Military Coercion and US Foreign Policy (Routledge Global Security Studies) 9780367459970, 9780367459963, 9781003026358, 0367459973

Table of contents :
Table of Contents
List of illustrations
List of contributors
Acknowledgements
About the Stimson Center
Preface
List of acronyms
1. Coercion in a competitive world
2. Multi-tasking: How the armed forces support US national interests short of war
3. Making use of history
4. Syria: Stumbling into stalemate
5. Iran and Iraq: Strange successes, strange failures
6. Western Balkans: Hard targets and harder victories
7. Russia: What’s old is new again
8. China: Narrow Straits and Rising Tensions
9. Coercion in the past, and the future of competition
Technical Appendix A
Technical Appendix B
Index

Citation preview

“So often, revisions fall short of distinguished predecessors. In this case, we see brilliance built on brilliance as the seminal work, Force Without War, is brought up to the present by a trenchant team of scholars and practitioners. This new volume will clearly become a well-thumbed textbook in our nation’s war colleges and military academies. As a combatant commander in both Latin America at US Southern Command and later in four years as NATO Supreme Allied Commander, I often turned to the original study – this new book will illuminate the path ahead for my successors in senior command.” Admiral Jim Stavridis (USN ret.) “The post-Cold War era will soon be as long as the Cold War was. Military Coercion and US Foreign Policy could not be more timely. It is not only a masterful updating of a classic study, but a thorough and wide-ranging assessment of the relevance – real and perceived – of American military power in a world where interests, adversaries, and conflicts interact in more complicated ways than ever.” Richard K. Betts, Columbia University, USA “This impressive edited volume updates one of the classic books on coercion as a tool of US foreign policy, bringing Force Without War up to the present day and providing key lessons for the future. It combines statistical analysis with detailed case studies, written by noted experts, to show where and how military coercion can help achieve US national objectives without resorting to large-scale military operations. Its findings will be especially helpful for the policymakers charged with navigating through today’s turbulent strategic environment, and finding ways to successfully compete with Russia, China, and others without escalating into major war.” Nora Bensahel, Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, Washington DC, USA, and Contributing Editor War on the Rocks “Building on the work that Barry Blechman, Stephen Kaplan, and colleagues did in one of the best defense studies of the 1970s, Force Without War, this 21stcentury Stimson team has again asked the question, based on more recent cases (and even more rigorous methodology), ‘How well does the deployment or employment of American military power serve the stated objectives of the United States in various crises around the world?’ The approach is careful and specific – looking for tangible, tactical and measurable effects, rather than waxing on about overall foreign policy outcomes. In other words, this book provides the kind of analytical and falsifiable research that characterizes the best of modern social science – but with the savvy and practicality of Washington insiders who understand how US foreign policy is actually made. It turns out that force ‘works’ in this way about half the time. Perhaps even more interesting are the book’s findings about when force is most likely to be effective and when it is not. For example, sending one aircraft carrier to a crisis turns out to be about as effective as sending several. And deploying US forces shoulder-to-

shoulder with strong allied participation makes a significant positive difference as well. The findings provide extremely helpful grist for policymakers deciding when and if to send US military forces to deter or compel American adversaries.” Michael O’Hanlon, Brookings Institution, Washington DC, USA

MILITARY COERCION AND US FOREIGN POLICY

This book examines the use of military force as a coercive tool by the United States, using lessons drawn from the post-Cold War era (1991–2018). The volume reveals that despite its status as sole superpower during the post-Cold War period, US efforts to coerce other states failed as often as they succeeded. In the coming decades, the United States will face states that are more capable and creative, willing to challenge its interests and able to take advantage of missteps and vulner­ abilities. By using lessons derived from in-depth case studies and statistical analysis of an original dataset of more than 100 coercive incidents in the post-Cold War era, this book generates insight into how the US military can be used to achieve policy goals. Specifically, it provides guidance about the ways in which, and the conditions under which, the US armed forces can work in concert with economic and diplo­ matic elements of US power to create effective coercive strategies. This book will be of interest to students of US national security, US foreign policy, strategic studies, and International Relations in general. Melanie W. Sisson is Senior Fellow with the Stimson Center in Washington, DC, USA. James A. Siebens is a Research Associate with the Stimson Center’s Defense Strategy and Planning Program, Washington, DC, USA. Barry M. Blechman co-founded the Stimson Center in 1989, and chaired its board until 2004.

ROUTLEDGE GLOBAL SECURITY STUDIES

Series Editors: Aaron Karp and Regina Karp

Global Security Studies emphasizes broad forces reshaping global security and the dilemmas facing decision-makers the world over. The series stresses issues relevant in many countries and regions, accessible to broad professional and academic audiences as well as to students, and enduring through explicit theoretical foundations. US National Security Reform Reassessing the National Security Act of 1947 Edited by Heidi B. Demarest and Erica D. Borghard Geo-economics and Power Politics in the 21st Century The Revival of Economic Statecraft Edited by Mikael Wigell, Sören Scholvin and Mika Aaltola Nuclear Command and Control Norms A Comparative Study Salma Shaheen Global Nuclear Order Sara Z. Kutchesfahani Nuclear Disarmament A Critical Assessment Edited by Bård Nikolas Vik Steen and Olav Njølstad Confrontational and Cooperative Regional Orders Managing Regional Security in World Politics Ariel Gonzalez Levaggi Military Coercion and US Foreign Policy The Use of Force Short of War Edited by Melanie W. Sisson, James A. Siebens and Barry M. Blechman For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/ Routledge-Global-Security-Studies/book-series/RGSS

MILITARY COERCION AND US FOREIGN POLICY The Use of Force Short of War

Edited by Melanie W. Sisson, James A. Siebens and Barry M. Blechman

First published 2020 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2020 selection and editorial matter, The Stimson Center; individual chapters, the contributors The right of The Stimson Center to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record has been requested for this book ISBN: 978-0-367-45997-0 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-45996-3 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-02635-8 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Taylor & Francis Books

CONTENTS

List of illustrations List of contributors Acknowledgements About the Stimson Center Preface List of acronyms 1

Coercion in a competitive world Melanie W. Sisson, James A. Siebens and Barry M. Blechman

2

Multi-tasking: How the armed forces support US national interests short of war Melanie W. Sisson, James A. Siebens and Barry M. Blechman

ix xi xiii xx xv xviii 1

16

3

Making use of history Jacob Aronson, Daniel Tuke, Paul Huth and Melanie Sisson

33

4

Syria: Stumbling into stalemate Alex Bollfrass

58

5

Iran and Iraq: Strange successes, strange failures Kenneth M. Pollack

82

6

Western Balkans: Hard targets and harder victories William J. Durch

110

7

Russia: What’s old is new again Thomas Wright

132

viii Contents

8

China: Narrow Straits and Rising Tensions Michael S. Chase

146

9

Coercion in the past, and the future of competition Melanie W. Sisson, James A. Siebens and Barry M. Blechman

163

Technical Appendix A Technical Appendix B Index

178

194

223

ILLUSTRATIONS

Figures

1.1 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 3.8 3.9 3.10 3.11 3.12 7.1 9.1 9.2

Sanctions initiated 1946–2018 Forces stationed abroad 1991–20188 Number of regional exercises 1993–2010 US Expenditures on security and assistance programs 2000–2018 Distribution of US humanitarian and peacekeeping operations32 US FONOP activity in the South China Sea, by target state Distribution of coercive military operations by pre-existing

regional presence3 Distribution of US military coercion over time and actor Illustrative display of first differences and confidence intervals The level of pre-existing permanent regional presence Deploying forces from outside-theater in has a positive effect

on outcome Air and naval assets are useful against weak targets Ground troops are useful against strong targets One carrier is better than no carriers, and better than more

than one carrier, other naval assets achieve the same effect Military exercises, no-fly zones Adding new sanctions to prior sanctions Sanctions decrease the effectiveness of force deployment Demand specificity and powerful allies make success more likely US Troops in Europe 2008–2019 Elements of coercion Effects of misperception of target values and goals

4

19

21

24

26

29

35

37

42

43

44

46

47

48

50

51

52

53

140

165

167

x List of illustrations

Tables

3.1 3.2 A.1 A.2 B.1 B.2 B.3 B.4 B.5 B.6 B.7 B.8 B.9 B.10

Number of cases by target actor Rate of success by policy goal List of short of war cases Short of War Dataset: codebook Descriptive statistics Deployment of Forces Military Exercises Sanctions Other Actions Taken by the US Magnitude and Type of Force Deployed Naval Power Domestic Characteristics Mission Characteristics Target Characteristics

36

37

183

186

199

205

208

209

211

213

215

217

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221

CONTRIBUTORS

Jacob Aronson is Assistant Research Scientist at the Center for International Development and Conflict Management, University of Maryland, USA. Barry M. Blechman co-founded the Stimson Center in 1989 and chaired its board until 2004. He is author or editor of more than 20 books, including Force Without War (Brookings, 1979) and The Politics of National Security (Oxford University Press, 1990), as well as many articles in journals, magazines, newspapers, and blogs. He holds a Ph.D. in international relations from Georgetown University in 1971. Alexander K. Bollfrass is Senior Researcher at the Center for Security Studies (CSS). Michael S. Chase is a Senior Political Scientist at RAND, Adjunct Professor in the China Studies and Strategic Studies Departments at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington, DC, and affiliate faculty member at the Pardee RAND Graduate School. William J. Durch is Distinguished Fellow with the Stimson Center. Paul Huth is Bauman Professor of Government & Politics, Director of the Center for International Development and Conflict Management at the University of Maryland, and Editor of the Journal of Conflict Resolution. Kenneth M. Pollack is Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). James A. Siebens is a Research Associate with the Stimson Center’s Defense Strategy and Planning Program. He holds an MA in international affairs with a concentration in

xii List of contributors

global security from American University’s School of International Service, and writes on grand strategy, military intervention, civil war, and hybrid warfare. Melanie W. Sisson is Senior Fellow with the Stimson Center in Washington, DC, USA. She earned an MA from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, and a PhD in political science from the University of Colorado at Boulder. She publishes on issues of national security and defense in major media outlets and in scholarly journals of international theory and politics. Daniel Tuke is a Graduate Student in the Department of Government and Poli­ tics at the University of Maryland. Thomas Wright is Director of the Center on the United States and Europe and a Senior Fellow in the Project on International Order and Strategy at the Brookings Institution.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The Editors are grateful to the Smith Richardson Foundation and to the U.S. Depart­ ment of Defense for their support of this project. The devoted, detailed work of a small and mighty group of individuals deserves mention and special appreciation – we are fortunate the book bears the fingerprints of: Rebecca Buechler, Daniel Herrington, Grace Hwang, Connor Kipp, Sean Maguire, Mackenzie Mandile, Chuck Meire, and Tait Ryssdal. Our thinking and therefore the book’s quality were improved by the generosity of time and input gifted to us by Scott Asack, Janine Davidson, Adam Frost, Jimmy Giles, Bill Hix, Michael Mazarr, James Meernik, Mike Power, Nadia Schadlow, Brendan Stickles, Karen Sutter, Dennis Wille, and Micah Zenko. Special thanks are due to Scott Kendrick, who conceived the need for this project and worked relentlessly to make it possible. Finally, our gratitude to the Stimson Center, from which we received care and feeding from project inception to completion.

ABOUT THE STIMSON CENTER

The Stimson Center is a nonpartisan policy research center working to protect people, preserve the planet, and promote security and prosperity.

PREFACE

Four decades have passed since Stephen Kaplan and I wrote Force Without War, a study of how the United States used its armed forces, short of all-out war, in sup­ port of foreign-policy objectives between 1945 and 1975. The study was one of the first to examine demonstrative uses of military forces in depth and has been influential – widely commented upon in the foreign policy and defense commu­ nities and inflicted on countless students at military colleges and civilian schools of international relations. I am pleased to have the opportunity to revisit the subject of a book that, if not my best, was at least my best seller. Our current study, Military Coercion and US Foreign Policy: The Use of Force Short of War, takes on a similar purpose as the original work, but with a new focus on coercive operations during the years since the end of the Cold War in 1991. The subject is no less relevant today than it was in the 1970s. Then, the US con­ fronted the USSR and sought to counter its advances throughout the world, while avoiding outright military conflict. Today, the United States confronts two revisionist powers – China and Russia – and hopes to compete successfully with them for global influence while again avoiding the huge risks stemming from a war between nucleararmed military superpowers. Being able to coerce these nations – persuade them to take actions that we prefer, or to not take actions that we dislike, without resorting to war, could be an essential instrument of successful competitive policies. The four decades between the two studies have witnessed huge changes in the global order. The conditions of life – health, life expectancy, education, standards of living – improved markedly throughout the world, with few exceptions, although the gap between the very poor and the very rich has grown both within the US and internationally. The revolution in communications technologies united the world’s population in near-instantaneous knowledge of events in any part of the globe and enables national leaders to speak directly to their citizens on a whim. It has provided effective means of organizing large groups of globally dispersed individuals, whether

xvi Preface

for good or for ill. Globalization of trade and increased travel and migration have strengthened knowledge of other nations and other peoples. Reduction in popula­ tion growth has led to, or will soon lead to, aging and even declining populations in the most advanced nations, while unconstrained growth in the poorest nations is resulting in large numbers of restive, young people with bleak futures in Africa and the Middle East. The United States shared in, and often led, these global trends in health, edu­ cation, communications, and economic relations and growth, yet the nation’s political system seems to be in disarray, if not already dysfunctional. The widening and hardening of positions on political and social issues goes back at least to the 1980s and perhaps earlier. As a result, the nation has been unable to resolve long­ standing domestic problems and public discourse has coarsened and become more strident. The country has lost confidence in its political leaders, to say nothing of its institutions, as well as in the journalists who chronicle their activities. Long-held beliefs about the boundaries of acceptable political behavior have eroded. While party politics in the US have always been competitive, the type of bi-partisan cooperation and compromise on foreign policy that characterized much of the Cold War era now appears beyond recovery. This multiplies the difficulties of competing successfully with China and Russia, as well as of meeting lesser chal­ lengers, while avoiding military conflict. Most importantly for our subject, the repeated apparent failures of major American military expeditions – from Korea and Vietnam through Afghanistan and Iraq – have led many, if not most Americans to view large overseas military engagements skeptically. For instance, recent polling has found that a majority of Americans – veterans and non-military civilians alike – do not believe the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were worth their costs.1 This shift has left US political leaders reluctant to test this skepticism with major new foreign adventures, and shifted their focus to small, mainly covert, isolated strikes. Moreover, significant numbers of Americans are now skeptical of any foreign entanglements – whether or not they suggest war – from involvement in multilateral institutions, to global trade arrangements, to military alliances. The global stage examined in Force Without War was dominated by the US and the USSR and their respective allies and proxies. It is perhaps cliché to note that many more independent actors crowd that stage in the twenty-first century. In reading the post-Cold War international landscape, however, there are several additional note­ worthy points of continuity and change over the past several decades. Latin America is now relatively more peaceful than it was during the Cold War. Even though US-Cuba relations continue to be tense, and Venezuela has taken Colombia’s place as the main site of internal strife, previously widespread political violence in Central America now takes the form of deadly gang violence. Past conflicts in southern Africa, too, have been largely resolved, although widespread conflict and terrorism in central Africa and the Sahel continue to foment instability and extremism, underscoring the need for increased diplomacy, peacemaking, and, at times, military actions aimed at terrorists on that continent. It is worth noting

