Introduction
When it comes to coercive diplomacy, there are many avenues a coercer can take when attempting to influence a target. Militarized coercion has been used throughout history as a foreign policy tool, however the success rate often varies based on a range of factors. This paper aims to better understand the scope and effectiveness of militarized coercion by solving two crucial questions: Is militarized coercion a successful form of compellence for all challengers? If so, what kinds of countries are more likely to use military coercion over other forms of coercive diplomacy? Solving these questions can help researchers better understand the driving forces and patterns behind the successful militarized coercion.
Literature Review
Several academic journals and articles were reviewed to answer the research question. The primary literary sources used in this paper are “Militarized Compellent Threats, 1918–2001” by Todd Sescher, “Crisis Bargaining and Nuclear Blackmail” by Todd S. Sechser and Matthew Fuhrmann, “The Effect of Third-Party Economic Coercion on Militarized Conflict” by Timothy Peterson and A. Cooper Drury, “How Prior Military Experience Influences the Future Militarized Behavior of Leaders” by Michael Horowitz and Allan Stam, “U.S. Strategic Interests in the Middle East and Implications for the Army” by Karl P. Mueller et al, and “ Russia’s Use of Military Force as a Foreign Policy Tool: Is there A Logic?” by Samuel Charap. Militarized Compellent Threats, 1918–2001
In his article over militarized compellent threats, Todd Sescher discusses the effectiveness of compellent threats in coercive diplomacy. Sescher prefaces his article by emphasizing the lack of empirical research in the field of military compellent threats. Sescher notes that a search of JSTOR between 1960 to 2006 netted 152 studies with the title bearing “deterrence” but only four containing “compellence.” This is due to the fact that the dynamics of deterrence and compellence are nowhere alike, and compellence is perceived to be more difficult to study than deterrence (Sescher 379).
In order to further understand the mystery behind compellence, Sescher builds the Militarized Compellent Threats dataset, or MCT. This dataset contains 211 distinct compellent episodes from the span of 1918-2001 (Sescher 379). In the MCT dataset, Sescher defines a militarized compellent threat as “an explicit demand by one state that the other state alter the status quo in some material way, backed by a threat of military force if the target does not comply.” Furthermore, all militarized compellent threats in the MCT dataset bear three key traits: “a compellent threat must contain a demand for a material change in the status quo, a compellent threat must involve an assurance of future military action if the demand is not met, and a compellent threat must be made from one state to another” (Sescher 380). Within the scope of these definitions, it can be assessed that “compellent threats aim to alter the status quo while deterrent threats aim to preserve it” (Sescher 382). After accounting for potential outliers, each episode in the dataset is assigned five variables: Participants, Issue type, Demonstrations and uses of force, Compliance, and Compulsion.
Sescher utilizes the MCT dataset to generate seven tables bearing various descriptive statistics of compellent threats. In Table 1 the ten most common challengers and targets are listed, with Japan being the most frequent challenger and China being the most frequent target. Despite a large number of major powers ranking as top challengers, Table 2 indicated that the most common dyad type in terms of power status was Major Minor at 47.1%)\. Only 8.3% of dyads were Major-Major, indicating that major powers do not target each other as much as they target minor powers. In Table 3 dyad frequencies are organized by regime type and the frequency of their occurences. The results indicate that the most frequent challengers are democracies, however they are the least likely to be targets of any threats. Table 4 compares high and low military expenditures against successful and failed threats, with the results indicating that 59.6% of threats succeeded when the expenditures were low and only 36.2% of the threats succeeded when expenditures were high. In Table 5, the data shows that challengers with a nuclear advantage had an 18.2% success rate, while those without a nuclear advantage had a 45.8% success rate. Table 6 indicates that 50% of threats succeed with a demonstration of force, and only 12.% of threats succeed without a demonstration. In table 7 the results indicate that a democratic challenger has a 40% chance of success in issuing threats, and non-democratic challengers have a 42.1% success rate.
Sescher’s thorough analysis in the MCT analysis could answer a lot of questions in the largely unexplored field of militarized compellent threats in coercive diplomacy. His empirical data can give researchers a better understanding of which countries issue and receive compellent threats and the factors behind why such threats fail or succeed.
