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The Politics of Coercion

Toward a Theory of Coercive Airpower

for Post–Cold War Conflict

Hinman

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COLLEGE OF AEROSPACE DOCTRINE,

RESEARCH AND EDUCATION

AIR UNIVERSITY

The Politics of Coercion

Toward a Theory of Coercive Airpower

for Post–Cold War Conflict

ELLWOOD P. “SKIP” HINMAN IV

Lieutenant Colonel, USAF

CADRE Paper No. 14

Air University Press

Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama 36112-6615

August 2002
Disclaimer

Opinions, conclusions, and recommendations expressed or implied within are solely those of

the author and do not necessarily represent the views of Air University, the United States Air

Force, the Department of Defense, or any other US government agency. Cleared for public

release: distribution unlimited.

ii

Air University Library Cataloging Data

Hinman, Ellwood P., 1966–

The politics of coercion : toward a theory of coercive airpower for post–cold war

conflict / Ellwood P. “Skip” Hinman IV.

p. cm. – (CADRE paper, ISSN 1537-3371 ; 14).

Includes bibliographical references.

Contents: Introduction – Coercion theory and the post–cold war era – A new theory for

a new era – The coercion hybrid and post–cold war conflict – Politics, doctrine, and

the future of American airpower.

ISBN 1-58566-109-0

1. Air power—United States—Political aspects. 2. Strategy. 3. Limited war. I.

Title. II. Series.

358.424—dc21

This CADRE Paper and others in the series are available electronically at the AU Press Web site http://aupress.maxwell.af.mil

and the Air University Research Web site http://research.maxwell.

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iii
Contents

Chapter Page

DISCLAIMER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ii

FOREWORD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii

ABOUT THE AUTHOR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix

1 INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

What Is a Theory of Coercive Airpower? . . . . . 2

The Attributes of Post–Cold War Conflict . . . . 4

Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

2 COERCION THEORY AND THE POST–COLD

WAR ERA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Punishment-Based Coercion: A Theory

for Total War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Risk-Based Coercion: A Theory for

Limited War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

Decapitation-Based Coercion: Echoes

of the Past . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

Denial-Based Coercion: Too Much of

a Good Thing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

3 A NEW THEORY FOR A NEW ERA . . . . . . . . . . 31

Phase One . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

Phase Two . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

Phase Three . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

Limited, Nonprotracted War and the

Coercion Hybrid . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

The Coercion Hybrid and the Politically

Restrained Nature of Post–Cold War

Conflict . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

The Coercion Hybrid and the Better State

of Peace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

The Escalatory Nature of the Coercion

Hybrid . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42

Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44

v
Chapter Page 

4 THE COERCION HYBRID AND POST–COLD

WAR CONFLICT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

Operation Desert Storm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

Operation Deliberate Force . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

Operation Allied Force . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50

Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54

Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54

5 POLITICS, DOCTRINE, AND THE FUTURE

OF AMERICAN AIRPOWER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

Recommendations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61

Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62

BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65

Illustration

Figure

1 The Coercion Hybrid . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

Table

1 Objectives of Allied Force . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51

vi
Foreword

In The Politics of Coercion: Toward a Theory of Coercive Airpower for Post–Cold War Conflict, Lt Col Ellwood P. “Skip” Hinman IV confronts an issue of high interest to airmen and policy

makers alike: What does coercion theory suggest about the use

of airpower in the early twenty-first century? More specifically,

Colonel Hinman seeks to determine whether any of the existing theories of coercion can stand alone as a coherent, substantive, and codified approach to airpower employment. Framing

his analysis on three key attributes of conflict in the post–Cold

War era—limited, nonprotracted war; political re-straint; and

the importance of a better state of peace—Hinman examines

the contemporary applicability of the four major theories of

coercive airpower: punishment, risk, decapitation, and denial.

For reasons explained in the pages that follow, Hinman

finds limitations in each of the prevailing theories of coercion.

In proposing a new construct that more adequately meets the

needs of post–Cold War conflict, the author recommends a

three-phase “hybrid approach” to coercion that draws on the

strengths and minimizes the weaknesses of existing theory.

Arguing that aspects of this hybrid approach were evident in

the employment of airpower in Operations Desert Storm, Deliberate Force, and Allied Force, Hinman contends that his hybrid theory of coercion is uniquely well suited for the unsettled

geopolitical landscape of the post–Cold War era.

The Politics of Coercion: Toward a Theory of Coercive Airpower

for Post–Cold War Conflict originally was written as a master’s

thesis for Air University’s School of Advanced Airpower Studies.

The College of Aerospace Doctrine, Research and Education is

pleased to publish this study as a CADRE Paper and thereby

make it available to a wider audience within the US Air Force and

beyond.

vii

JAMES R. W. TITUS

Dean of Research

Air University
About the Author

Lt Col Skip Hinman is chief of Seventh Air Force Strategy,

Osan Air Base, Republic of Korea. A graduate of the School of

Advanced Airpower Studies at Maxwell Air Force Base,

Alabama, he is a senior Air Force pilot with 2,600 flying hours

in the F-117, A-10, T-38, and T-37 aircraft. He has flown F-117s

and A-10s in numerous contingency operations, including

Desert Storm, Provide Comfort, and Southern Watch. During

Operation Allied Force, Colonel Hinman flew several combat

missions in the F-117. As mission commander, he planned

and led strike packages of up to 25 aircraft deep into the

most heavily defended target areas in Serbia. His decorations

include the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Meritorious Service

Medal with one oak-leaf cluster, the Air Medal, the Aerial

Achievement Medal with three oak-leaf clusters, and the Air

Force Commendation Medal. He has published articles in

Strategic Review, Airpower History, Aerospace Power Journal,

and various other periodicals. Colonel Hinman and his wife,

Jennifer, have three sons—Parker, Hunter, and Chase.

ix
Chapter 1

Introduction

We must continue to seek new, revolutionary, and imaginative ways to employ air and space power and continue to

provide the United States with even more capability to pursue national and military objectives with reduced risk and

cost in casualties, resources, and commitment.

—Air Force Doctrine Document (AFDD) 1,

—Air Force Basic Doctrine, September 1997

Since the two world wars, the United States has witnessed a

very clear shift from the total wars of the first half of the twentieth century to the limited wars that followed. The final decade

of the last century experienced a similar move from familiar

Cold War conflicts to the very different conflicts of the post–Cold

War era. But no such shift has occurred in American airpower

theory and doctrine. A Cold War mind-set, rooted in assumptions about total war dating from the pre–World War II period,

still controls current theoretical and doctrinal thought regarding airpower. The US airpower community must remain prepared to fight conflicts that approach total war and cannot

wholly discount the possibility of nuclear war. Regrettably,

though, the traditional preoccupation with such wars has left

airmen doctrinally ill prepared for the limited post–Cold War

conflicts that likely await America in the twenty-first century.

In light of this problem, this paper explores the following

question: What does coercion theory suggest about the use of

airpower in post–Cold War conflict? It seeks to determine

whether any of the existing theories of coercion can stand

alone as adequately coherent, substantive, and codified approaches. If analysis reveals that existing constructs fail the

test, the study investigates the potential content and applicability of a new theory for post–Cold War coercive airpower.

The paper includes five chapters. After presenting a basic

discussion of theory, coercion, and airpower, the current

chapter develops attributes of post–Cold War conflict. Chapter

2 uses these characteristics to analyze the compatibility of ex1
isting models of coercive airpower. Chapter 3 develops an airpower theory better suited to the limited conflicts of the

post–Cold War era. Chapter 4 tests that theory’s applicability

in three post–Cold War conflicts involving the United States:

Operations Desert Storm, Deliberate Force, and Allied Force.

The final chapter explores the implications and considerations

related to the findings embodied elsewhere in the paper.

What Is a Theory of Coercive Airpower?

Prior to embarking on such a task, one should discuss several definitions and assumptions. At the outset, this section

clarifies what is meant by a theory of coercive airpower by separately analyzing theory, coercion, and airpower.

A Theory of Coercive Airpower

This paper seeks to arrive at a theory of coercive airpower for

the post–Cold War era. In Military Strategy: A General Theory of

Power Control, J. C. Wylie defines theory as “an idea, a scheme,

a pattern of relationships designed to account for events that

have already happened with the expectation that this pattern

will allow us to predict or foresee what will come to pass when

comparable events take place in the future.”1 Theory, then, is

informed by past experience with the goal of accurately guiding

future experience. However, Carl von Clausewitz’s caution

about the limitations of theory is especially pertinent: “Theory

exists so that one need not start afresh each time sorting out

the material and plowing through it, but will find it ready to

hand and in good order. It is meant to educate the mind of the

future commander, or, more accurately, to guide him in his

self-education, not to accompany him to the battlefield; just as a

wise teacher guides and stimulates a young man’s intellectual

development, but is careful not to lead him by the hand for the

rest of his life” (emphasis added).2

A Theory of Coercive Airpower

This paper assumes that one uses airpower to change an

adversary’s behavior—in line with Clausewitz’s dictum that

2

CADRE PAPER
war is fundamentally “an act of force to compel our enemy to

do our will.”3 Additionally, one should note the distinction between coercion and pure destruction or brute force. Whereas

the latter aims to completely destroy the enemy’s capability to

resist, coercion seeks to persuade him before the destruction

is complete. The two concepts, however, are not mutually exclusive. A nation can in fact coerce in a manner that closely

resembles brute force, so long as the goal is to change the adversary’s behavior rather than simply destroy him.

One should also note that this paper discusses coercion in

war—not the concept of coercive diplomacy, which entails “use

of a threat of punishment and/or limited force short of full-scale

military operations”; here, coercion refers to the application of

threatened force in the context of actual war.4 At its core, coercive diplomacy is political, while coercion is fundamentally military in nature. Similarly, this study emphasizes fighting wars,

not deterring them. In Arms and Influence, Thomas C. Schelling

divides coercion into the two separate concepts of deterrence and

compellence.5 Although his term compellence closely approximates the meaning of coercion as used in this paper, much of his

theory deals with the deterrent element of coercion. As Schelling

postulates, a good part of coercion does indeed involve avoiding

war. The theory of coercion addressed here, however, aims to assist the war fighter if deterrence fails.

A Theory of Coercive Airpower

One must explore three aspects of the term airpower as it

appears in this theory. First, as RAND analyst Benjamin Lambeth appropriately attests in The Transformation of American

Air Power, “Air power, properly understood, knows no color of

uniform.”6 As such, the concept of airpower presented in this

paper connotes the vital contributions made by all services to

the joint air effort.

Second, this study considers only airpower that operates

separately from America’s surface forces—not the combinedarms operations, important though they may be, that feature

airpower in close coordination with land and maritime components. The three post–Cold War conflicts discussed here—Desert

Storm, Deliberate Force, and Allied Force—featured varying

3

HINMAN
degrees of surface action consonant with air operations. The

Gulf War, for example, involved over 500,000 US and coalition

ground troops. Airpower, however, did operate independently

for 39 days before the ground war began. During Deliberate

Force, the US military had minimal surface forces in-theater,

but a fairly sizable number from other countries participated

on the ground. In Allied Force, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) did not employ ground forces, but the Kosovo

Liberation Army did have some “friendly” troops in action. In a

future war, then, the United States may use ground forces in

conjunction with the air war, subsequent to it, or not at all. The

theory espoused herein, although applicable to each scenario,

does not address airpower in direct support of such surface

action.

Third, Col Phillip S. Meilinger, USAF, retired, proposes that

“in essence, airpower is targeting; targeting is intelligence; and

intelligence is analyzing the effects of air operations.”7 On the

practical level, it is fair, as he suggests, to reduce airpower to

targets and their effects, with intelligence as the intervening

variable: “Indeed, a skeptic could argue that a history of air

strategy is a history of the search for the single, perfect target.”8 Recently, however, theorists have rightly begun to look

beyond this traditional target-centered view to a more conceptual plane where one achieves political aims and desired effects without simply killing people and breaking things. Although their cause is noble and worthy of further exploration,

for the most part it remains beyond the scope of this paper. Instead, in the text that follows, one achieves political objectives

and military effects quite simply by attacking targets on the

ground with weapons from the air. As will become evident,

though, the same considerations about the political realities of

modern war that drive these recent theoretical musings are

prevalent throughout this study and weigh heavily upon the

new theory for post–Cold War conflict.

The Attributes of Post–Cold War Conflict

Clausewitz observed that in the history of war, “every age

had its own kind of war, its own limiting conditions, and its

4

CADRE PAPER
own peculiar preconceptions.”9 Accordingly, the end of the Cold

War marked the coming of a new age. Three important attributes

characterize conflict in this post–Cold War era: (1) limited, nonprotracted war; (2) political restraint; and (3) the importance of

the better state of peace.

Bearing no resemblance to either total or nuclear war, America’s conflicts in the last decade of the twentieth century were decidedly limited in both their aim and scope as well as conventional in nature. Additionally, they have been brief—measured in

days and weeks rather than months and years.10 Desert Storm,

for example, was a 43-day war. Deliberate Force lasted only 16

days, including a five-day bombing pause. The air war over Serbia—the longest US war since the end of the Cold War—continued for only 78 days. None of this is intended to suggest that the

next war will be a short one. It does suggest, however, that an

airpower theory for the post–Cold War era must not rest on an

inappropriate assumption of protracted war.

These wars of the post–Cold War era have also featured differing but prevalent levels of political restraint on military operations. As Jack Snyder explains, unrestrained operations are

“least likely . . . in the case of limited or defensive wars, where

the whole point of fighting is to negotiate a diplomatic solution.”11

Although political constraints have occurred in all of America’s

limited wars, they were part and parcel of such conflicts in the

last decade of the twentieth century. In a RAND report prepared

for the US Air Force, Stephen T. Hosmer concludes that the trend

will continue: “U.S. concern to minimize civilian casualties and

other collateral damage has increased over time and will probably constrain severely both the methods and targets of air attacks in future conflicts.”12 In sum, post–Cold War conflict, has

been—and arguably will continue to be—limited, nonprotracted

war that, by its very nature, is politically restrained.

