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  1. Strategic Coercion—A Closer Look

Strategic Coercion—A Closer Look

The conflict in Ukraine offers an important case study regarding the exercise of strategic coercion—the “deliberate and purposive use of overt threats to influence another’s strategic choices”—within the context of a major war.13 The literature concerning strategic coercion is substantial and is still growing. Most of it, however, deals with parties that are not significant economic or military powers armed with nuclear weapons. Assuming reliable insights will eventually emerge regarding Putin’s decision making, the concept of strategic coercion stands to advance in at least three topics: the critical nature of the flow of accurate information, the integral value of the dynamic of compellence and deterrence, and the efficacy of short- and long-term financial and economic sanctions.

For controlled coercion to take place, the target must receive reasonably accurate information about the strategic situation, including combat losses, and—to borrow Schelling’s words—the “pain yet to come” for noncompliance. Otherwise, reducing an adversary’s military power and strategic advantages lacks coercive value. If targets simply reject accurate (but perhaps unpleasant) information, as irrational actors sometimes do, that is one matter. If the targets are simply not receiving it, that is another matter, and it requires a different approach lest the attempt at strategic coercion fail for the wrong reasons.

Research on strategic coercion has been aware of the problem of irrational actors for some time and has made progress in tackling it. However, it has not completely separated the irrational actor problem from the “ignorant actor” problem. We know Putin was not receiving accurate information from his subordinate commanders and advisers; he eventually took some corrective measures, but the situation might not be fully resolved. At the same time, numerous theories surfaced—from “mad man” to “victim of stroke”—claiming Putin was an irrational actor and had to be treated as such.14 But we would presumably treat a “mad man” differently than we would someone who is malevolent but ignorant because the latter would have thresholds he would not want to cross; whereas the former would not. To further complicate matters, Putin could be both irrational and ignorant. Nevertheless, the larger point is strategic coercion theory (and practice) would benefit from more research into how best to distinguish between the two.

13. Lawrence Freedman, ed., Strategic Coercion: Concepts and Cases (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 3, 15; and Kelly M. Greenhill and Peter Krause, eds., Coercion: The Power to Hurt in International Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018).

14. Michael Krepon, “Putin Plays the Mad Man Card in Ukraine,” Forbes (website), March 1, 2022, https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelkrepon/2022/03/01/putin-plays-the-mad-man-card-in-ukraine/?sh=6d58ef2a1405; and Maggie Fox, “Why Does Vladimir Putin Walk Like That?,” NBC News (website), December 15, 2015, https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/why-does-vladimir-putinwalk-n480611.

Research into strategic coercion might also address how the concept’s two essential components, compellence and deterrence, could function as a synthetic dynamic. Separating the two has some value, particularly with respect to education. But it tends to obscure their complementary nature: they are interrelated counterparts, not complete opposites. Compellence often requires some form of deterrence, and deterrence typically involves some form of compellence. Together they round out strategic coercion, the aim of which is to make our adversaries do what we want—and not something else. Clausewitz and Schelling saw it the same way. They understood war to be an act of force to compel our adversaries to do what we want—which also implies denying our adversaries the ability to do something we do not want.15 For example, an invasion aimed at compelling the capitulation of a head of state should also include measures for deterring an insurgency should the first aim be accomplished. Fortunately, Putin invaded Ukraine with forces insufficient to accomplish the first objective, and it is unclear he had properly considered the second. For their part, the Ukrainians and those supporting them want to compel Putin to give up his aggressive intentions, while also deterring him from escalating.

We find this synthetic, compellence-deterrence dynamic at work in nearly all conflicts short of Schelling’s notion of “brute force,” that is, those situations inimical to the bargaining model of war.16 An example is using military force to perpetrate genocide, which eschews arriving at a negotiated settlement or a bargain of any sort.17 Campaigns sometimes begin as exercises in brute force but then transition to the bargaining model if the defenders’ resistance is too strong. Combining compellence and deterrence into a single dynamic will also facilitate gaining better control over adversaries and crisis situations. Modern articulations of strategies of control reach back to the 1950s and 1960s in the works of J. C. Wylie, Henry Eccles, and Herbert Rosinski; their concept of control should be reexamined and developed further for application in today’s strategic environment.18 The conflict in Ukraine will afford opportunities for strategic theorists and practitioners to study how the two components of coercion might function together and what their limitations might be. In short, the conflict in Ukraine, because of its strategic scale and operational scope, will offer new data which will improve the concept of strategic coercion. These data should justify fusing compellence and deterrence together more formally, rather

15. Carl von Clausewitz, Hinterlasseneswerk Vom Kriege, ed. Werner Hahlweg, 19th ed. (Frankfurt: Ferdinand, 1980), bk. 1, chap. 1, 191–92; Carl von Clausewitz, On War, trans. and ed. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986), 76; and Schelling, Arms and Influence, 2.

16. Schelling, Arms and Influence, 1–3.

17. For a broader definition of brute force, see Robert Mandel, Coercing Compliance: State-Initiated Brute Force in Today’s World (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2015), 4, 6–7.

18. On strategy of control, see Antulio J. Echevarria II, War’s Logic: Strategic Thought in the American Way of War (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2021), 130–42.

than informally or accidentally. Eventually, that process should be routinized in military training and execution.

Along similar lines, and to return to a topic mentioned above, Putin’s invasion of Ukraine will shed light on the coercive power of financial sanctions on a large, modern state with strong economic ties, especially in terms of oil and gas, to the West. At present, the sanctions consist of a combination of targeted and comprehensive sanctions, which the West can increase or decrease as necessary but not without some unwanted secondary or tertiary effects. Research into the coercive power of sanctions (or economic coercion) suggests they work best under specific conditions: (1) when costs to the target are significant, (2) the senders’ costs are minimal, (3) the issue of dispute is of low importance to the target, (4) the sender and target are closely allied, (5) sanctions are endorsed by an international institution, and (6) the target state is a democracy.19 As readers will note, only three of the six conditions obtain with respect to Russia’s current invasion of Ukraine.

While sanctions have become a weapon of choice for modern democracies, they also have a long and not entirely successful history.20 They have the advantage of being flexible, able to serve in a deterrence or compellence role, or both. The West has used them against Russia in both capacities, including the erosion of Moscow’s ability to manufacture war material and to resupply its forces over the long term. (Inept Russian logistical planning also added to the costimposing effects of sanctions in the short term.) By some accounts, the effect of sanctions may reduce Russia’s GDP by as much as 12 percent in 2022.21 It is unclear how effective Russian countermeasures will be. Economic sanctions may remain a weapon of first resort in the future. But, as with any weapon, adversaries and potential adversaries will have studied its effectiveness and adopted some countermeasures.

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