Crisis Bargaining and Nuclear Blackmail
Despite being seven decades into the nuclear age, scholars still lack a complete answer if nuclear weapons offer coercive advantages in international crisis bargaining (Sescher and Fuhrmann 173). In their article studying the effectiveness of nuclear weapons in coercive diplomacy, authors Sescher and Fuhrmann argue that owning nuclear weapons do not make the threats of the challenger any more compelling. The authors state two limitations nuclear weapons have in relation to compellence: nuclear weapons are not useful to hold territory, and the costs of imposing nuclear punishment are likely too high for the challenger (Sescher and Fuhrmann 174). It is further stated that the authors believe nuclear compellent threats are only powerful when the challenger possesses nuclear weapons and the target does not. The leverage the challenger has can continue escalating until the adversary submits, as the target can not match an equal threat (Sescher and Fuhrmann 176). Even without an explicit threat, the authors theorize owning nuclear weapons alone gives a coercive advantage to a challenger.
Two testable hypotheses are created to test this theory: H1A and H1B. H1A hypothesizes that compellent threats from nuclear states are more likely to succeed than compellent threats from nonnuclear states, and H1B hypothesizes that compellent threats from nuclear states are more likely to succeed than compellent threats from nonnuclear states only if they are issues against nonnuclear states (Sescher and Fuhrmann 176-177). The authors use the MCT dataset from Sescher (2011) to test their hypotheses. The fact that the dataset already contains both coercive demands and compellent threats, as well as the inclusion of both nuclear and nonnuclear challengers allows the researchers to test both their hypotheses effectively.
When testing their theory, the authors used the variable “Compellence Success” to measure if targets voluntarily complied with the demands of their challenger without the necessity of military force. The results indicated a success rate of 30% for compellent threats in the dataset (Sescher and Fuhrmann 182). When measuring the empirical relationship between nuclear possession and successful coercive diplomacy, three independent variables are evaluated.
These variables are “nuclear challenger”, “nuclear target”, and “nuclear challenger x nuclear target.” Additionally, control variables are used to account for confounding factors. The control variables are “capability ratio”, “stakes”, “resolve”, and “dispute history”. The authors use probit regressions to identify any correlations in the data.
Results indicate that there is “no support for the argument that nuclear-armed challengers make more effective compellent threats” (Sescher and Fuhrmann 182). Furthermore, the data shows that compellent threats are unlikely to succeed even when a nuclear challenger targets a nonnuclear target. This contradicts the presumptions of both hypotheses H1A and H1B, invalidating both of them. Given this data, the authors conclude that nuclear weapons are not credible instruments of compellence in international politics despite a wide variety of measurements (Sescher and Fuhrmann 192). These findings, as the authors put them, carry the implication that “the ability to destroy does not necessarily convey the ability to force.”
The Effect of Third-Party Coercion on Militarized Conflict
In Peterson and Drury’s article, the authors theorize that a potential challenger is more likely to initiate dyadic conflict against a potential target when a third-party state sanctions the target (Peterson and Drury 581). An example of this theory are the conflicts between The United States and Libya between 1978 to 2004. The authors note that during this time period several other states such as Brazil, Israel, and Egypt all initiated militarized conflict against Libya as well. When international norms against mitigation are seemingly mitigated by sanctions, the target becomes less likely to resist a military attack and may suffer a weakened economy. Thus while sanctions are often substituted for violence, to third-party states “economic sanctions sanction violence” (Peterson and Drury 581). Citing Drezner (1998), who explains that “senders are most likely to impose sanctions when they expect future conflict, while targets are least likely to make concessions in these exact circumstances” the authors expect a connection between sanctions and military conflict.
To test their assumptions, the authors use three hypotheses in their experiment. Hypothesis 1 asserts “dyadic conflict initiation is more likely when the potential target of violence is the target of third party sanctions.” The authors believe that democracies have a more meaningful signaling effect than nondemocracies, so Hypothesis 2 asserts “dyadic conflict initiation is more likely when the potential target of violence is the target of third party sanctions sent by a democracy.” But there are often challengers that have power regardless of regime type, and therefore Hypothesis 3 asserts “dyadic conflict initiation is more likely when the potential target of violence is the target of third party sanctions sent by a major power.” Their dependent variable is MID initiation from the dyadic MID 3.1 dataset (Ghosn and Bennett 2003). The explanatory variables used are third-party sanction, Dem-MP sanction, Dem-non-MP sanction, Nondem-MP sanction, a nd nondem-non-MP sanction.
The results netted eighteen models in three tables. Table 1 examines the entire sample of directed dyad years, Table 2 excludes misbehaving targets from the previous sample, and Table 3 incorporates Kantian peace control variables (Peterson and Drury 590). The results indicated strong support for Hypothesis 1, and only partial support for Hypothesis 2-3. The authors are able to conclude the data does match their argument that sanctions lower a target’s resistance to violence. Furthermore, they conclude that major power democracies make sanctioned countries more attractive targets to violence by third-party states (Peterson and Drury 599). The authors believe this indicates the signaling aspect may be more important than the economic cost for a target.
