In asymmetric interstate conflicts, great powers have the capability to coerce weak states by threatening their survival—but not vice versa. It is therefore the great power that decides whether to escalate a conflict into a crisis by adopting a coercive strategy.
In practice, however, the coercive strategies of the U.S. have frequently failed. In Coercion, Survival and War Phil Haun chronicles 30 asymmetric interstate crises involving the US from 1918 to 2003. The U.S. chose coercive strategies in 23 of these cases, but coercion failed half of the time: most often because the more powerful U.S. made demands that threatened the very survival of the weak state, causing it to resist as long as it had the means to do so. It is an unfortunate paradox Haun notes that, where the U.S. may prefer brute force to coercion, these power asymmetries may well lead it to first attempt coercive strategies that are expected to fail in order to justify the war it desires.
He concludes that, when coercion is preferred to brute force there are clear limits as to what can be demanded. In such cases, he suggests, U.S. policymakers can improve the chances of success by matching appropriate threats to demands, by including other great powers in the coercive process, and by reducing a weak state leader's reputational costs by giving him or her face-saving options.
In asymmetric interstate conflicts, great powers have the capability to coerce weak states by threatening their survival—but not vice versa. It is therefore the great power that decides whether to escalate a conflict into a crisis by adopting a coercive strategy.
In practice, however, the coercive strategies of the U.S. have frequently failed. In Coercion, Survival and War Phil Haun chronicles 30 asymmetric interstate crises involving the US from 1918 to 2003. The U.S. chose coercive strategies in 23 of these cases, but coercion failed half of the time: most often because the more powerful U.S. made demands that threatened the very survival of the weak state, causing it to resist as long as it had the means to do so. It is an unfortunate paradox Haun notes that, where the U.S. may prefer brute force to coercion, these power asymmetries may well lead it to first attempt coercive strategies that are expected to fail in order to justify the war it desires.
He concludes that, when coercion is preferred to brute force there are clear limits as to what can be demanded. In such cases, he suggests, U.S. policymakers can improve the chances of success by matching appropriate threats to demands, by including other great powers in the coercive process, and by reducing a weak state leader's reputational costs by giving him or her face-saving options.
Coercion, Survival, and War: Why Weak States Resist the United States
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Overview
In asymmetric interstate conflicts, great powers have the capability to coerce weak states by threatening their survival—but not vice versa. It is therefore the great power that decides whether to escalate a conflict into a crisis by adopting a coercive strategy.
In practice, however, the coercive strategies of the U.S. have frequently failed. In Coercion, Survival and War Phil Haun chronicles 30 asymmetric interstate crises involving the US from 1918 to 2003. The U.S. chose coercive strategies in 23 of these cases, but coercion failed half of the time: most often because the more powerful U.S. made demands that threatened the very survival of the weak state, causing it to resist as long as it had the means to do so. It is an unfortunate paradox Haun notes that, where the U.S. may prefer brute force to coercion, these power asymmetries may well lead it to first attempt coercive strategies that are expected to fail in order to justify the war it desires.
He concludes that, when coercion is preferred to brute force there are clear limits as to what can be demanded. In such cases, he suggests, U.S. policymakers can improve the chances of success by matching appropriate threats to demands, by including other great powers in the coercive process, and by reducing a weak state leader's reputational costs by giving him or her face-saving options.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780804795074 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Stanford Security Studies |
| Publication date: | 07/01/2015 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 288 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
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Coercion, Survival, and War
Why Weak States Resist The United States
By Phil Haun
STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
Copyright © 2015 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior UniversityAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8047-9507-4
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
ON AUGUST 2, 1990, ARMORED DIVISIONS of the Iraqi Republican Guard rolled into Kuwait City. The United States responded immediately, convening the UN Security Council, condemning the aggression, and demanding an immediate and unconditional withdrawal. Within days, the Security Council imposed comprehensive sanctions to compel Iraq to reverse its actions. Meanwhile, the U.S. military deployed thousands of aircraft, ships, and troops to the Middle East to deter further aggression. Though economic sanctions soon forced the Iraqi government to begin rationing, its dictator, Saddam Hussein, remained obstinate. In October, President George H. W. Bush ordered a doubling of U.S. deployed forces with the objectives of liberating Kuwait and destroying the Iraqi Army. To garner international and domestic support for war, the administration pressed the Security Council to authorize a coalition of thirty-four nations to use all means necessary to free Kuwait should the Iraqi Army not withdraw by January 15, 1991. In the final days leading up to the deadline, however, the White House feared not that coercion would fail but that it might succeed. Bush had already paid the diplomatic, political, and deployment costs of preparing for war, and his worst-case scenario now had Saddam capitulating. Although such an outcome would have rescued Kuwait, it would also have spared the Republican Guard, guaranteeing Saddam would remain in power and threaten his neighbors in the future.