Preface xvii

that our new study of the post-Cold War era found fewer coercive military actions in Latin America and Africa than in other regions. As noted in Force Without War, however, the absence of coercive action is arguably a positive indication that the political role of the military, providing stability and deterring conflict, is actually being performed effectively. What is more striking is the persistence of the primary conflicts that motivated American political/military involvement overseas during the Cold War. Most importantly, the Middle East has been in turmoil ever since the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, followed by the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan and the subsequent rise of terrorist organizations. These events prompted the US to initiate and expand its military presence in the region during the 1980s and to fight wars in Kuwait and in the Persian Gulf in the 1990s. Since the 2001 attack on the Twin Towers, the United States also has fought wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, and used both airstrikes and operations by Special Forces against terrorists in dozens of other countries in the Middle East, Africa, and East Asia. These small kinetic operations are direct uses of force. They are not intended to coerce the terrorists into stopping their activities, but to destroy them directly. In Europe, although the Soviet Union disintegrated and the Cold War ended, uncertainties and conflicts over Russia’s role in world affairs and the boundaries of its influence remain unabated and periodically result in violence and war. Conflicts in Georgia and Ukraine, as well as increased cyber and information warfare activities, have sparked renewed concerns in the US and Europe over Russia’s ambitions and its willingness to use coercion and military force in its continental periphery. In the far east, China remains an adversary of the United States, although the nature of the relationship has changed fundamentally. China no longer openly supports insurgencies in East and South Asia, as it did from the late 1940s into the 1970s. But after a 25-year period during which it concentrated on building its economy, China once again is challenging the US, its allies in East Asia, and many other nations. Indeed, the far greater economic and military power it now possesses permit China to assert claims for supremacy in its region through traditional overt economic and coercive military means. China’s aspirations for regional dominance, often defined against the interests of nations allied with the United States, seems likely to be a major source of conflict in world affairs for years to come. Moreover, four bilateral conflicts that prompted US political/military actions during the Cold War continue unresolved: China-Taiwan, India-Pakistan, Israel-Palestine, North Korea-South Korea. Each of these now contains an implicit risk of the use of nuclear weapons. The inability of world leaders to facilitate peaceful resolutions of these conflicts – each of which has continued for 70 years – is a sad statement of the human condition and the misplaced values of national leaders and populations. In addition to the ongoing ‘War on Terror’, a war that seems unlikely to end until climate change extinguishes human life on earth, US defense strategy now calls for

xviii Preface

continuing, global competitions with both China and Russia. Currently, the US has many advantages in those struggles, including its global alliances, superior economy and technology, as well as larger and more advanced military forces. Over time, these advantages may grow or fade – depending on how wisely US leaders work to preserve and even advance them. For now and the near future, however, the challenge is to counter Chinese and Russian international aspirations without getting into a war with either. If the US is successful in this endeavor, after some years of struggle it may be possible for the great powers to move toward more cooperative relationships based on policies that take into account their respective core interests. Military Coercion and US Foreign Policy necessarily differs from the original work in several important respects. During the Cold War, the US was often tempted to intervene in civil wars with international implications – Afghanistan, Angola, and Lebanon are prominent examples – in order to support or oppose foreign govern­ ments based on their (real or perceived) geopolitical and ideological alignments. Thus, the political objectives analyzed in Force Without War largely focused on US efforts to coerce regimes – their authority, their military actions, or their interactions with out­ side patrons – in the context of Cold War alignments. In the post-Cold War era, US interventions were more often justified solely in terms of preserving international order and protecting people from the ravages of war, rather than any overt or implicit “great power competition.” Absent the bipolar Cold War competition, in the 1990s and in the first decade of this century, the US had somewhat greater freedom to take initiative wherever and whenever it chose. The US used the “unipolar moment” to attempt to con­ struct a liberal world order in line with more ambitious, and perhaps idealistic, political goals, such as preventing or ending conflicts, preserving peace agreements, and enforcing arms control and nonproliferation norms and agreements. Thus, we have expanded the types of political objectives beyond those in the original study to include categories such as “protection of civilians,” “ceasefires,” “negotiations,” and “weapons of mass destruction.” Another key difference between Force Without War and the current study is the shift away from the previous emphasis on nuclear weapons and platforms. In the Cold War, the prospect of nuclear war with the Soviet Union loomed large in foreign policy thinking, particularly in military strategy. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, however, most US coercive efforts were directed toward govern­ ments without nuclear weapons or nuclear-armed patrons to consider. Only onefourth of the incidents included in the current study involved either Russia or China. As such, the US strategic arsenal played only a general deterrence role during the post-Cold War period and was not included in the coercive toolkit. Instead, the US sought to assess the roles and utility of US conventional military tools and operations, while incorporating other levers of national power into the analysis, such as economic sanctions, public threats, and diplomatic engagement. Whether or not the de-emphasis of nuclear arms will continue with a resurgent Russia remains to be seen, but in the most recent years covered by this volume, both the US and Russia have placed new emphasis on their nuclear forces.

Preface xix

In the post-Cold War era, many conflicts involving coercive military activity persisted for longer periods than during the Cold War. We therefore were mindful of escalatory steps within the conflict, such as the establishment of no-fly zones and missile strikes against air defenses, as well as the imposition of additional demands, thus identifying multiple phases of singular military operations, and grouping those phases into “cam­ paigns” against a particular target. US actions in the Balkans and in Iraq following the Gulf War are two excellent examples of such campaigns during the 1990s. Another difference between the two studies is that Military Coercion and US Foreign Policy measures policy outcomes across the full universe of cases, as opposed to Force Without War’s use of a select sample. The result, we hope, is a more comprehensive and holistic assessment of US political uses of force than found in the original study, while preserving fidelity to the key concepts of coercion and demonstrative force to advance US political objectives. One final difference between the two studies concerns their sources. When given the new task, we believed the project would be far easier. Force Without War was completed before the internet existed. Its data were collected primarily from printed command histories and annual DoD official reports; we even consulted ships logs, at times, to determine the locations of aircraft carriers during certain crises. Surely, with electronic records now available through the keyboards on our desktops, we believed, the work would be far easier. This assumption proved incorrect. When the US Defense Department switched from print to electrons, it also ceased collecting systematic data on its activities. We know with certainty that this is the case concerning unclassified records. Inquiries with numerous DoD offices suggest that it also is true as far as classified recordkeeping is concerned. Hence, this volume depends far more on unofficial data than did its predecessor – an unfortunate development both for this project and for other scholars interested in assessing the impact of military activity on world affairs, not to mention for the Department’s own efforts to rely more on analytics. The United States faces many challenges now and will continue to do so in the future, most importantly, the competitions with China and Russia. The US Gov­ ernment can muster many policy instruments for these competitions, including the armed forces. Military Coercion and US Foreign Policy shows how military forces can be used coercively, without major conflict, to achieve foreign policy goals. It also shows how such coercive endeavors can fail. It is our hope that students and practitioners of US foreign policy will take these lessons to heart. Barry M. Blechman

Note 1 Ruth Igielnik and Kim Parker, “Majorities of U.S. veterans, public say the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were not worth fighting,” Pew Research Center, July 10, 2019, accessed July 18, 2019 www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/07/10/majorities-of-u-s-veterans­ public-say-the-wars-in-iraq-and-afghanistan-were-not-worth-fighting/

ACRONYMS

1ID ABCT ADIZ ARG ASEAN ASW AUMF BSA CAOC CBP CBPS CIA CNO CSG CVBG CW CWC DDG DoD DPP DPRK EC EEZ EFP ERI EU FDY

1st Infantry Division Armored Brigade Combat Team Air Defense Identification Zone Amphibious Ready Group Association of Southeast Asian Nations Anti-Surface Warfare Authorization for Use of Military Force Bosnian Serb Army Combined Air Operations Center Continuous Bomber Presence Covariate Balancing Propensity Score Central Intelligence Agency Chief of Naval Operations Carrier Strike Group Aircraft Carrier Battle Group Chemical Weapons Chemical Weapons Convention Guided Missile Destroyer Department of Defense Democratic Progressive Party Democratic People’s Republic of Korea European Community Exclusive Economic Zone Explosively-Forged Projectiles European Reassurance Initiative European Union Federal Republic of Yugoslavia

Acronyms xxi

FONOPS GBSD GCC GDP GFAP IAEA ICBM ICTY IFOR IGPBS INF IRGC ISCI ISIS JAM JCPOA JNA KFOR KLA KPC KVM LRSO MEF MEK MEU MID MLRS NAC NATO NDS NFZ NSS OPCW OSCE PACOM PLA PLAN PSI RIMPAC RRF RS SACEUR SAM SFOR

Freedom of Navigation Operations Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent Gulf Cooperation Council Gross Domestic Product General Framework Agreement on Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina International Atomic Energy Agency Intercontinental Ballistic Missile International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia Implementation Force Integrated Global Presence and Basing Strategy Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq Islamic State of Iraq and Syria Jaysh al-Mahdi Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action Yugoslav National Army NATO Kosovo Force Kosovo Liberation Army Kosovo Protection Corps Kosovo Verification Mission Long-Range Stand-Off Marine Expeditionary Force Mujahedi-e Khalq Marine Expeditionary Unit Militarized Interstate Disputes Multiple-Launch Rocket System North Atlantic Council North Atlantic Treaty Organization National Defense Strategy No-Fly Zone National Security Strategy Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe Pacific Command People’s Liberation Army People’s Liberation Army Navy Proliferation Security Initiative Rim of the Pacific Rapid Reaction Force Republika Srpska Supreme Allied Commander Europe Surface-to-Air Missile Stabilization Force

xxii Acronyms

SSBN START TPP TRADOC UN UNHCR UNITAF UNMIK UNOSOM UNPREDEP UNPROFOR UNSC UNSCOM US USAF USCG USMC USN VBSS WMD

Ballistic Missile Submarine Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty Trans-Pacific Partnership US Army Training and Doctrine Command United Nations United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees United Task Force (Somalia) United Nations Mission in Kosovo United Nations Operation in Somalia United Nations Preventive Deployment Force United Nations Protection Force United Nations Security Council United Nations Special Commission United States United States Air Force United States Coast Guard United States Marine Corps United States Navy Visit Board Search and Seizure Weapons of Mass Destruction

1 COERCION IN A COMPETITIVE WORLD Melanie W. Sisson, James A. Siebens and Barry M. Blechman

Between 1991 and 2018, the United States was the world’s dominant power. With a productive economy and a federal government willing to spend generously on a military already well-advantaged relative to other countries, the United States “enjoyed uncontested or dominant superiority in every operating domain.… The US could generally deploy forces when we wanted, assemble them where we wanted, and operate how we wanted.”1 Indeed, the US armed forces during this period undertook a breadth, depth, tempo, and duration of overseas activities that was historically unprecedented. These activities were component parts of national security strategies designed by a sequence of presidential administrations to protect the US homeland, to defend US strategic interests overseas, and to promote abroad the liberal values of individual rights and democracy. In 2018, the US Government asserted that this post-Cold War era of primacy was over. What had in preceding years been diffuse prognosticating about an ascending China and an aggrieved and risk-acceptant Russia coalesced in the codification of these states as near-peer rivals in the 2018 National Security Strategy and National Defense Strategy. This energized preparation for a new era of long-term competition, in which the United States is anticipated to contend increasingly, and more directly, with the interests of other states also in possession of considerable military and economic might. National security leaders thus are preparing the United States to succeed at two related but not identical tasks: war, and competition. The requirements of war generally are well understood – even as they become increasingly technologically sophisticated – and preparing for it demands that the United States has, and knows how to use, the military assets needed to defeat all adversaries. Competition, however, demands that the United States find ways to discourage and therefore to minimize the frequency with which other actors choose to challenge US national

2 M. W. Sisson et al.

security interests, and to find ways to resolve those challenges favorably without needing to resort to war when they do arise. The idea of competition has captured the attention, imagination, and anxieties of national security practitioners. For historians and scholars of international politics, however, it is old hat. Indeed, a foundational premise of almost all theories seeking to explain why countries behave toward each other as they do is that the international environment is inherently competitive – that is, states perpetually are in contest with one another for advantage.2 Sometimes these contests manifest in ways that are direct, obvious, and violent, as happens in war, and sometimes they emerge as short-of-war tussles over, for example, diplomatic norms and standards, human rights, environ­ mental conservation, trade, information exchange, and international law. A state that competes successfully sets the terms of international life to suit its interests, as it understands them at any given time, more rather than less. It gets other actors to do more of what it wants, at the times of its choosing, in the ways that it likes, and it does so without first having to invade, occupy, or destroy. Exercising international leadership thus is both the work and the reward of com­ petition. It is the work of establishing rules, of convincing as many actors to follow them as much of the time as is possible, and of incentivizing compliance and penalizing defiance such that the rules remain intact. The return is in the system’s structural privileging of that state’s interests over those of others. This prioritization can be instantiated in the nature, type, and activities of multinational regimes and institutions, but need not be. So too can it be evident in norms backed by no legal or organizational entity, in loosely-formed but common patterns of behavior, and in the simple requirement of considering how an action will be perceived and, possibly, addressed by the dominant state. States, of course, are unlikely to tolerate this prioritization and follow rules set by another in the absence of a good reason to do so. Some may find that they agree with the rules because those rules suit their own material and instrumental interests, or because they comport with their values. For all other states, however, to be compelling and durable, the rules structure must promise and deliver either ade­ quate benefit for good behavior, or adequate pain for bad. This means that the rule-setter must have the capability and the will to give and to take away, as required to assert and enforce standards and expectations. Military, economic, and socio-political power therefore are the tools of the trade in competition. Socio-political power has been argued to be a means through which a state’s international leadership can be made more palatable. Indeed, strong arguments have been made that the appeal of individual rights, representative democracy, and market capitalism endowed the United States in the post-Cold War era with the power to attract. This so-called “soft power” is understood by some to lead other actors to view US dominance more favorably than they other­ wise would, and so to conform more readily with its rule-based order.3 Although there currently are no compelling empirical indicators to support this claim, there is a prima facie case to be made that having a domestic social and political culture with global appeal is more likely to be a net positive than negative.

Coercion in a competitive world 3

The eruption of violent, radical Islamist backlash in the early 2000s, how­ ever, and its continuation today demonstrates that socio-political diffusion cuts both ways. So, too, does China’s international rise call into question the extent to which values, ideology, and identity will drive national strategies in the coming decades. China’s influence in the Indo-Pacific region, after all, has been won not with a galvanizing socio-political message, but rather through the creation of financial structures and trade regimes with, and direct investments in, the economies of growth-hungry neighbors, both regionally and those more far-flung. The United States, too, uses the integration of its economy with those of others through trade, finance, and investment for political purposes. Opportunity to export to the large US market, to import its goods, and to access its services are sizable inducements, while exclusion and, especially, expulsion from them can impose considerable pain. Economic sanctions in particular have increasingly become a tool of influence – while not new, their use has grown steadily since World War II, and accelerated markedly after the end of the Cold War (Figure 1.1).4 Indeed, in the 44 years between 1946 and 1990 the United States initiated at least 191 sanctions on 74 states; in the 27 years between 1991 and 2018, those numbers increased to 252 sanctions on 101 states. Economic power, of course, also is the foundation of conventional and nuclear military capabilities, the development, maintenance, and application of which are dependent upon a robust industrial base and healthily stocked government coffers. Although it is possible that technological advancements may change the nature of weapons such that this relationship is attenuated over time, for now, expensive, sophisticated and integrated systems, powerful platforms, large quantities of planes and ships and servicemembers, and the skills and abilities needed to use them effectively are essential for states seeking to compete successfully. All of these tools are necessary, and none alone will be sufficient, for the United States to succeed in structuring international political life to prioritize its interests over the coming century. It will be the ability to use socio-political, economic, and military instruments in concert with one another, as integrated components of wise foreign policy managed deftly and with discipline, that will differentiate the rulesetter from the rule-follower, and that will separate peace from war. This book is written to aid decisionmakers in this task, and to do so specifically as they consider whether and under what conditions the US armed forces should be called into use. Lessons are drawn from the 27 years of US preponderance between 1991 and 2018. Focus is on how and to what effect the United States used its armed forces, either independently or in conjunction with other instru­ ments of foreign policy, to influence the behavior of other actors – to reinforce acceptable behaviors or to prevent or encourage the reversal of behaviors that ran counter to US interests. It is an examination, in other words, of how the United States went about coercing its global neighbors in the past to derive insights into how best to coerce them in the future.