How Prior Military Experience Influences the Future Militarized Behavior of Leaders
Authors Horowitz and Stam theorize in their article that the prior military experience of a leader is an important life experience with direct relevance for how leaders evaluate the utility of using military force (Horowitz and Stam 527). By analyzing and understanding the backgrounds of various heads of state, the authors intend to find a correlation between prior military experience and the use of force as a leader. It is important to identify if such a correlation exists, as previous literature has focused more on examining institutions and not the leaders themselves (Horowitz and Stam 530). The authors give a host of potential reasons as to why military experience may affect the behavior of leaders. Prior military experience can not only shape the future directives of a leader, but it also can be used to study the differences between civilian and military leaders.
Due to such variance in what constitutes “prior military experience”, three separate hypotheses are generated to solve the research question. Citing prior studies by Jennings-Neimi which show variance in those who fought in the military and those who simply served, the authors believe that combat participation has a direct link towards military action. This is the basis for the first hypothesis. H1 asserts that “leaders with military experience but no combat experience should be more likely to initiate military disputes.” The authors further believe that there is a clear and testable difference between professional and nonprofessional military regimes, forming the basis of the second hypothesis. Due to the probable fact that leaders must rise up through aggression and militarized behavior in autocracies and military regimes, H2 asserts that “leaders with combat experience in autocracies and military regimes should be more likely to initiate military disputes.” Due to the fact that military experience can go beyond the scope of a national military and include rebel groups, H3 is formed which asserts “leaders with rebel military experience should be more likely to initiate militarized disputes than those without rebel military experience.”
Building upon the Archigos data set by Goetmans et al., the authors build the Leader Experience and Attribute Descriptions data set, or LEAD. It includes a compilation of heads of state from 1875 to 2004, as well as the MID dataset to draw dependent variables from. The statistical results indicate that leaders with prior military service are more likely to initiate militarized disputes than either those with no prior service or those with no combat experience (Horowitz and Stam 542). Furthermore, leaders with prior rebel experience are significantly likely to begin military disputes (Horowitz and Stam 542). In Table 1, the belief behind H1 holds true. This indicates that leaders who were in the military but did not experience combat are more likely to introduce militarized disputes than those who experienced combat. Furthermore, the data indicates that the effect of rebel experience is independent of regime type, but militarized disputes are significantly higher when a leader has past experience. The authors conclude that leader backgrounds do matter, and can communicate the behavioral tendencies and beliefs of leaders (Horowitz and Stam 555).
U.S. Strategic Interests in the Middle East and Implications for the Army
Authors Mueller et al. lend their perspective on militarized relations between the U.S. and the Middle East in their article. It is stated that “The traditional definition of U.S. interests in the Middle East has centered on ensuring the free flow of natural resources and maintaining relationships with key allies and protecting them from external threats, in part to ensure access for U.S. military operations” (Mueller et al. 2). At the time of this article’s publication, the presence of ISIL in Syria and the threat of Iran’s capabilities have been some of the U.S.’s biggest challenges in the Middle East. While the U.S. remains the most important external power in the Middle East, it is no longer the most dominant (Mueller et al. 5). This is due to the fact that many of the U.S.’s partners have become more assertive and no longer rely on the U.S. to decide their interests or relationships with other actors. Examples include Qatar and the USA, which are now increasingly independent militarily (Mueller et al. 5). The authors emphasize this trend’s danger by stating that the U.S. would be forced to bail out its allies if they conducted a strike on their own, which could lead to potential retaliation against America. This new trend towards military independence indicates a decline in the faith in American commitments to partner security, and it is unknown if this is reversible yet (Mueller et al. 7).
As The United States military began to exit from Iraq in 2011, the rise of ISIL reversed that course and forced the U.S. to combat a new yet familiar challenge (Mueller et al. 8). The authors note that “military intervention is not the answer to every conflict that emerges in the Middle East, nor is it the primary role for the Army in the region. However, it is important to understand how the Army has been involved in limited interventions in the past in the Middle East to better understand how military power could be employed in future regional contingencies.” (Mueller et al. 9) When the United States is forced to deal with a threat in the Middle East, the authors state there are one to three goals that are sought to be achieved. The first goal is to take out the militants by any means necessary, via disruption, degradation, or defeat.