Last, the limited nature of post–Cold War conflict points to the

salience of the better state of peace. A clear vision of the desired

end state is important in all wars but crucial to post–Cold War

conflict. B. H. Liddell Hart established its significance in any war:

“The object in war is a better state of peace—even if only from

your own point of view. Hence it is essential to conduct war with

constant regard to the peace you desire.”13 In total wars that end

5

HINMAN
with brute-force victory and unconditional surrender, such as

the world wars of Liddell Hart’s time, the victors can impose

whatever peace they desire. However, the coercing nation in a

limited war has no such option after the fact. Consequently, one

must integrate the better state of peace into the war effort

itself. Michael Howard captured this idea in a Harmon Lecture

at the US Air Force Academy in 1988: “In making war, in short,

it is necessary constantly to be thinking how to make peace. The

two activities can never properly be separated.”14 Later, Howard

narrowed his focus to war in the modern era: “In a more real

sense than ever before, one is making war and peace simultaneously.”15 Having a clear conception of the peace one desires,

then, becomes more difficult and, consequently, more important

in the post–Cold War era than ever before. In summary, this

paper defines post–Cold War conflict as limited, nonprotracted

war that features appreciable levels of political restraint and demands increased emphasis on the better state of peace.

Notes

1. J. C. Wylie, Military Strategy: A General Theory of Power Control, Classics of Sea Power (1967; reprint, Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1989), 96.

2. Carl von Clausewitz, On War, ed. and trans. Michael Howard and Peter

Paret (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1976), 141.

3. Ibid., 75.

4. Peter V. Jakobsen, “The Strategy of Coercive Diplomacy: Refining Existing Theory to Post–Cold War Realities,” in Strategic Coercion: Concepts and

Cases, ed. Lawrence Freedman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 64.

5. Thomas C. Schelling, Arms and Influence (New Haven, Conn.: Yale

University Press, 1966), 70–72.

6. Benjamin S. Lambeth, The Transformation of American Air Power, Cornell

Studies in Security Affairs (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2000), 10.

7. Col Phillip S. Meilinger, “Ten Propositions Regarding Airpower,” Airpower Journal 10, no. 1 (Spring 1996): 58.

8. Ibid., 58–59.

9. Clausewitz, 585.

10. Enforcing the air-exclusion “no-fly” zones that have followed these

conflicts has proven quite a protracted endeavor. Although they are very important military operations that deserve serious consideration, this paper

does not consider them part of the wars that preceded them.

11. Jack Snyder, “Civil Military Relations and the Cult of the Offensive,

1914 and 1984,” International Security 9, no. 1 (Summer 1984): 121.

12. Stephen T. Hosmer, Psychological Effects of U.S. Air Operations in

Four Wars, 1941–1991: Lessons for U.S. Commanders (Santa Monica, Calif.:

RAND, 1996), xx.

6

CADRE PAPER
13. B. H. Liddell Hart, Strategy (New York: Praeger Publishers, Inc.,

1967), 338.

14. Michael Howard, “Strategy and Policy in Twentieth-Century Warfare,” in The Harmon Memorial Lectures in Military History, 1959–1987: A

Collection of the First Thirty Harmon Lectures Given at the United States Air

Force Academy, ed. Harry R. Borowski (Washington, D.C.: Office of Air Force

History, 1988), 354.

15. Ibid., 355.

7

HINMAN
Chapter 2

Coercion Theory and the Post–Cold War Era

There are now better ways of thinking about air power and

its potential as a tool of strategy than by seeking guidance

from the now-antiquarian writings of the early-20th-century

air power classicists.

—Benjamin Lambeth

In general terms, one can group the major existing coercion

theories into four separate categories: punishment, risk, decapitation, and denial. Punishment as a theory of coercive airpower has its roots in the interwar period. Risk-based coercion, which came later, is normally attributed to the writings

of Thomas Schelling. John Warden espouses the more contemporary decapitation theory, and recent denial-based coercion is most often associated with Robert Pape. Although each

approach has value, the utility of any single one as a standalone theory for the conduct of post–Cold War conflict remains

questionable.

Punishment-Based Coercion:

A Theory for Total War

The first substantive theories of coercive airpower surfaced

during the period between the world wars. Two of the most

prevalent interwar theories of coercion were espoused by Italian airpower advocate Giulio Douhet and the American airmen

at the Air Corps Tactical School (ACTS). Both approaches were

based to a large extent on the concept of punishment. One

should note at the outset that these early airpower pioneers

developed their constructs in the aftermath of one total war

and in preparation for the next. As such, they couched both

theories in a clear and unambiguous context of total war; consequently, they have proven largely incompatible with

post–Cold War conflict.

9
Giulio Douhet

In the 1920s, Douhet proposed a theory of airpower (later

published in his The Command of the Air, 1942) that most

closely approximated punishment in its purest form. Such

punishment aims to coerce an adversary to change his behavior by shattering civilian morale with direct attacks on the

enemy’s urban areas and population centers. Dr. Karl Mueller

defines punishment in more general terms as “the use of force

to change the adversary’s policy without affecting its abilities.”1 At the opposing end of the coercion continuum lies the

concept of denial, which attacks the adversary’s capability to

resist, normally by directly targeting his armed forces. While

denial looks to targets of a military nature, punishment-based

coercion almost exclusively attacks civilian sites.

By advocating the targeting of enemy cities with highly destructive bombs, Douhet hoped that a fearful, demoralized

population would either demand capitulation or revolt against

its own obstinate government. He arrived at a total-war approach considered controversial in his own time and obviously

incompatible with the politically restrained nature of limited

war in the modern era. Ironically, if US leaders targeted civilians today in the manner Douhet suggested, they would be far

more likely to spark an uprising in the United States than in

the population under attack. Not surprisingly, Hosmer concludes that “in future conflicts, humanitarian considerations

are likely to prohibit even limited direct attacks on civilian

populations.”2

However, when Mark Conversino boldly asserts that

“Douhet is dead, literally and figuratively,” he is overstating

the point.3 Although much of Douhet’s theory is now passé,

his concept of “command of the air” is very much alive in contemporary airpower theory. Interestingly, command of the air

added an important element of denial to a coercion theory

otherwise dominated by punishment. For Douhet, bombing

enemy airfields was a prerequisite to bombing cities: “I have

always maintained that the essential purpose of an Air Force

is to conquer the command of the air by first wiping out the

enemy’s air forces. This, then, would seem to be always the

first objective of an Independent Air Force.”4 But no semblance

10

CADRE PAPER
of denial existed beyond this air superiority campaign. In fact,

Douhet, who allows only for bombardment, pursuit, and reconnaissance aircraft, labels missions not directly associated

with strategic bombing as “auxiliary aviation,” viewing them as

“worthless, superfluous, harmful.”5 In short, Douhet’s style of

coercion clearly has no place for the denial-based targeting of

fielded forces.

In Douhet’s approach, success clearly depends upon the coercing nation’s capacity to bomb the enemy with massive,

overwhelming, and terrifying force. In his time, though, technology restricted the attainment of that goal. The bomber was

by no means as survivable as he had hoped his “battleplane”

would be. Nor did the destructive capacity of the conventional

bombs of the age meet his expectations. Consequently, his “independent air force” could not pack the punch he thought

necessary for airpower to be decisive. The advent of stealth,

precision-guided munitions, and sophisticated capabilities for

suppressing air defenses, however, has largely removed the

technological limitations. Interestingly, modern technology

also enables airpower to coerce an adversary in politically

palatable ways that Douhet did not envision.

The Air Corps Tactical School

In the 1930s, US airmen at ACTS developed the industrialweb theory—an alternative to Douhet’s approach. Also a

punishment-based coercive strategy, this approach opts to attack the population indirectly by targeting critical nodes of the

adversary’s industrial infrastructure. The goal of this economic

warfare is collapse of the enemy’s economic system and, ultimately, of the civil society as a whole. Presumably, such a

strategy would break civilian morale, convincing the adversary’s government to surrender.

Like Douhet’s construct, the industrial-web theory makes

no provision for directly attacking the enemy’s fielded forces.

The ACTS strategy, however, includes a sizable element of denial, based on the assumption that destruction of carefully selected economic targets will significantly decrease the enemy’s

war-making capability and reduce the effectiveness of the

civilian workforce. Consequently, if the industrial-web theory

11

HINMAN
failed to coerce the adversary to surrender, ACTS strategists

postulated that it would at the very least make a contribution

to a brute-force victory. In a lecture at ACTS in 1939, Maj Muir

S. Fairchild lauded both the denial and punishment aspects of

the approach: “This method of attack had the great virtue of

reducing the capacity for war of the hostile nation, and of applying pressure to the population both at the same time and

with equal efficiency and effectiveness.”6 Although less morally

repugnant than Douhet’s approach, the massive bombing of

economic and infrastructure targets in accordance with the

ACTS theory does bring the coercing nation’s morality into

question. Lt Gen Ira Eaker expressed this concern in a letter

to Lt Gen Carl Spaatz in January 1945: “We should never

allow the history of this war to convict us of throwing the

strategic bomber at the man in the street.”7 Douhet advocated

precisely that, and the industrial-web theory as well as the

context of total war eventually led to the same result.

Punishment-Based Coercion and

Post–Cold War Conflict

Punishment as a stand-alone theory of coercive airpower is

largely incompatible with conflicts of the post–Cold War era.

Several assumptions in the years prior to World War II perhaps

were appropriate in their own time but clearly have no application today. First, the theorists who advocated punishmentbased coercion clearly assumed a total war. Second, they believed that the war would not include any prohibitive levels of

political restraint. Third, the total-war requirement for unconditional surrender would allow the victor to dictate the terms

of peace. These assumptions led to a punishment-based coercion theory incompatible with the three attributes of post–Cold

War conflict mentioned in chapter 1: limited, nonprotracted

war; political restraint; and the increased importance of the

better state of peace.

The fundamental precondition for attacking the economic

infrastructure of the enemy nation—total war—clearly does

not exist in the context of limited war. Interwar theorists reasoned that, if the entire nation were at war, all targets were

military targets. Douhet took this logic a step further by posit12

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ing that there were in fact no noncombatants in a total war.8

These assumptions, questionable in their own time, clearly do

not apply to the limited wars of today.

For punishment-based economic warfare to succeed, the war

must be far more protracted than US conflicts since the end of

the Cold War. As Pape points out in Bombing to Win, “Although

bombing economic structures can weaken an opponent’s military capabilities in long wars, the first effects are generally felt by

civilians.”9 The limited conflicts of the post–Cold War era are

clearly not the kind of lengthy wars required for economic exhaustion to take effect. In The Power of Nations, Klaus Knorr furthers Pape’s basic argument: “Notwithstanding the large-scale

practice of economic warfare by economic measures in World

Wars I and II, its utility in the future is uncertain, but in all likelihood, it is slim if not nil. . . . Economic warfare makes sense

only in the event of a protracted war of attrition. Economic warfare is a game of big powers waging prolonged war against big

powers.”10 Consequently, economic warfare patterned after the

industrial-web theory would not initially be appropriate in a

post–Cold War conflict. It may become appropriate, however, if

the conflict experiences fundamental change and becomes more

protracted.

Pape’s observation also highlights the second disconnect between punishment and post–Cold War conflict—its incompatibility with political restraint. Even if a punishment-based targeting strategy has the desired effect, it normally proves more

damaging to civilians than to their military counterparts.

Douhet’s desire to bomb population centers, of course, is

clearly out of the question. Although economic targeting is a

somewhat more subtle approach, its expressed intent—causing the suffering and privation of civilian populations—is also

foreign to the politically restrained nature of post–Cold War

conflict. Although an economic-warfare strategy presumably

does not attack civilians directly, targeting a society’s economic infrastructure may indirectly lead to large numbers of

civilian deaths. For example, coalition air attacks on Iraq’s

electrical power grid during the Gulf War led to contamination

of the water supply and a subsequent cholera outbreak that

killed an estimated 111,000 Iraqi citizens. In fact, one analyst

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at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology contends that

“poor health caused by infrastructure damage killed thirty

times more civilians than did direct war effects.”11 Conrad

Crane captures the fundamental disconnect between a totalwar punishment theory and the political context of limited

war: “The same destructive power that makes airpower an effective military tool by punishing them [enemies] for transgressions, can also make its use unpalatable to nations suspicious of American power or sensitive to civilian suffering.

The military and political utility of the application of airpower

must always be balanced against its diplomatic repercussions

and the way its results will be perceived by world opinion.”12

Add to this the effects of accidental bombing. Experience

has clearly shown that even the careful bombing of infrastructure targets in proximity to urban areas inevitably results

in civilian casualties and collateral damage. Economic warfare

may become permissible when other coercive tools miss the

mark, but it is highly unlikely that civilian policy makers will

allow the implementation of a punishment strategy at the outbreak of a politically restrained war.

Third, beyond its incompatibility with political restraint,

punishment-based coercion finds itself equally at odds with

the desired postwar environment that frequently accompanies

post–Cold War conflict. Perhaps the most favorable aftermath

of a limited war is minimal destruction of civilian targets

paired with severe degradation of the enemy’s armed forces.

Liddell Hart called for “the least possible permanent injury, for

the enemy of to-day is the customer of the morrow and the ally

of the future.”13 Accordingly, a coercive strategy should limit

the adversary’s capacity to threaten his neighbors in the future yet allow his socioeconomic system to return to a relatively normal state in a fairly expeditious manner.

The weakness of punishment-based coercion is that it fails

on both counts. Put simply, the theory aims to destroy the

enemy’s society in order to save it. Liddell Hart cites “the extremely detrimental effect of industrial bombing on the postwar situation. Beyond the immense scale of devastation, hard

to repair, are the less obvious but probably more lasting social

and moral effects.”14 Furthermore, although punishment

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wrecks the civil infrastructure, it leaves the enemy’s military

strength largely intact. As Mueller observes, “Pure punishment strategies do nothing to help the coercer if coercion

fails.”15 The belligerent’s armed forces can continue to resist

during the current conflict and remain a viable threat in the

future.

Risk-Based Coercion:

A Theory for Limited War

The assumption of total war that preceded World War II persisted in its aftermath. The advent of nuclear weapons and the

coming of the Cold War fitted nicely into this preexisting mindset. In spite of the lessons of the limited war in Korea, total

war, with its new nuclear dimension, remained uppermost in

the minds of most US strategists and policy makers during the

1950s. The Air Force recognized the possibility of limited war

but was reluctant to make any appreciable shift in emphasis.

The 1959 version of Air Force Manual 1-2, United States Air

Force Basic Doctrine, submitted that “the best preparation for

limited war is proper preparation for general war.”16 But the

two are not the same. On the contrary, in a 1957 RAND report,

Robert Johnson postulates a vitally important distinction: “It

seems clear to many operators and students of the problem

that the targeting system and the target selection and priority

criteria which apply to general war may not apply to limited

war.”17 He argues that a “conscientious following of certain

underlying assumptions and certain clear policies as to priority

of mission” stand in the way of the service’s preparedness for

future limited wars. “Honest recognition that this is the case,

however, is required before a reasonable approach to the small

war problem can be made.”18

While the Air Force remained preoccupied with total war,

the academic community began searching for theories of coercion more compatible with the more likely limited conflicts. In

Arms and Influence, Schelling offers a conceptual alternative

to punishment that, at first glance, seems to avoid the pitfalls

of punishment as a stand-alone coercion approach to limited

war. A closer look at Schelling’s risk-based coercion theory,

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however, reveals some of its own shortfalls in the context of

post–Cold War conflict. In fact, the practical experience of

America’s war in Vietnam showed how ugly risk theory could

get when misapplied.