FIGURE 1.1 Sanctions initiated 1946–2018 Source: T. Clifton Morgan, Navin Bapat, and Yoshi Kobayashi, “The Threat and Imposition of Sanctions: Updating the TIES Dataset,” Conflict Management and Peace Science 31, no. 5 (2014): 541–58.

Coercion in a competitive world 5

War, not war, and coercion By all objective measures, of course, the United States did not during these years have to try to coerce other states. Coercion was a choice, not an asymmetric strategy demanded by limited capabilities. As the most powerful country in the world, the United States had the option of simply imposing its will, of throwing the full weight of its considerable military might at any given problem, confident that, although perhaps costly, battles would not be fought at home and that the far superior US military would prevail. Yet, this was not often the course chosen by US leaders. Instead, the US armed forces frequently were used not to achieve the desired outcome directly, but rather to do so indirectly by persuading other actors to behave in ways the United States wanted them to. That the United States used the military to achieve its desired ends through means short of war is not to say that the United States refrained entirely from the use of force. To the contrary, the US military deployed troops, dropped bombs, and launched missiles in pursuit of foreign policy aims on multiple occasions between 1991 and 2018. What, then, classifies these as violent acts of coercion and not as violent acts of war? There is no definition of war that has been established and accepted by the community of US foreign policy professionals, or that is of standard use in the academic literature. Some of the institutions, organizations, and scholars that study war do not so much define war as delimit it based upon the characteristics of military violence. “Sustained combat,” for example, attaches thresholds to the duration and intensity of violence that enable cut-points between war and not-war. Others focus on the effects of violence. One of the most-known and most-used conflict datasets, for example, relies on counts of participants killed in combat (battle deaths), as a means of distinguishing between armed disputes and wars, ostensibly because battle deaths are a reasonable proxy for the size and scale of military effort.5 Within the practitioner community, the most authoritative source on terminol­ ogy is silent on the issue. Although the word “war” appears in the DoD Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms more than 40 times, in none of those instances is it as an entry with its own definition. In all cases, rather, “war” is embedded in definitions of other terms, for example, “mobilization,” “neutrality,” “prisoner of war,” and “voluntary tanker agreement.”6 Among those who write on coercion, the tendency is to define what coercion is and to describe at length what it looks like, to be less specific and descriptive about what it is not, and to revert to dimensional characteristics when pressed to place events on one side of the line or the other. Comparisons are drawn between coercion, described as “an exemplary use of quite limited force,” or as “demon­ strative uses of force,” and war, described as “full-scale military operations,” or “a full-scale use of force,” or “the use of force that is massive, at least to the target.”7 Discerning the boundary between limited and full-scale uses of force, demonstra­ tive or massive, is left open for interpretation.

6 M. W. Sisson et al.

In some cases, being definitive about the threshold between coercion and war isn’t necessary – as in the work of Thomas Schelling, for example, who produced an almost-literary exploration of the relationships between and among behavior, incentives, and communication in international politics.8 His endeavor was to undertake rigorous theorizing, not systematic tests of his ideas against an empirical record. This latter clause is important because it is that task – the scrutiny of evi­ dence done for purposes of explaining what has worked in the past and why, and what therefore may be more likely to work in the future, and why – that requires clear differentiation between the phenomenon one wants to study from all other phenomena. If one wants to be able to choose wine based on the likelihood that it will be delicious and not distasteful, one first must be able to recognize the differ­ ence between a bottle of wine and a jar of grape juice. The work of which this book is a legacy established just such a means of oper­ ationalizing the distance between coercive uses of force and uses of force as war. In doing so, it advanced considerably the literature on coercion in international poli­ tics, although the authors did not describe its purpose in those terms. Rather, in the introduction to Force Without War, published in 1978, Barry Blechman and Ste­ phen Kaplan state simply that they understand military force to be one among many instruments available for use in pursuit of political objectives.9 The US military, in other words, is not a tool only of war, but rather also can be used as a tool of statecraft, independently or with diplomatic, economic, cultural, and other instruments of influence. Because all military actions carry costs and risk – dispatching portions of the US armed forces is expensive and makes possible unintended escalations that can result in unwanted violence – Blechman and Kaplan’s intent in writing the book was to provide information that might increase the likelihood that future choices to use the armed forces to coerce would be made selectively and wisely. Information was to be derived from the historical record of instances in which the United States had used its military in the conduct of statecraft, as a means not of imposing an out­ come but rather of communicating to other actors about the nature of US pre­ ferences and about behaviors that were desired, prescribed, or prohibited. Because their exercise was empirical, they needed a means of differentiating use of the military as a tool of coercion from its use as a tool of war. They achieved this by focusing on the effect the use of force was intended to have, as follows: Decisionmakers must have sought to attain their objectives by gaining influ­ ence in the target states, not by physically imposing the US will. When used as a martial instrument a military unit acts to seize an objective … or to destroy an objective.… In both of these examples, attainment of the immediate objective itself satisfies the purpose for which the force was used. [In coer­ cion,] … the activity of the military units themselves does not attain the objective; goals are achieved through the effect of the force on the perceptions of the actor.10

Coercion in a competitive world 7

Force, that is, is not used as a tool of coercion but rather as an act of war when it is designed to, “attain the immediate objective.” Conversely, it is an act of coercion when it is designed not to achieve the desired outcome directly, but rather to do so, “through the effect of the force on the perceptions of the actor.” The key distinction is the role of the other actor in determining the next step. In the former case, where the military is used to attain the objective directly, the United States removes from the other party the option of making any choice other than to return fire or not to return fire, assuming it is in a position even to do that. In the latter, the United States retains greater space for the target to maneuver. In 1994, for example, the United States quite flamboyantly massed a force of 23,000 and readied it to sail to Haiti to fulfill its policy objective of regime change. The US military preparations, undertaken in conjunction with ongoing negotiations, were an indirect approach to achieving the policy goal: The move still allowed the Cedras junta, in power at the time, to choose whether to cede authority of its own volition or to experience a US invasion. Happily, Cedras opted to go quietly, and some US forces returned home while the remainder were converted to a peace­ keeping force. Cedras may not have particularly liked that his options were con­ strained to, “step down without violence or have us remove you forcibly,” and yet he still had the opportunity to make a choice. Choice, then, is the conceptual lynchpin of this study. War removes choice; coercion retains and shapes it, albeit sometimes with a very firm hand, by adjusting the costs and benefits the target actor may expect to receive from the set of actions available to him.11

Determinants of coercive success The years during which the United States was the sole superpower can be parti­ cularly instructive on the matter of coercion because they make clear that shaping another actor’s choice is a matter of more than the possession of military power, of threats to use force, and even of its actual use. Despite being an unrivaled super­ power, the United States repeatedly confronted actors willing to challenge its pre­ ferences, and it did not in all cases prevail against them. Given, then, that simply having advantages on power indices relative to China, Russia, and the rest of the world did not guarantee the United States would get its way, there is a need to mine its mixed record of coercive successes and failures to ascertain, insofar as is possible, what separates the two. This, of course, is not the first work to notice that power and foreign policy success don’t always go together. One prominent explanation addresses the effects of credibility, which is the extent to which one’s warnings about likely responses to infractions are to be believed.12 The matter of credibility figured prominently, for example, in criticism of the Obama Administration’s attempt to coerce Syrian President Bashar al Assad to refrain from using chemical weapons during the Syrian civil war. In 2012, President Obama made the now infamous statement that the use of such weapons by Assad would cross a “red line,” seeming to suggest that such use

8 M. W. Sisson et al.

would produce a forceful US response. Ostensibly, the intent was to deter Assad; on that count the effort failed, as Assad instead continued to use noxious weapons to harm and terrorize Syrian civilians. As Alex Bollfrass recounts later in this book (see Chapter 4), Obama’s reticence to follow through on the red-line threat trou­ bled advisers, most notably Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and National Security Advisor Susan Rice, who were concerned with the effects on US credibility of a weak or non-response.13 External observers were similarly distressed at the impli­ cations of Obama’s restraint, worrying that an unwillingness to follow through on deterrent threats about weapons of mass destruction, of all things, could not but degrade perceptions of a willingness to follow through on deterrent threats about much of anything at all. Obama has explained his decision, in part, as arising from a desire not to fetishize credibility, which is believed by many watchers of international affairs to operate as, “an intangible yet potent force – one that, when properly nurtured, keeps America’s friends feeling secure and keeps the international order stable.”14 It is possible, however, that credibility is not so much intangible as it is poorly under­ stood. While at a conceptual level credibility has everything to do with the per­ ceptions of others, it also is true that those perceptions are grounded in reality. Credibility is not like love, which requires no physical manifestation in order to exist. It is, rather, as its interchangeable use with “reputation,” “assurance,” and “trust” suggests, a product of what it is a country does and says. The problem is that there is no consensus on which combinations of what a country does and says, and of when and how it does them and says them that make its threats and indu­ cements more or less believable. Criticisms at the time, and since, of Obama’s decision not to follow through with strikes on Assad in 2013 have included assertions that it was especially damaging because it involved the threat to use military force; reduced the con­ fidence of the US armed forces in the Commander in Chief; made Assad more likely to persist in his bad behavior; created permissive conditions that enabled Russia’s actions in Crimea and Ukraine; made the United States more likely to be challenged; and reduced the confidence of US allies everywhere in the stabi­ lity of US commitments.15 This litany smuggles in claims that credibility operates over time, across actors and issue areas, and is not conditioned by context. All failures to follow through on a threat, by this logic, have equally bad effects today and into the future. Damage, moreover, occurs no matter the actors involved, the interests at stake, the reasons for backing down, or whether or not policy objec­ tives were achieved (as Obama purports happened with the removal of most of Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal, despite – indeed perhaps because of – his nonuse of force). Many of these propositions have been tested against the historical record, but little brush has been cleared, with findings at turns supporting and contradicting them.16 A related set of explanations for failures by states with overwhelming power to achieve their objectives focus on resolve, by which is meant the willingness to accept costs to achieve a desired outcome.17 More specifically, explanations focused on

Coercion in a competitive world 9

resolve emphasize that the weaker actor in an exchange usually has serious interests at stake – interests that in fact may be existential. The strong state, by contrast, has interests at stake serious enough to have engaged the issue, and yet not so serious as those motivating the challenger. This disparity suggests that the weaker party will be highly resistant to being coerced – it has vital interests at stake, for which it is likely to be willing to tolerate pain, even over long periods of time. Because this imbalance of interests is recognizable prior to the start of military action, moreover, relative resolve can interact in unhelpful ways with beliefs about the stronger state’s cred­ ibility. It is reasonable, that is, to conclude that bluster, shows of force, and even limited uses of force notwithstanding, when push comes to shove the stronger actor either won’t follow through in full, or will do so only so long as it suffers little to no cost. This dynamic may be particularly powerful in liberal democracies, where state leaders are constrained by the preferences of their voting populations.18 Indeed, the United States during the post-Cold War era gained an unfortunate reputation for having a low cost-tolerance – for US blood, if not for treasure.19 It is hard to say that the US did not earn such a reputation during this period given its repeated retrenchments, hesitations to make good on threats, and outright statements of unwillingness to commit ground troops in pursuit of foreign policy outcomes. Balkans expert William Durch’s treatment in this book of US efforts to coerce Slobodan Milosevic in the 1990s (see Chapter 6) illustrates well how the Clinton Administration’s cost-sensitivity, most especially its casualty aversion, resulted in prevarications and half-measures that repeatedly proved ineffective, negatively affected perceptions of US resolve, and thereby contributed to prolonging the conflict at great cost to the Bosniac and Kosovar populations. A third explanation for why the United States did not experience frequent or easy coercive success during the post-Cold War period suggests that it is the char­ acteristics of the target actor that matter: its institutions of governance, its internal and regional cultures, and the personalities of its leaders.20 This proposition of course has considerable intuitive appeal – it seems obviously true that the tem­ perament, culturally mediated worldview, and character of who’s in charge, and how much they are in charge of, matter. This reasoning could suggest that outcomes are wholly contingent on indivi­ duals; there are no generalizable principles or practices of coercion that are more or less likely to succeed in any given case. Such a categorical rendering, however, does a disservice to the real implications of the argument, which are both more nuanced and more useful. In his contribution to this book, for example, scholar and former intelligence official Kenneth Pollack takes up the matter of leadership particularities as influ­ ences on foreign policy outcomes (see Chapter 5). Although it has become almost standard trope to conclude the US failed to coerce Saddam Hussein during the 1990s either because US efforts were not forceful enough, or because Hussein was entirely irrational and therefore not coercible, Pollack’s detailed examination of US military actions during this period produces a different lesson. Indeed, Pollack’s work raises as an alternative the proposition that although Hussein suffered at least

10 M. W. Sisson et al.

from denial and at most from delusion, he nonetheless did have a prioritized order of interests – including domestic political control, regional standing, and of course regime survival – and that he behaved in ways consistent with that ordering. The case thus suggests strongly that the United States did a poor job of understanding, much less of manipulating, Saddam’s incentive structure. The essence of coercive action, then, is communication. It is the reduction of an adversary’s uncertainty not only about US capability – about which there was little question during the post-Cold War era – but also about its willingness to suffer costs to achieve a desired outcome.21 It is safe to assume that US policymakers by now are well aware of the impor­ tance of resolve and credibility and that reiterating the truism does nothing more than beg the question. That is, the need to be met is to identify specific behaviors and actions that are more effective than others at communicating resolve and at establishing credibility. There is a robust and growing literature on communication, often referred to as signaling, in international relations that is both theoretically rich and, increasingly, subject to empirical examination.22 These works have produced a number of logical and intuitive propositions about how foreign policy tools, especially but not exclusively the military, can be used to self-inflict costs and thereby affirm a ser­ iousness of intent. Although the intent of this work is not explicitly to test any one of these theories or the paradigms of which they are a part, many of the proposi­ tions they have rendered, along with anecdotal and conventional wisdoms invoked in public policy discourse, are implicated in the analyses contained in the chapters that follow. The results are sometimes surprising, indicating at the very least that there is much to gain from expanding the scope of the inquiry presented here.

