COERCION – AN EFFECTIVE TOOL OR A BARRIER IN STATECRAFT?

Indian Naval Despatch, Vol. 6 No. 1, Dec 25. “Challenges and Inconsistencies Between Theory and Practice of Coercion” by Wg Cdr Vipin Kumar Pandey

Coercion is sometimes considered to be a convenient state policy to achieve favourable outcomes. However, state actors often deviate from expected responses to such coercion. Wg Cdr Pandey’s article examines the efficacy of coercion as a tool of statecraft and looked at some factors that influence its outcome, sometimes successful and sometimes not quite. Examples from history exist where the coercer has been able to compel an adversary to acquiesce. An example he gives is from the Peloponnesian War, where Melos was threatened by Athens with dire consequences to either submit or be obliterated. This seemed like a hastily thought coercive step, and a demonstration of powerplay by Athens.¹ The subsequent subjugation of the island of Melos failed to achieve the strategic benefit envisaged while contributing to undermining Athenian moral legitimacy. At the other end of spectrum is the gold standard of effective counter-coercion i.e. ‘Cuban Missile Crisis’. In response to Soviet coercion in placing nuclear missiles in Cuba, under 200 km from the US state of Florida, President John F Kennedy considered many options available to him to force the Soviets to retreat. It helped that Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev was also a pragmatist, while also one who wanted to try brinkmanship. There were factors at play and, perhaps multiple factors coalesced. The US and USSR both feared nuclear escalation, of course. From the Soviet point of view, forward-basing helped nuclear deterrence through coercion, which was itself a response to IRBMs placed by the Americans in bases of their allies, Turkey and Italy. Briefly, the author could have evaluated the complex cause and effect and the interplay of the socalled “Thirteen Days” with previous events. JFK’s counter-coercion worked, but arguably, USSR’s coercion was also more an attempt at counter-coercion than coercion. In this episode, Kennedy’s subsequent actions were calculated actions demonstrating credibility. And finally, the negotiated settlement led to face-saving concessions by both sides. The Russians withdrew their IRBMs from Cuba and USA agreed to remove its Jupiter missiles from Turkey and Italy quietly.

The efficacy of coercion as a strategy or as a tactic can have mixed results. Coercion strategies and tactical measures that enforce coercion, may become counterproductive. A partially successful coercive strategy was employed by the UN during the Bosnian War. UN economic sanctions against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia partially contributed to acceptance of the Dayton Accords. Internal domestic pressure along with NATO’s Operation ‘Deliberate Force’ were also factors.

The author’s other example is of the Americans not quite understanding the “value of the object” on territorial unification and the price in blood, time, deprivation and effort in the North Vietnamese leadership and even people were willing to pay. One can wonder at the time of writing this, if Iran’s objectives or resolve are adequately understood by the US and Israel in the ongoing conflict in West Asia with repercussions that are global. Despite years-long negotiations, recent parleys arranged in Oman did not yield results, because Iran would not yield on some issues and the US would not either. As it were, early tactical successes, including decapitation of several leaders in Iran and destruction of several military capabilities have not given the US-Israel combination a quick political-strategic victory that they might have optimistically hoped for.

Wg Cdr Pandey gave an example of Chinese naval manoeuvres in the South China Sea as coercive signalling.² The Chinese take recourse to a range of activities, some diplomatic, some coercive, while also trying to keep communications open with the opposition in Taiwan to the ruling party including the less firm stance on independence by the opposition party of Guomindang (formerly spelt as Kuomintang, KMT).

Coercion strategies may also suffer from signalling ambiguity as a dominant actor’s intent to deter may be construed as a hostile escalatory act, which leads to an arms race and preparation for full-scale military conflict sometimes leading to point of noreturn.³ Spencer Bakich explains how US coercive pressure did not really work on North Korea and they, in fact, hardened their own stand.

Schelling’s book Arms and Influence establishes that coercion has to be followed by credible threats and this credibility may erode rapidly if the adversary resists being coerced sometimes because he does not believe that the threats are credible.⁴ The often-asked question then is, why are coercion strategies so attractive and whether these strategies could be gainfully part of a leader’s or state’s policy? The answer probably lies in the psychological mechanisms of humans, amplified in the desire to wage war at great cost to the smaller or more vulnerable side. Between 1936-39, Hitler executed one of the most beneficial demonstrations of a sequenced strategy of coercion. By carefully exploiting an adversaries’ weaknesses, manipulating threat perceptions and by incremental risk-taking, and in making one demand at a time, he made the target countries feel that submission was a form of prudent statesmanship. Without firing a shot he militarised Rhineland, acquired Sudetenland via the Munich Pact, and absorbed Austria through the Anschluss and also invaded Czechoslovakia. It was only by invading Poland that he started using raw military force instead of coercive pressure that included the threat of war. Thus, as coercion ratchets upwards, escalates, the political-emotional costs increase for both the aggressor and target, creating decision paralysis or irrational reversals.