Bridging Deterrence and Compellence: An Alternative Approach to the Study of Coercive
Diplomacy
Author(s): Maria Sperandei
Reviewed work(s):
Source: International Studies Review, Vol. 8, No. 2 (Jun., 2006), pp. 253-280
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International
StudiesReview(2006) 8, 253-280
Bridging Deterrence and Compellence:
An Alternative Approach to the
Study of Coercive Diplomacy
MARIA SPERANDEI
Departmentof Government,Cornell University
Despite decades of research on coercive diplomacy, the linkage between
deterrence and compellence still remains unexplored. The present essay provides both a theoretical and empirical analysis of why studying
their linked relationship is desirable. After overviewing the literature, it
investigates the interplay between US strategies of deterrence and compellence in the First Gulf Crisis (1990-1991), suggesting that the deterrence-compellence linkage is stronger when the two strategies coexist or
after they have coexisted. In particular, such a linkage was absent at the
beginning of the First Gulf Crisis but very much present from the middle of the crisis until its end. Although this essay represents only a
preliminary foray into exploring the potential linkage between deterrence and compellence, it appears that a better grasp of this relationship
could provide us with the tools to counteract as well as reduce the
negative effects of miscalculation and misperception, practices that are
partially responsible for unpredicted and unwanted outcomes in international politics.
In a system of states, the use of force generally discriminates between peace and
war. Yet, international politics often takes place in a gray region involving no-peace
and no-war, wherein the threat of violence-more
than its mere application-is the
critical variable for an understanding of interstate relations and crises. Most conflicts are, in fact, reciprocal bargaining situations wherein the desired outcome
hinges on the participants' skillful exploitation of potential force (Schelling 1963:5;
Snyder and Diesing 1977:22; Lauren 1979:186). After decades of investigations
into the threat of the use of force as a distinctive practice in international politics,
one area still remains largely unexplored: the linkage between the two best-known
intended to dissuade an adversary from doing something (detypes of threat-one
terrence) and the other intended to persuade an adversary to do something (compellence). An overriding focus on deterrence characterized scholarship during the
Cold War. After the bipolar system's collapse, however, researchers and policymakers became interested in rediscovering the meaning and practice of compellence.1 Today, analyzing the relationship between deterrence and compellence is a
neglected but important task.
The purpose of this essay is to explore this dark corner in the literature on
coercive diplomacy. Three scholarly traditions, or rather approaches, seem to have
'This statement is not intended to suggest that research on compellence did not exist during the Cold War or
that strategies of compellence did not come into play. Rather, the heavy focus and reliance on deterrence jeopardized the significance of any comparative analysis linking deterrence to compellence.
O 2006 International Studies Review.
Published by Blackwell Publishing, 350 Main Street, Malden, MA02148, USA, and 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK.
254
Bridging Deterrence and Compellence
characterized the study of deterrence and compellence after World War II. By
discussing some of the extensive research on coercive diplomacy, the first section of
the essay will illustrate the similarities and differences among these approaches.
From them, this author will derive an overlooked alternative that offers interesting
possibilities. According to this view, deterrence and compellence are distinctiveand-linked events because every international actor A who aims at deterring another actor B shouldhave an idea about how to react if B acts contrarily to A's wishes.
This first section also clarifies the reasons why research on the missing approach is
desirable and explains the ways in which the study of the deterrence-compellence
relationship will unfold in the following sections.
The second section of the essay provides an overview of the defining features of
deterrence and compellence in order to establish an eventual connection between
the two strategies of coercion. This section suggests that even though some elements are peculiar to the study of deterrence and some others better suited to the
analysis of compellence, and although the two strategies have received different
emphases at different times, a wide range of points of contact exist. This assessment
does not make the development of a theoretical deterrence-compellence bridge
any easier. On the contrary, it demonstrates that, with the current state of knowledge, the theory of deterrence and the theory of compellence remain unbridgeable
or mutually exclusive.
The deterrence-compellence divide confirms that the theoretical study of the
two strategies has never encompassed their sequential, empirical application. Interestingly, if deterrence and compellence are regarded as sequentially applied
policies, studying their connection or disconnection is an important research endeavor. For this purpose, section three of the essay analyzes the interplay of US
deterrence and compellence in the First Gulf Crisis (1990-1991). Whereas the
literature on US coercive diplomacy during this crisis would advocate either the
impossibility of distinguishing between deterrence and compellence or the lack of
any relationship between them (given the weakness of the US deterrent attempt
and the seriousness of the coalition's compellent effort), this essay will argue that
inferences about the empirical deterrence-compellence linkage are less immediate
and straightforward than it would seem. The US policymakers who implemented
the weak policies of deterrence before the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait neither had, nor
sought to have, a prior notion of compellence in mind. However, a certain degree of
deterrence-compellence coordination is evident in the US strategy toward Iraq
when the two policies were concurrently pursued after August 2, 1990.
Despite the fact that this essay represents the first investigation into a new area of
inquiry within the study of coercive diplomacy and, thus, its findings should be
viewed cautiously as well as attentively, the deterrence-compellence relationship
could serve as a valuable instrument for planning and assessing the strategy of
coercion in dealing with crises. Ultimately, well-focused and coherent deterrencecompellence management is a highly desirable asset in dealing with interstate crises
wherein systemic misperceptions and misunderstandings often lie in wait. Policymakers, as a result, should regard a careful and constant appraisal of the deterrence-compellence linkage as a major objective.
Approaches to the Study of Deterrence and Compellence
Deterrence and compellence have been researched extensively. Valuable theoretical
and empirical contributions, both old and new, have undoubtedly advanced our
understanding of the nature of bargaining in international politics. Several aspects
of each policy have undergone wide and recurrent scrutiny. The conceptual definition and refinement of the two strategies, the conditions that favor or inhibit
their success, the classification of case studies as examples of deterrence or
compellence, the political and behavioral limits underpinning their rational
MARIA SPERANDEI
255
assumptions, and the role of the military and nonmilitary to enhance their credibility figure among the most investigated areas. However, research regarding the
threat to use force is noticeably characterized by an "inward-looking" perspective.
Deterrence and compellence are readily thought of as two separate halves of the
same coin and analysis proceeds withineach half rather than betweenthe two. Because
of the complex theoretical and empirical nature of both concepts and because the
study of coercive diplomacy has been mostly accompanied by a strong emphasis on
deterrence, a relatively small number of studies tackle deterrence and compellence
jointly rather than individually.2 Moreover, most of these studies do not consider
deterrence and compellence as distinctive and interrelated events on a continuum.
In other words, no effort is made to bridge the gap between the two halves of
coercive diplomacy. As will be further specified later, there is reason to believe that
such an effort is desirable and that the time is ripe for such development.
To substantiate this assessment, let us first examine the research strategy that lies
behind the study of deterrence and compellence. By adopting a holistic stance, this
section gives an account of several ways in which deterrence and compellence have
been dealt with, while also tracing the evolution of the literature on coercion. The
argument is developed along two dimensions. One (horizontal) concentrates on
how the interest in coercive diplomacy has changed over time. The other (vertical)
identifies comparable approaches across time. Providing an exhaustive overview of
the available literature is beyond the remit of this study. Rather, the purpose is to
touch thematically upon major contributions within the field in an attempt to offer
a new angle from which to examine the diplomacy of violence. The boundaries that
separate the discussed approaches are not impermeable. Several scholars have
adopted more than one approach across their studies or even different approaches
at the same time. As a result, the proposed classification is best understood dynamically, bearing in mind that the focus is not on the authors but on the approaches that were selected in general and on the one that is missing in particular.
'Joint-But-Opposite":The First Approach
Not surprisingly, the theoretical development of coercive diplomacy is framed by
the rise, succession, and demise of the Cold War. Although the policy of containment formulated at the end of the 1940s legitimized a special interest in deterrence
for four subsequent decades, the fall of the "iron curtain" encouraged greater
attention to compellence. Arguably, the primary and most comprehensive discussion of the two major exercises of coercive diplomacy-deterrence and compellence-was offered by Thomas Schelling in the 1960s. As his key works clearly
illustrate, Schelling (1963, 1966) focused mainly on the features that distinguished
between the two policies-a stance that would prove to be extremely resilient in the
years to come. Drawing on J. David Singer's distinction between "persuasion" and
"dissuasion," Schelling (1966:69) distinguished between "a threat intended to make
an adversary do something" and "a threat intended to keep him from starting
something." The major dissimilarities, to a great extent paralleling the ones existing between statics and dynamics, were identified "in the timing ... in who has to
make the first move and in whose initiative is put to a test" (Schelling 1966:69).
Deterrence is indefinite in timing and tactically static; it involves setting the stage by
demanding inaction and, potentially, waiting forever for the opponent to act. The
compellent threat, in contrast, cannot wait forever to be effective. A demand has to
be formulated, a deadline fixed, and some punitive action--to be ceased if the
2From the end of the Second World War until the demise of the Soviet Union, US official foreign policy was
widely reminiscent of President Harry Truman's policy of containment and was aimed at deterring the adversary
rather than "rolling it back." The Cuban Missile Crisis and President Reagan's mandate regarding Communism are
exceptions.
256
Bridging Deterrence and Compellence
adversary yields-has to be put in motion. Thus, whereas the issuing of a threat is
sufficient for deterrence, both the threat and the exemplary use of force are required for compellence. Moreover, because the alteration rather than the preservation of the adversary's behavior is the general objective of a compellent policy,
such threats are deemed to be more complex than deterrent ones because they
involve a degree of positive activity on the part of the target (Schelling 1966:100;
Petersen 1986; Freedman 1998:54). Ultimately, the West's focus on deterrence is
reflected in Schelling's terminological effort to create an adequate counterpart to
deterrence, referring to a more active kind of threat. The term "compellence," as
he states (Schelling 1966:71), is the best he could think of.
A viewpoint similar to Schelling's, namely an interest in the distinctionbetween the
threat to dissuade and the threat to persuade an adversary to change the status quo,
is observable in several other studies published in the ensuing decades. At the end
of the 1970s, Paul Lauren (1979:187) presented a brief historical narrative of several theories of bargaining by distinguishing between those that concentrated on
the official 'jewel in the crown" of US foreign policy, deterrence, and those that
emphasized the more dangerous compellence.3 Some commonalities were recognized. For instance, both deterrence and compellence use threats, not to harm the
adversary physically, but to affect his will. Namely, both the deterrer and the compeller must convince the adversary that they have "the will and the capability to
inflict considerable damage upon something that the opponent values more than
the object of dispute" (Lauren 1979:193). Clearly, therefore, both the theories of
deterrence and those of compellence are rooted in assumptions that are a rough
approximation of a more multifaceted and dynamic reality. Importantly, however,
for Lauren as well as Gordon Craig and Alexander George (1990), deterrence and
compellence remain two sets of theories with some common attributes.