Finding successful coercive strategies This book has two primary purposes. The first is to provide information about the conditions under which particular types, sizes, and uses of the US military increased or decreased the likelihood of coercive success during the period 1991–2018. The second is to determine how uses of the US military were, or were not, integrated with other tools of foreign policy in ways that enhanced or degraded US cred­ ibility, that communicated accurately or inaccurately US resolve, and that accessed well or poorly the target actor’s values and goals. It is hoped that knowledge of these past events will serve decisionmakers well as they assess contemporary con­ ditions and select which tools to use, when to use them, and how to use them to achieve US national security objectives. The chapters that follow address the full range of short-of-war activities under­ taken by the United States military, 1991–2018. This includes descriptions in Chapter 2 of such long-term activities as overseas basing and presence, mediumterm engagements like partner security assistance and training programs, regular and routine activities such as overseas exercises, and overtures such as port visits and aircraft fly-bys, among others. Although the focus of the book is on short-of-war

Coercion in a competitive world 11

activities, it would be misleading not to account for the enormous effort under­ taken by the US military to defeat terrorist groups worldwide, and so Chapter 2 also accounts for the scale and scope of these operations. With this context established, the book then examines the set of publicly reported non-routine, coercive military actions used to achieve specific goals, relative to specific actors, during the period 1991–2018. These roughly 100 instances of US efforts to deter and compel others are analyzed statistically to reveal relationships between US military actions, targeted actors, the interests under dispute, the economic and political context, and whether the United States achieved its goals. The analyses generate sometimes unexpected findings about combinations of US military, political, and economic actions that proved more, or less, successful in achieving US objectives in different contexts. This informa­ tion can provide useful points of comparison for decision-makers contemplating whether or how to use the armed forces as part of coercive strategies today and into the future. The insights generated by statistical analysis are complemented in Chapters 4–9 by in-depth narrative studies of important coercive exchanges. The cases were not selected to test any specific hypotheses, much less a broader theory, about US military coercion during the period 1991–2018. Authors were instead at liberty to explore US communication, credibility, and resolve as they saw fit. These chapters therefore vary somewhat in style and approach, but each focuses on significant examples of US military coercion and was contributed by an expert with subject matter expertise gained through direct experience and years of study. Alex Bollfrass (Chapter 4) examines US military actions – those threatened, and those carried out – relative to Syria during both the Obama and the Trump Administrations. Locating these events within the broader context of US interests in the Middle East, the chapter highlights the role in coercion of internal admin­ istration processes and interpersonal jostling, of the consequences of uncertainty about a target actor’s interests and motivations and – in the form of Russia’s capitalizing on Secretary of State John Kerry’s off-the-cuff suggestion that chemical disarmament might resolve the dispute – of the occasional benefits of accidental diplomacy. Kenneth Pollack (Chapter 5) provides another view of US coercion in the Middle East between 1991 and 2018, providing nuanced and expert analysis of US military activities relative to Iraq and Iran. In addition to drawing together neatly the otherwise unruly threads of Middle Eastern politics and the US role in them, Pollack makes a compelling case for the negative effects on military coercion not of a lack of information about a target’s interests and motivations, but rather of an inadequate understanding thereof. Indeed, it is difficult to put Pollack’s chapter down without acknowledging that US perceptions of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, and so its strategies of coercion, were the product of confirmation bias rather than of sensitive analysis, to the detriment of US objectives. Pollack’s treatment of US interactions with Iran, by contrast, offer a view of two states approaching each other with caution, with both at turns absorbing potentially

12 M. W. Sisson et al.

provocative activities rather than risking escalation. Pollack’s account suggests that Iran’s behavior during this period reflected both a respect for sheer US military might and a recognition on the part of its leadership that there was more to gain from managing the relationship than igniting it. Conversely, US behavior was at turns defined by preoccupations elsewhere and a desire not to become embroiled in yet another theater of conflict, most especially with a regime that had evidenced itself to be both capable and determined. It is worth noting, as the United States looks ahead, that Pollack’s careful tracing of events indicates that the majority of US gains were made, most especially those to do with Iran’s nuclear program, when its policy was either to sanction, or to engage in military activity, but not both. In the European theater, William Durch (Chapter 6) provides a chapter full of insightful observations about the choices made by the United States and its NATO allies in their efforts to coerce Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic. Far from simply identifying consequential operational missteps, however, Durch’s recounting of events in Bosnia and Kosovo also makes evident that two strategic misconceptions joined to prolong a tragically violent and brutal period in European history. The first was Milosevic’s belief that the NATO alliance could be fractured, a ghost onto which he held until a true preponderance of evidence convinced him otherwise. The second was a US/NATO misunderstanding of the historical legacies and instrumental interests that motivated Milosevic’s actions. These mutual misconceptions created a vicious cycle, in which the United States and NATO used plenty of kinetic force, but in the wrong places and ways, which only reaffirmed Milosevic’s belief in NATO’s lack of coherence and for­ titude, and so the violence continued. Thomas Wright (Chapter 7) also takes up the question of US and NATO col­ laboration in his chapter, specifically within the context of efforts to deter Russia. Wright moves incisively through the US policy positions, processes, and behaviors before, during, and after Russia’s successful gambits in Crimea and eastern Ukraine. Of particular note is his pointed observation that the United States has been flat­ footed and slow, equivocal in its expressions of commitment to NATO’s far flanks and Russia’s near-abroad, and yet still willing to enhance its troop presence, undertake military exercises, and expand NATO-specific defense spending. The chapter thus is effective in provoking the question of how long the United States will be able to maintain this type of strategic equivocation and, if the answer is not long, what the proper recourse will be. Indeed, it is difficult not to think that the United States soon will need to determine whether its deterrent objectives in Europe are met best by a larger permanent presence, by NATO interoperability, by so-called dynamic force employment, or by something else entirely. Finally, Michael Chase (Chapter 8) turns attention to US short-of-war moves used to communicate with China. As much as Russia has demonstrated that luck is when preparation meets opportunity, China has demonstrated an extent of strategic patience and a degree of operational creativity that pose new and paradigmbreaking challenges for the United States. Tracking the interplay between China’s non-traditional moves and the more conventional US ripostes, Chase’s chapter is a

Coercion in a competitive world 13

caution in over-endowing US military activity with expectations of immediate success, as much as it is an entreaty for the United States to understand near-term interactions within the long-term strategic context – in which the real currency is less military capability and more regional influence. Taken together, this collection of detailed work not only adds historical depth and richness to important coercive events but also brings to the fore important lessons about coercive strategy. Each study notes instances in which US communication of the behaviors desired of the targeted actor was ambiguous or bombastic – and, occasionally, both – characteristics that common sense suggests militate against accu­ rate interpretation of demands, much less behavioral compliance. Each study observes the importance of understanding, as well as is possible, the interests and values that motive the target’s behavior. Each study identifies contextual characteristics – alli­ ances, economic relationships, power dynamics – that might affect the outcome of any immediate coercive exchange. And each study emphasizes that coercion requires the careful coordination of multiple tools of influence; military power alone was in no case adequate to achieve US policy objectives short of war. The outcome of this study is not a new theory of coercion, a typology asso­ ciating leadership psychology with coercibility, a guide to enhancing national resolve, or a protocol of hard and fast rules that, if only followed, will guarantee coercive success. Each chapter, however, does produce stand-alone lessons; and these, when drawn together as a collective set in the concluding chapter, offer guidance about the construction of effective coercive strategy. The need for such strategies is again acute, as the United States faces a less pliable and increasingly contested international environment. It is unrealistic to believe that the world soon will be populated only by states satisfied with the status quo, and it would be irresponsible for US leaders to behave as though possessing the most able war-fighting force in the world will suffice to address the full spectrum of interstate frictions and conflicts. The United States must be prepared to manage provocation, incrementalism, and defiance. This imperative sits alongside the everpresent specter of interstate war. Navigating the line between the two will require US decisionmakers to take great care in the design of policies that include use of the US armed forces, and to practice great discipline in their implementation. The consequences of failure on either count may be severe.

Notes 1 US Department of Defense, Summary of the 2018 National Defense Strategy (Washington, DC: 2018), 3. 2 John Mearsheimer offers the archetype realist summary of this dynamic: “Although the intensity of their competition waxes and wanes, great powers fear each other and always compete with each other for power. The overriding goal of each state is to maximize its share of world power, which means gaining power at the expense of other states.” John Mear­ sheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: W.W. Norton, 2001). See also: Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill, 1979); E.H. Carr, The Twenty Years’ Crisis (New York: Palgrave, 1981). Other paradigms, too, acknowl­ edge that the international environment can be competitive, though differ in the extent to

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3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

11

12 13 14 15

16

which this need be determinative of state behaviors. Finally, social constructivists argue that there is nothing inherent about the international environment at all, that, rather, it is com­ petitive or cooperative by choice: Alexander Wendt, “Anarchy is What States Make of It: The Social Construction of Power Politics,” International Organization 46, no. 2 (1992): 391. Joseph S. Nye, Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics (New York: Public Affairs, 2004). On the use of the national economy for political purposes see: Robert D. Blackwill and Jennifer M. Harris, War by Other Means (Cambridge, MA and London, UK: Belknap Press, 2016). “Datasets,” Correlates of War Project, accessed July 2, 2019. www.correlatesofwar.org/ data-sets U.S. Department of Defense, Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms (Washington, DC: August 2018). Alexander L. George, Forceful Persuasion (Washington, DC: U.S. Institute of Peace, 1991), 5–6; Robert J. Art and Patrick M. Cronin, eds, The United States and Coercive Diplomacy (Washington, DC: U.S. Institute of Peace, 2003), 9–10. Thomas C. Schelling, Arms and Influence, Henry L. Stimson Lectures (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008). Barry M. Blechman and Stephen S. Kaplan, Force without War: U.S. Armed Forces as a Political Instrument, (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1978); Carl von Clausewitz and F. N. Maude, On War (London: Routledge, 1966). Blechman and Kaplan, Force without War, 13. It should be noted that the 2017 Joint Con­ cept for Integrated Campaigning is unique among current official documents in its similar emphasis on distinguishing between uses of force to achieve a goal directly vs. indirectly, defining armed conflict as events in which “the use of violence is the primary means by which an actor seeks to satisfy its interests” (8). On the role of cost/benefit in coercion: Robert Anthony Pape, Bombing to Win: Air Power and Coercion in War, Cornell Studies in Security Affairs (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996); Bruce Bueno de Mesquita. “The Costs of War: A Rational Expectations Approach,” The American Political Science Review 77, no. 2 (1983): 347; Christopher H. Achen, and Duncan Snidal, “Rational Deterrence Theory and Comparative Case Studies,” World Politics 41, no. 2 (1989): 143. doi:10.2307/2010405. For an excellent and thorough review of the academic literature on coercion, see: Daryl G. Press, Calculating Credibility: How Leaders Assess Military Threats (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005), chap. 1. Jeffrey Goldberg, “The Obama Doctrine,” The Atlantic, April 2016. Ibid. John McCain, “Obama Has Made America Look Weak,” op-ed, New York Times, March 14, 2014. www.nytimes.com/2014/03/15/opinion/mccain-a-return-to-us-realism.html; Tom Rogan, “Obama’s Credibility Crisis,” National Review, May 7, 2014. www.nationalreview. com/2014/05/obamas-credibility-crisis-tom-rogan/; Alex Weisiger and Keren Yarhi-Milo, “What American Credibility Myth? How and Why Reputation Matters,” War on the Rocks, October 4, 2016. https://warontherocks.com/2016/10/what-american-credibility-myth­ how-and-why-reputation-matters/; Justin Sink, “Panetta: Obama’s ‘Red Line’ on Syria Damaged US Credibility,” The Hill, October 7, 2014. https://thehill.com/policy/internationa l/219984-panetta-obamas-red-line-on-syria-damaged-us-credibility; Jeffrey Lewis and Bruno Tertrais, “The Thick Red Line: Implications of the 2013 Chemical-Weapons Crisis for Deterrence and Transatlantic Relations,” Survival 59, no. 6 (December 2017): 77–108. doi:10.1080/00396338.2017.1399729. Mark J. C. Crescenzi, “Reputation and Interstate Conflict,” American Journal of Political Science 51, no. 2 (2007): 382, accessed through EBSCOHost; Dianne Pfundstein Chamberlain, Cheap Threats: Why the United States Struggles to Coerce Weak States (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2016); Michael Tomz, Reputation and International Cooperation: Sovereign Debt across Three Centuries (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007); Alex Weisiger, and Keren Yarhi-Milo, “Revisiting Reputation:

Coercion in a competitive world 15

17

18

19

20

21 22

How Past Actions Matter in International Politics,” International Organization 69, no. 2 (April 2015): 473–95. doi:10.1017/S0020818314000393. Resolve has been treated primarily within the context of war, though the concept is equally applicable to coercion. Steven Rosen, “War Power and the Willingness to Suffer,” in Peace, War, and Numbers, ed. Bruce M. Russet (Beverly Hills: Sage Publica­ tions, 1972), 167–84; Andrew Mack, “Why Big Nations Lose Small Wars: The Politics of Asymmetric Conflict,” World Politics, 27, no. 2 (1975), 175–200; Diane Pfundstein Chamberlain, Cheap Threats: Why the United States Struggles to Coerce Weak States (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2016) Michael Tomz, “Domestic Audience Costs in International Relations: An Experimental Approach,” International Organization 61, no. 4 (2007): 821, accessed through EBSCOHost; Christopher Gelpi, Peter Feaver, and Jason Aaron Reifler. Paying the Human Costs of War: American Public Opinion and Casualties in Military Conflicts. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009); Gil Merom, How Democracies Lose Small Wars: State, Society, and the Failures of France in Algeria, Israel in Lebanon, and the United States in Vietnam (Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Kenneth A. Schultz, “Domestic Opposition and Signaling in International Crises,” The American Political Science Review 92, no. 4 (1998): 829. doi:10.2307/2586306. Dana Priest, “Fear of Casualties Drives Bosnia Debate,” Washington Post, December 2, 1995. www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1995/12/02/fear-of-casualties-drives-bosnia -debate/b7481408-0449-4bf6-825f-1f43a34194e7/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.443ed80a e83d; Melinda Penkava, “Casualty Aversion,” November 11, 1999, radio broadcast, NPR. www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1066450; M.S., “Casualty Aversion Leads to Casualty Displacement,” The Economist, April 12, 2010. www.economist.com/democra cy-in-america/2010/04/12/casualty-aversion-leads-to-casualty-displacement; Christopher A. Preble, “Will Public Aversion to Casualties Constrain Trump’s War-Making Instincts?” CATO at Liberty (blog), CATO Institute August 10, 2017. www.cato.org/blog/will-public­ aversion-casualties-constrain-trumps-war-making-instincts Michael C. Horowitz, Philip Potter, Todd S. Sechser, and Allan Stam, “Sizing Up the Adversary Leader Attributes and Coercion in International Conflict,” Journal of Conflict Resolutions 62, no. 10 (2018): 2180–204, accessed July 2, 2019. doi:10.1177/ 0022002718788605. On uncertainty in international conflict see: Kristopher W. Ramsay, “Information, Uncertainty, and War,” Annual Review of Political Science 20 (2017): 505. James D. Fearon, “Signaling Foreign Policy Interests: Tying Hands Versus Sinking Costs,” Journal of conflict Resolution 41, no. 1 (1997): 68; Keren Yarhi-Milo, Joshua D. Kertzer, and Jonathan Renshon, “Tying Hands, Sinking Costs, and Leader Attributes,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 62, no. 10 (2018): 2150.

2 MULTI-TASKING How the armed forces support US national interests short of war Melanie W. Sisson, James A. Siebens and Barry M. Blechman

The United States maintains large, diverse, well-equipped and highly trained mili­ tary forces incorporating the most advanced technologies available. The cost of sustaining such highly capable forces is great. In the 26 years between the end of the Cold War and 2018, the US spent more than $12.5 trillion on the military; on average, each year, some 51 percent of all federal discretionary expenditures and more than 3.1 percent of the nation’s wealth as measured by GDP.1 The armed forces have advanced the nation’s security and other interests directly, at times, such as in the Second World War and the Korean War. In situations like these, the military seeks to destroy an enemy’s forces, eventually convincing it to surrender or otherwise negotiate an end to the fighting. In the twenty-first century, these types of direct military operations have become a see­ mingly permanent fixture of US policy, beginning with the overthrow of the Afghan government in 2001 and the Iraqi government in 2003, with violence in both nations continuing into 2019. Although smaller forces are involved, the broader US War on Terror also continues to motivate direct uses of US military capabilities. In 2017 alone, strikes against terrorists by manned aircraft and drones, operations by Special Forces, and other counterterrorism missions are reported to have occurred in 80 countries worldwide, including Yemen, Pakistan, the Phi­ lippines, Syria, and Libya.2 Nearly 2.8 million US service members have been deployed to conduct these missions.3 The activities of the US armed forces in the war on terrorism are expensive. From 2002 to 2017, the wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, and Syria are largely respon­ sible for an Overseas Contingency Operations budget totaling roughly $1.8 trillion.4 They also are costly, resulting in the death and injury of nearly 7,000 service mem­ bers, and causing consequential hardship and strain on military families.5 So too do they use resources that might be devoted to other tasks. It also is true that these efforts have rid the world of many terrorist leaders and foot soldiers, diminished

Multi-tasking 17

terrorist organizations’ material capabilities, and reduced the availability of and ter­ rorist access to safe havens. Constant US surveillance and military operations, more­ over, no doubt make the activities of violent extremists more difficult to plan and conduct, and render those that they do manage smaller in scale and less effective. The US Global War on Terror also affects international perceptions of the United States – its values, its priorities, and its power. Some view positively the fact that the US uses its military, and the ways in which it uses it, to counter violent extremists around the globe, while others see it negatively due to its unavoidable collateral effects on civilians and potential to radicalize future generations. Whatever one’s beliefs about the purpose and nature of these activities, their scope, scale, duration, and intensity demonstrate the US military’s unparalleled size, sophistication, and reach. Major wars and smaller counterterrorism missions are the most obvious uses of US military capabilities, but the armed forces also serve the nation in many other important ways on a daily basis. Large-scale basing of US service members abroad, unilateral and joint military exercises, security assistance programs, friendly visits and demonstrations, and other routine practices are conducted both to maintain the effectiveness of US armed forces and to ensure continuing close relations with friends and allies, as well as to make clear to potential enemies that they would run grave risks if they ever challenged US interests and the structures that promote them. Indeed, in the competition for being the state that sets more rules of the international road than do others, the US armed forces are a sizable asset for reasons and in ways that extend well beyond their direct warfighting capabilities.

