International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War (2000) / Chapter Skim
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Defining Moment: The Threat and Use of Force in American Foreign Policy Since 1989
Defining Moment: The Threat and Use of Force in American Foreign Policy Since 1989
Pages 90-122
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From page 90... ...
presidents with difficult choices between retreat and "all-out" military actions intended to achieve objectives by the force of arms alone. In the 1980s most U.S.
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From page 91... ...
General Colin Powell, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was and remains a proponent of what was called the Weinberger doctrine. "Threats of military force will work," he says, "only when U.S.
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reserve forces, the forging of a global military alliance, even the conduct of a devastating air campaign against the Iraqi occupation army and against strategic targets throughout Iraq itself, Saddam Hussein refused to comply with U.S. demands and his troops had to be expelled by force of arms.
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We did not look at such cases of continuing military support of diplomacy in which "dogs may not have barked."4 Instead, we looked only at the handful of specific incidents in which U.S. armed forces were used deliberately and actively to threaten or to conduct limited military operations in support of American policy objectives in specific situations.5 We did not examine such military threats prior to the Bush administration because, as noted above, the Cold War placed significant constraints on U.S.
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diplomacy predisposed to disbelieve American threats, and to believe they can ride out any American military initiative and drive away American forces, it has been necessary for the United States in many incidents to go to great lengths to change these individuals' minds. Reaching this defining moment, the point at which a foreign decision maker comes to the realization that, despite what may have happened in the past, in the current situation U.S.
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Quite apart from the credibility of the U.S. threat, however, some demands are more difficult for foreign leaders to comply with than others, and some of the enabling conditions directly affect this perception of how costly it would be to comply with the demands.
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military threats in recent years (Blechman and Kaplan, 1978; lervis et al., 1985; Schelling, 1966~.9 A second contextual factor believed to shape the credibility of U.S. military threats is the presence or absence of broad public support for military action and, particularly, whether or not there is wide support among members of Congress.
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As with all the enabling conditions, what matters is not the reality of allied support but the targeted leader's perception of this factor. In explaining Saddam Hussein's disbelief of American threats during the Persian Gulf conflict, for example, former Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney cited Hussein's belief that the United States could never carry out military operations in Iraq itself because in Hussein's view the Arab nations allied with the United States would make clear that in such circumstances they would have to leave the coalition.
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Thus, Blechman and Kaplan (1978) found the deployment of forces on the ground in the potential theater of operations to be a more effective means of making threats credible than the movement of naval forces, as ground deployments demonstrate a willingness to pay the political price by putting U.S.
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, the retreat is publicly evident and could have dire consequences in national or regional politics. Potency of the Threat All of these enabling conditions context of the threat, character of the threat, and degree of difficulty of a demand contribute to a targeted leader's understanding of the cost of complying, or of not complying, with U.S.
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CASE STUDIES All these enabling conditions were examined for each of the eight major cases in which military force was threatened or used in limited ways in support of diplomacy during the Bush and first Clinton administrations. Although the authors examined each case extensively, only a brief summary of each can be presented in this paper; the summaries highlight the key findings.
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armed forces to invade Panama, capture Noriega, and bring him to the United States for trial. In this case, therefore, both diplomacy and military threats failed, necessitating the direct use of military force in war to accomplish the U.S.
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and allied military force in the region, an operation that could have left no question in Hussein's mind about the president's willingness to run huge political risks to implement the threat. Furthermore, the president's credibility was strengthened by the forging of a broad coalition that backed the American action, including Arab nations as well as traditional U.S.
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The last such incident during the first Clinton administration took place in September 1996, when the United States once again struck at air defense sites in the south of Iraq, this time in response to an Iraqi intervention in a conflict between two Kurdish factions in the north. The United States maintained that the Iraqi military action was unacceptable and responded both by reinforcing its forces in the Gulf region and by launching cruise missile attacks on newly rebuilt Iraqi air defense sites in
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The cruise missile attacks, which included a strike on an Iraqi military intelligence headquarters said to be implicated in the plot, were intended to indicate to Hussein that such acts of terror and similar covert operations would not be tolerated. An even more dramatic threat of American military force in the Persian Gulf took place in August 1994 when, in response to the movement of Iraqi armored forces toward Kuwait, the United States deployed substantial quantities of naval and land-based air and ground forces to the Persian Gulf and stated that it would resist any new invasion with force.
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In response to Iraq's military action against a Kurdish faction in the north, which U.S. leaders termed unacceptable, the United States was only willing to stage symbolic attacks against Iraqi air defense facilities in the south far from the scene of the Kurdish conflict.
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and other nations' ground forces to Macedonia to deter any extension of the Bosnian war to that nation, or any internal ethnic conflagration, represents an apparent success for U.S. military threats.
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There was support in the Congress, unanimity among the allies, the demand was stated clearly and reinforced by military actions, and the threat (automatic involvement in any extension of the Bosnian conflict) was potent relative to the demand.
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This is certainly the view of Undersecretary of Defense Walter Slocombe, who has said that "UNPROFOR's mistake was tolerating hostile behavior. It should have slapped down the people who were shooting at them."25 Similarly, the enabling conditions pertaining to the final demand made of the Serbs were mainly negative.
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Only when the NATO allies, reacting to the murders in Srebrenica and the Croat offensive, made clear that they would be willing to act more forcefully did the Serbs perceive a real cost to their noncompliance and begin to take the allies' threats seriously. Haiti ~ 1994- 1 996~27 Haiti presents a similar picture: ineffective threats and excessively limited military actions showed U.S.
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Yet the Haitian ruler, General Raoul Cedras, with virtually no means of defending himself if the United States did invade, refused to back down. Finally, President Clinton received authorizations to utilize military force from the OAS and the UN and set a deadline for the invasion.
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The U.S. interest and willingness to use force in Korea had strong precedent, public opinion and the Congress supported the need to do something about North Korea's nuclear weapons program, the demand was clear, and the threat was supported by visible military actions.
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U.S. threats to use military force clearly succeeded in three Macedonia, North Korea, and Taiwan.
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Tangible military actions were taken in all cases and hence shed no light. The presence or absence of public support is more interesting.
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It is rare that it can both make potent threats and retain public support. Potent threats imply greater risks.
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presidents show a greater ability to lead on this issue, or until the American people demonstrate a greater willingness to step up to the challenges of exercising military dominance on a global scale, foreign leaders in many situations will likely continue to see American threats more as signs of weakness than as potent expressions of America's true military power. As a result, they will likely continue to be willing to withstand American threats necessitating either recourse to force to achieve American goals or embarrassing retreats in the pursuit of American interests abroad.
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3Les Aspin, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, address to the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, Washington, D.C., September 21, 1992. 4A database listing all uses of the American armed forces since the end of the Cold War was prepared by DFI International for the U.S.
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The United States and some of its allies threatened once again to carry out air strikes, and eventually the UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, was able to negotiate an acceptable resolution of the conflict. 21Primary sources for this case study include FBIS transcripts of Radio Mogadishu broadcasts, contemporaneous news reports, Baker (1995)
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31Sources for this case study included public statements by President Clinton, Secretary of State Christopher, and Secretary of Defense Perry; transcripts of State Department press conferences; and Chinese Foreign Ministry statements, including press conferences by Foreign Minister Qian Qichen. 32Interview by Barry Blechman with General Colin Powell, February 21, 1997.
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1997 Who, why, what and how: Debates over post-Cold War military intervention. In Eagle Adrift: American Policy at the End of the Century, R.J.
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Whetten, L.L. 1974 The Canal War: Four Power Conflict in the Middle East.
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