THE RAF AIR POWER REVIEW - Royal Air Force Centre for Air ...

esist, then surrender must follow. Some, especially those trained in the social
sciences, have put new terms on these old concepts, and now refer to coercion
and denial strategies. There has been a vigorous debate over the past decade
between the proponents of these two camps. In truth, it is virtually impossible to
separate these two types of strategies in practice. If the point of attacking, say, an
enemy’s forces is to deny him the ability to fight, then it is likely such an inability will
have a strong coercive effect on the enemy’s will. Conversely, if an attack on the
enemy’s oil refineries is intended to break an enemy’s will because it destroys
something he values, then at the same time the value of the oil revenue lost will
decrease his ability to fight. The issue therefore becomes one of emphasis.
To a great extent, the choice of strategy is driven by objectives and by the nature of
the war. In a total war, with surrender and subjugation of the enemy as the goal, it is
likely the destruction of the enemy’s will and his capability will be necessary. Thus, in
World War II the Allies attacked both Germany’s will and her capability – coercion
and denial. In the case of Iraq, it was similarly a question of both strategies being
employed, albeit for different reasons: the coalition wanted to coerce Saddam to
leave Kuwait; but it also wanted to deny him the capability of remaining an offensive
threat in the region thereafter. Other conflicts, such as that in Kosovo, are more
problematic. It was NATO’s goal to coerce Serbia into stopping ethnic cleansing in
Kosovo. Coercion would ordinarily entail the attack of high value targets in Serbia
itself, but planners also employed a strategy of denial: they targeted Serbian military
forces and infrastructure actually engaged in Kosovo. Milosevic surrendered, but it is impossible at this stage to know why. Was
it because of the losses his military forces suffered in Kosovo – which accelerated greatly during the last two weeks of the war;
or was it due to the severe damage done to the Serbian infrastructure, estimated at over $30 billion? Perhaps it was both
strategies working together, along with the realization that the bombing would continue indefinitely and with no respite, that
broke Milosevic. On the other hand, reports increasingly indicate that the damage actually sustained by the Serbian army,
though high, was less than initially thought. This would tend to indicate that the coercive aspect of NATO’s air campaign was
the dominant cause of Serbian surrender. It may therefore be useful to re-examine the coercive strategy known as gradual
escalation, so deplored in Vietnam and seen as anathema by airmen ever since.
…if an attack on the enemy’s oil
refineries is intended to break an
enemy’s will because it destroys
something he values, then at the
same time the value of the oil
revenue lost will decrease his ability
to fight. The issue therefore becomes
one of emphasis…
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