The Good

Schelling proposes coercing an adversary by holding what

the enemy values at risk, not by bombing him in wholesale

fashion. Threatening the massive use of force would presumably obviate the need to actually use it: “Coercion depends

more on the threat of what is yet to come than on damage already done.”19 Punishment uses a significant level of military

force at the outset of hostilities, but risk uses only the minimum force required to instill in the adversary a fear of future

attacks and thus compel him to comply. Consequently, riskbased coercion is more compatible with post–Cold War conflict

because, in an ideal case, the use of only minimal military

force would significantly reduce the chance of civilian casualties, collateral damage, and the loss of public support. If risk

is successful, the targets that most worry the politicians would

not be attacked. Mueller submits that “a risk strategy is simply a gradual, escalating punishment strategy, in which the

coercer seeks to instill great fear of future civilian punishment

without actually having to inflict extensive damage.”20 Accordingly, a successful risk-based approach would favorably shape

the postwar environment by avoiding wanton destruction to

the enemy’s economic infrastructure and population centers.

The Bad

Unfortunately, if risk fails to coerce before the bombing begins, the coercing nation has to make good on its threats,

often choosing to attack the same targets—with the same unfavorable effects—as a punishment strategy. Consequently,

risk in practice can invite the same friction found between

punishment and political restraint. If the coercer determines

that the adversary places the greatest value in his economic

strength, then the vision of the desired end state comes into

question as well. When the adversary chooses to resist this

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threat of military force, the coercing nation following Schelling’s

formula would likely begin punitive bombardment of the

enemy’s civil infrastructure. If initially unsuccessful, the same

concept that at first shielded the society from extensive damage would later invite destruction. To his credit, Schelling correctly assesses that “pain and shock, loss and grief, privation

and horror are always in some degree, sometimes in terrible

degree, among the results of warfare; but in traditional military science they are incidental, they are not the object.”21 By

having the coercing nation threaten such consequences,

Schelling hopes they will not become necessary. Unfortunately,

the real object of that warfare—the better state of peace—will

suffer egregiously if those threats become reality.

Against an enemy that values economic power, Schelling’s

countervalue construct could lead to an unfortunate preoccupation with punishment-based targets. In this case, risk as a

stand-alone coercive strategy wholly misses the wartime opportunity to reduce the enemy’s military capacity to act unfavorably in the future, even if successful as a coercive tool. Additionally, such an approach makes no contribution to a

brute-force victory in the event that risk fails to coerce an obstinate foe. Schelling assesses that “the hurting does no good

directly; it can work only indirectly.”22 On the contrary, the

hurting, if directed at military targets, does plenty of good. It

degrades the adversary’s future capacity to threaten his neighbors and moves the coercing nation one step closer to a bruteforce victory.

One should note, however, that Schelling does allow for the

possibility that an adversary would in fact value his armed forces

rather than his economic strength. In this case, Schelling’s approach aims to coerce the enemy by attacking his military

strength in a more direct fashion. Such a strategy is far more

in line with the politically restrained nature of post–Cold War

conflict than the punishment-centered alternative. It also favorably reduces long-term damage to the adversary’s economic

base. However, Schelling recommends the same risk-based,

gradualist approach against these military target sets. In the

context of nonprotracted conflict, such incremental targeting

of the enemy’s fielded forces will not likely bring about a suf17

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ficiently significant reduction in his future offensive capacity.

Nor will it sufficiently enable a brute-force victory if risk-based

coercion fails.

The Ugly: The Practical Experience

of Vietnam

Most people would argue that Schelling’s construct failed

when put to the test in Southeast Asia. Vietnam, however, represents not so much a failure of the concept as the misapplication of risk-based coercion theory. Although the administration of President Lyndon Johnson hoped to follow Schelling’s

guidelines, gradualism in practice bore little resemblance to

risk on paper. In fact, it may not have been Schelling’s gradual

escalation at all but the president’s pattern of escalation and

de-escalation that led to the failure of the Rolling Thunder

campaign. Schelling’s concept calls for a methodical and continual increase in pressure; Johnson turned that pressure on

only to turn it off again. Whereas risk theory requires the adversary to believe the reality of the threat, one can safely postulate that Johnson’s threat of escalation remained less than

fully credible. As a result, the North Vietnamese believed that

their patience would prevail over any short-lived semblance of

US resolve.

Contrary to Johnson’s failed approach, Schelling’s ideal coercive approach is “one that, once initiated, causes minimal

harm if compliance is forthcoming and great harm if compliance is not forthcoming, is consistent with the time schedule

of feasible compliance, is beyond recall once initiated, and

cannot be stopped by the party that started it but automatically stops upon compliance, with all this fully understood by

the adversary” (emphasis in original).23 Conversely, no credible,

consistent threat of “great harm” existed throughout the

Rolling Thunder campaign, and President Johnson reversed

even the limited action he did allow after each implementation.

Admittedly, these ideal conditions are quite difficult to fulfill in

practice, but the Johnson administration’s effort to apply risk

theory to the war in Vietnam clearly fell well short of the mark.

By way of comparison, President Richard Nixon’s Linebacker

campaign differed markedly. Linebacker also followed an incre18

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mental pattern in line with the concept of risk, but the intensity

continued to increase with little hope of de-escalation. Contrary

to Johnson’s approach, Nixon’s style of gradualism closely

approximated Schelling’s theory. Interestingly, the operation

started with Linebacker I, which attacked military targets and

held North Vietnam’s capital at risk. Linebacker II’s massive attacks on Hanoi, when they came, showed that Nixon’s threat of

escalation was as painful as it was credible. Although US objectives in 1972 were admittedly less ambitious than in 1968, risk

seemed more appropriate when properly applied. Thus, one

should not blame the US failure in Vietnam, as a whole, solely

on the escalatory aspect of risk theory.24

Even with its drawbacks, risk stands as a vast improvement

over the punishment-based coercion theory born in the midst

of total war. In stark contrast, Schelling’s theory is far more

compatible with the politically restrained nature of past and

present limited wars. The baggage of Vietnam, however, left

the potential applicability of risk-based coercion to modern

war largely unexplored.

Decapitation-Based Coercion:

Echoes of the Past

Airpower advocates such as John Warden have traditionally

held risk theory and the related concept of gradual escalation

in deep contempt.25 Consequently, Warden searched the lessons of past wars for a contemporary alternative to Schelling’s

approach. His decapitation-based coercion theory aims to paralyze and incapacitate the enemy by destroying the maximum

number of political leadership, communication, and selected

economic targets in the minimum amount of time. According

to Warden, the relentless shock, surprise, and simultaneity of

the decapitation approach will coerce the enemy leader, who

fears for his life and the legitimacy of his regime, to succumb

to the coercing nation’s demands.26

With this idea, Warden hoped to slay the dragon of Vietnam.

In fact, the name Warden chose for the Desert Storm air campaign parodies Vietnam’s Rolling Thunder campaign, fashioned after Schelling’s construct: “This is what we are going to

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call the plan; it’s going to be Instant Thunder. . . . This is not

your Rolling Thunder. This is real war, and one of the things

we want to emphasize right from the beginning is that this is

not Vietnam! This is doing it right! This is using air power!”27

Ironically, though, Warden’s conceptual antithesis of risk suffers from many of the same shortfalls that plagued his predecessors. In fact, risk is more compatible with the defining attributes of post–Cold War conflict than Warden’s less-dated

approach.

The Better State of Peace

Although decapitation resembles punishment in some respects, Warden’s breed of coercion contains an element of denial. His targeting strategy presumably cuts the leader off from

his fielded forces, disrupting their ability to fight. Additionally,

as with Douhet, Warden staunchly advocates destroying the

enemy’s air forces and air defenses. One should note, however,

that Warden opposes any compromise of airpower’s presumably “strategic” nature by directly targeting the enemy’s surface forces.28 Interestingly, Warden thus couples his unambiguous desire to crush the adversary’s air forces with an

expressed intent to leave his ground army alone.

If one uses Warden’s own logic as a baseline, it is somewhat

surprising that he would arrive at such a bifurcated approach.

For example, he readily accepts the idea that destroying the

enemy’s will to resist is “tenuous because it is difficult to get at

‘will’ without destroying either armed forces or economy. In other

words, the will to resist collapses when the armed forces no

longer can do their job or when the economy no longer can

provide essential military—or civilian—services.”29 Yet, Warden

seems to heed only half of his own advice. Interestingly, his

solution to this dilemma involves targeting the enemy’s elusive

morale by attacking economic and leadership targets exclusively, completely avoiding any direct bombing of his armed

forces. Consequently, although decapitation presumably renders

the enemy’s ground forces largely ineffective during the war, it

fails to degrade their long-term capability to threaten their

neighbors. As with punishment and risk, then, decapitationbased coercion falls short of a better state of peace.

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A glaring weakness in Warden’s theory is that it aims to win

the war at hand without any real consideration for the peace

that follows. Not only does decapitation fail to degrade the

enemy’s future military capability, but also it attempts to

bring the adversary to his knees by covering him in rubble.

Warden’s focal point is the political leadership, but his approach is reminiscent of punishment in the targets he chooses

to attack. In Warden’s version, laying waste to the leadership

apparatus and the economic infrastructure that links the

government to the military presumably leads to capitulation.

Yet, in The Air Campaign: Planning for Combat, Warden himself

recognizes the importance of fighting wars with the ensuing

peace in mind: “The purpose of war ought to be to win the

peace that follows and all planning and operations should be

directly connected with the final objective. Although we pay lip

service to this idea, in policy, military, and academic worlds,

we easily get lost in a Clausewitzian world where defeat of the

enemy military forces becomes an end in itself rather than

merely one of a number of possible means to a higher end.”30

Liddell Hart, who conceptualized and codified the concept of

the better state of peace, quite clearly addresses and arguably

refutes the appropriateness of Warden’s concerns: “A realization of the drawbacks and evils of taking the civil fabric as the

objective does not mean the restoration of ‘battle’ in the old

sense as the objective. The drawbacks of that Clausewitzian

formula were amply shown in World War I. In contrast, World

War II demonstrated the advantages and new potentialities of

indirect, or strategic, action against a military objective” (emphasis added).31 Warden cannot visualize any choice between

his approach and the purely destructive nature of Clausewitz’s

absolute war. With a stroke of his pen, Liddell Hart responds

aptly with a style of coercion that targets the military instead

of its political leadership, economy, and civil society.

An astute scholar of war might argue that Warden borrowed

Liddell Hart’s concept of strategic paralysis for the express purpose of answering the British historian’s call for the better state

of peace. On the contrary, Liddell Hart’s strategic paralysis is far

closer to operational interdiction than to Warden’s “strategic air

campaign.” The crux of Liddell Hart’s indirect approach lies in

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the belief that attacking military targets such as communications facilities and military command and control headquarters

has a paralyzing effect on the armed forces as a whole. He calls

for “the paralysis and moral disintegration of the opposing

forces and of the nations behind” (emphasis added).32 Liddell

Hart indirectly targets the nation and its leadership by directly

targeting the adversary’s armed forces and the military’s command, control, and communications. By contrast, Warden

leaves the military alone and directly attacks the political leadership. His approach takes it home to the government and its civil

infrastructure on the first day of hostilities, causing the same

destruction Liddell Hart hoped to avoid.33

Political Restraint

Liddell Hart’s version of strategic paralysis is also far more

compatible with the politically restrained nature of post–Cold

War conflict than Warden’s “hit-him-in-the-face” approach.34

Warden hopes to attack—and Liddell Hart hopes to avoid—

sensitive targets that politicians view with reluctance. Warden’s targeting philosophy takes the air war downtown, where

collateral damage and civilian casualties are virtually inevitable. In fact, Warden’s insistence on a furious initial attack

that shocks and surprises the adversary—the kingpin of decapitation strategy—finds itself clearly at odds with the political realities of modern war. Liddell Hart, on the other hand,

avoids the immediate destruction of these “grand strategic”

targets and opts to achieve paralysis at the operational level by

attacking far more politically permissible targets of an explicitly military nature.

To be fair to Warden, one must note that he clearly recognizes the possibility that his style of coercion invokes political

restraint: “Political leaders may be loath to attack enemy rear

areas at times. Conceivably, cogent political or strategic reasons may call for avoiding attack on rear areas. It is imperative, however, that the operational commander make clear to

the political authorities that they are directing a militarily illogical course, and that the cost and duration of the war almost certainly will be far higher and longer than it otherwise

might be” (emphasis in original).35 With this passage, though,

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Warden reveals three glaring shortfalls of his coercion theory.

First, he fails to recognize that a different concept—one such

as Liddell Hart’s, which attacks the military in a more direct

fashion—could in fact be a more militarily prudent course.

Second, Warden’s theory is thin on recommendations to the

operational commander in the event that his or her political

leaders choose to disregard such advice. He submits elsewhere that “these disagreements will arise in virtually every

war. The operational commander must make his views known,

but he also must be ready with contingency plans in the event

he is overruled.”36 Unfortunately, he offers few alternatives to

his overtly aggressive approach in spite of the self-professed

likelihood that civilian officials would not permit the application of his politically unpalatable methods.

Third, Warden seems to miss the Clausewitzian dictum that

war has its own grammar but not its own logic.37 If war has no

logic of its own, how can a politically cogent course of action

be “militarily illogical”? This gross disconnect between Warden’s ideal approach and Clausewitz’s real war reveals the critical flaw in decapitation theory—that this unrestrained method

of coercion is incompatible with the politically restrained nature of modern war.

Limited, Nonprotracted War

Not only is decapitation incompatible with political restraint,

but also the theory fails to adequately account for the nonprotracted nature of post–Cold War conflict. Again, Warden’s words

become his own worst enemy. In arguing that “distant interdiction has the capability of producing the most decisive outcomes

affecting the whole theater,” Warden concedes, quite accurately,

that “it also has attached to it the greatest time lags between attack and discernible result at the front” (emphasis in original).38

The very attacks deep into the enemy’s rear that Warden advocates, then, are not likely to have any appreciable impact on a

nonprotracted war. Such interdiction may be appropriate in a

more prolonged conflict but arguably not at the outset of hostilities in a brief confrontation.