Fortunately for Bush, coercive diplomacy failed when the January 15 deadline expired and the U.S.-led coalition launched a massive air campaign. Coalition fighters quickly secured air superiority over Kuwait and southern Iraq, while its bombers and cruise missiles simultaneously attacked leadership targets in Baghdad in an effort to paralyze Saddam's ability to command and control his military. Undeterred, Saddam ordered Scud missiles to be launched at Israel and Saudi Arabia and, in late January, directed forward elements of his army to advance into Saudi Arabia in an attempt to jump-start his "mother of all battles." By early February, coalition air power shifted its effort toward attriting the Iraqi Army in preparation for the land invasion. Saddam's strategy had failed both to draw Israel into the conflict and to bait the coalition into an early ground war. His hope of victory faded as the air strikes against Iraqi fielded forces intensified. By mid-February, Iraqi officials broached the possibility of a cease-fire, and Soviet diplomats initiated discussions on the terms of a peace proposal. Fearful that Saddam would now agree to the UN resolutions and deny it the opportunity to destroy the Republican Guard, the United States accelerated the start date for the ground offensive. On the eve of the invasion, Saddam accepted the Soviet-brokered deal, which would have suspended all sanctions against Iraq on the withdrawal of its army from Kuwait, a process for which Iraq would be granted twenty-one days. Bush rejected these conditional terms and instead issued a forty-eight-hour ultimatum for withdrawal. To meet such a deadline would have required the Iraqi Army to abandon its heavy weaponry and prepared defenses. Though willing to withdraw from Kuwait in an orderly fashion, Saddam would not accept the humiliation of a hasty retreat, which would have left Iraq's southern border exposed and his regime vulnerable to domestic unrest. Coercion failed as Saddam chose to face the ground war with a slim chance of victory rather than concede, which would have threatened the survival of the Iraqi state and his regime.
This book is about why the United States chooses to coerce weak states and, as with Iraq in 1991, why coercion so often fails. Since World War II, the United States has been the great power that has most frequently initiated crises with much weaker states. In these asymmetric interstate crises, U.S. leaders have more often than not chosen coercion, which has been met by resistance in half the cases. And, of these unsuccessful efforts, half again have been resolved only by war. Given the overwhelming military advantage enjoyed by the United States, why do weak states so often resist, and why does coercion fail?
Coercion threatens force or employs limited force to convince a target to comply with a challenger's demands. In a conflict against a weak state, the United States, with its disproportionate advantage in power, has the luxury of choice, to decide whether to accommodate or to escalate the disagreement into a crisis by threatening military force. When choosing force, the United States has the options of coercion or brute force war. Because coercion requires the cooperation of the targeted state, it is a strategy likely to achieve only moderate foreign policy goals but with the advantage of avoiding the full costs of war. This is an attractive option for U.S. decision makers, particularly when conflicts are over issues nonvital to national security. Brute force strategies, by contrast, do not require the cooperation of the enemy to succeed and may thus realize more ambitious objectives, such as seizing territory or imposing regime change. Such actions, however, incur a higher price in terms of blood and treasure. The United States therefore usually prefers coercion, even with its more moderate goals and diminished chance of success.
International relations scholars offer numerous reasons for why coercion fails. Much of the literature focuses on psychological, cognitive, or organizational biases and the resultant nonrational decision making that leads to war. Others offer structural causes of war based on uncertainty or commitment problems inherent to the anarchic international system. These arguments, although useful for explaining why crises arise or why violence erupts, fall short of explaining the final outcome for most cases of asymmetric interstate coercion.
In theory, coercion should always succeed, as the United Sates should choose a coercive strategy only when it expects the targeted state will acquiesce. In reality, however, coercion often fails, as policy makers mismatch demands and threats. In some cases, the demands are so severe that, if conceded, they jeopardize the survival of the much weaker state or its regime. When this is the case, there is not likely to be any credible threat that will convince a target to agree to its own demise, so long that it retains the means to resist.