The second goal is to maintain or build a partner government that can be independently sustained. The third goal is to contain radicalism and violence, often as a last resort. While military instruments are available as well, large scale operations are very rare. Most interventions take the form of direct actions such as ground combat or air strikes, and indirect actions such as trading intelligence or training partner security forces (Mueller et al. 9). Thus, re-entering Iraq to fight ISIL is the “norm” according to the authors as the long term commitments of stability operations are necessary to maintain postconflict orders.
The authors emphasize that “success” can be a relative term. The invasion of Iraq can be seen as both a success and a failure, depending on context and scope. Historically, larger interventions can yield better odds of success, but can experience diminishing returns (Mueller et al. 10). This is most likely due to the fact that intervening governments can never fully overtake the local authority, if they are capable. Given this, the authors conclude that the U.S. can be successful with its relationship with Iran in two ways. The first way would be to deter Iran,
and be prepared for the military repercussions. The second way would be to allow societal pressure to change the country from within, although the U.S. must be cautious in demonstrating support for such progress (Mueller et al. 12).
Russia’s Use of Military Force as a Foreign Policy Tool: Is There A Logic?
Samuel Charap argues that ever since Russia invaded Crimea in 2014, the Russian military has increasingly intervened in other countries as well. This new behavior from Russia has raised concerns about “a new Russian militarism” and the implications it carries. Charap notes that all cases of Russian force since 2014 have been used to achieve policy goals for Moscow (Charap 1). Due to the intent of coercing the target countries via threats and military action, it is understood that Russia’s goals can be seen as acts of compellence. Charap cites a passage from Arms and Influence b y Thomas Schelling stating that “compellence entails inducing his withdrawal, acquiescence or his collaboration by an action that threatens to hurt, often one that could not forcibly accomplish its aim but that, nevertheless, can hurt enough to induce compliance” to define compellence in the scope of this article. An example of this is the 2014 invasion of Ukraine by Russia in which Russian forces devastated but did not defeat Ukrainian ones. This is believed to be part of Russia’s efforts to block Ukraine from Western integration (Charap 3). When intervening in Syria, Moscow attempted nonviolent coercion at first but was forced to use the military to eventually get what they wanted. This can be seen as a warning sign for potential future uses of force.
When analyzing the driving factors behind Moscow’s compellent military operations, Charap makes some key observations. It is noted that Russia only intervenes in high stakes situations, as it cannot risk worst-case scenario outcomes. Furthermore, Moscow’s objectives have aimed to either prevent or reverse geopolitical losses. Making gains geopolitically does not seem to be a driving factor for Moscow (Charap 3). It is also understood that Moscow has used just enough force to complete their goals, as cited by Schelling: coercive warfare can be conducted by degree, in measured doses, in a way that purely military engagements—‘battlefield engagements’—tend not to be”. Charap concludes that a troubling new pattern is emerging in Russia’s behavior, and the answer to this may be preventative diplomacy.
Theory
Given the empirical data over driving forces behind military coercion, this paper theorizes that militarized coercion positively has an impact on the cooperation of a target country. Furthermore, it is theorized that countries that have been sanctioned are more likely to face militarized coercion than those that aren’t. Specific examples, such as the relations between the US and the Middle East can be used to demonstrate this theory. The article by Mueller et al. details some of the challenges the US faces with Iraq, and the varying definitions of what “success” is. Yet the paper emphasizes the necessity of ground operations in the Middle East, which can lend credence to our theory that militarized coercion impacts cooperation. Conversely, Russia’s recent trend of militarized compellence in Charap’s article shows that they aren’t afraid to change norms as long as they calculate and methodologically plan their moves. Due to such variance between the US and Russia in terms of regime type, we introduce two separate hypotheses to test for:
Hypothesis 1: Militarized compellent threats from major powers are more successful, on average, than threats from minor states.
Hypothesis 2: Militarized compellent threats from democracies much more successful, on average, than threats from nondemocratic states.
Variables
In order to test these hypotheses, a target country that agrees to comply with military coercion will be considered the independent variable WILLINGNESS. The dependent variable is the effectiveness of militarized coercion, labeled EFFECTIVENESS. In this context, “effectiveness” is defined as a positive and lasting coercive impact on the target country. To account for confounding factors, three controls are used to ensure an accurate analysis is done. Due to empirical data suggesting that democracies are the most frequent challengers, we control for the regime type of the challenger (Sescher 2011, 388). The control variable DEMOCRACY a dichotomous variable indicating if the coercer is a democratic country or not. In order to account for the power of the challenger, the variable POWER is formed. It is also a dichotomous variable, indicating whether the challenging country is a major or minor power. The last control is nuclear capabilities as we want to make sure they don’t influence the outcome too much. Thus the control variable NUCLEAR CAPABILITIES indicates whether or not a country possesses nuclear weapons. The MCT dataset from Sescher (2011) as well as empirical findings from Peterson and Drury (2011) are used to extrapolate the necessary data to operationalize these variables.
