of punishment for noncompliance;
4. decide to use positive or negative enforcement;
5. be willing to accept the risk of either outcome.

The weakness in George’s approach is that each of the guidelines is centered in misperception theory. How can the coercer know if they have made their motive abundantly clear? Or if they have created sufficient urgency in the mind of the coerced nation? Can they be sure that the coerced country will see the “positive” enforcement as positive? The result is that while George’s research is often quoted, and his method of selecting cases copied[3], the outcomes of such research are no longer valuable to policy makers.

The furthest departure from the George’s qualitative analysis is Blechman and Kaplan’s Force without War[4]. This more comprehensive approach featured critical elements lacking in previous efforts. Notably, the examination was quantitative, one of the first of its kind in the field of coercive diplomacy. Blechman and Kaplan give a rigorous evaluation of factors such as: “the size, type, and activity of military units involved in the incident; the nature of the situation at which they were directed…and the extent and type of diplomatic activity that accompanied the use of armed forces.” They concluded that favorable outcomes occurred when:

1. the objective was “to maintain the authority of a specific regime abroad”;
2. the context was to reinforce, not change, behavior; or
3. the objectives are “at least loosely consistent with prior U.S. policies.”[5];

Blechman and Kaplan at least admit that misperception makes it difficult to abide by their findings. “In many…incidents, although U.S. decision makers may have thought—or feared—that a target state was prepared or intending to change its behavior, and thus used the armed forces to reinforce existing behavior, the target state may have had no such intention.”[6] Even this highly regarded work fails to explain how decision makers can overcome the barrier of misperception.

This paper operates under the assumption that decision makers have a limited dataset to draw on. Often, the situations in which coercive diplomacy are employed do not provide opportunity to gather intelligence, and they tend to dull rather than sharpen our ability to perceive the enemy. If the data could not be strictly operationalized and collected in advance of the operation—and therefore of value to decision makers—it was not included in this analysis.

Introduction

Definitions

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[1] Letter by Theodore Roosevelt (Original text : Library of Congress), 26 January 1900
[2] Alexander George. “Forceful Persuasion: Coercive Diplomacy as an Alternative to War” Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1991
[3] Robert J. Art and Patrick M. Cronin, eds. The United States and Coercive Diplomacy (Washington, D.C. United States Institute of Peace Press, 2003)
[4]Barry M. Blechman and Stephen S. Kaplan et al. Force Without War: U.S. Armed Forces as a Political Instrument. (Washington: The Brookings Institution, 1978)
[5] Among other less-certain conclusions Ibid pp.522-23
[6] Ibid p. 524