A state's survival requires that it retain sovereignty over its domestic and international affairs. Domestic sovereignty is threatened when a powerful challenger demands that a targeted state concede homeland territory. In Bosnia from 1992 to 1995, the Bosnian Serbs consistently resisted any peace deal that required them to concede territory. Though the Republika Srbska had not been recognized as a state, it acted as one. Only after it had already lost its western lands to the Croatian Muslim ground offensive backed by NATO air power did it finally agree to concede this territory, which it no longer possessed, to retain the ground it still held. Rationally, a powerful challenger should understand that a target will resist in such cases as its survival depends on it protecting its homeland.
Along with homeland territory, a state's survival requires that it maintain its international sovereignty over its foreign policy decision making. A state will thus reject demands for regime change, as this forfeits such autonomy. In March 2003, for example, Saddam rejected President George W. Bush's demand that he leave Iraq only days before the U.S. invasion. Although leaders will refuse to give up a state's autonomy, if subjected to sufficient coercive pressure they may be constrained in their foreign policy choices. For example, after ordering an invasion of Jordan in September 1970, Syrian leaders reversed this decision within days. An effective defense by the Jordanians, combined with the threat of the Israeli Air Force backed by U.S. forces in the Mediterranean, deterred the Syrians from committing their air force to the battle. As a result, this compelled the Syrians to withdraw their ground forces from Jordan. Coercion succeeded, in part, because Syria's decision to withhold its air power did not threaten its survival, whereas having its air force destroyed by the Israelis may well have done so.
In addition to state survival, a ruling regime must also be wary of the potential threat from domestic opposition. Concessions signal that the regime is weak, a revelation that may trigger a coup or insurgency. Saddam resisted Bush's forty-eight-hour ultimatum in 1991 out of concern over the audience costs associated with such a public foreign policy failure. The Shia and Kurdish revolt after the Gulf War suggests that these fears were well founded.
Survival concerns are particularly relevant in asymmetric interstate crises, given the inherent power disparities between great powers and weak states. The tremendous military advantage enjoyed by a powerful challenger enhances its expected outcome in a war against a weak opponent. Ceteris paribus, to prefer coercion over brute force requires the great power to levy heavy demands on its target, which, in turn, increases the likelihood concessions will threaten the survival of the weak state and its regime. This being the case, however, the target is likely to resist and coercion fail.
The resistance of weak states introduces a related question. Why would an American statesman choose a coercive strategy likely to fail? If the demands are high, such that the weak state is not likely to be coerced, why doesn't the United States simply take its objectives by force? Again, the international relations literature refers us to the previously mentioned list of rational and nonrational explanations for war. In addition, two incentives exist for a powerful challenger to intentionally choose a coercive strategy it expects to fail. First, coercion may be but an interim stage of a brute force strategy. It takes time to mobilize and deploy military forces to invade and occupy a country. If the costs of coercion are low, and there is some chance that the weak state might concede, then it may make sense to issue coercive demands while preparing for war.
Second, modern states are expected to seek resolution to conflicts through negotiations or intervention by international institutions before resorting to violence. U.S. leaders thus have an incentive to work through the UN Security Council to avoid the diplomatic and political costs of abrogating this norm. To justify war, the United States may therefore make the pretense of seeking a settlement when it, in fact, prefers that the weak state reject its efforts. This proved to be the case in the lead-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. President Bush spoke before the UN General Assembly on September 12, 2002, demanding that Iraq disclose and abandon its weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Before the Security Council could even pass a resolution, however, he began making the case that Saddam could not be trusted. Bush counted on coercive diplomacy to fail and thus provide justification for the war he had already decided on.
U.S. COERCION SINCE WORLD WAR II
Since the Second World War, the United States has been involved in half of the asymmetric interstate crises pitting great powers against much weaker states. Table 1.1 lists the cases in which the United States threatened or employed military force. In twenty-three of these thirty conflicts, U.S. leaders opted for coercion over brute force. Chapters 4 through 6 provide in-depth assessments of six of these crises with Iraq, Serbia, and Libya, respectively. Appendix A summarizes the remaining seventeen coercive cases. The summaries include the rationale for the coding provided in Table 1.1 for foreign policy, coercion, and coercive diplomacy success or failure. For a case to be coded as a success, the United States must have concluded the crisis having attained its core ex ante objectives. Overall, the United States achieved these foreign policy goals two-thirds of the time (twenty of thirty).
Coercion is coded as a failure when it did not achieve U.S. core foreign policy objectives or when the United States abandoned coercion in favor of a brute force strategy. This latter reason has increasingly caused coercion failure. It occurred in five out of the twelve coercion cases that have taken place since the Cold War: in 1991 in the Gulf War, in 1998 in the Desert Fox air strikes, in 2001 in the Afghanistan War, in 2003 in the Iraq War, and in 2011 in the Libyan Arab Spring.
