The logic of strategic coercion supposes that it is often easier to exhaust a nation's will to persist in war than it is to destroy that nation's material capacity to wage war. Of course, this estimation depends on how important the object of war is to the aggressor. Proponents of coercive diplomacy also argue that the prospect of strategic attacks, if made credible, might be enough to compel aggressors to quit their aims. This logic undergirds strategies of graduated escalation. The promise that strategic coercion can often and reliably achieve objectives with a minimum of destruction is a false one.
Coercion is an inherently weak form of control.
To some extent strategic attacks initially may strengthen national resolve. For all these reasons, strategic coercion is subject to miscalculation and escalation. However, the war also dragged-on much longer than expected and NATO failed to stem the attacks on ethnic Albanian Kosovars during its course. Another inadvertent effect of the bombing campaign was a fracturing in US relations with both Russia and China. These costs unsettled America's European allies, who certainly do not wish to repeat the experience.