The joint-but-opposite approach is also present in the debate between Paul Huth
and Bruce Russett (1984, 1990) on the one side and Richard Ned Lebow and Janice
Gross Stein (1989) on the other concerning the coding of cases as examples of
successful or failed deterrence or compellence. Their disagreement centers on a
group of ambiguous cases. Whereas Lebow and Stein, who adopt narrower criteria
for inclusion, regard the spurious cases as "false positives" and therefore exclude
them from the analysis, Huth and Russett view the group as "false negatives" and
take account of them on the basis that some cases could be genuine examples of
deterrence and compellence. Regardless of the validity of their positions, for Huth,
Russett, Lebow, and Stein, the essential task was one of matching the theoretical
distinctionbetween deterrence and compellence with the empirical evidence.
A similar perspective is adopted by Walter Petersen (1986) in his assessment of
some hypothesized dissimilarities between deterrence and compellence. Common
key propositions stemming from deterrence theory hold that (1) compellent threats
are more likely to result in violent conflict, (2) it is easier to compel than to deter, (3)
compellence is a reckless activity, and (4) the targets of compellent threats have a
bargaining advantage over the initiators. Petersen's findings suggest that the first
statement is true if compellent threats are issued under specific structural conditions, that the applicability of the second proposition is limited, and that the third
and the fourth ones are invalid. Notwithstanding that his primary intent was to
demonstrate that these conventional assumptions are faulty in some significant
respect, Petersen's preference for examining what distinguisheseach policy from the
other is, once again, unquestioned.4
3It is worth noting that Lauren considered the terms "compellence" and "coercive diplomacy" as equivalent. In
the present essay, both compellence and deterrence (and not exclusively compellence) comprise coercive diplomacy.
4Petersen's research is based on questionable coding decisions and definitions of deterrence and compellence
that shift the focus away from Schelling's conceptual framework. However, for the purposes of the present essay,
Petersen's approach to the investigation of coercive diplomacy is very similar to Schelling's.
MARIA SPERANDEI
257
Likewise, in his appraisal of the most significant factors responsible for international crisis outcomes, Eric Herring (1995:14) takes into account the deterrencecompellence distinction--along with the military balance, the interests at stake, and
other psychological and cultural variables. But he admits, as a final remark, that this
distinction can be eroded as a result of crisis tactics. His case in point is the Chinese
reaction to the planned US invasion of Korea (September 1950). After President
Harry Truman had decided to invade North Korea but before the operations had
begun, the Chinese use of deterrence shaded into compellence in an effort to
change Truman's mind. For Herring (1995:231), however, the blurring was provisional because "once US forces entered North Korea, the Chinese abandoned
deterrencein favor of luring US forces to their destruction."
The Deterrence-Compellence
Divide: The SecondApproachand Its TwoExpressions
Besides dealing with deterrence and compellence as joint-but-opposite components
of coercive diplomacy, scholars have chosen to treat them separately and unequally,
favoring the former over the latter or vice versa. The awesome increase in destructive power brought about by nuclear and thermonuclear weapons soon after the rise
of the "iron curtain" marked the "golden age" of deterrence. Despite the fact that
their works differ significantly in scope, content, and conclusions, deterrence theorists are generally grouped into three succeeding waves of thought (Jervis 1979;
Buzan 1987; Schaub 1998). What unites them is an unquestioned preference for
deterrence as the prime (if not the only) expression of coercive diplomacy. Writing at
the dawn of the nuclear era, when no major nuclear deployment had yet occurred,
"first-wave"thinkers such as Bernard Brodie (1946) and Arnold Wolfers (1962:147165) formulated some theoretical forecasts regarding the implications of nuclear
weapons. In the late 1950s, with the emergence of bipolarity and the undermining of
the United States' credibility in meeting Soviet aggression with nuclear retaliation,
"second-wave"scholars such as Schelling (1963, 1966) and Glenn Snyder (1960; also
Snyder and Diesing 1977) signaled the heyday of rational deterrence theory. The
logical assumptions at the core of this theory were subjected to vigorous criticism
during the 1970s and the 1980s by subsequent "third-wave" studies (George and
Smoke 1974; Jervis 1979). Using a case-study approach and drawing on the recent
breakthroughs in social psychology, these works emphasized the behavioral and organizational deviations of decision makers from established patterns of rationality.
Even though the theory and practice of deterrence thrived, a conceptual and
empirical vacuum surrounded the policy of compellence until the end of the 1980s,
with the noteworthy exceptions of studies by George, Hall, and Simons (1971) and
Lauren (1972). Awareness of the unequal treatment of compellence vis-a-vis deterrence along with a willingness to remedy the unbalanced state of the literature
developed since the second half of the 1990s (George and Simons 1994; Freedman
1998; Art and Cronin 2003). Significantly, after the end of the Cold War, US policymakers rediscovered the utility of compellence in a number of instances (Iraq,
Somalia, Bosnia, Libya, Laos, Cuba, Haiti). In the new international context, classical deterrence could no longer be the keystone of US strategy; its conceptualization needed rethinking and updating. Compellence, on the other hand, seemed
to offer practical and analytic promise, and the unequal treatment of the two
branches of coercion began to be redressed. What is relevant to a discussion of
the topic of this section--the deterrence-compellence divide--is that the new
scholarship on compellence ultimately reflected a perspective on the study of
coercion that recalled the one adopted by the three waves of literature on
deterrence just considered. Deterrence and compellence were retained as distinct
concepts to be analyzed separately.
Scholarly research into the forgotten half of coercion (George and Simons
1994; Freedman 1998; Art and Cronin 2003) has confirmed the complexity of the
258
Bridging Deterrence and Compellence
phenomenon as the research on deterrence had already suggested. Nevertheless,
although the study of deterrence has generally relied on an axiomatic system of
deductive logic, induction appears to be the principal methodology chosen for the
study of compellence.5 In particular, a comparative case-study approach aimed at
determining the correlates of the success and failure of compellence has been the
favored technique. Whereas there is some agreement on these correlates of compellence, variations in the terminology used are customary. The expression "compellence" itself has generated disagreement, being referred to as "coercion,"
"coercive diplomacy," or, in George's (1991) favored wording, "forceful persuasion." Reminiscent of Schelling's theoretical skeleton, a broad group of analysts
considered the various forms of compellence (and deterrence) as a subset of the
"diplomacy of violence" or "coercive diplomacy" (George, Hall, and Simons 1971;
Huth and Russet 1984; Stein 1992; Herring 1995; Freedman 1998; Art and Cronin
2003). According to Schelling's (1966:3) definition, coercion is the "power to hurt,"
which best succeeds when it is "held in reserve" rather than when it is used as
"brute force." Therefore, the full-scale use of force (war-fighting) should not be
interpreted as the most extreme execution of a purposeful threat; rather, it should
translate into the failure of coercion and ex hypothesiof compellence. Another
branch of the literature (Lauren 1979; Treverton 2000) includes only compellence
in the category of coercive diplomacy and excludes deterrence as too weak a policy
tool to coerce effectively. Contrary to subsuming compellence under coercive diplomacy or claiming their equivalence, George (1991) looks at compellence as a
more wide-ranging instrument of violence than coercion. Compellence, as George
intends it, involves the offensive as well as the defensive use of threat, whereas
coercive diplomacy would refer exclusively to the latter, being the demonstrative
(or limited) use of force. By making coercive diplomacy a subcategory of compellence, George visibly reverses Schelling's framework while also blurring the distinction between compellence and brute force. Elsewhere, Robert Art and Patrick
Cronin (2003) introduce a further division, that between "coercive diplomacy" and
"coercive attempts," the former comprising and the latter excluding the threat of
the limited use of force.
Some observations are called for after this brief theoretical tour. Terminological
disagreement about compellence is acute. Although classifications are normal practice in international relations theory and conceptual analysis is a necessary first step
toward clear thinking, an unwarranted emphasis on definitions surrounds the
theory of coercion. Schelling's categorization of deterrence and compellence as the
major expressions of coercive diplomacy seems to not only remain the most logically appealing theoretical framework on the subject but to be perfectly capable of
containing all the variants in the study of threat and use of force that have been
contemplated to date. Ultimately, no variant seems to offer more than just additional conceptual distinctions on an already conceptually and empirically complex
issue.
In conclusion, the present essay recognizes that the coercive policies of deterrence as well as of compellence rely on the threat of future military force to influence adversarial decision makers and that the limited use of actual force may be
required for compellence to work. In addition, this essay endorses Schelling's
grouping of compellence and deterrence as both being indicative of coercive
diplomacy, a choice also made, quite recently, by Daniel Byman and Matthew
Waxman (2000).
"Induction and deduction are best viewed as complementary in explaining both deterrence and compellence.
The latter policy, however, benefits from a lower level of abstraction (that the success of deterrence is harder to assess
as there are no visible changes that can confirm it); the success and failure of compellance are easier to measure
empirically.
MARIA SPERANDEI
259
"Blurringthe Boundaries":The ThirdApproach
An alternative perspective on the study of deterrence and compellence questions
the viability of distinguishing between the two along semantic or empirical lines. In
this respect, David Baldwin (1979:188) holds that the differentiation between the
two policies of coercion is deficient because "from a purely semantic standpoint any
deterrent threat can be stated in compellent terms and any compellent threat can
be stated in deterrent terms." Notably, this stance is not antithetical to the former
approaches. Schelling himself has acknowledged the possibility that the boundaries
between deterrence and compellence may blur in certain instances. Take, for example, the Cuban Missile Crisis. The successful US compellent policy following the
failure of deterrence in 1962 had, in Schelling's (1966:80-82) words, "some static
qualities of the deterrent threat." Along these lines, Freedman (2004:111) observes
that the United States was simultaneously conveying two warnings to the Soviet
Union: one (compellent) aimed at stopping Soviet missile installations in Cuba, the
other (deterrent) aimed at stopping any additional missiles from passing through
the US blockade. Elsewhere, Art and Cronin (2003:4) maintain that the two policies
likely intermingle when the opposing parties disagree on the legitimacy of the
status quo. Thus, the deterrer's attempt to defend the status quo will be viewed by
the target as a compellent action benefitting the deterrer, whereas the target's
would-be active response might be defined as both a failure of deterrence and a
compellent reaction.