Coercive diplomacy is a more restrictive form of coercion, for which violence is only threatened. Coercive diplomacy is not applicable for many cases of interwar coercion, in which force is already being employed. Where coercive diplomacy has been attempted, it has failed in two-thirds of the cases (thirteen of nineteen). This lower success rate is understandable because, for coercion to succeed, a powerful challenger must at times first demonstrate resolve by employing limited force. Other times, coercive diplomacy fails because demands are initially too high and the threats too low. In such cases, coercive diplomacy fails, but coercion eventually succeeds when, over time, the powerful challenger adjusts its threats and demands until the weak target acquiesces.
Because war, coercion, and brute force all involve a state's employment of violence, a clarifying comment is warranted. In theory, war is a state's use of violence to achieve its political objectives, but, in practice, the amount of violence required to call a crisis a war is set arbitrarily. For instance, El Dorado Canyon, the coercive strategy that involved a single U.S. air raid against Libya, is not classified as a war even though blood was shed on both sides. By contrast, the eleven weeks of air strikes against Serbia over Kosovo are called a war, even though no NATO personnel were killed in combat. Whereas coercive strategies may or may not reach the requisite level of violence of being labeled as war, brute force strategies, where objectives are seized by force, such as in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, are called wars. Because this book is more concerned with the U.S. decision making in choosing between coercive and brute force strategies and less concerned as to whether a particular crisis qualifies as a war, in an effort to limit confusion, the term war in this book will refer only to brute force strategies.
This book makes two primary contributions to our understanding of international politics and U.S. foreign policy. First, it introduces a theory for coercion specific to asymmetric interstate conflicts. A simple but powerful game theoretic model captures the unique and key characteristics of the interaction between a powerful challenger and a much weaker opponent. This model incorporates the alternative strategies available to the United States, that is, those of accommodation and brute force. Also, the coercion range is developed to demonstrate the set of potential demands for which the United States prefers a negotiated settlement to war and the weak target prefers concession to resistance.
This book further demonstrates that the survival concerns of weak states and their leaders provide a better explanation for coercion failure than the rational explanation for war based on commitment problems. The survival argument proposes that a weak state will resist the demands of a great power because concession would result in the loss of the state's and/or the regime's sovereignty. By contrast, the commitment explanation claims that a weak state's resistance is based less on concerns over the outcome of the present crisis and more on the impact a concession would have on future crises.
Second, this book presents seven historical cases drawn from recent U.S. experience with Iraq, Serbia, and Libya. Each case traces the decisions made by the United States and its adversaries that led ultimately to coercion success or failure. Together, these cases validate the asymmetric coercion model for analyzing asymmetric conflicts and demonstrate the significant role survival plays in the decision making of a weak state and its leaders.
This work should be of interest to foreign policy practitioners. It identifies clear limits to the effectiveness of coercive strategies. Demands, which threaten the survival of not only the weak state but also its regime, are most likely to be resisted. It also highlights that, at times, coercive diplomacy must first fail before coercion can succeed. Weak state leaders often face internal threats, prompting them to initially resist demands and provoke a limited U.S. attack to exhibit their resolve to those who might otherwise remove them from power.
This book also offers policy recommendations that increase the likelihood of coercion success for the United States in future asymmetric conflicts. Policy makers should be concerned not only with matching threats to demands but also with the manner in which their coercive strategies are implemented. The timing and delivery of coercive signals have a direct impact on the audience costs a weak state's leader will suffer for making concessions. In addition, U.S. leaders should continue to take steps to minimize commitment problems by working through international institutions, building coalitions, engaging third parties in the negotiations, and/or by implementing agreements incrementally.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Coercion, Survival, and War by Phil Haun. Copyright © 2015 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. Excerpted by permission of STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS.
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Table of Contents
Contents and Abstracts1Introduction chapter abstractThis chapter introduces the question of why the United States so often fails to coerce weak states. Coercion is defined as the threat of force or restricted use of force to convince a target to comply with a challenger's demands. In asymmetric interstate conflict a powerful challenger chooses between accommodation, brute force or coercion. The chapter includes a table and summary statistics for the thirty asymmetric crises between the United States and weak states since World War II. The chapter considers conventional non-rational and rational explanations for coercion failure and introduces an alternative explanation based on a weak state's survival concerns. The chapter concludes by reflecting on why the United States would knowingly make coercive demands that threaten survival and offers an explanation based on the desire to lower the diplomatic and political costs of going to war.