Decapitation-based coercion, then, proves largely incompatible with the attributes of post–Cold War conflict. In his

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efforts to counter risk theory, Warden concocts a style of coercion

that suffers from many of the same drawbacks as the theories

of total-war punishment. Like the approach of the interwar

theorists who preceded him, Warden’s style wholly misses the

importance of both political restraint and the better state of

peace. Despite his efforts to the contrary, the disconnect between

coercion theory and the practice of post–Cold War conflict remains intact.

Denial-Based Coercion:

Too Much of a Good Thing

Pape’s denial-based theory fills many of the gaps left by the

other three methods of coercion. In stark contrast to the preceding theories, his style of denial directly targets the enemy’s

military strategy and specifically his fielded forces with the intention of making his defeat inevitable. According to Pape, the

adversary will at some point recognize the futility of a continued struggle and surrender to avoid further destruction: “Denial strategies target the opponent’s military ability to achieve

its territorial or other political objectives, thereby compelling

concessions in order to avoid futile expenditure of further resources. . . . Thus, denial campaigns focus on the target

state’s military strategy.”39

Denial and the Attributes of Post–Cold

War Conflict

With his focus squarely on the adversary’s military capabilities, Pape arrives at a theory of coercion that, though not

without its flaws, is far more compatible with the defining attributes of post–Cold War conflict. Denial differs decidedly

from the other coercive strategies in that it attacks military

targets exclusively. In so doing, it forces the adversary to

change his behavior without the malignant side effects so

prevalent in punishment and decapitation. By offering a viable

concept that avoids the targeting of politically sensitive civilian

sites, denial proves far more compatible with the politically restrained nature of post–Cold War conflict.

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Denial does not, as some critics may contend, reduce the air

arm to the ignoble status of maidservant to the army. Denialbased coercion instead makes airpower maidservant to

policy—as it should be. Denial, however, is unique and in

some cases superior to its distant coercion cousins because it

serves both the positive and negative aims of policy. Simply put,

it achieves political objectives within the confines of political

restraints. Conversely, the other three approaches aim to serve

the positive at the exclusion of the negative—to achieve war

aims with no regard for the politically restrained nature of

limited war.

The targeting philosophy espoused in the other coercion

theories renders long-term effects largely incompatible with

the nonprotracted nature of post–Cold War conflict. Proponents of both punishment and decapitation boast of an important denial element in their theories but often fail to mention the time necessary for this aspect of their approach to

take effect. Pape, however, does not miss the opportunity to

draw attention to this shortfall: “In short wars, attacking economic targets rarely affects battlefield capabilities.”40

Pape’s approach to denial, on the other hand, has a more

immediate effect. A focus on direct military targeting—undiluted by attacks on economic or civil infrastructure—ensures

that the enemy is denied the use of his fielded forces at the

earliest possible time. As such, Pape’s style of denial is far

more in line with the relatively brief US wars fought in the last

decade of the twentieth century.

The most important improvement of denial over the other

coercion theories, though, is its greatly increased compatibility

with Liddell Hart’s concept of the better state of peace. First, it

promises to degrade severely the adversary’s capacity to wage

war in the future. If the war ends quickly, a denial approach

ensures maximum degradation of the enemy’s fielded forces.

The other approaches, with their emphases elsewhere, allow

the adversary to escape with his military capability largely intact. Second, denial avoids unnecessary destruction of the

enemy nation’s social and economic infrastructure: “Unlike

countercivilian strategies, denial strategies make no special effort to cause suffering to the opponent’s society, only to deny

25

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the opponent hope of achieving the disputed territorial objectives.”41

Third, in the event that coercion fails, Pape’s model has the

added benefit of bringing the coercing nation closer to a bruteforce victory. Pape asserts that “coercion by punishment rarely

works. When coercion does work, it is by denial. Denial does not

always work, either, of course, and sometimes states have no

choice but to inflict a decisive defeat.”42 And, if required, denial

can take a large first step in that direction. Mueller cites this

added benefit of Pape’s coercive approach: “Denial offers an additional advantage over punishment, in that it fails gracefully if

it does not work. The actions a coercer takes to convince the

enemy that defeat is inevitable are basically the same as those

required to make defeat actually occur; that is prosecuting a denial strategy looks very much like pursuing a pure force victory.

If it fails, the effort will not have been wasted.”43 Contrary to

Schelling’s belief, denial and its emphasis on military targets are

by no means the same as brute force. Because the latter aims

simply to destroy the adversary, it is in essence the antithesis of

coercion. Denial, on the other hand, focuses squarely on coercion and arguably has even more coercive potential than the

other theories. Because denial resembles brute force in the targets it attacks, however, it adds a brute-force fallback not available in the other three approaches.

The Shortfalls of Pape’s Theory

of Coercion

Like the other theories, however, Pape’s denial-based coercion has its own flaws—for example, the focus on denying the

enemy his strategy. This idea carries an intuitive and oftenunsubstantiated assumption that the enemy actually has a

cogent, well-conceived strategy and that the coercing nation

can unequivocally determine what it is. One should note that

the United States itself has entered conflicts without clear, coherent plans for the conduct of combat operations. It would

simply be quite difficult to assign a strategy to a belligerent

who has yet to choose one himself. Even when the adversary

has a specific plan, Pape assumes that the coercing nation always has the capacity first to decipher that strategy and then

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to attack it. Both are bold assumptions. Getting it wrong could

lead to a fruitless or, even worse, a largely counterproductive

effort.

Second, for Pape, the coercive aspects of denial focus on the

enemy’s fielded forces—not on his air forces. Pape views air

superiority as a prerequisite to—but separate from—the prosecution of denial-based coercion: “Air superiority is not a separate

coercive air strategy but a necessary step in the pursuit of all

four coercive strategies. The central question in air strategy is

what to attack once air superiority has been achieved.”44 On

the contrary, one should view the destruction of the enemy’s

air forces and air defenses as an integral part of the denial effort itself.45 A well-conceived denial strategy should not solely

target ground forces, as Pape prescribes, but should attack all

military forces. Mueller agrees with this assertion: “Air superiority, which Pape regards merely as a precondition for aerial

coercion, can be coercive in its own right if the enemy’s strategy

hinges on control of the air.”46

The third and most significant drawback to Pape’s theory,

however, is his failure to consider the other coercive tools as

complements to denial. In Bombing to Win, he grossly overstates denial’s case by unequivocally negating the coercive potential of punishment, risk, and decapitation. Pape carelessly

tosses the other ideas aside when he asserts, “First, punishment does not work; . . . second, risk does not work; . . . third,

decapitation does not work.”47 In so doing, Pape puts all his

coercion eggs in one denial basket, leaving no room for the

other coercion strategies. Short of a decisive military victory,

he offers practitioners of war no alternative if his “one-sizefits-all” approach fails to coerce a particularly obstinate adversary or proves unresponsive to the context of a particular

conflict. According to Mueller, “statesmen and officers who

find themselves advocating coercive strategies over very high

stakes without being able to deny the enemy the prospect of

victory through resistance should seriously reconsider their

policies. It is less obvious, however, that they should embrace

denial alone as the only effective use of coercive air power.”48

Pape’s greatest strength—his emphasis on denial—becomes

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his greatest weakness when he wholly discounts the viability

of the other coercive methods.

Unlike the approaches that preceded it, then, denial-based coercion theory is quite compatible with the three specific attributes of conflict in the post–Cold War era. Because of the weaknesses in Pape’s approach, though, his theory of coercion cannot

stand alone as a sufficiently coherent and substantive approach

to modern war. In fact, the limitations of all four constructs—

punishment, risk, decapitation, and denial—point to the need for

an approach designed to meet the specific needs of post–Cold

War conflict more adequately. Fortunately, though, much in

these existing theories informs the content of a new theory of coercive airpower for the post–Cold War era.

Notes

1. Karl Mueller, “Coercion and Air Power: A Primer for the Military Strategist,” lecture, Royal Netherlands Air Force Airpower Colloquium 2000,

Netherlands Defence College, Rijswijk, Holland, 6 June 2000, 4.

2. Stephen T. Hosmer, Psychological Effects of U.S. Air Operations in Four

Wars, 1941–1991: Lessons for U.S. Commanders (Santa Monica, Calif.:

RAND, 1996), xxii–xxiii.

3. Lt Col Mark J. Conversino, “The Changed Nature of Strategic Air Attack,” Parameters, Winter 1997–1998, 31.

4. Giulio Douhet, The Command of the Air, trans. Dino Ferrari (1942;

reprint, Washington, D.C.: Office of Air Force History, 1983), 50–51.

5. Ibid., 100.

6. Maj Muir S. Fairchild, “National Economic Structure,” lecture AF-9

and 10-C, ACTS, Maxwell Field, Ala., 5 April 1939, Air Force Historical Research Agency (AFHRA), file no. 248.2021A-7.

7. Lt Gen Ira C. Eaker, commanding general, Mediterranean Allied Air

Forces, to Lt Gen Carl Spaatz, commanding general, US Strategic Air Forces,

letter, subject: Operation Clarion, 1 January 1945, papers of Carl A. Spaatz,

box 20, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.

8. Douhet, 5–6.

9. Robert A. Pape, Bombing to Win: Air Power and Coercion in War, Cornell Studies in Security Affairs (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1996),

68.

10. Klaus Knorr, The Power of Nations: The Political Economy of International Relations (New York: Basic Books, 1975), 141.

11. Beth Osborne Daponte, “Iraqi Casualties from the Gulf War and Its

Aftermath” (Cambridge, Mass.: Defense and Arms Control Studies [DACS]

Program, Center for International Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1992), 1; see also “Tactical Bombing of Iraqi Forces Outstripped

Value of Strategic Hits, Analyst Contends,” Aviation Week and Space Technology 136, no. 4 (27 January 1992): 63.

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12. Conrad C. Crane, American Airpower Strategy in Korea, 1950–1953

(Lawrence, Kans.: University Press of Kansas, 2000), 184.

13. B. H. Liddell Hart, Strategy (New York: Praeger Publishers, Inc.,

1967), 351.

14. Ibid., 349.

15. Mueller, 9.

16. Air Force Manual (AFM) 1-2, United States Air Force Basic Doctrine, 1

December 1959, 4.

17. Robert B. Johnson, “RAND Studies of Air Power in Limited Wars,”

Special Information Memorandum no. 7, Headquarters Far East Air Forces,

21 May 1957, AFHRA, file no. K720.3102-7, 6.

18. Ibid., 5.

19. Thomas C. Schelling, Arms and Influence (New Haven, Conn.: Yale

University Press, 1966), 172.

20. Karl Mueller, “Denial, Punishment, and the Future of Air Power,” Security Studies 7, no. 3 (Spring 1998): 189.

21. Schelling, 2.

22. Ibid., 172.

23. Ibid., 89.

24. See Wayne Thompson, To Hanoi and Back: The U.S. Air Force and

North Vietnam, 1966–1973 (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution

Press, 2000), 276–79; and Mark Clodfelter, The Limits of Air Power: The

American Bombing of North Vietnam (New York: Free Press, 1989), 163–64,

194–202.

25. John A. Warden III, The Air Campaign: Planning for Combat (San

Jose, Calif.: toExcel, 1998), 55; and Col Richard T. Reynolds, Heart of the

Storm: The Genesis of the Air Campaign against Iraq (Maxwell AFB, Ala.: Air

University Press, January 1995), 28–29.

26. Reynolds, 72.

27. Ibid., 28–29.

28. Col John A. Warden III, “The Enemy as a System,” Airpower Journal

9, no. 1 (Spring 1995): 51–52.

29. Warden, The Air Campaign, 113.

30. Ibid., 144–45.

31. Liddell Hart, 351.

32. Ibid., 348.

33. Ibid., 348–49. A closer look reveals that the two theorists in fact

focus on different levels of war. In his historical analysis of World War II, Liddell Hart observes that what was called the “strategic bombing” of Germany

could have been more accurately termed “grand strategic bombing.” In this

discussion, it seems evident that the term strategic as Liddell Hart used it

in the 1950s more closely approximated the term operational as it is used

today. Speaking about the Allied grand strategic bombing campaign, Liddell

Hart asserts that “it seems fairly certain, even on a reasonably favourable

view of its effects, that they were less decisive than the action of air forces

against strategic objectives—in the military sphere” (362). Consequently, in

Liddell Hart’s parlance, Warden’s version, with its focus on the civilian leadership, would more appropriately be termed “grand strategic paralysis.” Likewise, Liddell Hart’s concept, which targeted the military and its command

structure, would more accurately be called “operational paralysis” today.

These subtle distinctions are important because they drove the two men to

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quite divergent theories of war. In the context of post–Cold War conflict,

“paralysis” and its governing coercion theory must serve both the war and

the peace. Basil Liddell Hart understood this; John Warden seemingly does

not.

34. When Warden briefed Lt Gen Charles Horner, the Gulf War air component commander, on the Instant Thunder plan, Horner quipped, “It

sounds like a ‘decapitate the snake plan.’ I don’t see it as a slick plan, but

as a ‘hit-him-in-the-face plan.’ ” See Michael R. Gordon and Bernard E.

Trainor, The Generals’ War: The Inside Story of the Conflict in the Gulf (New

York: Little, Brown and Company, 1995), 93.

35. Warden, The Air Campaign, 55.

36. Ibid., 112.

37. Carl von Clausewitz, On War, ed. and trans. Michael Howard and

Peter Paret (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1976), 605.

38. Warden, The Air Campaign, 81.

39. Pape, 19.

40. Ibid., 75.

41. Ibid., 19.

42. Ibid., 15.

43. Mueller, “Denial, Punishment, and the Future of Air Power,” 191–92.

44. Pape, 58.

45. Maj Thomas P. Ehrhard, Making the Connection: An Air Strategy

Analysis Framework (Maxwell AFB, Ala.: Air University Press, April 1996),

11.

46. Mueller, “Denial, Punishment, and the Future of Air Power,” 214.

47. Pape, 316.

48. Mueller, “Denial, Punishment, and the Future of Air Power,” 208–9.

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Chapter 3

A New Theory for a New Era

Before fighting the first battle one must have a general idea

of how the second, third, fourth, and even the final battle

will be fought, and consider what changes will ensue in the

enemy’s situation as a whole if we win, or lose, each of the

succeeding battles. Although the result may not—and, in

fact, definitely will not—turn out exactly as we expect, we

must think everything out carefully and realistically in the

light of the general situation on both sides. Without a grasp

of the situation as a whole, it is impossible to make any really good moves on the chessboard.

—Mao Tse-tung

In World War II, ACTS concepts embodied in the industrialweb theory guided American air strategy. Policy makers during the Vietnam War looked to Schelling’s concept of risk.

