GIARI “Political Integration and Identity” Seminar••••••••

Title: “Coercive Diplomacy in the Asia Pacific”
講師: Patrick Bratton (Hawai`i Pacific University 大学 助教授）
日時: 6 月 9 日(水) 14:45-16:15
場所: 19 号館 711 号
Language: English (No-translation)
Admission Free, No-preregistration
司会: 植木（川勝）千加子, Professor, Waseda University
Organized by GIARI : Global Institute for Asian Regional Integration(Waseda
University Global COE Program)Presentation: “Coercive Diplomacy in the Asia Pacific”
Coercion seems straightforward in a theory because a target is supposed to give in if thethreat of non-compliance outweighs the costs of compliance. However, the reality ismuch more complicated than the theory. There are three overlooked factors that inhibit
effectiveness of coercion: coding problems, non-unitary rational actors, and short-terms
success. There are also factors that facilitate success of coercion, but most factors arecontextual. Therefore, coercion is very difficult in practice.
There are different forms of coercion: deterrence and compellence. While deterrence is athreat to induce inaction, compellence is a threat to induce action. There is also a
difference between coercion and brute force. The former leaves a target a choice forsettlement, but the latter no choice. In brute force an actor takes what it wants byviolence.
Coercive diplomacy can be implemented by a variety of tools. Generally speaking, at thebottom end of the spectrum are diplomatic sanctions: canceling state visits, cultural or
educational exchange programs, revising diplomatic positions on sensitive issues. Next
up the ladder are economic sanctions which can be limited to certain types of products,
can be unilateral or the coercer can use allies or international organizations to apply
multilateral sanctions. Lastly is military force. However, military force can be used incoercive diplomacy without the actual use of violence.
Coercion depends on two factors: credibility (whether the target believes that the coercer
will execute its threats) and persuasiveness (whether the threats will have a great impact
on the target). Threats are not automatically both credible and persuasive; they can also
be one but not the other. In fact, the two are often inversely related; threats that arecredible are not often persuasive, and those that are persuasive are not very credible. For
example, in the context of a trade dispute a threat of nuclear attack would be very
persuasive but not very credible.

The key to build up credibility and persuasiveness is for the coercer to send clear signalsthat convey both the demands that the target has to do and the threats of punishment ofwhat will happen if the target does not comply. These signals can be both verbal andnon-verbal, in particular non-verbal signals like the implementation of economic
sanctions, or the deployment of military forces, are seen as costly signals.
One of the great puzzles facing an analyst of coercion is that while coercion seems
straightforward in theory, it is very difficult in practice. Three factors inhibit
effectiveness of coercion: coding problems, non-unitary rational actors, and short-term
nature of success.
First, there is a problem with accurately coding successes and failures. It is extremely
difficult to judge whether coercion succeeded or failed when the target gives in to only
some parts, but not all of the coercer’s demands. Second, it is misleading to code casesof coercion in only “success” and “failure” as the only possible outcomes. Third, the data
set of cases may be actually fundamentally flawed. Perhaps we believe coercion isdifficult because we only look at cases where it has failed. Many scholars have suggested
that by privileging cases where the sanctions have actually been used draws us to thehardest cases, where they are least likely to work.
Second, coercion writers have for the most part assumed that states involved in coercion
are unitary, rational actors. It has been subsequently pointed out that the rational actor
model forgets that the coercer and the target of the coercion are actually governments
rather than individuals: Governments are coalitions of numerous individual decisionmakers, virtually all of whom occupy positions within large, semiautonomous,
bureaucratic organizations; any government involved in an attempt at coercion is likely to
speak with many voices at once. These individuals within a target government react
differently to coercive measures. This suggests that even if a coercer succeeded ingetting demands accepted in the short term, it would be very difficult to secure complete
acquiescence in the long term, because certain members of the target's government wouldattempt to reinstate their objectionable policies, since their political careers (and in someregimes, their lives) depend on it. Likewise, a coercer is not a unitary, rational actor, andtherefore it has difficulties in sending clear and coherent messages and orchestrating them.
Third, coercion tends to be short-lived. If vital interests are not on the part of the target,
coercion is highly likely to fail in the long run. Therefore, a coercer needs to anchor
coercive diplomacy to make settlement with the target for long-term success. It must be
remembered that coercion is not a substitute for an effective foreign policy. A
comprehensive study has been made of American political uses of military forces,
including coercive threats and deployments in support of allies, between 1946 and 1975.
It found that most of the time these actions served only to buy time and that theeffectiveness declined sharply over time. It should be recognized that coercive militaryoperations cannot substitute for more fundamental policies and actions—diplomacy,close economic and cultural relations, an affinity of mutual interests and perceptions—which can form the basis either for sound and successful alliances or for stable adversary
relations. If coercion can produce only a breathing space, the coercer needs to consider

using that time to reduce the motivation underlying that aggressive intention, and/or toprovide alternative goals that may be relatively satisfactory to the deterred power.
Due to these reasons, coercive diplomacy failed in many cases. For coercive diplomacy
in the Cold War the US by most academic accounts had only one case of success: theCuban Missile Crisis. This was facilitated by several important factors that tended tomake coercion more likely and to make its success last longer.
First, the most important and obvious one is that the goals of the coercer and the target
need to be non-exclusive. The coercer cannot make demands that are completely
antithetical to the primary interests of the target. If the coercer does, any success purely
through the use of threats is likely to fail, and even if they are successful they are boundto be short lived.
Second, both parties need willingness to settle for a sub-optimal compromise. This needfor a compromise between the two is often overlooked in conventional understandings ofcoercion. It must be remembered that the coercer is attempting to get what it wants
without having to endure the costs of a full-scale war, so it cannot reasonably expect toget all the benefits of war: for example, taking all that it wants by force. So by definition
success through coercion depends upon compromise.
Third, the compromise needs to address in some fashion the interests that caused thebehavior. It is important to consider that the target had reasons for doing what made thecoercer angry in the first place. Therefore unless those reasons are addressed, at least insome way, then after the immediate threat is gone those actions will likely start again. It
is unlikely the coercer can simply maintain its success unless it is comfortable paying
high enforcement costs repeatedly in the years that follow.
Fourth, monitoring and enforcement of the agreement is another important factor forsuccess of coercion. Once a settlement is reached between the coercer and the target, thequestion is whether the target will abide by the settlement or not. While the reachedagreement ideally should prevent this from happening, having a method of monitoringand enforcing the settlement without resorting to coercion or war again is useful. An
effective monitoring and enforcing regime must be both within the coercer’s power andalso built into the settlement.
It is noted that most of these factors that facilitate success are contextual, they are set
before the coercive contest begins and are unchangeable; commitment and credibility are
hard to build during crisis; their goals and interests should be nonexclusive, but these are
set before the crisis start; monitoring and enforcement regimes are facilitated bygeography and military/intelligence capabilities, which are unchangeable with limited
time. In other words, there are significant limitations in what policymakers can do to
make coercion successful. As a result, coercion turns out to be very difficult to work inreality.