Demonstrations of commitment: presence and practice Since World War II, the strategic culture of the United States has favored defense in depth, locating substantial military assets overseas through a network of alliances and partnerships to defend and pursue US security interests.6 Although official US statements are careful to note that this positioning is not aggressive or offensive in intent, it undeniably is an active and forward-oriented approach, designed to identify and to respond to threats as they emerge. The placement of US armed forces overseas – sometimes permanently and other times on rotational assignments – has been a fixture, and one on large scale, of the US force posture. Indeed, as of 2017, the Department of Defense controlled more than 600 military bases and installations outside the United States, including in eight US territories and 45 foreign countries.7 The stationing of US troops on the territory of an allied nation is significant not only because it projects military capabilities in case they are needed on short notice, but also because it means that if that country were to be invaded by an enemy, the US would be involved in the conflict virtually automatically. Such placements thus are intended to communicate to allies the level of US commitment to their security, and to would-be aggressors the seriousness of US intent. A physical US military presence, in other words, is an essential means of reassuring allies and deterring their adversaries.

18 M. W. Sisson et al.

US interest in stability on the European continent and in East Asia have been constants since the end of World War II, reflected in markedly high levels of inregion presence. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US began to reduce its force posture significantly in the European theater, from roughly 260,000 active duty forces in 1991 to about 180,000 in 1992. Until 2005–2006 (at the height of the Iraq War) the US consistently maintained more than 100,000 troops in Europe and between 70,000–80,000 troops in the Indo-Pacific region. In the 1990s, South America, too, received attention, primarily as partners in US counter-narcotics operations. The 2003 invasion of Iraq precipitated both a sizable increase in the US military presence in the Middle East, and the ongoing US War on Terror main­ tained it through 2012. Following the completion of the Integrated Global Presence and Basing Strategy (IGPBS) in 2004, the US began another broad reduction in its permanent basing of forces abroad, and particularly of heavy combat units in Europe.9 These reductions were offset by shifting emphasis to rotational deployments, often referred to as “heel­ to-toe deployments,” whereby units are stationed abroad on a temporary basis.10 Such deployments augment permanent regional presence, and allow multiple units to benefit from participating in training and exercises with partners and allies.11 In Europe, for example, in the wake of Russia’s 2014 aggression in Ukraine, the United States committed nearly one billion dollars to implement the European Reassurance Initiative (ERI), an expansive program designed to deter further Russian adventurism and to reassure allies of US commitment. ERI provides security assistance to enhance local capabilities, and bolsters multilateral force pre­ sence and readiness through ongoing rotational deployments and NATO exercises under the banner of Atlantic Resolve. As a result, the US has increased the size and caliber of its forces in Eastern Europe from two rotations of two battalions in 2014 to a continuous rotation of an Armored Brigade Combat Team (ABCT) and a Combat Aviation Brigade starting in 2016. These additional forces are primarily distributed across the Baltic states, as well as Poland, Bulgaria, and Romania, and conduct numerous joint exercises each year.12 In addition, the US has activated reserve support units that deploy rotationally to Poland.13 In Asia, in addition to its permanent presence, the US regularly rotates roughly 4,700 soldiers to South Korea.14 The US also rotates 1,250 Marines through northern Australia, who engage in joint training and exercises with partner nations across the region; the US aspires to raise the size of the Marine deployment to 2,500.15 The Army rotates thousands of troops through the Pacific theater each year through the Pacific Pathways program, in which units deploy for several weeks to six months to train with partner forces in places like Indonesia, Malaysia, Japan, Thailand, Australia, and the Philippines.16 So, too, is there a continuous bomber presence in Guam dating from 2004, with an assortment of bombers with stealth, conventional, and nuclear capabilities “conducting routine, strategic deterrence and regional training missions” on an ongoing basis.17 These aircraft frequently conduct missions along the North Korean coast and also challenge China’s self-declared air defense identification zone in the China seas. Littoral combat ships have been

FIGURE 2.1

Forces stationed abroad 1991–20188

20 M. W. Sisson et al.

routinely deployed to Singapore since 2013, and P-8 spyplanes have monitored and maintained a presence in the important maritime region of the South China Sea and the Strait of Malacca since 2016.18 The US emphasis on joint exercises with the armed forces of other nations is part of a deliberate strategy to buttress alliances and caution potential challengers. Such exercises are notably, and usefully, multi-purpose. In the first instance, they can be an effective means of generating understanding with partners that enhance interoperability and, ultimately, go some distance toward preparing for war. Exer­ cises, for example, often work in combination with rotational deployments to test and improve the ability of the US armed forces to conduct joint operations and rapid deployments to reinforce allied nations. They also can have intelligence value when used to probe enemy posture and capability, especially in cases in which they elicit responses that suggest or even reveal an adversary’s defenses. Beyond these direct effects, joint exercises also are highly visible indicators of US investment in cooperative security. As demonstrations of capability, exercises simultaneously boost the confidence of friends and remind potential aggressors of what tangling with the US military looks like. All four of the US military services, together with allied forces, conduct exercises every year that range from routine field trainings to simulations of theater-wide conflict with thousands of troops and complex logistics, support, and commandpost elements.19 Many of these exercises are conducted annually and have been carried out for decades, such as Exercise Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) (East Asia), Foal Eagle (South Korea), Cobra Gold (Thailand), Balikatan (Philippines), and Sea Breeze (Ukraine). DoD does not make a full accounting of joint military exercises publicly avail­ able, but an enterprising scholar gathered available open-source reporting of such events between 1993 and 2010 (Figure 2.2).20 Although this dataset does not cover the full period 1991–2018, and because of the limitations of open source research is certainly incomplete for the years it does include, it nonetheless gives a sense of the frequency and volume with which the United States partners with foreign mili­ taries to ensure readiness and to communicate commitment. These data indicate that in 2002 and 2003 there was a notable uptick of exercise activity in the Indo-Pacific region. There was not a provocation during this period – for example a North Korean missile test or unusual movement of con­ ventional systems – or an official explanation for the increase in activity. There is some suggestion, however, that the US intention was to demonstrate that its engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan did not preclude it also from operating meaningfully in other regions, with a Pentagon representative explaining the pur­ pose of one such exercise as showing the US “can walk and chew gum at the same time.… We want to show that we’re there and that we’re strong. We’re saying to the North Koreans: ‘Don’t test us. Don’t try us.’”21 Indeed, until President Trump’s summit diplomacy in 2018, the United States for many years conducted major annual exercises with partner South Korea to defend against the possibility of North Korean aggression. These exercises have

Number of regional exercises 1993–2010 Source: Vito D’Orazio, “International Military Cooperation: From Concepts to Constructs” (doctoral dissertation, Pennsylvania State University, 2013), accessed through ProQuest June 10, 2019; “Data,” Vito D’Orazio, accessed June 10, 2019. www.vitodorazio.com/data.html

FIGURE 2.2

22 M. W. Sisson et al.

routinely involved thousands to tens of thousands of US and South Korean forces and are described by the US Department of Defense as intended, “to enhance readiness, protect the region and maintain stability on the Korean peninsula.”22 Combined exercise Ulchi Freedom Guardian 2017 involved 17,500 US troops, including 3,000 troops deployed to the peninsula for the exercise, as well as forces from Australia, Canada, Colombia, Denmark, New Zealand, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, not to mention all services of the South Korean military. Participation in joint exercises with the US can be used as a carrot or a stick. When China was first invited to participate in RIMPAC in 2014, for example, the Navy hoped that closer military-to-military cooperation with China might serve, “to discourage bad behavior in the South China Sea.”23 China joined the exercise again in 2016 despite worsening tensions with the US. China’s accelerating efforts to militarize and stake territorial claims in the South China Sea, however, caused the US to disinvite China from participation in RIMPAC 2018.24 Similarly, pre­ sumably as part of the Obama Administration’s efforts to “reset” relations with Russia, the US and NATO included Russia in a number of joint military exercises in 2011 and 2012, but canceled all military-to-military ties, including joint military drills and port calls, in the wake of Russia’s intervention in Ukraine in 2014.25 The US and NATO also went ahead with a planned exercise in Ukraine, and initiated a series of exercises under the banner of “Atlantic Resolve,” particularly in Eastern Europe, to deter further Russian aggression.

Garnering good will: security assistance, humanitarian missions, and friendly visits While familiarizing partners with US military tactics is among the benefits of joint exercises, the US Government also devotes separate lines of effort, and considerable resources, to training the armed forces of allied and friendly nations. Falling under the umbrella of “security cooperation,” training missions range from the deploy­ ment of small detachments of Special Forces to remote areas to work with local armies, to the much larger missions in Iraq and Afghanistan.26 The intentions of such programs are twofold: first, and most directly, to assist partners in growing and enhancing their own capabilities and; second, more indirectly, to develop positive relationships with countries that share US values and interests, or that are strategi­ cally located. The presumption is that by making tangible and visible investments, partner countries will be both better able, and more willing, to support and con­ tribute to US foreign policy goals The United States supports many security assistance programs worldwide. Indeed, the best available data, collected by the Security Assistance Monitor, indi­ cate that the number of recipients of such programs ranged from a low of 13 in 1997 to a high of 171 in 2014, hitting a peak total expenditure in 2015 of $18 billion spread across 167 states.27 While $18 billion is a pittance relative to the nearly $600 billion 2015 Department of Defense budget, it is considerably more

Multi-tasking 23

than the $9.7 billion allotted to the US Agency for International Development for development aid, promotion of global health, food relief, and other non-military forms of assistance.28 US investment in security assistance experienced considerable growth during the twenty-first century, most notably in countries of the Middle East. Much of this growth is attributable to the role of security cooperation programs in the US counterterrorism mission after 9/11, which placed a premium on enhancing the ability of local intelli­ gence and security services to combat nascent and extant terrorist organizations. Security assistance is not always confined to providing financial and material support, however. Often referred to as “advise and assist” missions, some deploy­ ments of US troops are for purposes of providing combat training, intelligence, and logistical support. They also can involve US personnel directly in military opera­ tions. The United States has been conducting advise and assist missions in Afgha­ nistan and Iraq, for example, since the onset of war in 2001 and 2003, respectively. Total expenditures on the Iraqi Security Forces Fund alone during Operation Iraqi Freedom (March 2003–December 2011) was at least $25 billion29; in Afghanistan, from FY2002-FY2018, the US allocated $78 billion to support, “the costs of recruiting, training, equipping, housing, transporting, and resupplying the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces”30. Advise and assist missions are more often of smaller scale, as was the case for the involvement of 100 US special forces operators dispatched to support partner nations in their pursuit of Joseph Kony, the leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army responsible for brutal violence and human rights violations in Uganda. While the pursuit of Kony was both openly acknowledged and readily accepted in the United States, other advise and assist missions have been both more quietly implemented and much less well-understood by the US public. It was not until the deaths of four US soldiers in Niger in 2017, for example, that most Americans became aware of the extent of US advise and assist missions on the African continent.31 With the exception of the US engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan, security and assistance programs are not intended to professionalize a partner state’s military wholesale, or to stabilize violent situations. They doubtless do achieve some direct effects by increasing the competence of partner forces, and benefit US service members who have opportunity to engage with foreign counterparts and to exer­ cise their own military and interpersonal skills. Still, the primary value of security assistance programs is in their cultivation of relationships, the building, main­ tenance, and management of which is hoped to go some distance in inducing cooperation where and when the US would like it. Committing the time and effort of US service members to training, advising, and assisting the military forces of partner nations is not the only way in which the armed forces are important to setting conditions more favorable to the United States. To the contrary, the US military is an important means of generating posi­ tive perceptions of the United States and its values, and of garnering international goodwill – which it does by regularly doing good works and coming to the aid of partners and other nations around the world.

US Expenditures on security and assistance programs 2000–2018 Source: “Security Aid,” Security Assistance Monitor.

FIGURE 2.3

Multi-tasking 25

The US armed forces frequently provide humanitarian relief to nations suffering from natural or man-made catastrophes; according to available data, the US mili­ tary did so more than 100 times between 1991 and 2018. With its global reach and substantial assets, the US military has incomparable capabilities to offer logistical support, medical assistance, and needed equipment and supplies to nations damaged by earthquakes, storms, epidemics and other sources of human suffering. The armed services also undertake more narrowly targeted humanitarian activities – search, rescue, and recovery, for example, and preventive evacuations. An active participant in 30 multilateral peacekeeping operations in the world’s most vulner­ able places during this period, the US military went to work in Albania, Bosnia, Cambodia, Liberia, Somalia and other countries where conflict and violence destroyed communities and made security and stability both precious and scarce. Figure 2.4 depicts the locations of US humanitarian and peacekeeping missions. US forces often visit other nations for reasons both mundane and celebratory. Navy ships, for example, each year make thousands of visits to foreign ports all around the globe that serve to replenish ships and their crews, and to conduct routine maintenance. These visits, however, can also send both subtle and direct political messages. Their very presence can be a form of good-natured show and tell, with invitations to local dignitaries and sometimes the general population to tour the ship serving as special gestures of goodwill – gestures that also remind them of US military might. In a few cases, as with Singapore, the US has estab­ lished arrangements that permit maintenance and replenishment on a routine basis at designated facilities, denoting a special status between the US and that country. Less frequently than naval vessels, but not infrequently, US Air Force units are sent on overseas visits to participate in air shows or to observe national days of cele­ bration – in these cases, the purposes are to entertain, inspire awe, and again to highlight US military power. Individual, high-ranking civilian and military leaders of the armed services also visit foreign nations at times, often on important occasions but sometimes to convey specific messages of support or comfort or otherwise to affirm a friendly relationship. High-level military visits are a special form of diplomacy that carry implicit messages about the security relationship between the United States and the host nation, and more generally about the extent of US interest in the host­ nation’s region. Although no official, publicly available source accounting for high-level mili­ tary-to-military contacts is available, an independent researcher used open source reporting to catalogue visits to foreign countries made by the Secretaries of the US Armed Services between 1991 and 2013. These data indicate that the quantity of Secretary-level touches varied during the post-Cold War period, with a peak in 2011 of at least one, and in some cases more than one, of the Service Secretaries making a total of 87 visits to 48 host countries. There was a significant increase beginning in 2004 in the number of visits by services other than the Army. So too did the locus of US attention change notably after 2004, evidencing not only an increase in the number of Secretary visits overall, but also the inclusion of African

FIGURE 2.4

Distribution of US humanitarian and peacekeeping operations32

Multi-tasking 27

nations, and a sizable bump in the number of visits to hosts in the Middle East and, later, the Indo-Pacific. The timing and nature of these changes suggest they were a product both of US efforts to encourage cooperation with its post-war counterterrorism efforts, as well as of the Obama Administration’s increasing attention to and eventual explicit “pivot” toward Asia.33

Rule-setting: norms and international law Competing successfully enables one state to set more of the terms of international political life than others, and to set those terms such that they prioritize its own interests. Norms – here understood to mean practices that are common but not codified by any governing body – and international laws can be mechanisms for doing so. Indeed, the development of the Bretton Woods institutions in the after­ math of World War II, and those that followed, are widely understood to have been designed to assert Western – and primarily US – principles of international govern­ ance, finance, trade, and transit, and to have been largely successful in doing so. During the post-Cold War era there were periods during which the relationships between the United States and many of these institutions were strained, and ten­ sions became even more pronounced after the 2016 election of President Donald Trump. Specifics notwithstanding, the general source of friction during these per­ iods was a perceived mismatch between the interests the United States wished these institutions to serve and the extent to which they were understood by the United States actually to be serving them. At the same time, other countries – most notably China and Russia – took and likely will continue to take these moments of strife as opportunities to apply pressure that might further erode the strength of US-led regimes to their advantage. This game of tug of war over international norms and laws has implications on the ground, translating into whether and how states do everything from control exports of dangerous technologies, police borders for contraband, manage monetary policy, fish the oceans, and much other work upon which the daily life of the planet’s inhabitants depend. The US military is active in monitoring and enforcing the norms and laws intended to ensure these necessary functions occur relatively unimpeded. The military undertakes, for example, missions that retain the integrity of and access to the global commons – the skies, seas, and space domains that fall outside national borders and are used by all – when they are challenged or misused. US Navy and Air Force assets do work to prevent or stop the illegal movement of drugs, weapons, and people, and have even been involved in fighting piracy on at least 23 occasions since 2006.34 Much of this rule-defiance is done by criminal actors, terrorist networks and, sometimes, people made desperate by the circumstances of their lives. So too, however, do states seek to shirk responsibility, avoid accountability, and in other ways contravene the norms and laws that govern public goods. Such behaviors can evidence a simple prioritization of the value of disregarding an extant law over the value of the law itself as, for example, may be the case for failing to enforce rules about irresponsible resource extraction. In other cases, however, states violate

28 M. W. Sisson et al.

international laws as a means through which to challenge US power and influence, and to exert their own. This tactic became particularly pronounced in the 2010s, when China began routinely to challenge international passage through the waters of, and airspace over, the South China Sea as a means of extending its territorial claims. In response, the US has increased the number of Chinese claims it challenges through “freedom of navigation operations” (FONOPS), in which US ships and aircraft pass through contested areas to ensure the principles of freedom of navigation and flight in international waters and airspace are retained and respected. These moves and countermoves are not benign. To the contrary, China, its regional neighbors, and the United States understand them to be contestations over whose interests, influence, and rules will prevail in a geography of global significance.

