OPINION Vol.1, No.1 June 2013 - National Defence University

• Determine the punishment regime for non-compliance.
• Determine inducements to encourage compliance.
Step Two: Assessing the Environment. Situational-contextual factors can be exploited to ensure
a flexible coercion strategy. There are no hard and fast rules for assessing the environment and it is
dangerous to transfer ‘lessons’ from past coercive strategies if the environmental factors are even
subtly different.
Step Three: Select the Form of Coercion. Selecting a coercion form is important because it
provides clarity of purpose. The factors affecting future coercion mean that opportunities to use
George’s classic and tacit ultimatum successfully are diminishing, as they rely on the threat of
harsh punishment with little tolerance for non-compliance. The try and see approach is also
unlikely, as explained later. Therefore, the most likely of George’s forms in future coercion are
incremental coercion and the limited threat. However, in the light of future coercion factors, some
other forms have been added:-
• Underdog Coercion. A weak state is able to threaten a stronger state if it has some
hold over it. This may be an active hold, such as control of a vital commodity, or a
passive hold, such as not taking action against internal militants threatening the stronger
state. The weaker state takes advantage of the situation by refusing to cooperate unless
the stronger state offers something in return. This coercion could be used as a countercoercive
measure or as coercion in its own right.
• Incentivized Coercion. This is where a mix of carrot and stick is used, similar to the
limited threat, but the inducements are decided from the outset.
• Baited Coercion. One state coerces another into something they are unlikely to
cooperate on, by offering them the bait of something they want. The coercing state must
‘oversell’ the ‘bait’, to make it sufficiently attractive, whilst minimizing the downstream
risks, which may affect the coerced states’ national interests. An example is the core
European States who pushed for greater integration by playing up the attractions of a
unitary currency, so as to persuade satellite states to join the Euro zone. The downstream
risks, such as stringent monetary policies and austerity packages, were deliberately
undersold.
Step Four: Opponent Evaluation. In this step, you assess the strengths and weaknesses of the
target state, ensuring you anticipate likely reactions and responses from the opponent's perspective.
This step is key and Pape’s Punishment theory (for rational opponents) or Engelbrecht’s 2 nd Order
Theory (for irrational opponents) could be used to gauge the viability of Steps One to Three. If
they were judged unviable, it would be prudent to return to step one and adjust the variables or to
step three to change the form of coercion.
The Application of Future Coercive Modalities
Whichever modality is used, it will have to be considerably more sophisticated to succeed. A way
to think through a strategy in detail is to ‘war game’ it, so that contingency plans are developed in
anticipation of as many outcomes as possible. ‘War gaming’ is a military concept increasingly used in
other spheres and increasingly relies on support tools. A tool for the analysis of strategic interaction,
called Game Theory, gained a practical application when the US government financed research into its use
for national security purposes in the mid-1960s, to find ways to outmanoeuvre the Soviet Union in the art
of statecraft. In 1994, the Nobel Prize in Economics went to three game theorists, the mathematician John
Nash, the economist Reinchard Selten, and the strategic theorist John Harsanyi. 32 Therefore, for future
success, coercive statecraft will be less about threatening states with war and more about threatening them
economically (through smart sanctions, such as finance). Although political concerns will continue, it will
be more about ensuring resource security than territorial disputes. It will also be about the end state being
cloaked by a more credible and proportionate intermediary state. Coercion is therefore likely to involve
many steps (reciprocity, with clarity and over limited time). Additionally, coercive statecraft will be less
about threatening to sponsor internal dissidents within a coerced state due to uncertain consequences and
more about being coercive with allies, although there will be a balance between universal support and
forming a narrower coalition with clearer goals and will. Also it will be more about ensuring the
OPINION Vol.1 No.1 29 June 2013