2A Theory of Asymmetric Interstate Coercion chapter abstractThis chapter develops a theory of asymmetric interstate coercion. A coercive strategy includes compellent or deterrent demands, punishment or denial threats, and costly signals. The determinants of coercion success are measured, coercive diplomacy is considered where the use of force is only threatened, and the relationship between economic sanctions and coercion is discussed. A model of asymmetric coercion is developed where demands, threats and costly signals are determined by the powerful challenger and in response the weak target chooses whether to resist or concede. In equilibrium, a coercive strategy should only be adopted when the target is expected to concede. The coercion range depicts the set of successful coercive demands for which the challenger prefers coercion to accommodation or brute force and the target prefers concession to resistance. The chapter concludes by discussing rational and non-rational explanations for why coercion might still fail.
3Survival and Coercion Failure chapter abstractThis chapter considers why powerful states issue high level demands of weak states. Given a high probability of victory a powerful challenger must expect high level concessions to prefer coercion to brute force. When demands threaten the sovereignty of the weak state, however, it is likely to resist. The unitary actor assumption for the weak state is relaxed to also consider the survival concerns of its regime and regime leadership. Rationally, a powerful challenger should not coerce when demands threaten a target's survival. However, when the costs of coercion are low and when there is uncertainty whether the target will concede then it may make sense to coerce while preparing for war. Also, if the external costs for adopting a brute force strategy are high, then first having the United Nations Security Council issue coercive resolutions may decrease the diplomatic and political costs for later going to war.
4The United States vs. Iraq: The Gulf and Iraq Wars chapter abstractThis chapter considers two crises between the United States and Iraq. In the 1991 Gulf War and the 2003 Iraq War, the United States adopted coercive strategies which threatened the survival of Saddam's regime and the Iraqi state. These crises test the limits for what coercion can achieve and examine the tradeoffs between coercive and brute force strategies. In both crises, U.S. administrations chose coercive strategies they did not intend to have succeed in order to then implement the brute force strategies they preferred. These two crises thus provides insight into the key questions addressed by this book as to why the United States so often chooses coercion, why coercion so often fails as weak states resist, and, knowing this, why the U.S decision makers still prefer coercive strategies.
5The United States vs. Serbia: Bosnia and Kosovo chapter abstractThis chapter examines two crises of the US against the Bosnian Serbs and Serbia in 1992 and 1999, respectively. In both cases, coercive diplomacy failed but coercion ultimately succeeded. The first crisis arose over actions in the Bosnian Civil War from 1992 to 1995, whereby the United States finally coerced the Bosnian Serbs into accepting a peace agreement but could never compel them to give up territory until it had already been taken by force. The second crisis arose over Serbia's treatment of Kosovar Albanians and concluded when Serbia's President Slobodan Milosevic finally conceded Kosovo after a 78-day NATO air campaign. He conceded, however, only when the expected economic costs to Serbia from the air campaign outweighed the political value of maintaining control of Kosovo. This crisis is a rigorous test of the survival hypothesis as Serbia eventually conceded homeland territory while it still retained the means to resist.
6The United States vs. Libya: El Dorado Canyon, Pan Am Flight 103, and WMD chapter abstractThis chapter considers three cases between the United States and Libya from 1981 until 2003. Libya's support of international terrorism triggered a crisis for the United States, culminating in the El Dorado Canyon air raid in April 1986. Coercion ultimately failed because of the mismatch between demands and threats as an isolated Reagan administration could not maintain the credible threat of force. The second case commenced with the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in December 1988. It concluded with the extradition of two Libyan officials in 1999 to stand trial at The Hague. Another crisis commenced in September of 2002 when British Prime Minister Tony Blair, with the backing of George W. Bush, made overtures to Muammar Qaddafi to resume negotiations over Libya's WMD. The case concluded in December 2003 when Qaddafi abandoned Libya's nuclear, biological and chemical ambitions.
7Conclusion chapter abstractThis chapter summarizes the book's main argument that the United States, because of its power advantage, has an incentive to make large coercive demands of weak states that if conceded threaten the survival of the state, the regime or its leadership. Due to international norms to first seek negotiated settlements prior to war, the U.S. has an incentive to go to the UN and adopt a coercive strategy the U.S. does not believe will, or does not want to succeed, to obtain justification and support for a brute force war. Alternative explanations based on non-rational behavior, uncertainty, and commitment problems help to explain why crises arise and why coercive diplomacy fails, but does not provide insight into when coercion is likely to succeed or fail. The book concludes with implications for U.S. foreign policy.