From noise, signals The nature, type, and persistence of the full roster of US military activities described above are visible and important components of how the United States participates in international politics, and of how it competes for advantage. Their conduct has direct benefits, such as ensuring the effectiveness of the armed forces. They also benefit the United States in ways that are important but diffuse – by contributing to close rela­ tions with friends and allies, for example. They are background noise, so to speak, baseline indicators of US readiness, interests, and commitments. Any one of these activities, however, also can be used to pursue discrete and immediate US policy objectives – they can become specific signals that spike up above the usual noise. Such uses are communicative, designed to tell foreign nations how the United States would like them to behave in a particular circum­ stance: to convince a state not to take a measure that it has threatened or appears to be contemplating, such as an invasion; to convince a state to change or to stop an activity it already has begun, such as bombing a civilian population; or to convince a state to undertake an action that it otherwise might not, such as negotiating a peace agreement or withdrawing forces. Such military actions are intended to coerce the target nation to behave as desired by the United States, to persuade it to act of its own accord, and to avoid the need for the United States to use its armed forces to achieve the desired outcome directly. The use of the armed forces always carries both costs and risks. Military operations are expensive, and are not always supported by the public, or by friends and allies. They can raise the specter and sometimes the likelihood of unintentional escalation and violence, and they put US service members and assets in harm’s way. Policy­ makers seeking to use the US military wisely in future efforts to persuade other states, therefore, can benefit greatly from information about which discrete coercive US military actions, done under what conditions, and taken for what reasons have in the past proved more or less successful in achieving US policy goals. Chapter 3 therefore identifies patterns and extracts lessons from the set of publicly available coercive mili­ tary operations undertaken by the United States during the post-Cold War period.

US FONOP activity in the South China Sea, by target state

Source: Compiled from US Department of Defense Annual Reports on Freedom of Navigation.

FIGURE 2.5

30 M. W. Sisson et al.

Notes 1 Calculated using available budgetary data from the Congressional Budget Office for 1992–2018. “Budget and Economic Data,” Congressional Budget Office, accessed April 12, 2019. www.cbo.gov/about/products/budget-economic-data 2 Costs of War, Watson Institute, accessed June 10, 2019. https://watson.brown.edu/cost sofwar/; Stephanie Savell, “The American Empire’s Long Reach,” The Nation, February 19, 2019, accessed March 14, 2019. www.thenation.com/article/america-empire-wa r-terror-counterterrorism/ 3 Jennie W. Wenger, Caolionn O’Connell, and Linda Cottrell, Examination of Recent Deployment Experience Across the Services and Components (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2018), accessed August 14, 2019. https://doi.org/10.7249/RR1928, www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR1928.html 4 Stimson Center, Counterterrorism Spending: Protecting America While Promoting Efficiencies and Accountability (Washington, DC: Stimson, May 16, 2018), accessed August 14, 2019. www.stimson.org/sites/default/files/file-attachments/CT_Spending_Report_0.pdf; Leo Shane III, “Price Tag of the ‘War on Terror’ will Top $6 Trillion Soon,” Military Times, November 1, 2018, accessed August 14, 2019. www.militarytimes.com/news/penta gon-congress/2018/11/14/price-tag-of-the-war-on-terror-will-top-6-trillion-soon/ 5 “Figures,” Costs of War, Watson Institute, accessed June 10, 2019. https://watson. brown.edu/costsofwar/figures/2018/direct-war-death-toll-2001-480000; c.f., Nese F. DeBruyne, “American War and Military Operations Casualties: Lists and Statistics,” US Library of Congress (Congressional Research Service, RL32492, 2018), accessed August 14, 2019. https://fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL32492.pdf 6 Stacie L. Pettyjohn, US Global Defense Posture, 1783–2011 (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2012). www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/MG1244.html 7 US Department of Defense, Base Structure Report: FY 2018 Baseline, accessed May 24, 2019. www.acq.osd.mil/eie/Downloads/BSI/Base%20Structure%20Report%20FY18. pdf; the actual number of US military installations overseas and in US territories outside the 50 states and Washington, DC that were owned and operated by the US Depart­ ment of Defense according to the FY2018 Base Structure Report was 625. 8 For a detailed explanation of the sources used for US troop presence abroad, see Tech­ nical Appendix A. 9 John R. Deni, Rotational Deployments vs. Forward Stationing: How Can the Army Achieve Assurance and Deterrence Efficiently and Effectively? (West Point, NY: United States Army War College Press, 2017). https://ssi.armywarcollege.edu/pubs/display.cfm?pubID=1362 10 Rotational deployments generally last for 6, 9, or 12 months at a time, although some rotations are as brief as 30 days. Once a unit has completed its rotation, it is often redeployed, followed directly by the deployment of a different unit. As such, there is much debate over the trade-offs involved in such deployments, both in terms of cost effectiveness and readiness. See Joseph Goetz, “The Rotational Force Fig Leaf,” Modern War Institute, August 24, 2017, https://mwi.usma.edu/rotational-force-fig-leaf/; Robert D. Critchlow, “US Military Overseas Basing: New Developments and Oversight Issues for Congress,” Congressional Research Service (Library of Congress), October 31, 2005. https://fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL33148.pdf 11 Todd South, “The Pacific Push: New Rotation, Thousands More Soldiers Heading to the Region as the Army Readies for a New Kind of Fight,” Army Times, May 8, 2019. www. armytimes.com/news/your-army/2019/05/08/the-pacific-push-new-rotation-thousands­ more-soldiers-heading-to-the-region-as-the-army-readies-for-a-new-kind-of-fight/ 12 “2018 European Reassurance Initiative (ERI) Fact Sheet,” US European Command Public Affairs Office, June 20, 2017. www.eucom.mil/media-library/document/35876/ 2018-eri-fact-sheet; “FACT SHEET: European Reassurance Initiative and Other US Efforts in Support of NATO Allies and Partners,” The White House Office of the Press Secretary, June 3, 2014. https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2014/ 06/03/fact-sheet-european-reassurance-initiative-and-other-us-efforts-support-; Andrew

Multi-tasking 31

13 14

15 16

17

18

19 20

21 22

Tilghman, “Army Plans 9-Month Deployments for Armored Brigades in Europe,” Military Times, March 30, 2016. www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2016/03/30/army-p lans-9-month-deployments-for-armored-brigades-in-europe/; Jen Judson, “Deterring Russia: US Army Hones Skills to Mass Equipment, Troops in Europe.” Defense News, March 17, 2017. www.defensenews.com/digital-show-dailies/global-force-symposium/ 2017/03/17/deterring-russia-us-army-hones-skills-to-mass-equipment-troops-in-europe/; Jen Judson, “Hodges: First Rotational Armored Brigade to Reach Europe in January,” Defense News, October 6, 2016. www.defensenews.com/digital-show-dailies/ausa/2016/ 10/07/hodges-first-rotational-armored-brigade-to-reach-europe-in-january/ Kyle Rempfer, “Army Reserve Activates Seven Units to Assist European Missions,” Army Times. www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2019/09/18/army-reserve-activates-seven­ units-to-assist-european-missions/ Todd South, “Armored Unit Returns from Korea Deployment, Will Be First to Field the New Joint Light Tactical Vehicle,” Army Times, December 12, 2018. www.armytimes. com/news/your-army/2018/12/12/armored-unit-returns-from-korea-deployment-will­ be-first-to-field-the-new-joint-light-tactical-vehicle/ The Marines have plans to eventually rotate twice as many forces through Australia. Alison Bevege, “Hundreds of US Marines Leave Australia after Troop Rotation,” Reuters, October 15, 2017. www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-military-australia-return-idUSKBN1CK03U Tyrone C. Marshall Jr., “Pacific Pathways Increases Readiness Through Partnership,” US Indo-Pacific Command, PACOM News, October 15, 2014. www.pacom.mil/Media/News/ News-Article-View/Article/564720/pacific-pathways-increases-readiness-through-par tnership/; Wyatt Olson, “Consecutive Exercises in Thailand Kick off New Twist for Army’s Pacific Pathways,” Stars and Stripes, February 6, 2019. www.stripes.com/news/pacific/con secutive-exercises-in-thailand-kick-off-new-twist-for-army-s-pacific-pathways-1.567605 Continuous Bomber Presence includes B-1B Lancers, B-52 Stratofortresses, and B-2 Spirits. See Richard Ebensberger, “Dyess B-1s Deploy to Andersen, Take over Continuous Bomber Presence Op,” Air Force Global Strike Command, February 7, 2017. www.afgsc.af.mil/News/ ArticleDisplay/tabid/2612/Article/1075634/dyess-b-1s-deploy-to-andersen-take-over-con tinuous-bomber-presence-operations.aspx Sydney J. Freedberg Jr., “The P8, Singapore and South China Sea Strategy,” Breaking Defense, June 6, 2016, accessed September 17, 2019. https://breakingdefense.com/2016/ 06/poseidon-in-singapore-the-p-8-south-china-sea-strategy/; Mike Yeo, “Littoral Combat Ship Montgomery Deploys to the Pacific,” Defense News, July 1, 2019. www.defensenews. com/naval/2019/07/01/littoral-combat-ship-montgomery-deploys-to-the-pacific/. Alaina Garrett, Matt Grimm, Nathaniel Haight, Robert Allison, and Kerrie Ford, “Exercises and Adversaries: The Risks of Military Exercise” (Master’s capstone, Texas A&M University, March 6, 2017). http://hdl.handle.net/1969.1/159129. As a more recent illustration of the sheer number of exercises the US and its allies conduct, in 2016, 2017, and 2018, NATO reported that it had conducted more than 100 exercises each year, with an even greater number of national exercises led by NATO member-states. See: Key NATO & Allied Exercises, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Public Diplo­ macy Division, Press & Media Section, May 2017. www.nato.int/nato_static_fl2014/a ssets/pdf/pdf_2017_05/20170510_1705-factsheet_exercises_en.pdf; “Key NATO and Allied Exercises in 2018,” North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Public Diplomacy Division, Press & Media Section, June 2018. www.nato.int/nato_static_fl2014/assets/pdf/pdf_2018_ 04/20180425_1804-factsheet_exercises_en.pdf; “Key NATO and Allied Exercises in 2019,” North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Public Diplomacy Division, Press & Media Section, February 2019. www.nato.int/nato_static_fl2014/assets/pdf/pdf_2019_02/ 1902-factsheet_exercises_en.pdf Michael Zielenziger, “Aboard the USS Carl Vinson,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, March 3, 2003, accessed through Nexis Uni. “Exercise Ulchi Freedom Guardian 2017,” US Department of Defense, last modified August 18, 2017. https://dod.defense.gov/News/News-Releases/News-Release-View/ Article/1282786/exercise-ulchi-freedom-guardian-2017/

32 M. W. Sisson et al.

23 Ben Werner, “China’s Past Participation in RIMPAC Didn’t Yield Intended Benefits of Easing Tensions,” US Naval Institute News, last modified May 24, 2018. https://news. usni.org/2018/05/24/33834 24 Megan Eckstein, “China Disinvited from Participating in 2018 RIMPAC Exercise,” US Naval Institute News, last modified May 23, 2018. https://news.usni.org/2018/05/23/ china-disinvited-participating-2018-rimpac-exercise 25 Nancy Montgomery, “US Army to proceed with planned exercise in Ukraine,” Stars and Stripes, last modified March 13, 2014. www.stripes.com/news/us-army-to-proceed­ with-planned-exercise-in-ukraine-1.272551 26 The term “security cooperation” is used by the DOD to describe a broad array of activities, of which “security assistance” involves State Department funding, coordina­ tion, and/or oversight. However, “security assistance” is also used as a general term for these types of efforts across the US government, and is here used more or less inter­ changeably with “security cooperation.” 27 “Security Aid – Downloads.” Security Assistance Monitor, Center for International Policy, accessed September 20, 2019. http://securityassistance.org/content/military-aid-download 28 US Agency for International Development, Fact Sheet: Fiscal Year 2015 Budget Request for Development and Humanitarian Assistance, accessed June 10, 2019, pg. 1–2. www.usaid. gov/sites/default/files/documents/1869/USAIDFY2015DevelopmentBudgetFactSheet.pdf 29 US Library of Congress, Congressional Research Service, What Is “Building Partner Capacity?”: Issues for Congress, by Kathleen J. McInnis and Nathan J. Lucas, RL44313 (2015) 30 US Congress, Senate, Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Sub­ committee on Federal Spending Oversight and Emergency Management, Oversight of US Spending in Afghanistan, May 9, 2018, accessed June 10, 2019, p. 7. www.sigar. mil/pdf/testimony/SIGAR-18-46-TY.pdf 31 Nick Turse and Sean D. Naylor, “Revealed: The US military’s 36 code-named operations in Africa,” Yahoo News, last modified April 17, 2019. https://news.yahoo.com/revealed­ the-us-militarys-36-codenamed-operations-in-africa-090000841.html?soc_src=hl-viewer& soc_trk=ma 32 US Department of Defense, Office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Joint History Office, “Other than War: The American Military Experience and Operations in the Post-Cold War Decade” by Frank N. Schubert, 2013, accessed June 12, 2019. www.jcs.mil/Portals/36/Documents/History/Monographs/Other_Than_War.pdf; US Department of Defense, Air Force Historical Research Agency, “Airlift Operations in which USAF Participated since 1994” by Daniel L. Haulman, November 2006, accessed June 10, 2019. https://media.defense.gov/2011/Feb/18/2001330063/-1/-1/0/huma nitarian%20since%201994.pdf; US Department of Defense, Office of the Under Secre­ tary for Personnel and Readiness, “Humanitarian Service Medal (HSM)—Approved Operations,” accessed June 10, 2019. https://prhome.defense.gov/Portals/52/Docum ents/RFM/MPP/OEPM/docs/HSM%20Approved%20Operations%20-%202015%2010 %2005.pdf; W. Eugene Cobble, H. H. Gaffney, and Dmitry Gorenburg, For the Record: All US Forces’ Responses to Situations, 1970–2000 (Alexandria, VA: Center for Strategic Studies, May 2005). https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a574366.pdf 33 Vito D’Orazio, “International Military Cooperation”; “Data.” www.vitodorazio.com/data. html 34 Compiled based on open-source news reports. “Antipiracy,” All Hands, accessed June 11, 2019. https://allhands.navy.mil/Features/Antipiracy

3 MAKING USE OF HISTORY Jacob Aronson, Daniel Tuke, Paul Huth and Melanie Sisson

Despite its sizable power advantage, its considerable overseas presence, and its extensive schedule of regular and persistent military activities worldwide, the United States still faced frequent challenges to its interests during the post-Cold War period. In a number of instances, US policymakers decided that although these challenges were not cause for war, they did require a response that included use of the US armed forces. Between 1991 and 2018, the United States deployed forces and other military assets, instituted no-fly zones, carried out accelerated, expanded, or unscheduled joint-exercises, took kinetic actions, or undertook other military moves with the intention of coercing opponents and reassuring allies more than 100 times. This chapter examines this set of coercive events to understand better which strategies worked and which didn’t.