Desert Storm had John Warden. Regrettably, we have no codified theory to guide the conduct of America’s conflicts in the

post–Cold War era. Each of these past approaches, based on

assumptions that do not meet the post–Cold War standard,

largely ignores the realities of modern war. To fill the gap, this

paper recommends a three-phased hybrid approach to coercion that optimizes the strengths and minimizes the weaknesses of the existing constructs of coercive airpower.

Phase One

This new theory of coercive airpower opens hostilities with

an aggressive denial campaign flanked by a fairly sizable element of risk. Air strategists pursuing such an approach

launch a massive attack on military targets while holding

decapitation- and punishment-based civilian sites at risk (fig. 1).

By capitalizing on the coercive aspects of both denial and risk,

this hybrid theory seeks synergy from a tenuous partnership

between Pape and Schelling. As denial makes defeat progressively likely, the adversary is compelled to change his behavior.

31
If not, the symbiotic threat of future attacks on leadership and

infrastructure targets will persuade him to think again.

Schelling argues that the threat of attacking civilian targets is

more effective than actually bombing them. The goal in this

phase is successful coercion of the adversary with the “onetwo punch” of denial and risk without having to resort to the

other coercive measures.

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100%

Coercion

Effort

Phase One Phase Two Phase Three

Risk

Risk Punishment

Denial Denial Denial

Decapitation Decapitation

Time

Figure 1. The Coercion Hybrid

Counterair Denial

One should note that, unlike Pape’s theory, the denial aspect of this hybrid concept attacks the enemy’s armed forces

as a whole—not only ground forces, but also air forces, air de-
fenses, and naval forces, if applicable—in very large numbers,

from the first day of the conflict to the last. Accordingly, Conversino argues that “the opponent’s integrated air defense system, including its air units, are part of a nation’s fielded

forces.”1 Similar to Douhet’s venerable concept of command of

the air, then, the counterair campaign not only is an essential

prerequisite to a coercion strategy, but also is part and parcel

of the coercion effort itself. Simply stated, counterair is coercive in its own right. As such, counterair denial is a pivotal aspect of phase one.

Few other theorists have grasped this seemingly simple concept. For example, Warden, whose approach similarly attacks

the adversary’s air forces, does so to enable the coercive effort

and not for any intrinsic coercive value in and of itself. Pape

and Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir John “Jack” Slessor, an

interwar British airman, largely agree that air superiority

serves as a vital precursor to the counterland effort. Slessor

distinguishes himself from Pape, though, when he hints in Air

Power and Armies that the enemy may be coerced to surrender “when his air forces form so large and important a proportion of his total fighting strength that the attainment of a

real superiority in the air will, in itself, be sufficient to induce

him to accept our terms.”2 But Slessor avoids any further discussion of the topic, explaining that “these are not the conditions which it is the object of this work to examine.”3 According to Meilinger, “Slessor remained ambivalent about the air

superiority campaign, arguing on one hand that it was necessary but on the other that one should not see it as an end in

itself.”4 Consequently, neither Pape nor Slessor fully develops

the very real denial aspect of the air superiority effort. Additionally, they both miss the point. The issue is not whether airpower can be decisive by achieving air superiority but whether

it can coerce by attacking the enemy’s air forces in addition to

his surface forces.

Additionally, one should explore a subtle but important distinction that exists between counterair denial and air superiority. Counterair denial is coercion; air superiority is only one

desired outcome of the counterair effort for the sole purpose of

enabling counterland and further counterair denial. Whereas

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counterair denial may be an end in itself, then, air superiority

is not. Slessor accurately assesses that “air superiority is only

a means to an end and, unless it is kept in its proper place as

such, is liable to lead to waste of effort and dispersion of

force.”5 When air superiority takes on an elevated importance

of its own, airpower begins to lose its focus. One can inappropriately divert limited air assets away from the counterland effort

to achieve an unnecessary level of superiority. In this construct,

then, the only goals of counterair are (1) employing coercion

and (2) using air superiority to enable the counterland-denial

campaign in phase one and, potentially, the other coercive

efforts in later phases.

Counterland Denial

In the history of warfare, the enemy’s fielded forces have always been a—often the—primary object in war. With the advent

of airpower, airmen began to scrutinize the truth of this venerable assumption. In a lecture to ACTS in 1940, Maj Muir S.

Fairchild claimed that, historically, “the ground commander

was forced to accept an intermediate objective; he was left no

choice; he must defeat the enemy’s armed force as a preliminary to final military pressure through occupation of the

enemy’s critical areas. This intermediate step to the ultimate

goal has been required ever since the beginning of armed conflict. In fact, it has been so consistently necessary as to lead

many military men to accept the enemy’s armed forces as the

true military objective” (emphasis in original).6 Almost immediately, airmen looked beyond the enemy’s fielded forces, expecting to find that true military objective elsewhere. The fact

that airpower can bypass the enemy’s ground forces, however,

does not necessarily mean that it should.

On the contrary, the enemy’s fielded forces remain a primary target in war. Over 60 years ago, Slessor submitted that

“the object of the air force in a campaign of the first magnitude

in which great armies are engaged is the defeat of the enemy’s

forces in the field, and primarily of his army.”7 His assertion

about airpower in land campaigns, although appropriate in

his own day, may be even more applicable to post–Cold War

conflicts such as Allied Force, in which the air arm was the

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only component waging war against the opposing army. Accordingly, attacking and degrading the enemy’s surface forces

have increasingly become the responsibility of airpower.

With his counterland focus, however, Slessor found himself in

the minority during the interwar period. Douhet and the American airmen of his day sought, as did the contemporary prophet

John Warden, a theory that would “leapfrog” the enemy’s surface

forces and attack his true center of gravity (COG). These theorists

borrowed the concept from Clausewitz, who defines a COG as

“the hub of all power and movement, on which everything depends. That is the point against which all our energies should be

directed.”8 Most interwar theorists on both sides of the Atlantic

agreed that, historically, fielded forces were attacked only as a

means to an end, with that end being the actual COG. They

seemed to miss the point that the COG could in fact be the

enemy army itself. But Clausewitz did not: “For Alexander, Gustavus Adolphus, Charles XII, and Frederick the Great, the center

of gravity was their army. If the army had been destroyed, they

would all have gone down in history as failures.”9 He is even

clearer elsewhere: “To sum up: of all the possible aims in war, the

destruction of the enemy’s armed forces always appears as the

highest.”10 To be fair, Clausewitz does go on to list the enemy

capital and his allies as additional, potential COGs. By looking

beyond the army to the belligerent’s capital, though, the interpreters of Clausewitz miss a vital point about the concept as it

relates to limited war: What was no longer out of reach for technological reasons would nonetheless often remain unattainable

for political ones today.

Furthermore, the term COG implies that, if one attacks a

single panacea target set, the enemy’s strength—thus, his resistance—will crumble. Warden and his predecessors certainly

believe this to be true. Slessor and many others since his time

do not: “No nation at war—with possibly in some circumstances the unfortunate exception of ourselves—has any one

single centre of which the paralysis by an enemy would be

fatal. If there were any one single centre it might be possible

so highly to organize its defences as at least to make the attack so costly that the attacker would not continue to face the

losses involved.”11

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With this passage, Slessor elucidates an additional point quite

pertinent to the politically restrained nature of post–Cold War

conflict: A target in the enemy’s capital, even if it does amount to

this elusive COG, normally will be very well defended, significantly increasing the likelihood of lost aircraft and aircrews.

Conversely, air and space technology allows airpower to target

land armies with much greater efficiency and with far fewer

losses than ever before. In the conflicts of the post–Cold War era,

air forces have attacked surface forces without the bloody,

costly consequences of force-on-force battle in the age of Slessor,

ACTS, and, for that matter, Clausewitz. In fact, in very general

terms, deployed military forces protected by marginally integrated, mobile surface-to-air missiles and antiaircraft artillery

pose less of a threat than deep targets in the capital city

guarded by sophisticated networks of several well-integrated

and redundant missile and artillery systems.

In sum, phase one allows the coercing nation to concentrate

its effort on counterland efforts and counterair denial while

holding decapitation and punishment targets at risk. If successful, the first phase is an end in itself. If not, it serves as a

means to an end by substantially weakening the enemy’s military capacity to resist attacks in the subsequent phases. Hosmer finds that such denial and the results it renders are essential elements of successful coercion in all wars: “In every

major conflict from World War II on, enemies have capitulated

or acceded to peace terms demanded by the United States only

after their deployed forces have suffered serious battlefield defeats. In future conflicts, enemy leaders are likely to prove

equally reluctant to make concessions or terminate conflicts

as long as they see a chance to prevail on the battlefield.”12

Phase Two

Attacking the enemy’s armed forces, then, is necessary but

not always sufficient. Accordingly, Hosmer also assesses that

“attacks or threatened attacks against enemy strategic targets

have helped to persuade enemy leaders to terminate wars on

terms acceptable to the United States only when the enemy

leaders have perceived that they faced defeat or stalemate on

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the battlefield.”13 In short, denial in some cases may require

the implementation of additional coercive instruments. Consequently, in the event that phase one fails to coerce compliance,

the hybrid theory of coercive airpower adds decapitation to the

risk-and-denial formula. In the second phase, this new approach comes at the adversary from three different directions.

First, it continues to target fielded forces and remaining air

forces in large numbers, with the important addition of an element of denial inherent in the decapitation strategy. Second,

it carries out the threat to attack leadership, aiming to capitalize on the coercive potential of Warden’s approach. Finally,

it continues to hold civilian economic targets at risk.

Transition to the second phase of this coercion hybrid is possible only if political authorities release the sensitive leadership

and communication targets associated with the decapitation

strategy.14 Without this shift in political restraint, no shift to

phase two occurs. If civilian officials release such targets in a

piecemeal fashion, air strategists will intentionally hold them in

reserve until a fundamental change in the politically restrained

nature of the conflict allows the attack of leadership sites en

masse. Consequently, airpower will have the opportunity to capitalize—admittedly to a lesser degree—on the shock, surprise,

and simultaneity missed when these targets do not come under

attack at the outset of hostilities. Additionally, this massive shift

ensures the coercing nation’s credibility to make good on its

threat to decapitate and punish targets.

Phase Three

In the event that this three-pronged attack fails to reverse

the adversary’s behavior and if the political context allows, the

coercing nation may change from holding economic targets at

risk to actually pursuing a punishment strategy. Again, considerable shock value accrues to holding the bulk of these targets in reserve until the policy makers release them en masse.

Attacking economic targets in large numbers will have the

added effect of bolstering the already potent denial campaign

even more. The enemy’s armed forces, suffering from relent37

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less attack, will further feel the denial effects of decapitation

in phase two and punishment in phase three.

It is essential, however, that phase one’s counterland/counterair denial continue in full force throughout these later

phases. The Battle of Britain taught a lesson quite pertinent to

this approach. Germany’s initial bombing campaign against

England was a successful, nearly decisive counterair denial effort. In response to a British retaliatory raid on Berlin, though,

Adolph Hitler abandoned the denial effort altogether, opting

for punishment attacks on London: “The fateful decision was

finally made that the whole weight of the Luftwaffe attack

should be switched to London; thus . . . Fighter Command’s

airfields were saved. It was not a moment too soon.”15 The

message should be clear: One must maintain the intensity of

the denial effort throughout. It is essential not to switch from

one method to another but to add decapitation and then punishment to the denial effort if necessary.

Limited, Nonprotracted War

and the Coercion Hybrid

The hybrid coercion theory is clearly more compatible with

the attributes of post–Cold War conflict than are its predecessors. For one, it fits far better into the limited nature of modern war. By design, it provides policy makers with a limited option that stops short of a prematurely aggressive approach.

The proposed hierarchy for the types of targets struck will likely

match the limited objectives of post–Cold War conflict.

Additionally, commanders conducting limited wars have a

finite number of assets at their disposal. Initially, the coercion

hybrid focuses these restricted resources on a viable denial

campaign with the option of allocating additional forces to implement later phases. The new theory allows more efficient focusing of the limited number of strike aircraft on a condensed

number of interrelated denial targets. Concentrating airpower

in this way at the outset of hostilities maximizes the principle

of economy of force. This approach assumes that a shift to

later stages would be accompanied by an increase in forces,

particularly in the assets that will strike decapitation and

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punishment targets. Without such an increase, this move

would be unwarranted and largely inappropriate.

Slessor captures the essence of the coercion hybrid: “The

whole art of air warfare is first the capacity to select the correct

objective at the time, namely that on which attack is likely to be

decisive, or to contribute most effectively to an ultimate decision;

and then to concentrate against it the maximum possible force,

leaving only the essential minimum elsewhere for security” (emphasis in original).16 In accordance with Slessor’s assertion, the

new theory is intentionally designed so that limited forces are

concentrated to the maximum extent possible. By allowing for a

phase shift as the context changes, the coercion hybrid targets

the appropriate objective at the optimum time. Additionally, the

coercive effort within each phase is arguably the one most likely

to prompt a timely decision.

The coercion hybrid is also more compatible with the nonprotracted nature of conflict in the post–Cold War era. With

the focal point of this new approach on denial-based coercion,

the coercing nation benefits from the more immediate effects

of attacking military targets. Furthermore, by starting with a

massive denial effort, the coercion hybrid ensures the maximum possible degradation of the adversary’s military capabilities in the event of early capitulation. One should note that a

shift to the later stages carries with it the realization and tacit

assumption that the nonprotracted nature of the conflict has

changed and that the war will be more prolonged. Consequently, decapitation- and punishment-based targeting

philosophies become more appropriate at that time.

The Coercion Hybrid and the Politically

Restrained Nature of Post–Cold War Conflict

The greatest strength of the coercion-hybrid theory is that, instead of expecting politicians to acquiesce to overtly aggressive

military strategies, it realigns airpower with the politically

restrained nature of post–Cold War conflict. Approaching coercion in this manner capitalizes on the coercive effects of each individual theory to the maximum extent allowable in politically restrained war. It avoids politically unpalatable targets until the

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context allows attack on leadership and infrastructure. It permits airpower to conform to politics without compromising the

essence of war in the third dimension. The concept remedies the

friction between politician and air strategist so prevalent in the

other approaches. It is responsive to political demands without

being foreign to military thought. Unlike the theories of Warden

and his ACTS predecessors, it aligns military grammar with political logic. In fact, in more general terms, this new theory aligns

airpower theory with the venerable teachings of Clausewitz himself: “Subordinating the political point of view to the military

would be absurd, for it is policy that creates war. Policy is the

guiding intelligence and war only the instrument, not vice versa.