More recently, Byman and Waxman (2000:5-12) have further portrayed the
empirical haziness between deterrence and compellence by describing the US-Iraq
standoff during the first Persian Gulf Crisis. According to these authors, US injunctions that can be classified as "deterrence" or "compellence"--such as "don't
invade Kuwait" or "withdraw from Kuwait"-overlapped considerably in practice.
Even though a compellent threat plays an inherent role in deterrence (that is,
issuing the threat "don't invade Kuwait" contains the warning that an action will be
stopped in the case of invasion), a deterrent intimidation plays an implicit role in
compellence (that is, the demand for withdrawal implies the implicit request of not
engaging in the offense).
Coercion is therefore a dynamic process and coercive threats should be seen
as lying along a continuum rather than as discrete events. Standard frameworks
based on the deterrence-compellence distinction do not provide for a full understanding of coercion if a crisis is viewed as a process of constant interaction wherein
actors' moves are measured against the adversary's countermoves. Consider the
novelty of this idea. The coexistence of deterrence and compellence is not a special
circumstance in a crisis, as Schelling has proposed and as Freedman as well as Art
and Cronin have reiterated. Rather, an entire crisis is seen as a continuous interplay
between the two policies of coercion. Although Byman and Waxman are aware of
the constant difficulty of distinguishing in practice between deterrence and compellence and, as a result, take both strategies into account, these authors' overriding
interest is in compellence. Overall, though, Byman and Waxman's position is more
consistent than Baldwin's (1979:192), who, in the same article in which he acknowledges the possibility of a deterrence-compellence merger, retreats from his
position by affirming that "students of international relations should be wary of the
distinctionbetween compellence and deterrence."
Table 1 summarizes the discussion thus far. It indicates the three main trends that
have dominated the rich panorama of studies that exist on deterrence and compellence. Analysts have been eager to (1) deal with the two policies jointly by accentuating their differences over their possible interactions or points of contact
(first approach), (2) tackle them separately by restricting attention to only one of the
two (second approach), or (3) identify their semantic or empirical inseparability and
difficult partition (third approach). The complexity of the concepts as well as their
TABLE
1. Three Orthodox Approaches to Deterrence and Compellence
APPROACHES TO DETERRENCE (D) AND COMPELLENCE (C)
A) First Approach
JOINT-BUT-OPPOSITE
B) Second Approach
SEPARATE AND UNEQUAL
D
B1) Emphasis on D
Schelling
(1963, 1966)*
Lauren
(1979)
Huth and Russett
(1984, 1990)
Petersen (1986)
Lebow and Stein
(1989)
Craig and George
(1990)
Stein (1992)
Herring (1995)*
First-wave theorists
(1940-1950s)
Second-wave theorists
(1960s)
Third-wave theorists
(1970-1980s)
Lebow and Stein
(1994)
Freedman
(2004)
*
C) Third Appr
BLURRED
(SEMANTICAL
EMPIRICAL
C
B2) Emphasis on C
George, Hall, and
Simons (1971, 1994)
Lauren (1972)
Freedman (1998)
Schaub (1998)
Art and Cronin
(2003)*
*Recognitionthat the distinctionmaybe eroded in certaininstances.
Baldwin (1979)
Byman and Wax
(2000)
With minor emp
Schelling (1963,
Herring (1995)
Freedman (1998
Art and Cronin
MARIA SPERANDEI
261
potential coexistence help explain the frequency with which analysts shift from one
approach to the other. For instance, understanding deterrence and compellence as
two opposite sides of coercion (first approach) is compatible with an exclusive concentration on one of them (second approach). Similarly, as highlighted by Schelling's previous insight on the Cuban Missile Crisis, the first and third approaches do
not exclude one another, while Byman and Waxman's study ultimately shows the
compatibility of the third and the second approaches.
"Distinctive-and-Linked":
A ForgottenApproach
An additional option exists besides the approaches summarized in Table 1. Rather
than putting deterrence and compellence at odds with one another and addressing
them either in concert or independently (first and second approaches) or stretching
their terminological or empirical boundaries until they overlap (third approach),
there is reason to think that deterrence and compellence can be effectively linked
and that studying their relationship could promote a better understanding and
execution of them both. Although their semantic difference is viable, as Herring
(1995:15-16) has demonstrated, their rigid separation is unproductive not merely
because the two policies may empirically fuse or blur in the particular case under
study but, more importantly, because they can be formulated and applied at sequential stages in the management of a crisis.
Several case studies-the Berlin crises in 1948-1949 and 1958-1962, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the Taiwan Straits Crisis in 1954-1955, the
Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, the Sino-Soviet border crisis in 1969, the Falklands
War in 1982, and the Gulf War in 1990-1991--have involved a mixture of deterrent and compellent policies. In the Berlin crisis, the airlift (compellence) by
which the United States responded to the Soviet blockade of Berlin in June 1948
resulted from the failure of US deterrence. Also, by the time the blockade was lifted,
the United States had set up its most successful deterrent device: the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization. With regard to Japan (1941), the United States had used the
threat of an oil embargo (deterrence) for months before actually imposing it in July
1941 (compellence). Even though the US nuclear arsenal played a significant deterrent role against a Chinese invasion during the Taiwan Straits Crisis, the use of
tactical nuclear weapons in defense of the island (compellence) had also been considered. In 1961, the implementation of the US naval blockade during the Cuban
Missile Crisis was preceded and accompanied by ominous build-ups of US military
forces.
Reasonably, after a deterrent threat has failed and the stakes of deterrence have
remained unaltered, a more compellent action has to be initiated. By contrast, once
a compellence policy has succeeded, there may be an advantage in preserving the
status quo through a deterrent policy (see, for example, Schelling 1963; George
1991). In short, either the failure of deterrence is followed by a compellent threat
or the success of compellence is followed by a deterrent policy. Obviously, the
success of deterrence or the failure of compellence are not interesting instances,
given that the former would not require any following compellent threat, and the
latter would result in war rather than deterrence. The possible combinations have
been illustrated in Figure 1.
The distinctive-and-linked approach derives from a synthesis of the first and
third approaches discussed above. First, deterrence and compellence are distinctive
policies and the analytic categories that maintain this distinction are valuable. Second, a linkage between compellence and deterrence exists even though there are,
as Byman and Waxman have noted, difficulties in distinguishing empirically between them. Accordingly, a description of compellence has to incorporate insights
and examples of deterrence. In this fourth approach, the analysts' focus is on the
dynamic process leading from the failure of deterrence to the issuing of a final
262
BridgingDeterrenceand Compellence
Deterrencefollowed by compellence
Compellencefollowed by deterrence
(no need for C)
1)
CS
----
DS
DSpeace
CS
2)*
DF
DF
DF
------.
*
-
CS
CF
2)
CF
war(noneedforD)
*Legend: DS = deterrencesuccess; DF = deterrencefailure;CS = compellencesuccess;CF = compellencefailure
FIG.1. Acceptable Patterns for the Study of the Deterrence-Compellence
Relationship.
compellent threat. But rather than focusing on the two-player interaction, the distinctive-and-linked approach proposed in this essay considers the discrete events
and policies of deterrence and compellence that one player outlines and executes
during the crisis. The intent is not a denial of the relevance of reciprocity in the
understanding of coercive diplomacy. The suggestion, instead, is that deterrence
and compellence can be meaningfully treated as discrete events even if they are
codependent for the duration of the crisis.
When deterrence and compellence are regarded as discrete and juxtaposed
events, investigating the relationship between them becomes viable. Although some
interesting works in the early 1990s (Stein 1992; Cimbala 1994) have dealt with the
sequential incidence of deterrence and compellence in a crisis, the development of
a theoretical and empirical bridge linking one strategy to the other has not yet been
considered. The occurrence of both deterrence and compellence serves to support
the conclusions that these policies cannot be kept rigidly separated (Freedman
1998:20) and that their outcomes may be similar (Stein 1992). More specifically, in
her assessment of the reasons behind the failure of coercive diplomacy in the First
Gulf Crisis, Stein (1992) places side by side the US inability to mount a convincing
strategy of deterrence in the period preceding the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the
US orchestration of compellence in response to the Iraqi reluctance to fulfill the
UN resolutions. Here, Stein treats deterrence and compellence as separate and
distinguishable policies. Despite the significant difference in the way they were
crafted and executed, both policies were unsuccessful. According to Stein, had the
United States manifested a stronger commitment to deterrence, coercive diplomacy
would still have stood little chance of success due to Saddam's systematic miscalculations and misjudgments of US intentions. Like Byman and Waxman (2000),
Stein remains interested in the two players' interactions, and Hussein's stubborn
and deceptive behavior is depicted as a major variable in accounting for the failure
of both US deterrence and compellence. Ultimately, although deterrence and
compellence are dealt with jointly (first approach) and sequentially, no effort is
made at bridging them in the way the fourth approach proposes.
A hypothetical example clarifies how and why an investigation of the deterrencecompellence interplay along the lines of the fourth approach is desirable. Specifis deterring B), A has (or
ically, when actor A is warning actor B not to do X
(=-A to do X (a compellence
should have) an idea about how to react if B decides
strategy). If A's deterrent threat fails (= B decides to do X), A puts in motion its
compellent policy, which, on the one hand, will involve elements of the compellence
strategy considered earlier and, on the other, will certainly contain some novel
aspects due to structural changes, new information, and the presence of other
contingent factors. Some features of the deterrent policy that actor A carries out
may be important for the follow-on compellent plan. Indeed, the initial policy of
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deterrence could even purposely present some characteristics particularly pertinent to compellence in order to make the road to compellence easier. On the
contrary, significant compellent aspects may be missing (and later regretted) in the
deterrence design. An analysis of the deterrence-compellence linkage will therefore address the following set of questions. To what extent are a preceding policy of
deterrence and a succeeding compellent strategy similar? Does compellence resemble or contrast with a previous deterrent policy? Up to what point did an initial
deterrent policy favor, or at least not obstruct, a subsequent attempt at compellence? And which aspects of one policy set are incompatible with the other? These
issues can be discussed both theoretically and empirically. A theoretical description
of the deterrence-compellence relationship is offered in the next section of this
essay. The last section examines the deterrence-compellence interplay.
Even though the above questions provide insight into how the linkage can be
scrutinized, several observations will help the reader understand why this scrutiny
is significant today. First, the presence of a large theoretical and empirical foundation regarding how deterrence and compellence function makes the effort feasible. Second, and more importantly, use of both policies appears to have become
an essential element in contemporary US foreign policy, given that, following
the end of the Cold War,the United States has more overtly resorted to the exercise
of compellence while depending, despite some speculation about its effectiveness, on the old practice of deterrence. Moreover, whereas theoretical interest
in compellence has thrived since the early 1990s, recent publications of experts in
the field such as Colin Gray (2003) and Patrick Morgan (2003) have signaled a
renewed interest in deterrence notwithstanding that the first George W. Bush
(2002) Administration had stressed its marginal importance for the twenty-first
century. Third, the academic investigation of the deterrence-compellence linkage
could provide policymakers with relevant advice on the management of coercive
diplomacy.