Short of war Military coercion is distinct from war in that it seeks to achieve an outcome not by imposing it directly, but rather by persuading another actor to behave in a particular way. Military coercion thus threatens the use of force, and sometimes includes its use – though when it does, it does not do so in ways that themselves determine the outcome of the confrontation. This is because so long as an action is one of coercion and not of war, it does not seek to eliminate the tar­ get’s ability to make a choice about how to respond, or to directly impose a particular outcome. US coercive military actions in the post-Cold War era were intended primarily to prevent something from happening, known as deterrence, or to cause it to happen, called compellence.1 Deterrent actions are designed to persuade an actor not to initiate an action that it appears to be considering, as was the case when Iraq massed troops near the Kuwaiti border in 1994, which suggested to the United

34 J. Aronson et al.

States that an invasion was forthcoming. Compellent efforts are those intended to persuade an actor to undertake or terminate actions it otherwise wouldn’t. US efforts to convince Slobodan Milosevic to negotiate a peace agreement in the Balkans in the 1990s are a good example of compellent military coercion. The purpose of this chapter is to identify the characteristics of post-Cold War US coercive military actions that produced better, and worse, outcomes. This information can contribute to the design of effective coercive strategies by identifying the assets and activities most likely to produce favorable outcomes in various circumstances. Equally importantly, however, this chapter provides information about which coercive actions have not worked well in general, allowing policymakers to avoid unnecessary, ineffi­ cient, and risky uses of the expensive, busy, and valuable US armed forces.

A new dataset on uses of force short of war2 This book is an examination of the role of the US military, during the period 1991–2018, in achieving favorable US foreign policy outcomes in ways other than imposing them directly. This focus both creates boundaries around the types of military actions that are considered, and necessitates that analysis include a set of variables that is both expansive and detailed. The dataset built for this purpose is structured around four strict criteria for inclusion, rules that ensure the events it contains are instances of the same phe­ nomenon. The four rules that distinguish military coercion from other types of military activity are these: 1.

2. 3. 4.

Change in disposition: There was a change in the status of at least one element of the US armed forces – one or more components were put on alert, ordered into action, made a previously unscheduled move from one location to another, or engaged in non-decisive kinetic activity. Target: There was an actor identified by US officials as the target of the military activity. Policy objective: There is evidence that the US military action was intended by policymakers to achieve at least one defined objective. Coercion: There is evidence that the US military action was intended to influ­ ence the target actor’s behavior, and not simply to impose the desired outcome.

Applying these criteria to the historical record as contained in publicly available sources produced a total of 115 discrete cases of US military coercion between January 1, 1991 and June 30, 2018. During this time, the United States sought to deter other actors 83 times, to compel them 31 times, and to induce – to offer a carrot rather than use a stick – one time. In 101 cases, the US action included the participation of at least one, and often more than one, partner nation; the UN was officially supportive of the US action in 34 instances; and the coercive US action involved kinetic force in 21 instances. Challenges arose both in places where the US had a large pre-existing presence, and in places it did not (Figure 3.1).

FIGURE 3.1

Distribution of coercive military operations by pre-existing regional presence3

36 J. Aronson et al.

The set of coercive events that occurred over this period of time are not assumed to be independent from one another – to the contrary, many are associated directly over space and time. Indeed, these 115 instances are distributed over only 14 targeted actors (Table 3.1), with some occurring in relatively rapid sequence.4 Each event is described in the dataset by more than 100 variables identified by scholars, practitioners, and analysts as being potential influences on the likelihood of achieving coercive success.5 These catalogue the military action itself, the eco­ nomic, political, historical, and diplomatic context in which the event occurred, the deterrent or compellent nature of the coercion, the target’s apparent motiva­ tion, the US administration’s stated policy goals, and whether or not those goals were achieved. US coercive military actions were undertaken during the period 1991–2018 for one or more of eight general categories of policy interests, and in some cases, the United States had more than one goal. Indeed, over the set of 115 cases there were a total of 234 stated policy goals coded into the Dataset. The outcome of each goal also is coded, and so outcome is assessed on a per-objective basis. One hundred and seventeen of these were achieved, and one hundred and seventeen were not – a baseline success rate of 50 percent.6 Success rates did vary across policy goals, however, as is evident in Table 3.2.

TABLE 3.1 Number of cases by target actor

Target

Cases

Afghanistan China Haiti Iran Iraq Israel Liberia Libya North Korea Russia Somalia Syria Yemen Yugoslavia

1 4 6 9 24 1 1 2 18 22 3 7 1 16

Making use of history

37

TABLE 3.2 Rate of success by policy goal

Policy Goal

Success Rate

Instances

Maintain Territorial Integrity Conventional Arms WMD/ICBM Activity Protect Civilians Military Posture Negotiations Cease Fire Change Regime

92% 50% 50% 49% 47% 31% 29% 17%

37 8 36 35 59 13 34 12

FIGURE 3.2

Distribution of US military coercion over time and actor

Policymakers, however, need more than description to inform their decisions. Ideally, they will have information about the characteristics of coercive events that are more likely to cause successful outcomes than others, and about contextual features which may make favorable outcomes easier or more difficult to achieve. Statistical methods help to render such insights by estimating the relationship between the intrinsic and contextual features of coercive military actions and the likelihood of achieving US policy objectives.

Studying coercion There is a central assumption that leaders on both sides of a dispute understand that largescale war is costly in terms of human suffering and death, destruction of infrastructure, disruption of local and global economic structures, and the potential for political turmoil and civil unrest. Because of these costs, leaders have an incentive to resolve disagreements and disputes before a situation escalates to war and, so, theoretically it should be possible

38 J. Aronson et al.

to settle any given dispute without war. At the same time, leaders have incentives to reach settlements short of war on terms most favorable to their own interests and there­ fore may use the threat of war to try and coerce their adversary into making concessions in a contest of competitive risk-taking and bluffing. Given the incentives of state leaders to avoid war but still secure favorable for­ eign policy outcomes, American policymakers seek to distinguish adversaries who are truly resolved from those that are bluffing and will back down. In the context of the ongoing situation on the Korean Peninsula, for example, US officials must judge whether they can use economic and military pressure to coerce Kim Jong-un into denuclearization, or whether he is prepared to use force to protect his nuclear weapons program. If US policymakers underestimate Kim Jong-un’s seriousness, armed conflict could erupt, but at the same time the United States does not want to cede unnecessary ground to Pyongyang. Conversely, there may be questions about how resolved the United States is in a given situation. While there rarely is a global crisis in which there is not some American interest at stake, there are some issues over which the US clearly is resolved to fight, and others where it clearly is unwilling to engage militarily. When Saddam Hussein annexed Kuwait, the US swiftly assembled a coalition to expel Iraqi forces, restore the Kuwaiti government, and generally defend American strategic interests in the Persian Gulf. No such coalition has been raised to reverse the Russian annexation of the Crimean Peninsula. Seeing these stark differences in American actions, it is understandable that foreign leaders may be unsure about how the US would respond in a new crisis. China, for example, may see the failure of the US to intervene forcefully in Crimea and feel emboldened to take stronger and more aggressive actions in the South China Sea. What, then, are leaders to do in these situations of uncertainty? IR theory suggests leaders would be unwise to take every statement, threat, or demand from an adversary at face value, because in many of these situations there may be incentive to make excessive demands, rattle sabers, and otherwise put forth a false willingness to fight – to bluff. To distinguish between bluster and conviction, and thereby resolve this uncer­ tainty, leaders must pursue a coercive bargaining strategy that sends a costly signal based on a credible threat of force – they must demonstrate that they have the cap­ ability to apply force, and the willingness to accept costs in order to do so. There may be many ways to send a costly signal, with or without direct military activity. One line of thinking argues, for example, that signals are costly when they stake political leaders’ reputations on achieving a favorable dispute outcome, tying their hands and putting the ball in their opponent’s court. When George W. Bush issued an ultimatum to Saddam Hussein in 2002 he did so on the floor of the UN, putting his domestic and international reputation on the line and leaving little room for doubt that non-compliance would result in war. War was not ultimately avoided in this instance, for reasons explained thoroughly in Chapter 5. Demands also are understood to be more effective when the kinds of threats being made are actions that a state can enact. The ability actually to follow through on a threat, for example, can be limited by political circumstances.

Making use of history

39

While the Obama Administration famously issued a “red line” stating it would not tolerate the use of chemical weapons in the Syrian Civil War, that position was undercut by domestic opposition to intervention, as well as a lack of support from key allies such as the United Kingdom. So too can perceptions of threat be degraded by questionable military capabilities. While North Korea has made major advances in nuclear and missile technology in recent years, the nascent nature of their missile program coupled with the deployment of missile defense systems by the US means that while a threat from Pyongyang to fire nucleararmed ballistic missiles on major American cities is taken seriously, its operational capability to do so may in fact be quite limited. This, of course, is not the case for the US military; as the sole truly “global” military force, the question facing foreign leaders is not whether the US can carry out its threats, but rather whether it has the intention and resolve to do so. In trying to send costly signals based on credible threats of coercion the US finds itself in a unique position compared to other states. As the sole truly “global” military force, in many crises the question facing foreign leaders is not whether the US has the ability to respond, but rather whether it has the intention or resolve to do so. Making military moves, in concert with clear demands, can be especially useful in sending signals of resolve, particularly given the frequently large power disparity between the US and other nations. Mobilization or deployment of mili­ tary forces makes statements costlier, both in terms of economic and political capital, and provides a visible demonstration of a leader’s willingness to follow through on threats or demands. Additionally, making military moves as a means of costly signaling leaves a state better prepared in the event of escalation. In the lead up to the 2014 intervention in Libya, for example, American and allied leaders coupled statements demanding that Gaddafi limit civilian casualties and seek a negotiated settlement to the conflict with deployment of military assets to the Mediterranean, meaning that when Gaddafi continued to press his offensive on Benghazi, coalition forces were ready to follow through swiftly and act to protect civilians, ostensibly averting a massacre. The fact that leaders sometimes choose to escalate disagreements into militarized disputes may suggest that the existing American force deployment was inadequate to convey American interests and resolve effectively. When the United States responds to challenges and disputes by introducing new military forces into the theater of potential operations, moreover, it is likely that policymakers are seeking to send a more powerful signal of resolve, with the expectation that doing so will increase the likelihood of achieving a favorable outcome. The analyses below test whether, and if so under what conditions, this proposition is borne out.

General empirical approach Assessing the impact of a policy intervention is difficult. The gold standard scien­ tific approach is to use a randomized controlled trial. For example, if the goal is to identify the impact of sanctions on the willingness of an affected state to provide

40 J. Aronson et al.

concessions, random states would be sanctioned, and an equal number of random states would be exempted (or given “placebo” sanctions). The purpose of such an approach is to have two comparable populations of states who are similar in every way but one: the occurrence of a sanction. As this simple example should make clear, this type of scientific approach is impossible in the real world. Policy interventions are not random. Based on a variety of factors such as domestic politics and target characteristics, the US chooses which policies to use, and when to use them. Observational data – that is, data that describe the real-world – will reflect this selection effect. Sanctions, for example, may be systematically more likely to be used against lessdeveloped countries. As a result, it is difficult to distinguish the impact of sanctions from the impact of economic development, because they co-vary. A variable that predicts when a particular policy instrument is used and affects the outcome of interest is called a “confounding variable.” One may also think of confounding variables as alternative explanations for the occurrence of a policy intervention and an outcome. To identify the impact of a policy instrument, it is necessary to adjust for these alternative explanations. Case studies do this by comparing cases that differ in the use of a treatment (e.g., use and non-use of a sanction) but that are otherwise similar in other important ways, such as military capability or economic development. In this way, the case study adjusts for alternative explanations by holding them constant. Case studies, however, are limited in how many can be adjusted as it is rare for two cases to be identical in all ways but one. In addition, cases may have important idiosyncrasies that are difficult for a researcher to identify but that affect the examined outcome – a terrorist attack, for example, or differing cultural responses to the restriction of goods resulting from sanctions. To combat this problem, an analyst could examine many pairs of cases. While a specific pair of cases might not be identical across all relevant variables, the dis­ tribution of the values of alternative explanations between treated and control cases could be made similar, which means they no longer have an impact that biases the estimated impact of a policy. Reliance on many cases also address the problem of idiosyncrasies, as these idiosyncrasies would be distributed normally across both samples, thereby canceling out their effect. These considerations motivate the use of statistical analysis making use of a large number of cases. For the statistical analyses done here, subject matter expertise was used to iden­ tify the set of alternative explanations to be taken into account. Alternative expla­ nations were then quantified, and data collected for as many cases as possible. Finally, statistical methods (regression and matching) were used to adjust for their effect. The result is a less-biased estimate of the impact of a policy intervention that is resistant to idiosyncrasy and numerous important alternative explanations. While the methods applied address many problems related to the non-random use of policy interventions, some problems remain. This is visible, for example, when assessing the impact of pre-existing forces in a theater of operations. The US keeps more forces in theaters that feature more dangerous potential challengers.

Making use of history

41

This latent challenge is linked to the size of pre-existing forces but is unobserved. Known information functions in an analogous manner. Potential challengers can observe how many forces are available to respond to a threat. As a result, a chal­ lenge is only observed when the challenger believes it may be able to achieve its goals despite the presence of pre-existing forces. In general, statistical analysis has trouble disentangling the impact of a policy or variable when unobserved explanations are present. Where these problems affect the analyses conducted here, they are noted and the effects on the results are made explicit.

Results The results generated here control for numerous alternative explanations for the outcomes of the coercive events contained in the dataset. Each statistical model includes a measure of the goal that the US was pursuing, concurrent presidential approval rating, whether an action took place in an election year, the con­ sistency of Department of Defense and Department of State statements, the normalized economic development and military capability of the target state, the dependence of the target state on US trade, the involvement of US and target allies, and the number of forces in the region prior to the action. Because policy interventions may have an impact over time, the analyses include a vari­ able measuring prior policy use when appropriate. Finally, to account for unobserved explanations specific to a country, such as resolve, the models include binary country-specific indicators. The statistical model is a logistic regression because the outcome is binary, either a success or a failure. A matching technique is employed to reweight the sample so that values of alternative explanations are made similar across cases where the treatment – sanctions, for example – occurs and does not occur. The result is a set of findings on the effect of a US policy or an important alternative explanation for the outcome of coercive events. The figures displayed below show the change in the probability of US success in an action when moving from the treatment case to the non-treatment case, providing the extent of the greater or lesser likelihood of success, for example, when military forces are deployed and when they are not. The change in probability is represented as a numeric value, or “first difference.” This number indicates whether the policy intervention or other feature of the event has a significant effect on the outcome, and what the size of that effect is. It answers the question, in other words, of whether the United States is better or worse off deploying forces as compared to not deploying them, and by how much. The first difference is not a certainty; it is rather the number the model identifies as most likely to reflect what is true in the real world. As such, it is both possible and necessary to assess how confident one should be about this estimate. This measure is represented, appropriately, by a confidence interval.7 If the entirety or majority of the confidence interval is above zero, confidence can be high that a

42 J. Aronson et al.

policy intervention or other event characteristic increases the chance of US success. A confidence interval entirely or mostly below zero indicates the opposite, that the intervention or characteristic makes success less likely. If a sizable portion of the confidence interval crosses zero, it is unclear whether a policy or characteristic has any effect at all.