No other possibility exists, then, than to subordinate the military

point of view to the political.”17

A campaign plan that exclusively attacks the enemy’s armed

forces at the outset of hostilities and initially avoids deep-strike

civilian targets altogether is far more compatible with political restraint than one that starts with a punishment or decapitation

strategy. This new approach not only minimizes the potential for

collateral damage and civilian casualties, but also reduces the

likelihood of losing friendly aircraft in the often more heavily defended areas of the country. In fact, it is fair to postulate that, by

having one’s forces wait before they “go downtown,” the enemy’s

air defenses may be at a lower state of alert by the time such attacks become necessary and permissible. The enemy may actually move some air defense sites to defend elsewhere, leaving the

capital more vulnerable to phase-two and -three attacks. American politicians and the public alike must realize, however, that

losses will still occur. They must be prepared for collateral damage and civilian casualties, even in this more careful approach.

In line with the politically restrained nature of post–Cold War

conflict, however, this new theory truly reduces the chances of

each to the absolute minimum.

Quite interestingly, John Warden, one of the most vocal critics of a pure denial effort, recognizes the potential need for the

method advocated in the hybrid theory: “Ideally, a commander

will attack centers of gravity as close as possible to the leadership ring of the five rings. He may, however, be forced to deal

with the enemy’s fielded military forces because he cannot

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reach strategic centers without first removing enemy defenses

because enemy forces are threatening his own strategic or operational centers of gravity or because his political masters will

not permit him to attack strategic centers” (emphasis added).18

In fact, this new approach attacks each of the COGs identified

in Warden’s five rings but orders them in a way that is more

compatible with political restraint.19

The Coercion Hybrid and the

Better State of Peace

Compared to the previous theories of airpower, the coercion

hybrid also allows for a far better state of peace. With the denial effort primary and pervasive throughout, this new approach severely weakens the adversary’s capacity for future

aggression by targeting his fielded forces from the beginning of

the conflict to the end. By initially avoiding decapitation- and

punishment-based coercion, it also aims to make the adversary comply quickly, thus sparing civilian targets that one

would prefer to leave intact.

The overarching purpose of each method employed in this

new theory, of course, is to coerce the enemy. Beyond the coercive value of denial-based targeting, though, the desired effect of attacking military targets in this approach is destruction and paralysis. Both serve the short-term objectives of

winning the war itself, and the destruction of military equipment, supplies, and facilities serves the long-term aim of winning the peace as well. If coercion fails altogether, denial’s destructive aspect facilitates a brute-force victory.

The desired effect of the decapitation attacks in phase two

is maximum paralysis and minimum destruction. Whereas

Warden’s approach results in appreciable levels of both, decapitation in the hybrid theory aims to win the war with the

least detrimental effect on the postwar environment. In fact,

decapitation is preferable to punishment primarily for this reason. The better state of peace, of course, is optimized if the coercive effort is successful prior to the implementation of phase

two. Although the negative impact of decapitation is less severe than that of punishment, the second phase does invite

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the less-desirable effects of targeting political leadership and

communications. In the coercion hybrid, however, chances are

favorable that the synergistic phase-one instruments of denial

and risk will negate the need to resort to such attacks.

Although unlikely, it is possible that a coercing nation may

determine that a certain degree of damage to the enemy’s national economy and civil infrastructure is in line with the optimal state of peace. A shift to phase three would allow for this

desired end state. One should note, however, that it is generally far more appropriate to weaken an adversary by degrading his military might than by tearing down his economic capacity. By attacking military targets, one conducts the war

with peace in mind. Civilian targeting most often aims to win

the war without due regard for the peace one desires.

The Escalatory Nature of the Coercion Hybrid

The most unfortunate aspect of this new approach is that it

quite clearly carries with it the burdensome appearance of

gradualism—anathema to most airpower circles. However, this

theory differs from gradual escalation in two subtle but quite

significant ways. First, the initial denial phase is designed to

be anything but gradual, starting with a massive attack on air

and ground forces and maintaining that intensity throughout

the conflict. Second, it does not release and withhold civilian

targets on an ad hoc basis, as was the case during Rolling

Thunder, but very consciously holds them in reserve until the

politics of the conflict allow airpower to be unleashed en

masse. In fact, this very deliberate stair-step approach, complete with well-conceived, compatible, and coherent phases,

would more accurately be labeled “phased escalation.”

To distinguish between this new concept of phased escalation and the gradual escalation of the Vietnam era, one should

consider again the difference between Rolling Thunder and

Linebacker. Aside from the markedly different contexts in

1968 and 1972, Johnson and Nixon used escalation in very

different ways. Johnson’s haphazard “on again, off again” version gave Schelling’s theory of risk a bad name. In fact, everyone agrees that Rolling Thunder was an utter failure. Admit42

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tedly, the United States had more modest political aims in

1972, but most people consider the Linebacker operation an

example of successful coercion. Nixon, who started with a denialbased Linebacker I campaign, later added massive, punishment-based attacks in Linebacker II. Nixon’s approach, then,

approximated the concept of phased escalation; Rolling Thunder clearly did not.

Another complaint about gradual escalation that grew out of

Johnson’s supervision of the air war in Vietnam is that it allows

the enemy to recover from a blow and reconstitute his military

strength. Because of constant US vacillation, this occurred numerous times in Vietnam. Clearly, this would not happen in a

strategy that follows the phased coercion hybrid. From the first

to the last day of the war, this new theory calls for nonstop attacks on military targets. The enemy’s armed forces would never

get a break from such a relentless denial effort.

Furthermore, phased escalation allows this hybrid approach to strike a pivotal balance between structure and flexibility—a balance that is absent from existing theories of coercion. In general, a conspicuous and pervasive disconnect

exists between the fluidity of American politics and the generally rigid practices of the US armed forces. This airpower theory

begins to bridge the gap with an approach that is politically

flexible and at the same time militarily sensible. It builds expected policy shifts into the plan up front, allowing changes to

flow in a coherent manner.

Conclusion

The coercion hybrid, then, is compatible with the attributes of

conflict in the post–Cold War era. It builds upon previous theories of coercion to arrive at an approach in line with limited, nonprotracted war. It provides an approach structured for and responsive to the politically restrained nature of the limited wars of

today and tomorrow. It pulls existing constructs together in a

way that yields a better state of peace. Most importantly, it provides the twenty-first-century airman with a well-constructed

theory of coercive airpower specifically designed for the unsettled

landscape of the post–Cold War era.

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Notes

1. Mark J. Conversino, “The Changed Nature of Strategic Air Attack,” Parameters, Winter 1997–1998, 35.

2. Wing Comdr J. C. Slessor, Air Power and Armies (London: Oxford University Press, 1936), 28.

3. Ibid.

4. Col Phillip S. Meilinger, ed., The Paths of Heaven: The Evolution of Airpower Theory (Maxwell AFB, Ala.: Air University Press, 1997), 63.

5. Slessor, 4.

6. Maj Muir S. Fairchild, “The Aim in War,” lecture AF-3-L, ACTS,

Maxwell Field, Ala., 27 May 1940, Air Force Historical Research Agency, file

no. 248.2021A-3, 11.

7. Slessor, 61.

8. Carl von Clausewitz, On War, ed. and trans. Michael Howard and Peter

Paret (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1976), 596.

9. Ibid.

10. Ibid., 99.

11. Slessor, 22.

12. Stephen T. Hosmer, Psychological Effects of U.S. Air Operations in

Four Wars, 1941–1991: Lessons for U.S. Commanders (Santa Monica, Calif.:

RAND, 1996), xxi–xxii.

13. Ibid., xxi.

14. This construct assumes that civilian leaders initially will withhold

such targets from attack and release them in large quantities only after

other coercive measures have failed to compel compliance.

15. Robin Higham, “The Royal Air Force and the Battle of Britain,” in

Case Studies in the Achievement of Air Superiority, ed. Benjamin Franklin

Cooling (Washington, D.C.: Office of Air Force History, 1994), 132–33.

16. Slessor, 82–83.

17. Clausewitz, 607.

18. Col John A. Warden III, “The Enemy as a System,” Airpower Journal

9, no. 1 (Spring 1995): 53.

19. Ibid., 47–51. Leadership, Warden’s innermost ring, comes under attack in phase two. Infrastructure and organic essentials, the next two COGs,

are targeted in phase three. Direct attacks on population, Warden’s next

ring, are conspicuously omitted, as Warden himself recommends. By avoiding targets that would cause the civilian population pain, suffering, and privation, however, the coercion hybrid aims at their hearts rather than their

homes and workplaces in a manner quite contrary to Warden’s theory. Additionally, this new approach protects public support, America’s most vulnerable COG, by minimizing collateral damage and civilian casualties. The

fielded military, Warden’s final ring, is both the focal point of phase one and

the target of aggressive attacks in later phases.

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Chapter 4

The Coercion Hybrid and

Post–Cold War Conflict

Just as some plants bear fruit only if they don’t shoot up too

high, so in the practical arts the leaves and flower of theory

must be pruned and the plant kept close to its proper soil—experience. . . . Theory and experience must never disdain or exclude each other; on the contrary, they support each other.

—Carl von Clausewitz

This chapter analyzes the coercion hybrid from the perspective of three post–Cold War military operations—Desert Storm,

Deliberate Force, and Allied Force. In some cases, aspects of

this new theory are prevalent in the practical experience of

America’s wars since the end of the Cold War. In other cases,

US airmen might have faired better by following the guidance

of this revised theoretical construct.

Operation Desert Storm

The Gulf War stood at the crossroads of the Cold War and the

era that followed. Although it took place amidst the dissolution

of the Soviet Union, it utilized theory and force structure developed during the Cold War. As such, it both echoed the past and

opened a window to the future. Beyond the oft-told official story

of the Desert Storm air campaign, the first war of the new era

teaches us much about post–Cold War conflict.

Skeptics of the coercion hybrid might argue that decapitation, not the denial aspects of the Desert Storm air campaign,

led to success in the Gulf War. They would not be alone in that

assessment. For at least three reasons, however, they also

would not be altogether correct.

First, decapitation might not have been as successful as its

proponents suggest. Of course, Warden and many of his fellow

airmen see the Gulf War as a validation of the Instant Thunder plan and the overarching concept of strategic paralysis.1

Not surprisingly, Pape disagrees: “A strategic bombing strategy,

designed by Warden and aimed at decapitating the Iraqi

45
leadership, was executed during the opening days of the air

war against Iraq, and failed completely.”2 Lambeth furthers

Pape’s assertion: “In the end, the so-called strategic part of the

air campaign, namely, those sorties not directly aimed at taking down Iraq’s air defenses, command and control links, and

fielded ground forces, did little to affect the immediate course

and outcome of the war.”3 More importantly, the findings of

the Gulf War Air Power Survey (GWAPS) cast doubt on the efficacy of the front-loaded decapitation approach:

Even though the U.S.-led Coalition managed to achieve one of the most

lopsided and comparatively bloodless military triumphs in modern history, Coalition air forces did not succeed in toppling Saddam Hussein

or completely severing his communications with the Kuwait theater or

the Iraqi people during the forty-three-day campaign. . . . So accepting

the ambitious aims of decapitation and destruction as measures of effectiveness against the L [leadership] and CCC [command, control, and

communication] targets entails the paradoxical assessment of complete failure by Coalition air power against two supposedly key target

systems during one of the most successful campaigns in history.4

Second, Desert Storm was only partially successful. Among

other objectives, Gen Norman Schwarzkopf explicitly set two

principal goals for the operation: (1) expel the Iraqi army from

Kuwait and (2) destroy the Republican Guard. Gen Colin Powell articulated his vision of the desired end state quite specifically: “I won’t be happy until I see those tanks destroyed. . . .

I want to finish it; to destroy Iraq’s army on the ground.”5 Although the coalition forced the Iraqi army from Kuwait, many

people argue that it did not sufficiently degrade Iraq’s future

offensive capability. James Chace observes that President

George Bush “was determined to expel Saddam from Kuwait

and destroy the Iraqi military. . . . He succeeded in the first

aim, and failed badly in the second.”6 In Certain Victory, Brig

Gen Robert Scales left no doubt about his assessment of the

“peace” accomplished by the air campaign: “Despite 41 days of

almost continuous aerial bombardment, the Republican

Guard remained a cohesive and viable military force able to

fight a vicious battle and survive to fight insurgents in northern and southern Iraq.”7

Third, more than likely, the counterland-denial campaign

rather than the decapitation effort led to the measured success of Desert Storm. According to Pape, “The air power that

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ultimately coerced Iraq was not the bombs directed at Baghdad, but those that smashed Iraq’s field army in the Kuwaiti

theater of operations.”8 Likewise, Lambeth reports that the

Gulf War allowed airpower “to demonstrate its real leverage of

greatest note, namely, the ability to engage an enemy army

wholesale, and with virtual impunity, by means of precision

attacks. Appreciation of this point is crucial to a correct understanding of what air power showed itself, for the first time in

Desert Storm, capable of doing if properly used.”9

In the aggregate, the coalition did succeed in forcefully

evicting Iraqi forces from Kuwait. The fundamental question

is whether an intense and up-front counterland-denial campaign would have rendered a more favorable peace and a lessthreatening Iraqi military. One may postulate that the coalition

would have had more rather than less success in achieving

both goals had it weighted the air campaign in favor of denial

instead of decapitation. Lambeth, for one, ponders whether

airpower would have achieved more than it did if denial had

played a more dominant role in the Desert Storm air war: “One

might argue in hindsight that at least many of the allied attacks against Iraq’s infrastructure drew off both sorties and

precision weapons that could have been put to better use

against targets of more direct relevance to Iraq’s fighting capacity. They also may have been unnecessary in retrospect.”10

Interestingly, although people often herald the Gulf War as the

antithesis of Vietnam-style gradualism, the Desert Storm air

campaign had its own breed of escalation. Indeed, the swift and

overwhelming “strategic offensive,” which grew out of Warden’s

Instant Thunder plan, bore little resemblance to the incremental

pattern of Rolling Thunder. Because air planners chose to lead

with a decapitation-based strategy, though, the counterland

campaign actually escalated gradually from a slow start to a fullblown effort just prior to the ground invasion. In fact, just prior

to the commencement of hostilities, General Schwarzkopf expressed frustration over the air component’s plan because it

failed to emphasize attacks on the Republican Guard.11 This incremental counterland effort factored into Iraq’s ability to escape

with much of its army and elite forces intact.

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The coercion hybrid’s counterland campaign, of course, allows for no such gradualism. Rather, it emphasizes attacks on

the enemy’s fielded forces from the first to the last day of hostilities. In sum, the coercion hybrid is neither the risk-based

Rolling Thunder of Vietnam nor the decapitation-based Instant Thunder of Desert Storm. Instead, one might more appropriately dub the denial-heavy alternative “Constant Thunder: The Storm That Never Ends.”