Defining the Deterrence-Compellence Interplay Theoretically
The fourth approach described above made the case for looking at deterrence and
compellence as distinctive, juxtaposed, and interrelated policies that one of the two
sides involved in the coercive process adopts at different stages in a crisis. From this
perspective, it has been argued that tracing the bridge connecting or disconnecting
deterrence to compellence and compellence to deterrence is meaningful. Despite
the comment that the diplomacy of coercion is a duel rather than a game of
solitaire, as Gray (2003:21) has recently reiterated, examining ex post the coercive
strategy of one player by focusing on the interplay between sequentially implemented policies during a crisis could help promote their better understanding and
execution. Such an approach is compatible with those studies (Byman, Waxman,
and Larson 1999; Byman and Waxman 2000; Treverton 2000) that specifically
emphasize the reciprocal and dynamic nature of coercion. However, rather than
exclusively and constantly viewing deterrence and compellence as intermingling
events along a continuum, this essay favors singling them out on the continuum to
observe their transversal rather than their concomitant interaction. Some reasons
have been advanced as to why this alternative approach to the investigation of
coercive diplomacy is desirable. This section is concerned with how to advance such
an investigation theoretically. Owing to the presence of a well-established research
literature regarding deterrence and compellence, this section attempts to survey
and reflect on what is already extant while looking for potential connections. Critically, given that the sequential planning and execution of a deterrent and a compellent threat may always present empirical aspects that the extant theoretical
literature has not yet observed, any theoretical framework is necessarily incomplete
unless it is tailored to the relevant case study. Nonetheless, evidence from a number
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BridgingDeterrenceand Compellence
of case studies can increase the power of a model of the deterrence-compellence
linkage.
Discovering Some Essential Featuresof Deterrence
Although the study of deterrence might be as old as politics, only after the onset of the
Cold War did it grow into the relatively complex set of ideas that have inspired US
foreign policy. Ensuring that deterrence works is a far more complicated task than
examining the principles behind its logic. However, a rational understanding of these
principles, along with an awareness of their strengths and limitations, is perhaps the
only guide for an actor eager to execute a deterrent and possibly a compellent threat.
Numerous but fairly consistent definitions of deterrence (Schelling 1966:69;
George and Smoke 1974:11; Lauren 1979:188; Buzan 1987:163; Herring 1995:14;
Morgan 2003:1; Freedman 2004:27) assume that its major objective is obtaining a
specific inaction on the part of an adversary. This goal is pursued by threatening to
harm the opponent seriously were he to carry out the unwanted action. In Lauren's
(1979:188) view, "deterrence attempts to persuade an opponent to refrain from
initiating certain action, such as an armed attack, that is viewed as highly dangerous
by making him fear the consequences of such behavior." Saying the same but in
other words, "deterrence is simply the persuasion of one's opponent that the costs
and/or risks of a given course of action he might take outweigh its benefits" (George
and Smoke 1974:11). Statements of this kind already contain some fundamental
aspects of deterrence. First, deterrence implies the existence of two parties-previously referred to in this essay as actors A and B-and a special stress falls on the
party that intends to execute the threat. Obviously, deterrence is more the deterrer's policy than the challenger's. The challenger, in fact, would better define its
reaction as surrender at worst and resistance or endurance at best. This asymmetry
leads to a second aspect thought to be characteristic of deterrence. The interaction
between A and B is depicted in purely conflictual terms, as a zero-sum game without chances for bargaining and cooperation-a depiction that the reader will
shortly see has been shown to be false in practice.
As a third point, maintaining a specific status quo (= persuading the opponent to
be inactive) is the major goal of a deterrent threat. Schelling's (1966:32) portrayal of
deterrence as "setting the stage and, potentially, waiting forever for the opponent
to act" is symptomatic in this regard. Fourth, the adversary's fear of the consequences deriving from initiating the unwanted action has to be greater than his
intention to undertake that action. For the deterrent policy that A is implementing
to be effective, therefore, the deterrence measures need to be substantial enough to
lower the challenger's motivation and will to attack. That is, the deterrer has to
possess the right military capabilities and commitment to convey credibility to his
threat. Finally, a further and vital assumption is implicit: the opponent is expected
to calculate rationally the utility of his alternative courses of action on the basis of
available information.
Rationality has been the cornerstone of deterrence theory since its origins. Given
that both players were supposed to be rational, the major task of any deterrence
theory became discerning the requirements of a credible policy of deterrence.
These conditions were clearly set out by William Kaufmann in early 1954. According to Kaufmann, actor A must convince actor B that (1) he has an effective military
capability, (2) he, therefore, could impose unacceptable costs on B, and (3) he would
use his military capabilities if attacked. Eventually, the implicit message that A
communicates to B is that he will behave rationally. Moreover, by threatening unacceptable damage on B, A is expected to influence B's cost-benefit calculations so
that B's final best choice will rationally be not to attack.
The assumption of rational, utility-maximizing decision makers is strongly contested by the supporters of psychological (Jervis 1979) and case-study approaches
MARIA SPERANDEI
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(George and Smoke 1974) to deterrence. The objective of these latter approaches is
to unmask the gap separating the idealized principles of deterrence theory from
empirical evidence. For instance, by reviewing a set of cases involving the failure of
deterrence, Lebow and Stein (1989) infer that, even though leaders calculate in
accordance with rational deterrence theory's predictions, they often end up acting
against them. Factors alien to rational-utilitarian calculations are eventually crucial
in determining the challenger's response to deterrent threats. Seemingly, the expected domestic political consequences of the use of force are a relevant intervening
variable. More radically, in his review on the inadequacies of rational deterrence
theory, Robert Jervis (1989:186) highlighted the practical importance of the individual level of analysis. Different actors have different views about what constitutes
rational behavior. Because each person is rational, but his or her rationality is
grounded in specific values and means-end beliefs, the resulting behavior will naturally be idiosyncratic.
Notwithstanding an apparent clash between the assumptions of rational deterrence theory and the criticisms resulting from more empirical approaches to deterrence, the different schools are complementary rather than incompatible.
Behavioral and case-study approaches promote a broader formulation of rational
deterrence theory by incorporating into the old framework some important factors
that depart from standard conceptions of rationality, such as domestic and political
concerns--including the need to maintain power and the desire to maintain national security. Because deviations from rationality are common, some proponents
of psychological approaches to deterrence also recommend accompanying the deterrent threat with policies of reassurance and incentives that forestall and contain
the adversary's deviant behavior. As Paul Stern and his colleagues (1989:296) and
Patrick Morgan (2003:151) acknowledge, the risk that a challenger interprets the
rewards as weaknesses of the opponent, to be exploited, is hardly avoidable. However, because the challenger's response is a function of particular beliefs and attitudes, a possible countermove for the deterrer is to study the opponent's thinking
in order to better anticipate its likely behavior. In short, a culturally empathetic
understanding of the adversary along with a grasp of the psychology of key policymakers and decision-making processes are all helpful devices.
Rational deterrence theory also stipulates that the deterrer must carefully define
the unacceptable behavior, possess the military capability to punish the adversary,
demonstrate the resolve to carry through on this threat, and make an attempt
to communicate this resolve (Stern et al. 1989:30). Among these requirements,
first- and second-wave deterrence theorists and the US national security establishment have tended to emphasize the importance of military capability in terms of
military balance. Given that military superiority is assumed to convey credibility
to threats, the ownership of nuclear weapons and the possibility of causing unacceptable damage confer a particular appeal to deterrence via retaliation (Herring
1995). Third-wave theorists such as Lebow and Stein (1994) have questioned the
absolute relevance of military balance and surmised instead that the balance of
interests is as important a predictor of crisis outcome as the balance of capabilities.
Even though the perspective of military balance would suggest that the side that is
militarily inferior will back down first in a crisis, from the perspective of balance of
interests, the side with less at stake will do so. That is, the more the deterrer has at
stake, the deterrer's interests are, the more advantageous his position will be in the
process of bargaining.
The relevance of military balance as a critical component of successful deterrence
is also diminished by the consideration that, in some instances, usable military
options may play a more determinant role than overall military capability (Snyder
1960; Mearsheimer 1983; Byers 1985; Herring 1995). For example, the retaliatory
effect provoked by the possession of impressive nuclear and conventional forces
may be judged by the deterrer as excessively dangerous and hence not usable. The
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BridgingDeterrenceand Compellence
US retreat from a nuclear first-use position and the endorsement of a strategy of
decoupling in the 1970s is one such illustration. In effect, coupling conventional
defense with nuclear weapons was judged to be too risky a strategy by US policymakers. Likewise, successful deterrence does not necessarily have to depend on
the threat and capacity to impose punishment; it may also be achieved via denying
the opponent any gains from the action that is to be deterred. When the goal is to
stop the enemy's military forces from making territorial gains, deterring via the
promise of a protracted and costly war of attrition might be a more appropriate
strategy than threatening the nuclear annihilation of the adversary (Mearsheimer
1983).
A second, related aspect of rational deterrence theory that third-wave critics
disputed was disinterest in those limited threats that do not involve the strategic
threat of an all-out thermonuclear war. George and Smoke (1974) were the first to
make this point while pressing for major consideration of limited threats. Writing in
the 1970s, these authors were concerned with how the United States could successfully protect a third nation or group of nations from Soviet influence (the threenation problem). Although the set of policy directions encompassed in George and
Smoke's model are strongly reminiscent of the Cold War context and the abstract
nature of rational deterrence theory, the stress these authors put on deterrence
involving limited threats as opposed to strategic deterrence has relevance today in
the so-called war on terrorism.
In conclusion, no author or study has offered a general formula for a successful
deterrent policy. Ultimately, as Gray (2003:17) has rather convincingly argued,
deterrence is unreliable because, "although it is conceived and executed as a coercive strategy intended to control unfriendly behavior, such a control has to rest
upon the voluntary consent of the deterree."