Evaluation
When evaluating the hypotheses, focus was put more on qualitative data over quantitative
data. While quantitative data is necessary to measure and analyze data at the macro level, historical evidence supporting the main question is equally as useful in cases of militarized conflicts. Table 3 from Sescher (2011) indicates that the majority of challengers are democratic, comprising 36.2% of all challengers. In Table 1, Sescher (2011) we see that the most common challengers in the dataset are Japan, the Soviet Union, The United Kingdom, The United States, France, Turkey, Germany, Iraq, South America, and Italy. A good amount of these challengers are not in fact democratic. However, 8 of these 10 states are considered major powers. In Table 3, Sescher (2011) the results indicate that 55.4% of all challengers are major powers in the data set. In controlling for nuclear capabilities, we reference Table 3 from Sechser and Fuhrmann (2013). The table indicates that out of 100 compellent threats from nuclear challengers, only 10 succeeded. This along with the findings of the article, emphasizes the relative unimportance of nuclear capabilities when it comes to compellent threats.
With the data from Charap’s article indicating that Russia has begun using militarized compellent threats and succeeding, Hypothesis 1 is backed more by historical and quantitative evidence than Hypothesis 2. While it is true the majority of militarized compellent threats are issued from Democratic countries, this does not mean that the majority of these threats are actually successful. Mueller et al. note that the US, a democratic nation, has been struggling to maintain its militarized superiority in the Middle East due to intercountry conflicts and alliances out of America’s control. Mueller et al note that “once-minor powers such as Qatar and the UAE have emerged as consequential and increasingly independent military players [..] these actors are so contradictory that even shared threats like ISIL, which challenge the states and nonstate groups of the Levant, Israel, and the Gulf alike, are not sufficient to galvanize unified responses.” However Russia, a major authoritarian power, has seen increasing success in its militarized threats in the recent years. This suggests that major powers, regardless of their regime type, can achieve more success even if they intervene less than strictly democratic powers. However, sanctions from democratic powers bear more weight in initiating third party militarized conflict than simply being a major power Peterson and Drury (596). This can be due to the fact that democracies bear more credibility than other powers. Therefore, it can be concluded that Hypothesis 1 holds up, while Hypothesis 2 does not.
Discussion
When comparing both qualitative and quantitative data, it is safe to say that Hypothesis 1 holds up more than Hypothesis 2. This is probably due to the fact that rational actors assume Democratic states wouldn’t actually follow through with militarized compellent threats. Due to the high costs of deploying troops, most democracies would think twice before coming up with a more viable solution, such as sanctions. Yet sanctions only enable others to militarily attack a target, as indicated by Peterson and Drury. This can mean that Democratic states have better rates of economic coercion than military coercion. Major states such as Russia do not face issues such as audience costs, which may allow them to act more than democrats do.
Limitations
When researching militarized compellent threats, a major limitation can be the transparency of country data. While we have more than enough data to reach and quantify conclusions, there is no doubt that some militarized coercion attempts may have never been reported or documented. This can lead to holes in the data, although I do not believe they would be significant enough to alter any conclusions. Furthermore, defining “success” seems impossible in this field, as the definition of success varies so wildly amongst researchers. Having more clearly defined concepts, as well having as a centralized source to compile data would greatly improve the accuracy of research.
Works Cited
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Mueller, Karl et al. “U.S. Strategic Interests in the Middle East and Implications for the Army.” Rand Corporation, no. PE-265A, ser. 2017, 2017. 2017.
Peterson, Timothy M., and A. Cooper Drury “Sanctioning Violence.” Journal of Conflict Resolution, vol. 55, no. 4, 2011, pp. 580–605., doi:10.1177/0022002710393915.
Sechser, Todd S. “Militarized Compellent Threats, 1918–2001.” Conflict Management and Peace Science, vol. 28, no. 4, 2011, pp. 377–401., doi:10.1177/0738894211413066.
Sechser, Todd S., and Matthew Fuhrmann. “Crisis Bargaining and Nuclear Blackmail.” International Organization, vol. 67, no. 1, 2013, pp. 173–195., doi:10.1017/s0020818312000392.