After a heavy initial emphasis on leadership targets and the

slow start of counterland, Desert Storm planners eventually

used the massive air armada at their disposal, in essence, to

do everything at the same time. In short, the operation did not

require an orderly and efficient use of coalition air forces. Nor

was it forthcoming. An astute scholar of Desert Storm might

refute this assertion, arguing that the air campaign plan had

separate phases. Air planners did, in fact, identify four such

phases: (1) the strategic offensive, (2) destruction of enemy air

defenses in Kuwait, (3) preparation of the battlefield, and (4)

the ground invasion. According to GWAPS, however, these

phases were distinct only on paper. Instead of working efficiently toward a focused, common objective, planners designed an “air campaign with divergent goals.”12 Additionally,

Gen Charles Horner conceded that, “in reality, there were no

distinct phases; all operations were going simultaneously.”13

Using the Gulf War experience as a template for future conflicts, then, would be a dangerous proposition. The massive

military force structure employed during Desert Storm was a

legacy of the Cold War, but America’s current military is greatly

reduced in size. What may have been possible in 1991 would

not likely fit the limited resources available in today’s limited

wars. Conversely, the coercion hybrid, with its distinct phases,

offers an approach more tailored to the force-constrained realities of post–Cold War conflict.

Operation Deliberate Force

Deliberate Force, the NATO air campaign in Bosnia from 30

August to 14 September 1995, closely resembled the coercion

hybrid theory. In fact, the stated military objective—“a robust

NATO air campaign that adversely alters the [Bosnian Serb

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army’s] advantage in conducting successful military operations against the [Bosnian army]”—paralleled the denial aspects of phase one. The desired end state—“Bosnian Serbs sue

for cessation of military operations, comply with [United Nations] mandates, and negotiate”—reflected NATO’s clear, coercive intent.14 In short, the goal was to compel the Serbs to accept the terms of what later became the Dayton Peace

Accords. Additionally, military commanders and NATO politicians alike were adamant about avoiding collateral damage

and civilian casualties that could upset support for their efforts to coerce the Serbs to acquiesce in Bosnia. According to

Conversino, this “desire to limit collateral damage and Serb

casualties to the lowest possible level reflected the political realities of the Balkans.”15 Lambeth recognizes the delicate political context as well: “Concern over collateral damage was extremely high, since even a single stray bomb resulting in a

catastrophe on the ground would end instantly any UN confidence in NATO’s ability to be precise.”16

Almost three years of planning for operations in Bosnia culminated in the concept that ultimately guided air operations

in that country. The common thread running through each

version of the evolving plan was an awareness of the delicate

political sensitivities related to air operations in the region. As

such, each concept for air attack in Bosnia started with politically permissive military targets and offered other options in

the event that denial-based attacks proved unsuccessful. In

fact, the final air campaign plan for Deliberate Force bore a

striking resemblance to the stair-step approach of the coercion

hybrid, in that it called for a “phased sequence of attack” that

featured strictly military targets during the initial bombing

phase.17 Specifically, the target categories attacked at the outset—fielded forces, direct and essential military support, and

integrated air defenses—closely paralleled the hybrid theory’s

phase-one focus on counterair and counterland denial.18

The denial-based initial phase of Deliberate Force also incorporated an important element of risk. Conversino submits

that the NATO military commanders and their staffs “factored

in political constraints during the planning process, designing

a campaign capable of gradual escalation that nevertheless

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sought to destroy things rather than kill people.”19 The plan

called for strikes on leadership and infrastructure targets in

the event such bombing became necessary and, more importantly, if it received approval from civilian officials within

NATO. According to Chris Campbell, politicians and military

planners alike recognized that such attacks “might well result

in increased collateral damage and were seen as a huge political step to take.”20 Fortunately, the combination of denial- and

risk-based coercion and the success of Bosnian Croat ground

action drove Bosnian Serb compliance prior to the initiation of

these riskier attacks. As such, one can view Deliberate Force

as an example of an air campaign that achieved its coercive intent in the first phase of the hybrid theory.

Largely as a result of the approach NATO adopted, the alliance

flew 3,535 sorties and dropped over 1,100 bombs with no reported incidents of collateral damage or civilian casualties.21

Planners carefully crafted a counterair- and counterland-denial

campaign that successfully coerced the Serbian army and its

leadership without increasing the likelihood of such damage or

casualties through leadership and infrastructure attacks. Lambeth reports that “in the end, NATO’s efforts to minimize unintended destruction paid off well. There were no Serbian complaints about noncombatant fatalities or other harm to

innocents, since there was no collateral damage to speak of.”22

Measured by its own objectives and desired end state, Operation Deliberate Force was clearly a success. As a result of pressure from the ground war and the air campaign, Slobodan Milosevic accepted the Dayton Accords, and the delicate peace in

Bosnia secured during the operation remains to this day. The

skillful military planning and execution of Deliberate Force

under quite difficult political circumstances should serve as a

guide to the conduct of conflict in the post–Cold War era.

Operation Allied Force

Four years after Deliberate Force, NATO found itself once

again at war in the Balkans. The opponent remained Serbia,

its leadership, and its army, but the playing field had moved

from Bosnia to the Serb province of Kosovo. The ensuing 78-

day air war—Allied Force—offers students and practitioners of

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airpower alike many pertinent lessons for the conduct of war

in the post–Cold War era.

First, Deliberate Force achieved NATO’s objectives (table 1)

with denial and risk alone, but Allied Force provides an example

of a post–Cold War conflict in which the other coercive methods

became necessary. A great debate rages to this day over whether

Milosevic accepted NATO’s terms because of the denial targeting

of fielded forces in Kosovo or the punishment- and decapitationbased coercion in Serbia proper. Gen Wesley Clark, supreme

allied commander, Europe during Allied Force, emphasized denial, while Lt Gen Mike Short, his air component commander,

strongly supported decapitation and punishment. A wellpublicized debate between the two generals during Allied Force

typifies the argument that continues to this day: “ ‘This [the leadership and infrastructure targeting plan in Serbia proper] is the

jewel in the crown,’ Short said. ‘To me, the jewel in the crown is

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Table 1

Objectives of Allied Force

Political Objectives US Military Objectives

President Bill Clinton Secretary of Defense William Cohen

(24 March 1999) (24 March 1999)

• Demonstrate NATO’s opposition to aggression • Deter further action against the

• Deter Milosevic from further attacks • Kosovars

• Damage Serbian capacity to wage war • Diminish the Serbian army’s ability

• to attack

NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana Gen Henry Shelton, chairman of the

(1 April 1999) Joint Chiefs of Staff (24 March 1999)

• Stop the killing in Kosovo • Reduce ability of Serbian forces to

• End the refugee crisis; make it possible for • attack the Kosovars

• them to return

• Create conditions for political solutions based Secretary Cohen and General Shel-

• on the Rambouillet Accord ton (24 March 1999)

• Deter further action against the

• Kosovars

• Reduce ability of Serbian forces to

• attack the Kosovars

• Attack Serbian air defenses with

• minimal collateral damage and

• civilian casualties

• Failing to deter Milosevic in the

• near term, diminish his ability to

• wage war in the future
when those B-52s rumble across Kosovo,’ replied Clark. ‘You and

I have known for weeks that we have different jewelers,’ said

Short. ‘My jeweler outranks yours,’ said Clark.”23 In essence, the

two approaches produced a compromise.

Second, the remarkably high levels of political restraint at the

outset of hostilities diminished in a sizeable way the likelihood

that decapitation- and punishment-based targeting strategies

would initially have the desired effect. The few leadership and infrastructure targets that made their way through the political

target-selection process in the first few weeks could hardly pack

the punch called for in these theories of coercion. Initially, rather

than compelling compliance, haphazard bombing only emblazoned resistance. The politics at the outset of Allied Force weakened the potential blow of these strikes, essentially rendering

them ineffective. Clausewitz anticipated this phenomenon: “Thus

policy converts the overwhelmingly destructive element of war

into a mere instrument. The terrible two-handed sword that

should be used with total strength to strike once and no more,

becomes the lightest rapier—sometimes even a harmless foil fit

only for thrusts and feints and parries.”24 Furthermore, in his

study of airpower in four wars, Hosmer concludes that “U.S. selfimposed constraints are likely to limit the potential coercive

leverage that can be achieved through future air operations

against strategic targets.”25

At the politically charged outset of post–Cold War conflict,

the enemy’s armed forces may be the only target set upon

which airpower can concentrate overwhelming force. Because

leadership and infrastructure targets are often more politically

sensitive, a far more appropriate course of action would entail

initially holding these sites at risk and in reserve. Once the coercive potential of risk has reached its apex and the political

climate allows for the increased likelihood of collateral damage

and civilian casualties, the coercion hybrid can then attack

these sites in wholesale fashion.

Third, NATO found that every incident of collateral damage

and civilian casualties—predictable by-products of such a prematurely aggressive approach—brought an increase in political restraint and a further decrease in the already questionable effectiveness of the attacks against these target sets. In

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sum, these piecemeal attacks arguably had very little effect on

the eventual outcome until the politically restrained nature of

the war changed significantly in early May. According to John

Keegan, there “have really been two air wars, the first lasting

a month, the second six weeks.” The first was a measured failure, and the second—a success.26 As a result of this shift in

the political context of Allied Force, NATO allowed airpower to

conduct larger and more coordinated attacks against Serbia’s

political leadership and civil infrastructure.

Fourth, once the political climate allowed the infliction of

punishment, that approach—rather than denial—had the

greatest coercive value in Allied Force. The denial-based targeting that had proven effective in Bosnia and Kuwait met

with questionable results in Kosovo. Facing no threat of a

ground invasion, Serb military and paramilitary forces could

disperse and conceal themselves in ways that made a denial

strategy increasingly difficult. Lambeth finds that “in contrast

to Desert Storm, the campaign’s attempts at denial did not

bear much fruit.” He adds that “ironically, also in contrast to

the coalition’s ultimately unrequited efforts to coerce Saddam

Hussein into submission, punishment did seem to work

against Milosevic in this case” (emphasis in original).27 Denial

seemed effective and appropriate in the Gulf War and Deliberate Force, but the war in Kosovo suggested the need for other

coercive methods. In short, denial may not be the “one-sizefits-all” coercive method that Pape envisioned.

The final lesson from the Kosovo conflict is that stumbling

through an air campaign without the guidance of a clear, coherent strategy invites disaster. The air war over Serbia by no

means unfolded in accordance with a well-orchestrated plan

based on any such concept. On the contrary, it evolved haphazardly on a daily basis, reacting to the ebb and flow of the

international political mood. NATO leaders released and withheld individual targets in response to Serbian actions within

Yugoslavia and public opinion within their own countries. Interestingly, though, Allied Force unfolded along lines roughly

approximating the coercion pattern prescribed by the hybrid

airpower theory—admittedly, more by accident than by design. In very general terms, denial ran throughout with a size53

HINMAN
able increase in decapitation- and punishment-based targets

later in the conflict.

Gradualism in Allied Force, however, was more reminiscent

of gradual escalation in Johnson’s Rolling Thunder campaign

than of phased escalation in the coercion hybrid. In Kosovo,

there was no semblance of a conscious, calculated “stair-step”

approach. On the contrary, representatives from each of the

19 NATO countries could “line-item-veto” individual targets on

the air tasking order. In the coercion hybrid, policy makers

veto the entire phase until the political context allows for the

full application of overwhelming force in a coherent manner.

Without this appreciable contextual shift, no shift to the later

phases can occur. Unlike the situation in Allied Force and

Rolling Thunder, phased escalation optimizes the risk value of

future attacks as it maintains an appreciable level of shock,

surprise, and simultaneity. Ironically, though, what failed in

Vietnam seems to have enjoyed success in Allied Force.

Conclusion

“No plan survives first contact with the enemy,” but some

plans survive better than others.28 Ultimately, the meandering

path NATO stumbled upon in the Balkans was the only approach compatible with the politically restrained nature of the

air war over Serbia. Unfortunately, the planning and execution

of Allied Force clearly revealed that airmen had no coherent,

conceptually sound strategy for the politically restrained, incremental nature of the Kosovo conflict. When policy makers

rejected airpower’s traditional “all-or-nothing” approach, military planners had nothing to fall back on as an alternative.

Ironically, had they looked past their favorable memories of

Desert Storm, they may have seen in Deliberate Force a more

appropriate model for yet another politically sensitive air war

in the Balkans. Likewise, future air strategists may look to the

hybrid theory of coercive airpower for such a viable option in

the post–Cold War conflicts of the twenty-first century.

Notes

1. John A. Warden III, The Air Campaign: Planning for Combat (San Jose,

Calif.: toExcel, 1998), 150–53.

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2. Robert A. Pape, “The Air Force Strikes Back: A Reply to Watts and Warden,” Security Studies 7, no. 2 (Winter 1997/98): 213.

3. Benjamin S. Lambeth, The Transformation of American Air Power, Cornell Studies in Security Affairs (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2000),

147.

4. Thomas A. Keaney and Eliot A. Cohen, Gulf War Air Power Survey, vol.

2, Operations and Effects and Effectiveness (Washington, D.C.: Department

of the Air Force, 1993), 278–79.

5. Lt Col Ben Harvey, personal notes, subject: Desert Story, 6 August–14

September 1991, Air Force Historical Research Agency (AFHRA), IRIS no.

876218, file no. K239.0472-61, 2, 22.

6. James Chace, “New World Disorder,” New York Review of Books 45, no.

20 (17 December 1998): 61.

7. Robert H. Scales Jr., Certain Victory (Washington, D.C.: Office of the

Chief of Staff, US Army, 1993), 358.

8. Pape, 213–14.

9. Lambeth, 117.

10. Ibid., 147.

11. Keaney and Cohen, 96.

12. Ibid.

13. Lambeth, 106.

14. Briefing, AIRSOUTH, subject: NATO Air Operations in BosniaHerzegovina—Deliberate Force (U), 1 August 1995, AFHRA, Air University

Balkans Air Campaign Study, folder B3d-3, IRIS no. 01135134. (NATO Secret) Information extracted is unclassified.

15. Lt Col Mark J. Conversino, “Executing Deliberate Force, 30 August–

14 September 1995,” in Deliberate Force: A Case Study in Effective Air Campaigning, ed. Col Robert C. Owen (Maxwell AFB, Ala.: Air University Press,

January 2000), 159.