Unravelling Some Essential Featuresof Compellence
Despite the fact that a serious and collective academic interest in the theory and
practice of compellence did not emerge until the 1990s and despite the subsequent
lack of terminological agreement, compellence is a more systematically explored
policy than deterrence. In effect, the conceptual formulation of this theory has been
accompanied by the observation and description of a number of empirical cases of
compellence. Not only did the execution of compellent policies since the 1990s
favor the theoretical study of this half of coercive diplomacy, but compellence itself
entails a less problematic relation with the empirical world than deterrence. Although the success of deterrence leaves no footprints in the sand, the success of a
compellent policy is clearer and more tangible. As in the case of deterrence, however, compellence is hardly a high-confidence strategy, and the variables presented
in this section are, as George (1991:7) has termed them, "empty boxes" that policymakers have to fill in each specific situation in which an execution of compellence is being considered. It is also worth noting that, only a few years ago, research
on compellence was still lacking despite the salience of compellence as an instrument of US foreign policy in the post-Cold War international order.
Schelling was the first theorist to analyze the concept of compellence in great
detail. His major interest was in those elements that distinguish compellence--a
threat intended to make an adversary do something (action)--from deterrence--a
threat intended to keep an adversary from starting something (inaction). Like
deterrence, compellence relies on the use of threat to influence the adversary's
strategic choices, and major emphasis is placed on the side issuing the threat:
the compeller. Nevertheless, compellence is much more definite and explicit than
deterrence. Compellence demands a modification in the adversary's current behavior (rather than the adversary's inaction), and it usually involves initiating an
action (rather than setting the stage and waiting). Moreover, that action can cease,
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or become harmless, only if the opponent responds. As Schelling (1966:70) has
observed, "the threat that compel[s] ... often requires that the punishment be
administered until the other acts rather than if it acts." In contrast to the blunt use
of force to repel an adversary, compellence stresses the threat of punishment if the
adversary does not comply with what is demanded. Also, a time limit for compliance
must be set because "compellence, to be effective, can't wait forever" (Schelling
1966:72). These three conditions-(1) a demand, (2) a threat of punishment for
failure to comply, and (3) a time limit for the response-are the essential features of
a classic ultimatum and, in Schelling's pioneering work, they constituted the necessary elements of a compellent threat.
Additional variables that provide us with a better understanding of compellence
have been identified by George and Simons (1994) in The Limitsof CoerciveDiplomacy.This volume presents a detailed account of seven case studies and the conditions that determined the success or failure of compellence in each case. The most
relevant conditions were the type of provocation, the clarity of the demand, the
image of war (more or less cruel) that was present, the strength of motivation or
balance of interests at stake between the initiator and the target (that is, the relationship between the magnitude of the demands made to the opponent and the
magnitude of the opponent's motivation not to comply), the type of positive inducement offered by the initiator as a bargaining card, the presence or absence of
coalitional support to back the initiator's demand, and the opponent's fear of unacceptable escalation. From the various combinations of these variables, four variants regarding the sense of urgency of the threat were identified (George and
Simons 1994:18): the classic ultimatum, the tacit ultimatum, the try-and-see approach, and the gradual turning of the screw.
Despite their greater descriptive accuracy,models of compellence (as well as their
counterparts on deterrence) are highly context dependent and can enlighten and
guide policymaking only to a limited extent. For instance, the nature of the US competition with the Soviet Union strongly influenced the exercise of compellence in most
regional crises during the Cold War years, and what we know about compellence did
not prove useful. Although structural constraints have lessened today, the state that
engages in compellence can rarely have complete or reliable control over the outcome,
and the adversary's appraisal of the situation is ultimately a decisive element.
TheoreticalDistinctionsand Similarities:Towarda Potential TheoreticalBridge
Building a theoretical bridge linking deterrence to compellence is a daunting task.
Although their policies share some central features, the theoretical portrayal of
deterrence has developed along lines that are alien to the discussions of the theory
of compellence. As the first section of this essay anticipated and the previous paragraphs have confirmed, deterrence and compellence are generally thought of as
substantially detached strategies even though both are based on a process of interaction among the deterrer (compeller) and his adversary.
Deterrence and compellence differ in a number of respects, most of which mirror
the differences between statics and dynamics. Deterrence involves setting the stage
and waiting. By contrast, compellence usually involves initiating an action (or an
irrevocable commitment to action) that can cease or become harmless only if the
opponent responds. The overt act (the first move) is up to the side that makes the
compellent threat. Moreover, deterrence tends to be indefinite in its timing. Compellence has to be definite. There has to be a deadline or the adversary will systematically refuse to comply. Too little time and compliance becomes impossible;
too much time and compliance becomes unnecessary. Thus, compellence involves
timing in a way that deterrence typically does not.
Not only have deterrence and compellence proceeded as separate policies, but
their theoretical development has followed a different historical pattern. For
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Bridging Deterrence and Compellence
instance, whereas the study of deterrence reached its apex during the golden age of
the Cold War, interest in compellence mostly developed after the demise of the
Soviet Union. As a result of this temporal divide, the categories of deterrence are
apt to explain a struggle between actors of similar capability, thus leaving underestimated and unappreciated cases of limited and asymmetric warfare and preventive diplomacy. Conversely, the categories of compellence are a better
expression of the clashes between powers of asymmetrical strength and with diverse interests at stake (George and Smoke 1974:55-56).
Furthermore, as has been previously observed, the requirements for deterrence
are considerably more indeterminate than those of compellence. The theory of
deterrence has relied upon the soundness of certain assumptions such as rationality
and the military interest. By contrast, the analysis of compellence in the 1990s has
maintained a more empirical stance by essentially becoming a systematic survey of
the variables associated with the success or failure of compellence. In effect, the
analysis of the two strategies has progressed on differing tracks.
Notwithstanding the aforementioned variations, numerous points of contact exist
between deterrence and compellence. Both deterrence and compellence are a
function of a multitude of variables that fluctuate over time (that is, according to the
systemic context, balance of military capability, balance of interests, actors' intentions and perceptions). Contemporary theories of deterrence and compellence also
embody a number of significant behavioral and political simplifications that have
revealed themselves as being fallacious to some extent (for example, the unitary
actor assumption, the zero-sum game assumption, the rationality assumption, the
emphasis on military threats). Additionally, as Herring (1995:2) has recognized,
both deterrence and compellence should be combined with measures of reassurance or they may either provoke the very attack they are designed to deter or
impede the move they are designed to compel.
As this discussion hopefully suggests, the development of a theory regarding how
deterrence and compellence can be linked is not automatic. Nevertheless, some
positive inferences can be drawn if deterrence and compellence are viewed in
practical rather than abstract terms. A theoretical bridge is currently unattainable
but an empirical bridge founded on the variables highlighted above is possible.
Consider the following example. When sequentially executed policies of deterrence
and compellence are observed, the effects of the preceding deterrent "inaction" on
the subsequent compellent "action" may be analyzed. In this respect, the existence
of an ideational plan for future compellence at the earlier stage of deterrence
creates a significant connection between the deterrence in progress and an imminent policy of compellence. Similarly, usable military options that confer credibility
to the deterrent threat may be functional for compellent purposes. Thus, an examination of the relationship between deterrence and compellence becomes feasible in support of George's (1991:4) conviction that a more empirical grasp of
coercive diplomacy is needed.
Relationship Between Deterrence and Compellence in
First Gulf Crisis (1990-1991)
A reading of the literature on coercive diplomacy in general and the First Gulf
Crisis in particular suggests that often such crises hinge on the misperceptions of
the major actors (Lauren 1972; Jervis 1989; Stein 1992; George and Simons
1994:230, 288; Lebow 1998). From this perspective, the reasons why President
Saddam Hussein of Iraq ordered the invasion of Kuwait--thus marking the failure
of deterrence--were the result of a rational decision-making process wherein he
assumed different stakes were involved and held perspectives different from those
extant in the United States. Given that misperceptions and other socio-political
MARIA SPERANDEI
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impediments may easily hamper the success of a rationally sound policy, rationality
is rarely consistent with the optimal political choice.
Saddam Hussein's major misperception consisted of his underestimation of the
threat of US intervention. By way of contrast, the US government experienced,
with regard to the national security interests at hand, a serious split between those
civilians in the White House and the Department of State who were interested in
peace planning with Iraq and those in the Department of Defense who were interested in war planning. As a result, the signals from US foreign policymakers
were mixed (Stein 1992), and Hussein wrongly perceived the accomodationist part
as the stronger.6 In addition to seriously questioning whether the United States
could afford to use its force at all, Hussein overestimated the effect that intolerance
of heavy casualties would produce on the US public's support of a military intervention in Iraq.7 Conversely, the United States miscalculated the highly attractive
expected utility for the Iraqi regime of using force, thus underestimating Hussein's
resolve.8
Such a reading of the First Gulf Crisis originates from the idea that a conflict
derives from a process of interaction among multiple (at least two) actors. In this
section, however, the focus will be on the consistency and the logical soundness of
the main policies undertaken sequentially by one of the crisis participants via an
exclusive reliance on that actor's information, perceptions, intentions, and plans at
the time of the crisis. This maneuver is possible only ex post, namely once the crisis
has reached a peaceful or warlike conclusion (= counterfactual reasoning), and it
implies a shift from a top-down approach, in which decisions and events are tackled
chronologically, to a bottom-up approach, in which the temporal dimension is an
important but not the only variable in comparing and contrasting decisions and
events.9 Specifically, the rest of this section has as its purpose to investigate in detail
the potential relationship between US policies of deterrence and compellence during the First Gulf Crisis. Both policies were pursued by the United States between
July 1990 and January 1991. oThe United States tried to protect Kuwait from
being invaded by Iraq (deterrence), and it immediately threatened to use its own
force in the face of a military attack by Iraq (compellence). Analyzing the Gulf Crisis
from this point of view clearly means dissecting it and determining when the two
courses of action were put into place. Furthermore, for the sake of consistency, the
focus is limited to only one actor in the dispute (the United States), Iraqi priorities
and positions appearing only to the extent that they were filtered and understood
by the United States. This methodology is motivated by the empirical consideration
that Iraqi perceptions of the US deterrent stance were far from US expectations
6Consensus on national security interests was reached by US policymakers immediately before the Gulf War
began, and from mid-January 1991 onward, the US government was able to pursue a unitary view.
7This reaction is referred to as the "Vietnam-syndrome." Notwithstanding US sensitivity to heavy casualties,
Hussein underestimated the extent to which US public opinion supported the use of military force in the Gulf
region. He also misperceived his own military capabilities and the Arab states' willingness to support the Iraqi cause.
Still, Hussein's decision to invade Kuwait could appear very rational and plausible, given that the expected utility of
using force might have been estimated as greater than not resorting to it (see Stein 1992).
8Through an invasion of Kuwait, Hussein expected to have access to Kuwaiti oil fields, production levels, and
OPEC prices while also compelling Kuwait to cancel debts and pressuring Saudi Arabia to change its oil production
levels. Last, but not the least, the Iraqi President aimed at reinforcing his political position as the benefits of invading
Kuwait seemed to outweigh the costs.
9Analysts such as George and Smoke (1974), Byman and Waxman (2000), and Art and Cronin (2003) have
adopted a similar approach by restricting their attention to one side of the crisis. However, whereas these authors
process that took place within the leadership circles, this essay explores the
mostly examined the decision-making
policies that resulted from the leadership circles and compares them in order to see whether there was any linkage
between actions involving deterrence and those involving compellence.
10On the presence of a US deterrent policy before the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, there may be some disagreement. In consonance with Stein's (1992) analysis of the Gulf Crisis, this essay recognizes that, although weak, badly
and scarcely convincing, a US attempt at deterrence was in place before August 2, 1990.
orchestrated,
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BridgingDeterrenceand Compellence
and beliefs and could even invalidate the significance of any distinction between
deterrence and compellence. Therefore, unless otherwise specified, deterrence and
compellence will herein refer to the US strategies used against Iraq.
Generally, deterrence is successful when no force is used and a course of action is
stopped before its pursuit is attempted. According to John Mearsheimer (1983:
13-133), for deterrence to succeed and in order to deny a blitzkrieg-style victory to
the adversary, the defender needs a strong, immediate, and short-term balance of
forces. Compellence, instead, succeeds when a compellent threat is made and the
attacker stops using his force. The compellent threat obviously fails if the defender
has to use more than limited force to stop an attacker from engaging in its aggressive acts. In conventional terms, deterrence and compellence succeed when the
deterrer or compeller has the military capability and resolve to deny the potential
attacker's objectives quickly. Both strategies failed in the First Gulf Crisis. However,
we are not interested here in US deterrent and compellent failures as such (see, for
example, Stein 1992) nor are we interested in the reasons that pushed Hussein to
invade (Stein 1992; George and Simons 1994), although these questions are legitimate. Instead, our attention will be devoted to evaluating the eventual connection
between an initial strategy of deterrence and a later strategy of compellence independent of the success or failure of either. It is clear, nonetheless, that the outcome of sequentially applied policies is in some measure a function of their overall
planning and potential connection.
Recall a crucial proposition made at the beginning of this essay. It was previously
proposed that a credible deterrent strategy must involve some connection (or disconnection) with the possibility of performing a compellent policy in the near future. This hypothesis will be examined in the First Gulf Crisis. In what follows, the
focus will be on the US effort to deter Iraq from the invasion of Kuwait and the US
attempt to compel an Iraqi retreat from Kuwait. The purpose of the examination is
to observe the shift from an initial policy of deterrence to a consequent policy of
compellence and whether and how some aspects of the earlier deterrence are
consonant or discordant with the following compellence. The smoother the linkage
and the less abrupt the passage from a deterrent to a compellent posture, the more
desirable it will be for the side that is planning and executing them.
Unconvincing Deterrence
Soon after the end of the Iran-Iraq War, the US government regarded Iran as a
primary threat to stability and Iraq as a close ally of the West that opposed the
Iranian revolutionary regime. Starting in 1990, however, things started to change.
Notwithstanding a more bellicose Iraqi stance early in 1990 (Stein 1992:149), the
United States continued to adopt an attitude of conciliation rather than confrontation. The preferred policy of the George H. W. Bush Administration was to
maintain and rely on diplomatic contacts with Baghdad to demonstrate the United
States' good intentions and desire to see Iraq adopt a moderate and pro-Western
course (Gordon and Sciolino 1990). When US Assistant Secretary of State for Near
Eastern and South Asian Affairs,John Kelly, went to Baghdad in February 1990, he
praised Hussein for being a force for moderation in the region. On April 16, Robert
Dole and four other senators met with Hussein and presented to the White House
their assessment that the Iraqi President would continue to be moderate (Woodward 1991:199-204). Evidence that a confrontation was brewing in the Gulf became apparent, though, at the end of May 1990 when, during an Arab summit
meeting convened in Baghdad, President Hussein privately denounced the Arabs
of the Gulf for engaging in economic sabotage with Iraq by keeping the price of oil
artificially low (Stein 1992:149). The impasse deepened when, during a meeting
between the oil ministers of Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab
Emirates on July 10 and at an OPEC meeting a few days later, Kuwait refused to
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agree to limit indefinitely their oil production. On July 21 the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reported the first Iraqi troop movements near the border
with Kuwait (Gordon 1990).
Although the crisis was intensifying and Hussein continued to escalate his
threats against the Gulf States, the signals from Washington were confusing. On
July 24, Pentagon spokesperson Pete Williams declared to the New YorkTimesthat
the United States remained "strongly committed to supporting the individual and
collective self-defense" of the Gulf states-as the future sending of two aerial
tankers and a cargo transport to the Gulf for joint exercises with the United
Arab Emirates would prove. But when he was bluntly asked whether the United
States would provide help if Kuwait were attacked, he declined to answer. An
implicit response was provided later that day by senior State Department spokesperson, Margaret Tutwiler, who reiterated the US commitment to individual and
collective self-defense in the Gulf region and called attention to the absence of
defense treaties or security commitments linking Kuwait to the United States
(Gordon 1990).
These ambiguous warnings preceded the famous meeting of US Ambassador to
Iraq, April Glaspie, with Saddam Hussein on July 25, an occasion in which Glaspie
failed to warn Saddam of the full consequences that an aggression against Kuwait
would produce (Friedman 1991). Although the US Ambassador's performance has
been severely criticized, Glaspie was ultimately following the policy of the US State
Department and was trapped by the need to stress US friendship toward Iraq, on
the one hand, and US determination to ensure the free flow of oil and the sovereignty of all Gulf States, on the other. Consistent with this "straddle the fence"
policy, on July 28, President Bush cabled Saddam that "differences are best resolved by peaceful means and not by threats involving military force or conflict"
(Hoffman and Dewar 1991), but no reference was made to the 100,000 Iraqi troops
stationed on Kuwait's border. More seriously, the United States disregarded intelligence evidence on the substantial increases in Iraqi military preparations, and no
additional attempt at deterrence was made. Only when the CIA warned that Iraq
would attack within 24 hours did Assistant Secretary of State Kelly summon the
Iraqi ambassador in Washington to inform him that the situation was "extremely
serious" (Obendorfer 1991:40).
The strongest and least ambiguous US warning to Iraq is enshrined in the abovementioned allegations regarding the US commitment to individual and collective
self-defense. The vagueness of this commitment led Stein (1992:155) to infer that
"the diplomacy of deterrence was inconsistent, incoherent, confusing, and unfocused in the critical two weeks preceding the invasion." Had Saddam Hussein been
deterrable, it is very unlikely he would have been stopped, given Washington's
confusing signals.
The same uncertainty was reflected in the split among the Policy Planning Staff at
the State Department. According to interviews conducted in August 1990 (Stein
1992:160), members were divided about the likely US response to an Iraqi attack.
In particular, even when an imminent Iraqi invasion of Kuwait was certain, the
general expectation in Washington was that Hussein would occupy the disputed oil
fields and the strategic islands. Remarkably, the crucial factor in determining the
US response was not the realitybut rather the extentof the invasion. That is to say, to
paraphrase Stein, a deterrent commitment could not be defined before it was
massively violated. As long as the United States was uncertain about the extent of
Saddam's intentions and as long as they seemed to discount the likelihood that Iraq
would use its force in a large-scale attack, no efficacious policy of deterrence could
be put into place because the precise policy was a function of those intentions. Was
Iraq's invasion of Kuwait preventable? Very likely not; the Iraq-US relationship was
sufficiently ambiguous to make accurate interpretation of signals on both sides
almost impossible.
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TechnicallySound Compellence
Like the end of the Cold War some months earlier, Iraq's invasion of Kuwait on
August 2, 1990, caught the West completely by surprise. Hussein himself was convinced that he had performed an irresistible fait accompli.However, even though
Iraq's invasion significantly surprised both the United States and Western Europe,
plans for countering such a challenge had been in preparation ever since the Iranian revolution (1979) and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (1980). Massive military resources had already been directed toward the formation of the Rapid
Deployment Joint Task Force in 1980, which later became the Central Command
(Clementson 1983).
In contrast to the exercise of deterrence, compellence was well orchestrated."1
A few days after the invasion, US Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney convinced King
Fahd that the Iraqi challenge required a joint and swift military response while
President Bush promptly announced that US forces were being sent to defend
Saudi Arabia under the code name of Operation Desert Shield. The building of a
military coalition (United States, Soviet Union, United Kingdom, France, Egypt,
and Syria) and the consolidation of the economic embargo were further elements in
the strategy to contain Iraq. Four core principles guiding US policy during the crisis
were spelled out by President Bush (1990): (1) the immediate, complete, and unconditional withdrawal of all Iraqi forces from Kuwait; (2) the restoration of Kuwait's legitimate government to replace the puppet regime installed by Iraq; (3) a
commitment to the security and stability of the Persian Gulf; and (4) the protection
of the lives of US citizens abroad. To meet these principles, the United States
intensified diplomatic measures as well as strategic military movements. Diplomatic
measures included the promotion of bilateral cooperation between the United
States and the United Nations to find a peaceful solution to end the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait and restore Kuwait's legitimate government. Military movements
involved deployment of US military forces for the dual purpose of (1) deterring
Iraq and defending Saudi Arabia and other friendly states in the region from
further Iraqi aggression, and (2) enforcing the UN-mandated economic sanctions
(= compellence). From the beginning of September 1990, the coalition forces on
the Arabian Peninsula engaged in fairly effective deterrence against further Iraqi
aggression. Moreover, through the auspices of the United Nations, the United
States had legitimated a comprehensive blockade of Iraq with naval forces in the
Gulf having the legal authority to challenge and intercept shipping.
Both deterrent and compellent missions were, thus, in action by the end of August.
The military forces in Saudi Arabia were aimed at deterring an Iraqi attack on the
Kingdom or any other target in the Gulf beyond Kuwait; their presence was described as "wholly defensive" (Danchev and Keohane 1994). The embargo of exports
and imports, however, aimed at compelling Iraq's retreat. During the month of September, the Bush Administration began to think more actively about how a peaceful
solution to the crisis might be enforced. Bush's National Security Adviser, Brent
Scowcroft, stated (Robinson 1990) that war was not inevitable and that Iraq's unconditional withdrawal would show the success of collective action. The Bush Administration was clearly trying to send the message that sanctions backed by the
international coalition now formed against Iraq would work and that no secret agenda for a military solution or for the forcible overthrow of Saddam Hussein existed.
By the end of October, however, outward signs of a disintegrating coalition (in
particular from France and Russia) convinced the US administration to undertake
"It is worth noting that this positive opinion of the US compellent policy is independent of its ultimate effects.