16. Lambeth, 176.

17. “Deliberate Force Factual Review,” vol. 2 (U), AFHRA, Air University

Balkans Air Campaign Study, folder B4-3, IRIS no. 01135143, 2–6. (NATO

Secret) Information extracted is unclassified.

18. Briefing, Lt Gen Michael D. Ryan, subject: Operation Deliberate

Force, US Air Force Corona Conference (U), February 1996. (Secret) Information extracted is unclassified.

19. Conversino, 159.

20. Col Christopher M. Campbell, “The Deliberate Force Air Campaign

Plan,” in Deliberate Force: A Case Study in Effective Air Campaigning, 100.

21. Conversino, 168.

22. Lambeth, 176.

23. Dana Priest, “Tension Grew with Divide over Strategy,” Washington

Post, 21 September 1999, 1.

24. Carl von Clausewitz, On War, ed. and trans. Michael Howard and

Peter Paret (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1976), 606.

25. Stephen T. Hosmer, Psychological Effects of U.S. Air Operations in

Four Wars, 1941–1991: Lessons for U.S. Commanders (Santa Monica, Calif.:

RAND, 1996), xx.

26. John Keegan, “Please, Mr. Blair, Never Take Such a Risk Again,” London Daily Telegraph, 6 June 1999, 1.

27. Lambeth, 225.

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28. This quotation is commonly attributed to Helmuth von Moltke (the

elder). See Robert D. Heinl Jr., comp., Dictionary of Military and Naval Quotations (Annapolis: United States Naval Institute, 1966), 239.

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Chapter 5

Politics, Doctrine, and the Future

of American Airpower

The social changes of our time may so transform the whole

nature of warfare that the mode of thought of the military

professional today will be, at best, inadequate or, at worst,

irrelevant. This is the kind of change for which we must

today be prepared and able, if necessary, to adjust.

—Michael Howard

Gradualism clearly played an important role in the planning

of Deliberate Force and the execution of Allied Force. In fact,

top leaders in the US Air Force are beginning to consider seriously the implications of the escalatory nature of post–Cold

War conflict. Gen Joseph Ralston, USAF, who replaced General

Clark as supreme allied commander, Europe, reveals the growing importance of politics in the post–Cold War era:

US airmen will no doubt continue to maintain that a rapid and massive application of airpower will be more efficient and effective than

gradual escalation. I share this belief. Yet, when the political and tactical constraints imposed on air leaders are extensive and pervasive—

and that trend seems more, rather than less, likely—then gradualism

may be perceived as the only option, and whether or not we like it, a

measured and steadily increasing use of airpower against an opponent

may be one of the options for future war.1

General Jumper expands upon this idea by recognizing the

need for a new approach to airpower that incorporates the

growing likelihood of both gradualism and political restraint:

From the air campaign planning point of view, it is always the neatest

and tidiest when you can get a political consensus of the objective of a

certain phase, and then go about [achieving] that objective with [the]

freedom to act as you see militarily best. . . . [But that] is not the situation we find ourselves in. We can rail against that, but it does no good.

It is the politics of the moment that is going to dictate what we are able

to do. . . . If the limit of that consensus means gradualism then we are

going to have to find a way to deal with a phased-air campaign with

gradual escalation. . . . We hope to be able to convince [civilian politicians] that is not the best way to do it, but in some cases we are going

to have to live with that situation.2

57
The new theory of coercive airpower developed in this paper

may be one such approach.

Gradualism may not be ideal. In fact, many airmen have argued quite persuasively through the years that gradual escalation is no way to run an air war. Even worse than an incremental campaign, though, is the prospect of being ill prepared for one

in the event that the political leadership requires it. Arguably,

this occurred during the planning and execution of Allied Force.

In essence, the purpose of Air Force doctrine is to prepare

airmen for future conflict by building on past experience, regardless of how unpleasant that experience may have been. Unfortunately, Air Force doctrine past and present has fallen well

short of that mark. It currently provides little practical guidance

to airmen who will plan and fight tomorrow’s post–Cold War

conflicts. In short, present service doctrine provides the nation

with one and only one way to prosecute an air campaign—the

parallel application of overwhelming force to deliver a swift, decisive blow. Any variation amounts to little more than a reluctant, makeshift adjustment on the fly. It prepares airmen quite

well to fight their political masters over the right way to prosecute an air war but leaves them empty-handed when forced to

fight an adversary in a politically restrained environment.

For example, AFDD 1, Air Force Basic Doctrine, informs airmen that “the versatility of air and space power, properly executed in parallel attacks, can attain parallel effects which

present the enemy with multiple crises occurring so quickly

that there is no way to respond to all or, in some cases, any of

them.” It goes on to state that “such a strategy places maximum stress on both enemy defenses and the enemy society as

a whole” (emphasis added).3 By encouraging airmen to employ

such an overtly aggressive strategy, doctrine advocates an approach that is both at odds with the better state of peace and

unresponsive to the politics of modern war.

Not only is the officially sanctioned Air Force way of war the

antithesis of gradualism, but also the service’s doctrine still

places strategic attack well above the level of counterland efforts.

Caroline Ziemke recognizes the Air Force’s doctrinal neglect of

denial-based concepts, positing that “by making airpower synonymous with strategic bombing, airpower advocates effectively

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excluded some of the most potentially decisive aspects of airpower from their own scale of effectiveness.”4 In fact, she goes so

far as to argue that “strategic bombing is not mere doctrine to the

USAF; it is its lifeblood and provides its entire raison d’etre.

Strategic bombing is as central to the identity of the Air Force as

the New Testament is to the Catholic Church.”5

Clearly, today’s airmen must reconsider the dogmatic approach of yesterday’s airpower doctrine. Jack Snyder warns

that “the destabilizing consequences of an inflexible, offensive

military strategy are compounded when it is mismatched with

a diplomatic strategy based on the assumption that risks can

be calculated and controlled through the skillful fine-tuning of

threats.”6 Changes must be made to bridge the gap between

the theory of the past and the practice of the present. Richard

Hallion accurately assesses that “doctrine must be realistic

and, above all, flexible enough to be applied to varying circumstances.”7 The time has come for airmen to seriously explore other more contemporary and politically palatable approaches to the airpower puzzle. If airpower doctrine is to

remain viable, the experience of post–Cold War conflict and the

realization of practical lessons by the Air Force’s top leadership must make their way into official service texts.

Recommendations

The Air Force should consider some specific and quite appropriate changes in order to align service doctrine with the

political realities and practical experience of modern war.

First, doctrine must accept the inevitability of political restraint in limited war and the increased likelihood of gradualism in future conflicts of the post–Cold War era. Air Force doctrine writers must reverse their apolitical tendencies and begin

to prepare airmen to fight tomorrow’s politically restrained

wars. Quite simply, the service’s one way of prosecuting air

campaigns cannot remain incompatible with the policy it aims

to serve. Codifying the very real likelihood of severe political

limitations on strategic attack and discussing alternative approaches would constitute two steps in the right direction.

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Second, Air Force doctrine in the twenty-first century must

begin to elevate the importance of one such alternative—the

counterland mission. Current service doctrine unabashedly

prioritizes its principal war-fighting responsibilities as air superiority first, followed by strategic attack, and, finally, counterland. The service must begin to question the appropriateness

of such a hierarchy in the politically restrained, nonprotracted

conflicts of the post–Cold War era. More specifically, AFDD 1

currently cites a monumental struggle between the air superiority and counterland missions:

Air and space power is so flexible and useful, there will be many demands that it be diverted to other tasks before any measure of air and

space superiority is secured. That is a false economy that ultimately

costs more in long term attrition and ineffective sorties. In some situations, the weight of enemy attacks may demand maximum support to

friendly surface forces. Nevertheless, attaining the required degree of

air and space superiority to enable effective maximum support is an

equally critical competing demand (emphasis added).8

One finds no recognition here or elsewhere that the air component commander can efficiently concentrate available air

forces on both counterair and counterland as part of the same

denial campaign. Because of the elevated importance of air superiority and strategic attack, doctrine seems to miss this

point altogether. In fact, the real friction in current doctrine is

more accurately between the two competing priorities of air

superiority and strategic attack. An approach—such as the coercion hybrid—that places counterair and counterland denial

before the more traditional “strategic” application of airpower

resolves this tension and aligns doctrinal grammar with the

political logic of the twenty-first century.

Current doctrine assumes that the concept of economy of

force intuitively prioritizes strategic attack over the counterland mission. In fact, the idea that attacking COGs in the capital is more economical than targeting individual tanks on the

battlefield is older than the Air Force itself: “If properly applied, strategic attack is the most efficient means of employing

air and space power.”9 Interestingly, though, when political

limitations severely dilute the synergistic and paralyzing effects of strategic bombing, counterland may become the more

economical use of force.10 In fact, the synergy of counterair

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and counterland as one denial effort would arguably make the

approach advocated in the coercion hybrid a more efficient use

of limited resources than the ambivalent priorities in Air Force

doctrine as currently written.11 The theoretical priorities embodied in Air Force doctrine today, then, must be realigned to

meet the needs of the post–Cold War era.

Third, in more general terms, Air Force doctrine traditionally

has championed the coercive value of strategic attack but still

views counterland as little more than support for the decisive

ground battle. Doctrine must look beyond this outdated approach and embrace the very real coercive potential in the targeting of the enemy’s fielded forces.

Fourth, Air Force doctrine has always embraced technology.

It must recognize that technology has allowed modern airpower

not only to be effective at denial-based coercion, but also

equally adept in phased air campaigns. Michael Howard sees

the “need for versatility, adaptability and flexibility in the

Armed Services so as to absorb technological change” but requires that it “must be extended to absorb political and social

change as well.”12 Technology commonly precipitates great

change in the tactics of airpower. Such change must also

make its way into strategy and service doctrine. For Lambeth,

one of the enduring lessons of post–Cold War conflict is the effectiveness of modern aviation technology in denial-based

strategies: “American air power showed its ability to achieve

strategic effects against fielded enemy ground forces through

its enhanced survivability, precision, and lethality. Accordingly,

it now has the wherewithal to proceed directly toward strategic goals, at least in many cases, that bypass any compelling

need to attack an opponent’s urban-industrial assets.”13 As

such, doctrine writers in the Air Force must now recognize

that the technology of modern airpower enables what the politics of post–Cold War conflict requires—a shift in emphasis

from strategic attack to a counterland effort.

Conclusion

Air Force doctrine still draws upon interwar theories designed around what airpower could do over 60 years ago—

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bomb the large, fixed area targets of yesterday’s total wars.

With the benefit of modern technology, airpower is now far

better at accurately attacking small, mobile targets such as

fielded forces. Now that airpower can do both, the question

turns to what it should do. Interestingly, many of the economicand civil-infrastructure targets politically permissible in yesterday’s total wars are politically unpalatable in today’s more

limited conflicts. Similarly, the technologically constrained military targets of the past are the very targets allowed by civilian

leaders of the present time.

The time is ripe for an airpower approach that is better

aligned with the technological capabilities and political limitations of the aerial weapon. In the foreword to AFDD 1, Gen

Michael Ryan, former Air Force chief of staff, writes that “these

warfighting concepts describe the essence of air and space

power and provide the airman’s perspective. As airmen, we

must understand these ideas, we must cultivate them and,

importantly, we must debate and refine these ideas for the future.”14 The theory of coercive airpower for post–Cold War conflict may provide a template for such change.

The new approach advocated in this study emerged from existing theories of coercive airpower based upon the firm foundation of America’s experience in limited war. It has roots in

both theory and practice. As a consequence, it is quite responsive to the defining attributes of conflict in the post–Cold

War era. Regrettably, yesterday’s Cold War concepts and assumptions about total war remain largely unresponsive to

today’s limited wars. Aligning airpower theory and Air Force

doctrine with the realities of the post–Cold War era will prepare tomorrow’s airmen for the conflicts that likely await the

United States in the twenty-first century.

Notes

1. Quoted in John T. Correll, “The Use of Force,” Air Force Magazine, December 1999, 39. General Ralston’s quotation was very carefully crafted

from a passage in an article by Col Phillip S. Meilinger (“Gradual Escalation,”

Armed Forces Journal International, October 1999, 18):

Airmen will, no doubt, continue to maintain that a rapid and massive application of air

force will be more efficient and effective than gradual escalation. They are probably correct.

Yet when the political and tactical constraints imposed on air leaders are extensive and pervasive—and that trend seems more rather than less likely—then gradual escalation will be

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more appealing. . . . A measured and steadily increasing use of airpower against an enemy,

which gives him ample opportunity to assess his situation and come to terms, combined

with a remarkably low casualty rate for both ourselves and the enemy’s civilian populace,

may be the future of war.

The similarities and the differences of these two quotations are quite intriguing.

2. Quoted in James A. Kitfield, “Another Look at the Air War That Was,”

Air Force Magazine, October 1999, 42.

3. Air Force Doctrine Document (AFDD) 1, Air Force Basic Doctrine, September 1997, 24.

4. Caroline F. Ziemke, “A New Covenant? The Apostles of Douhet and the

Persian Gulf War,” in The Eagle in the Desert: Looking Back on U.S. Involvement in the Persian Gulf War, ed. William Head and Earl H. Tilford Jr. (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1996), 306.

5. Caroline F. Ziemke, “Promises Fulfilled? The Prophets of Air Power and

Desert Storm,” lecture, Washington Strategy Seminar on Air Power and the

New Security Environment, Washington, D.C., January 1992, 16–19.

6. Jack Snyder, “Civil Military Relations and the Cult of the Offensive,

1914 and 1984,” International Security 9, no. 1 (Summer 1984): 129.

7. Richard Hallion, ed., Airpower Confronts an Unstable World (Washington, D.C.: Brassey’s, 1997), 11.

8. AFDD 1, 29.

9. Ibid., 52.

10. Parenthetically, it is interesting to note that the coercion hybrid is

more in line with the Air Force’s own “New View of Conflict” (AFDD 1, 42)

than is current Air Force doctrine. Phase one corresponds quite nicely with

the halt phase, adding the important coercive ingredient of denial. The later

phases allow airpower to “gain and expand the strategic initiative” as America

deploys and builds up ground forces for the ground offensive.

11. See AFDD 1’s discussion of the principle of economy of force for further illumination of this point (18).

12. Michael Howard, “Military Science in an Age of Peace,” Journal of the

United Services Institute for Defence Studies 119 (March 1974): 6.

13. Benjamin S. Lambeth, The Transformation of American Air Power,

Cornell Studies in Security Affairs (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press,

2000), 268.

14. AFDD 1, [i].

63

HINMAN
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73
The Politics of Coercion

Toward a Theory of Coercive Airpower

for Post–Cold War Conflict

Air University Press Team

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