Eventually, compellence failed, and it is widely held that even though Hussein misperceived most of the US signals,
the US government equally misperceived most of the Iraqi responses. Thus, notwithstanding the one-sided perspective privileged here--in a context of uncertain information about the adversary's intentions and given the longlasting US hope for a compromise--the compellent effort was technically skillfully orchestrated.
MARIA SPERANDEI
273
further unilateral moves. The US forces in Saudi Arabia were doubled, and a
generally defensive posture aimed at protecting Saudi Arabia gave way to an offensive position with the purpose of liberating Kuwait. On November 8, the New
YorkTimesreported that President Bush ordered an additional 150,000 US ground,
sea, and air forces to the Persian Gulf to prepare an adequate "offensive military
option." At the end of that same month, a compellent threat was finally issued.
Either Iraq complied by January 15, 1991 or Security Council Resolution 678
would authorize "all necessary means" to affect Iraqi compliance.
Although deterrence and compellence can be regarded as intertwined during
most of the crisis, the measures undertaken by the United States after the invasion
had a primarily compellent purpose. They were, in fact, dynamic rather than static
strategic decisions and in some way implied an alteration in the status quo to
intimidate Hussein and force his retreat. Once an act of aggression had been executed, the United States had to adopt a compellent stance and use threats to
persuade Hussein to do something he would otherwise not be inclined to do.
From what has been discussed thus far, compellence is best depicted as a series of
incremental steps rather than as an immediately well-thought-through strategy.
Along this line, Ken Matthews (1993:102) splits the US compellent effort into four
escalating phases. In the first phase, compellence was a low-pressure strategy based
on the imposition of sanctions. This policy lacked credibility because neither a timetable nor the consequences that would occur if Iraq refused to withdraw from Kuwait
had been specified. Unspecified deadlines are not sufficient for compellence to work.
Despite its weakness, this policy was the necessary political precursor to making
acceptable the assembling of a credible military force for use if necessary. The next
two phases were devoted to establishing the three major elements of the coercive
threat, namely (1) the required action (withdrawal from Kuwait), (2) the date by
which that action had to be completed, and (3) the military consequences that would
follow in the case of noncompliance. By early November (phase 2), following a
massive reinforcement of US military forces in Saudi Arabia, the United States announced that force would be used to eject the Iraqi military from Kuwait and, by the
end of November, UN sanction for the ultimate use of force was ensured.
The critical elements of the US strategy of compellence against Iraq were, thus, in
place. The credibility of the compellent threat was also reinforced by a continued
build-up of the coalition's military capabilities in the region (phase 3)-a build-up
that was, in turn, creating pressure for some face-to-face negotiations. In Matthew's
(1993:106) words , the talks (phase 4) were the last necessary precursor to the actual
resort to force once the UN deadline had passed. The failure of the talks in Geneva
(January 9, 1991) between Tareq Aziz, the Foreign Minister of Iraq, and James
Baker, the US Secretary of State, represented the last chance for a negotiated
settlement and a deescalation of the crisis. The crossing of the final threshold-the
war threshold--signaled the failure of compellence. Had the deadline been delayed and war not been declared, the credibility of any following threat would have
been fatally undermined.
In the implementation of its compellent effort, the United States, backed by the
United Nations, imposed a stringent embargo and economic sanctions against Iraq,
set up an impressive international coalition, deployed a massive number of troops
as well as the latest generation of aircraft furnished with precision-guided munitions to Saudi Arabia, set a deadline for Iraq's withdrawal, and threatened the use
of force were Iraq to decline a voluntary withdrawal from Kuwait. According to
George and Simons' (1994:106) model of coercive diplomacy, the US strategy of
compellence in the Gulf became more effective by progressively moving from the
use of economic sanctions to the threat of the use of force. The "gradual turning of
the screw" variant of coercive diplomacy exercised through the increasing use of
economic sanctions was replaced as November went by with a classic ultimatum
backed by a deadline and the threat of war.
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BridgingDeterrenceand Compellence
As the failure of the US policy of compellence shows, a well-executed and potentially flawless policy does not always succeed. Misperceptions are probably the
major reason for such failures. For instance, notwithstanding that the United States
did not intend to trap Saddam into a war (Stein 1992:171), the Iraqi leadership
believed in the existence of a US plot against Iraq, while Hussein cultivated the
image of the United States as a conspiring force against the Arab people. As a result,
the US attempts to reassure were unpersuasive and ineffective. However, considering the available information and the protracted US preference for a compromise, the US leadership executed a technically sound compellent policy.
Analysis of a PotentialLinkage
A few observations herald the analysis of the deterrence-compellence linkage found
in this case. First, the majority of the existing research that focuses on deterrence
and compellence in the First Gulf Crisis appears to have objectives different from
the ones that animate the present investigation. Most of the literature dealing with
deterrence and compellence in relation to the Gulf Crisis either addresses the elements responsible for, respectively, the failure or the potential success of coercive
diplomacy (for example, Cimbala 1994; Byman and Waxman 2000; Art and Cronin,
2003) or investigates the rationale behind Hussein's invasion of Kuwait and the US
response (for example, Dannreuther 1991; Stein 1992).
The approach adopted by Stein (1992) is perhaps the closest to the one this essay
presents. There is, however, a fundamental difference. Stein ponders the legitimate
and interesting issue of whether, if the United States had seriously tried to deter
Iraq before it invaded Kuwait, deterrence would have succeeded in preventing the
attack. The answer she provides-considering Hussein's conviction that the United
States sought his destruction-is that even finely crafted and optimally designed
strategies of deterrence and compellence stood little chance of success. It is precisely in this sense that, for Stein, the two failures-and, ultimately, deterrence and
interconnected. Seeing Hussein's misperceptions as a major
compellence-are
cause of their failure, deterrence and compellence are only accidentally interconnected (or rather similar).
By contrast, the question raised in this essay is to what extent the US policy of
deterrence carried with it the plan for future compellence, namely to what extent
were the two policies deliberately or consciously interconnected. The interest in a
potential linkage stems from the initial proposition made in this essay that an
efficacious policy of deterrence in a post-Cold War context implies an ex-anteconnection with a compellent threat in the case deterrence fails. Accordingly, the emphasis is not on the policies' success or failure as such but on the potential
connection between the policies themselves. Importantly, the linkage appears particularly significant in a post-Cold War context in which deterrence is no longer the
foundation of US foreign policy while compellence may be both difficult and dangerous to practice without any deterrent support.
A second observation is that the frequent difficulty of distinguishing in practice
between deterrence and compellence does not rule out the validity of this distinction. Byman and Waxman's (2000) inference that the deterrence-compellence distinction often breaks down in practice has already been alluded to earlier. Yet, it is
worth noting here that, although the US strategy of coercion in the Gulf does not
invalidate Byman and Waxman's allegation, a major purpose of the present essay is
to keep the policies of deterrence and compellence as detached as possible. Despite
the fact that deterrence and compellence tend to be juxtaposed along a temporal
spectrum, they are still distinctive policies and studying their linkage is not as
impractical as Byman and Waxman's (2000:6) analysis suggests.
Whereas deterrence is the only policy that the United States tried to implement
before the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, deterrence and compellence coexisted for a
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MARIA SPERANDEI
certain period after the invasion. In particular, an unconvincing policy of deterrence preceded the Iraqi invasion while a stronger policy of deterrence--characterized by the deployment of military forces in Saudi Arabia for defensive
purposes--coexisted with economic compellence after the invasion. By the end of
November 1990, this second attempt at deterrence gave way to a more convincing
compellent policy through the issuing of a full ultimatum. It can be argued that
compellence did not begin until November 8, when President Bush announced the
deployment of an additional 150,000 troops to Saudi Arabia. Until that time, the
military forces assembled there had the primary intent of deterring and defending.
Nonetheless, although absent in military terms, compellence (through economic
sanctions and an embargo) already existed and were later aided by the deployment
to produce a stronger coercive policy.
A third observation regarding a deterrence-compellence linkage revolves
around the negligible role that nuclear weapons played in the crisis. With the
end of the Cold War and the large number of conventional forces invested in the
Gulf region, the deterrent effect of the US nuclear arsenal played an insignificant
role in the crisis. The insignificance of the nuclear dimension had the effect of
lowering the war threshold and ultimately making the war a likely outcome. In
addition, unlike the Cuban Missile Crisis during the Cold War, the Gulf Crisis had
been provoked by an act of military aggression and a process of deescalation-something more radical than serious diplomatic restraint-was needed to
avoid a conflagration of hostilities.
The fourth, and last, observation centers on the huge gap between US policy
regarding Iraq before and after the invasion of Kuwait. The Iraqi offensive caught
the United States by surprise because Washington had not regarded Iraq as an
enemy before August 2, 1990. Before that time, no Iraqi act was perceived as
menacing, nor had any deterrent policy been effectively devised. Remarkably, before August 1990, the Bush Administration had suppressed the investigation of
irregularities in Iraq's use of US aid and intervened repeatedly to block the Congressional attempt to end loan guarantees. Clearly, as Stein (1992) has noted, there
were high expectations on the US side that Saddam could be "resocialized" and
that Iraq could be turned into a regional counterweight to Iran.
In light of these observations, an analysis of the relationship between deterrence
and compellence in the Gulf Crisis can be attempted. The differences in the ways
the strategies of deterrence and compellence were crafted and implemented are
striking. The deterrent effort was flawed and not credible. The attempt at compellence, once the hope of reaching a compromise was ruled out, was serious and
well orchestrated. At first glance, one could be tempted to conclude that no linkage
was present between the two policies. Yet, a more accurate examination of the
empirical evidence shows that this assessment would be untrue. Three phases can
be identified and are illustrated in Figure 2.
Phase A. Before the invasion, a climate of uncertainty regarding Hussein's
intentions existed and the US stance resembled anything but a "wait-and-see"
approach. Deterrence was not convincingly attempted just as a compellent idea
was not systemically contemplated. Notwithstanding the uncertainty about
Hussein's real intentions, the general expectation was that Iraq would not risk
launching a large-scale invasion. Although plans for countering a challenge in the
Middle East had existed ever since the Iranian revolution and despite the presJuly91
-PHASEAUnconvincing
deterrence
2 Aug 90
-PHASE B-
8 Nov 90
A
Moresolid deterrence
andeconomiccompellence
-PHASEC-
15 Jan91
A
Stronger
compellence
FIG.2. TemporalSpectrumfor the Two Strategiesof CoerciveDiplomacy
276
BridgingDeterrenceand Compellence
ence of a massive military force in the region since 1983 (the United States
Central Command known as CENTCOM), no connection was clearly established
between the policy of unconvincing deterrence and the imminent possibility of
counterattack against Iraq using existing forces. Accordingly, the Central Command made no decision to send further forces to the region. Even prior to the
invasion in August 1990, US policymakers were divided about the likely US
response to an Iraqi attack. In short, phase A saw no linkage between deterrence
and compellence.
Phase B. A certain deterrence-compellence symbiosis is identifiable after the
invasion. By the end of August, both deterrent and compellent measures were
under way. By August 7, 1990, the presidential decision to send a military force to
Saudi Arabia was being implemented. This force would mainly have a deterrent
and defensive purpose. Yet, one of its tasks would be to enforce the compellent
policy involving an embargo and economic sanctions. A major degree of coordination between deterrence and compellence policies was visible at this point.
The two policies were also linked to the extent that the deterrent force could
easily have been used to make a compellent threat. Phase C validates this assessment.
Phase C. By November 1990, the US deterrent stance had been converted into
a well-orchestrated attempt at compelling an Iraqi retreat. Reinforcements of US
ground, sea, and air forces were made for the purpose of preparing for an attack;
these were added to the deterrent forces already established in the region from
August. The deterrent policy and the deployment of defense missions were necessary first steps in carrying out the compellent threat.
Even though at first glance no deliberate relationship between deterrence and
compellence is apparent, a closer look reveals that some measures of US deterrence
were strictly related to future compellent activities in the Gulf States. In particular,
the policy of containment and deterrence continued (and was, in fact, strengthened) after the invasion of Kuwait-at a time when the first economic compellent
measures were undertaken. A connection between the two policies existed inasmuch as the mainly defensive military contingent deployed in Saudi Arabia also
served the purpose of enforcing the economic embargo and sanctions (Phase B).
Although US policymakers could have organized and controlled the deterrence-compellence relationship more explicitly and systematically, some sort of
linkage was present with the purpose of making the shift from a mainly deterrence stance to a stronger compellent commitment. Although no linkage existed
between the policy of deterrence preceding the invasion and the final compellent
threat, the relationship was increasingly established as it became evident that
compellence would soon be substituted for deterrence.
Some inevitable questions arise. For instance, does a minimum degree of
deterrence-compellence linkage have to be present in the sequential application
of the two policies? In other words, in a period characterized by the coexistence
of deterrence and compellence, is their relationship a requirement or a matter of
choice? The Gulf War case study suggests that a relationship between the two
policies most likely exists when deterrence and compellence are simultaneously
pursued, but it is more difficult to attain when compellence replaces deterrence.
A second issue concerns the extent to which a more overtly and thoroughly
planned deterrence-compellence linkage is desirable for an actor who engages in
a deterrent policy that fails and paves the way to a more compellent strategy or in
a compellent policy that succeeds and can thus be strengthened via deterrence.
In both cases, the actor will likely consider the sequential implementation of the
two policies. However, the later the linkage is devised, the less likely it will achieve
its desired outcome. Finally, even though a timely and accurately prepared
deterrence-compellence relationship may help achieve the desired outcome,
extraneous factors can ultimately be determining.
MARIA SPERANDEI
277
The reasons for the failure of both deterrence and compellance in the First
Gulf Crisis can be found in a number of other factors besides the deterrencecompellence linkage. To begin with, the unlikelihood of using, and the unwillingness to use, nuclear weapons lowered the war threshold. Second, the crisis was
provoked by an act of aggression and therefore an ongoing dynamic had to be
positively disrupted. Third, misperceptions have been shown to play a decisive
role (Stein 1992). Any of these three factors could have had a bigger impact on
the outcome of the crisis than a strong deterrence-compellence relationship.
Undoubtedly, however, US policy in the Gulf would have benefitted from a better
deterrence-compellence linkage. Had a reciprocally supportive deterrencecompellence relationship been evident at the beginning of the crisis, not only
more convincing coercive policies could have been developed (and the probability of a peaceful resolution increased) but also the US position would have been
clearer both domestically and internationally from the onset of the crisis. Seemingly, the costs of this clarity were deemed less attractive than the advantages of a
policy in itinere, never definite and always mutable.
Conclusions
This essay has attempted to fill a gap in the literature on coercive diplomacy by
examining a possible relationship between deterrence and compellence-two
politico-military strategies that have been extensively investigated as distinctive or
intermingled activities. Rather than providing definitive conclusions about the
deterrence-compellence linkage, this essay ultimately must push for further
research on the subject.
The first section of the essay was the engine for the entire inquiry. Deterrence
and compellence are generally thought of as separate halves of the same coin, and
research tends to proceed within each half rather than betweenthe two. The first
section offered a way of looking at the diplomacy of violence. The existing approaches can be grouped into three major perspectives that consider deterrence
and compellence as either 'joint-but-opposite," "separate-and-unequal," or
"blurred-and-indistinguishable" phenomena. As scholars have adopted different
angles in their work, rigid boundaries cannot be drawn between these perspectives.
The ultimate focus of the present essay has been on the perspective that appears to
have been missed, which examines deterrence and compellence as distinctive-andlinked strategies. This stance is based on two central propositions. First, an actor
who engages in a deterrent policy should already have an idea of his possible
compellent replies in case the opponent refuses to behave as the deterrer desires.
The deterrer's idea will obviously change across time. Second, the smoother the
linkage and the less abrupt the passage from a compellent to a deterrent policy, the
better for the side planning and executing them.
The second and the third sections of this essay were designed to survey, respectively, the theoretical and the empirical interplay between deterrence and compellence. Section two considered the difficulty of drawing an operationally
meaningful linkage between the two strategies by resorting to the existing theoretical literature on deterrence and compellence. This literature has been shown,
however, to be helpful in the investigation of the deterrence-compellence relationship when these phenomena are applied to an appropriate empirical case and
their interaction is dynamically assessed.
The third section of the essay provided some interesting results regarding the
linkage between deterrence and compellence. Before Iraq invaded Kuwait, no deterrence-compellence linkage was in place on the part of the United States. Notably,
the crucial factor in determining the US response seemed to reside in the potential
extent rather than the reality of the invasion. US decision makers plainly miscalculated the extent of what was about to happen. The air exercises that the United States
278
Bridging Deterrence and Compellence
executed with United Arab Emirates forces before the Iraqi invasion were not classified as a build-up action. Similarly,the military forces deployed in the Middle East
(especially in Iraq and Iran) since the Iranian revolution were neither reinforced nor
considered. In a nutshell, deterrence neither obstructed nor favored a possible later
attempt at compellence. Simply, no connection had ever been considered. By contrast, a deterrence-compellence symbiosis was identifiable soon after the invasion.
Following the placement of a military force in Saudi Arabia, reciprocally reinforcing
deterrent and compellent policies were put into place. This finding seems to support
the thesis that the deterrence-compellence linkage is stronger when the two strategies coexist or after they have coexisted than before either of them is executed.
Accordingly, while the US deterrent stance was being converted into a wellorchestrated attempt at compelling Iraq's retreat (by November 1990), deterrence
was a critical and transient element for carrying out the compellent threat.
Overall, the deterrence-compellence relationship that developed during the
Gulf Crisis was relatively strong-widely deficient at the beginning but clearly
present from the middle of the crisis until the end. Notwithstanding Stein's (1992)
view regarding the inability of the United States to institute effective deterrence, a
deterrence-compellence linkage was attempted from February 1991 onward,
building on the plans that had been underway since the Iranian Revolution in
1979. Because of such preparations, the United States was in a better position to
engage in a deterrence-compellence linkage. Despite the fact that such an undertaking could fall short of gaining the hoped-for success, US policy after January
1991 appeared at the very least more consistent and credible.
The underlying focus of this essay that an actor who is practicing a policy of
deterrence should already have in mind an idea about a possible compellent attempt is confirmed to the extent that a deterrent strategy involves some connection,
at some point during the crisis, with the possibility of performing an imminent
compellent policy. A second underlying proposition also seems plausible: the less
abrupt the passage from a compellent to a deterrent posture, the more desirable for
the side that is planning and executing these policies. But this proposition has not
been empirically verified.
Ultimately, the approach endorsed in this essay and the insights it offers can be
easily critiqued. The exclusive concentration on the policies that one of the crisis
participants is implementing without an attempt at pursuing a real understanding
of the other side's moves and countermoves contradicts the indisputable insight
that coercion is a reciprocal, interactive, and dynamic process. Two observations can
be offered in this respect. On the one hand, the study of coercion as a continuous
process of interaction between the choices of two players is not necessarily incompatible with the perspective adopted here, which focuses on one player's strategy or
vision of the crisis. On the other hand, although analyses that examine coercion
from the perspective of both actors do achieve a comprehensive understanding of
the crisis, their policy relevance is very limited. For instance, the variety of factors
and conditions that could account for either the failure or the success of deterrence
or compellence might be endless. Limiting the research to the United States' handling of its policies of deterrence and compellence may unveil aspects of the deterrence-compellence linkage that could strengthen and improve its actions
regardless of the identity, capabilities, and behavior of a potential adversary.
A second major critique can be raised about the choice of the First Gulf Crisis
as the only empirical case used to explore the distinctive-and-linked approach to
deterrence and compellence described here. The First Gulf War was selected because it was the first instance after the end of the Cold War in which a US policy of
deterrence (despite its weaknesses) was followed by a US attempt at compellence.
Unquestionably, studying additional cases from the same perspective is needed to
have a clearer picture of the benefits of devoting attention to the deterrencecompellence linkage. Further research on the linkage could both challenge and add
MARIA SPERANDEI
279
new evidence to the inferences offered here. Moreover, the contribution of new
evidence about the distinctive-and-linked approach could be used to strengthen
future US policies and actions. The questions to be posed and answered are far
more numerous than those that this essay has explored. If nothing else, a stone has
been thrown into the lake. In addition, research on the US deterrence-compellence
linkage during the First Gulf Crisis will benefit from further analysis. For instance,
no primary documents have been used in the present analysis; more accurate
archival research could prove useful.
In conclusion, as miscalculation is always possible in international politics, policymakers could perhaps reason and act more efficiently by keeping the deterrence-compellence linkage in mind from the very beginning of a crisis rather than
trying vainly to understand the opponent's intentions. Lebow and Stein (1994)
have reached the conclusion that the accurate evaluation of an adversary's intentions and military capabilities as well as the exact prediction of the impact of an
actor's statements and actions on a challenger are highly problematic. Perhaps, a
partial solution to this problem lies in the consistency between such closely connected and interdependent sequential policies as deterrence and compellence.
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