The characteristics of military action The vast scope of US military capability between 1991 and 2018 means that pol­ icymakers had at their disposal a broad set of tools for use in coercive strategies, extending from local shows of force, to rapid deployments, to the application of kinetic force. The data gathered for this study allow for inquiry into whether, and which, of the characteristics of US military action affect the likelihood of achieving policy goals – for better, or for worse.

Forces on hand: standing presence and rapid deployments As discussed in Chapter 2, the United States maintained a large overseas presence during the post-Cold War era. The stationing of the US military on foreign terri­ tories long has been argued to be important both for projecting US power over­ seas, and also as a means of general deterrence of adversaries and reassurance of allies. It is reasonable then to ask whether different levels of presence also have an

FIGURE 3.3

Illustrative display of first differences and confidence intervals

Making use of history

43

effect on the likelihood of coercive military success, and if so, what effect that presence has. Somewhat surprisingly, analysis indicates that the size of pre-existing permanently stationed US forces in-region does not have a significant effect on the outcomes of immediate coercive events (Figure 3.4).8 The finding that having high in-region presence is no more helpful than having low in-region presence, however, reflects some confounding features. In the first instance, the analysis does not access the deterrent effect that standing presence might, or might not, have. It is impossible to tell what actions might have taken in the absence of US forces. Thus, while it is the case that the size of pre-existing presence does not affect the outcomes of immediate coercive exchanges, the implications of this finding should not be extended to make claims about the value of in-region presence for general deterrence overall. US overseas posture, further, is planned to account for the value of strategic interests and likely challengers to them. The United States, that is, stations more forces in more important and more difficult places. Regional actors that choose to push the boundaries with the US therefore know their actions will be seen and that they may well generate a response. That they elect to challenge the US posi­ tion anyway is a good indicator that the interests at stake are of considerable importance to them and that, accordingly, they are highly resolved – which may make US success less likely. So, too, might the fact of a standing, sizable, and active in-region presence dilute the signaling effect of military action. In-region military activity may be perceived as routine, or simply seem low-effort, and therefore lackluster and unconvincing.

FIGURE 3.4

The level of pre-existing permanent regional presence

44 J. Aronson et al.

At the other end of the spectrum, immediate coercive events in regions in which the US has minimal pre-existing presence might have an equivalent likelihood of success as in high-presence areas because actors in those regions might believe the US generally is inattentive or disinterested. Although willing to pursue gains on the cheap – that is, under the presumption that the US will not react – they become more likely to concede once the US makes clear its displeasure. While permanent in-region presence does not have a statistically significant effect on coercive outcomes, the results of multiple analyses indicate that the deployment of forces from outside a theater of operations into a theater of opera­ tions does. Specifically, outside-in deployments, when they are ground, air, or naval, increase significantly the likelihood that US policy objectives will be achieved (Figure 3.5). This finding, moreover, is consistent and robust across mul­ tiple tests of potential co-variables, including the nature, type, or size of forces already stationed in-theater. This result likely is driven by the preponderance of US military strength – not, however, because it is a demonstration of capability. Instead, the effect’s more plausible explanation is that the extent of US military advantage makes the coer­ cive question not whether the US can intervene, but rather whether it will inter­ vene. Pre-existing presence does not seem to answer this question; the movement of new or additional forces into a potential theater of operations does. This is par­ ticularly true when the US undertakes immediate deterrence; although there is not a significant difference between the effects of deterring and compelling across the

FIGURE 3.5

Deploying forces from outside-theater in has a positive effect on outcome

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45

full set of cases, in situations in which the United States deploys forces from outside the theater of operations, its effects are more beneficial for deterrent than for compellent efforts.9 In deterrent efforts, the US adversary has time to receive the signal and update its understanding of US resolve, and therefore its cost-benefit expectations, accordingly. In compellent events, by comparison, the adversary already has crossed the threshold of action and so despite having new information is already in a difficult position. In such cases, compellence requires an adversary to balance the potential costs of defiance against the potential costs of compliance – loss of the gains being sought and the domestic consequences and reputational costs of backing down, for example. Deployments, of course, are not identical, but rather vary by size and asset type. These features might be expected to affect event outcomes, especially when they interact with an important characteristic of the target actor: its own military power. Indeed, examination of the interaction of these features of US military coercion do reveal important differences. The effect of deployment on weak targets is unequivocally positive. Weaker states might be especially moved by the US signal of intent, not only for its com­ munication of resolve but also because it adjusts the local balance of capabilities, potentially to the extent that they do not have any adequate response. The confidence interval for the effect of outside-in deployment on strong tar­ gets, by comparison, indicates a small measure of uncertainty. Here the strength of the effect may be attenuated by the nature of the deployment, insofar as larger movements are required to shift the local balance of capability. So too might strong targets believe that the United States is wary of escalation, and so still could ques­ tion the level of US commitment. Nonetheless, the overall effect holds, and deployment of forces from outside into a region makes US coercive efforts vis-a-vis strong targets more likely to succeed. Asset types, however, have notably different effects when conditioned by the target actor’s power. When coercing weaker challengers, the United States is more likely to achieve success when it deploys air and naval assets than when it does not. This is not true, however, when comparing the deployment of ground forces versus no ground forces at all (Figure 3.6). One potential explanation for this finding – and one that resonates with a number of examples, including the US experiences in Somalia and in many parts of the world during the War on Terror – is that it is the result of US overconfidence and adversary adaptation. The United States, that is, clearly is the more capable actor in these environments and therefore may assess threats and risks to be low. At the same time, however, weak adversaries have found effective means of countering the US advantage by using asymmetric tactics, such as improvised explosive devices, mob violence, urban warfare, civilian co-optation and so forth. These both degrade the utility of US ground operations and impose costs – often in the form of servicemember injuries and deaths – that test directly the extent of US resolve. The same cannot be said of the ability of weak states to undermine modern air and naval assets, which are both difficult to defend against and even harder to attack. Amid the

46 J. Aronson et al.

FIGURE 3.6

Air and naval assets are useful against weak targets

breakup of Yugoslavia, for example, there was little Serb forces could do to insulate themselves against the effects of American and allied air and naval assaults. The dynamic relative to stronger states is different. Here, dispatching ground forces seems to send a powerful signal (Figure 3.7). In these cases, the US deploy­ ment comes with the knowledge that the challenger has adequate capability to impose relatively high costs on the United States. The fact that the US sends ground forces anyway may therefore reveal a relatively high level of resolve, not least because they serve as a tripwire, removing any question of whether or not the US will respond to an incursion that harms its personnel. Regardless of the strength of the targeted actor, when deploying forces from outside in, larger ground deployments – those above 1,000 troops, or roughly a brigade – and larger air commitments increase the chance of US success.10 This finding is relatively unsurprising, insofar as only small movements of troops or of airplanes suggest an unwillingness of the United States to put its people and assets in harm’s way, do not have a sizable effect on the local balance of capabilities, and so are not likely to affect meaningfully the target’s cost-benefit calculations. Although moving naval forces into the theater of operations also has a generally positive effect, increasing the size of a naval commitment does not improve the probability of success. This is true even when the naval assets in question are air­ craft carrier strike groups (CSGs). Although the deployment of one CSG leads to a higher US success rate than does not deploying any CSGs, adding more carriers thereafter does not amplify the effect. That is, deploying one CSG is better than

Making use of history

FIGURE 3.7

47

Ground troops are useful against strong targets

deploying zero CSGs, but deploying two does not produce better results than does deploying one. Also noteworthy is that sending a CSG does not achieve any greater positive effect than does sending an amphibious ready group (ARG)11 together with other naval assets. The deployment of an ARG – a combination of assault, transport, and landing ships that can forward-locate and deploy ground-attack and transport air­ craft, and a reinforced infantry battalion of roughly 1,200 Marines – along with some combination of cruisers and destroyers, achieves the same effect as does deployment of a single CSG (Figure 3.8). These results are somewhat surprising. CSGs, after all, are largely credited with being the centerpiece of the US ability to move air and missile capabilities overseas, carrying a combat-ready air wing and sailing with a combination of destroyers, cruisers, and submarines. Deployment of a CSG thus definitively changes the bal­ ance of in-theater capabilities and is a highly visible display; both characteristics might reasonably be expected to elevate the stakes for leaders of both states. Where one deployed CSG is good, then, it might be expected that more than one is even better. It might be, however, that the first CSG is adequate to the task of signaling to the adversary the extent of US investment, and that the addition of more carriers does not provide any new information. The effect of multiple carriers might also be blunted if the reason for their selection in a coercive strategy is that the US recognizes it is facing a highly resolved adversary – a factor that, of course, also decreases the likelihood of a positive outcome.

48 J. Aronson et al.

FIGURE 3.8 One

carrier is better than no carriers, and better than more than one carrier, other naval assets achieve the same effect

Although ARGs are smaller and less ostentatious than CSGs, they have the additional function of transporting Marine ground forces. When combined with cruisers and destroyers, then, these ARG-plus formations enable not only the airand sea-based strikes that are possible for the CSG (albeit on a smaller scale), but also the landing of ground forces – a capability the CSG does not have. That ARGs have as a primary purpose the movement of ground capability specifically, in other words, may elevate adversaries’ assessment of US resolve such that it is commensurate with that of the flashier movement of a carrier. This finding that sending a CSG does not improve US odds of success much more than does sending other naval assets suggests policymakers have consider­ able flexibility when considering the design of force packages. A carrier might still be the preferred choice for any number of reasons, and yet so too might there be equally good reasons to send an ARG-plus formation instead. That policymakers can make this determination without sacrificing effect is both new and useful information. Two other policy implications of the findings about deployment size, type, and adversary strength are relatively straightforward. First, when coercing weak tar­ gets, the US should deploy air or naval forces; air forces should be sent in rela­ tively large numbers, and the naval commitment can be designed based upon operational or other imperatives. Second, when coercing a strong target, the US should deploy ground forces and is advantaged by deploying at least a brigade of soldiers or Marines.

Making use of history

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There is a third potential implication, though of a more speculative nature. Juxtaposing the finding that strong adversaries are more responsive to the move­ ment of ground troops alongside the finding that ARG-plus force packages are as effective as the deployment of a CSG could suggest that ARGs will have increasing utility in an era of intensifying competition with China, in particular. The analyses done here are inadequate to support making strong inferences on this count, yet suggestive enough, certainly, to merit further inquiry.

Shows of force and uses of force Military exercises are another notable component of US coercive efforts. Take, for example, US engagement with North Korea, where joint exercises have been prominent in US efforts to pressure Kim Jong-un to negotiate denuclearization. So too has the United States undertaken non-routine exercises in response to what it argues are provocative Chinese actions in the South China Sea. Exercises, how­ ever, do not have a positive coercive effect (Figure 3.9). This may reflect the dif­ ficulty for targets of distinguishing when exercises are being used to coerce rather than as matter-of-course training or as part of standard operations. It might also be that targets perceive exercises to be little more than a hand-wave in the direction of threatening force rather than a clear assertion of US preferences over behavior and of threatened consequences for noncompliance. Still, exercises may be useful to the United States for reasons that extend beyond their direct coercive effect – by, for example, actually serving training purposes, enhancing partner interoper­ ability, reassuring friends and allies, or – as appears to be the case relative to US nuclear negotiations with North Korea – serving as a useful bargaining chip.12 The United States not only uses deployments and demonstrations – shows of force – to coerce challengers, but also sometimes applies force for purposes of coercion. Analysis of coercive kinetic actions reveals them to have a slightly nega­ tive but insignificant effect on the likelihood of US success. That is, the results of the analyses done here indicate that the explicit use of force does not change the likelihood that the US will succeed in coercing an adversary (Figure 3.9). This finding runs counter to the notion that using force both is a firm signal of resolve and a clear, and intimidating, demonstration of US military efficacy. The result therefore is surprising. It may be explained, however, by unobserved factors, most notably about the resolve of the adversary – the factor that caused the need for kinetic action in the first place. That is, when the US uses force, it is likely because its efforts to signal through non-kinetic means have been frustrated. The United States would prefer that challenges not arise at all and, when they do, that threats and shows of force suffice to defuse the situation. The dataset, however, intentionally captures those cases in which challenges did arise, threats and shows of force occurred and yet, in 50 percent of the cases, were inadequate to achieve US goals. This sequencing might be the result of confronting highly motivated target actors, making them particularly hard cases, or actors that per­ ceived the United States to have low credibility, or low resolve, and possibly

50 J. Aronson et al.

FIGURE 3.9

Military exercises, no-fly zones

both – as, for example, was true of Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic in the 1990s. Failure might also be caused by miscommunication, wherein the targeted actor does not understand US demands, or by a US failure accurately to access the target’s values and goals. In such a case, the threats and even kinetic punishments levied might not be meaningful to the target, and easily ignored or tolerated, as is suggested by the frequency and duration of US coercive kinetic activity relative to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq between the first and second Gulf wars. The United States, too, implemented no-fly zones with some frequency during this period, using them in 28 coercive events in Libya, Iraq, and the Balkans. Nofly zones did not have an appreciable effect on the likelihood of achieving the full set of policy goals; even for the objective of protecting civilians, the task for which no-fly zones might reasonably be considered best-suited, the success rate was roughly 50 percent (Figure 3.9).

Other US actions and factors In addition to the deployment of forces, the US also uses other policy instruments that might increase the chances of success. Unfortunately, few do. Coercion does not often happen in the absence of diplomatic engagement. Much of this activity is not visible to the public eye, occurring at various levels of official and unofficial dialogue that goes unreported, and so evidence and the implications that can be derived from it are limited. Nonetheless, what is available indicates that the direct high-level talks – those involving the President, his staff, or

Making use of history

51

members of his cabinet – reported publicly in 35 cases had no discernible effect on the likelihood of US policy success. This was true whether the US also did, or did not, deploy outside forces. Sanctions are of particular interest, having become a highly visible and oft-used tool of foreign policy, applied to achieve coercive goals as disparate as deterring violations of human rights and compelling nuclear disarmament. Some argue that sanctions are effective, and therefore preferable to the use of violent force, while many others do not find convincing evidence that sanctions achieve coercive out­ comes and disagree that they are more humane.13 Putting to one side the larger debate about the independent utility, and the ethics, of sanctions, examining the combined effect of sanctions and military actions reveals that they do not perform well together. Sanctions were in place against targeted actors prior to military coercion in 89 of the 115 cases in the dataset; in 25 cases additional sanctions were imposed after the military action began; and in 23 cases net-new sanctions were applied, either before or after the military action’s start date.14 When the United States undertakes military coercion of any kind – from raising the alert status of a portion of the armed services to applying limited kinetic force – and sanctions already are in place, the US has roughly 50 percent odds of success. Adding new sanctions to old, after the initiation of military action, actually reduces the likelihood of success (Figure 3.10). Doubling down on sanctions after military coercion has begun, in other words, makes success less likely.

FIGURE 3.10

Adding new sanctions to prior sanctions

52 J. Aronson et al.

There are further situations in which adding new sanctions is especially counter­ productive. Specifically, new sanctions backfire when used against states with weak, underdeveloped economies and states that have low bilateral trade with the US. This unhappy relationship between sanctions and military coercion holds even when the US action includes deployment of assets from outside the theater – the form of military coercion most durably associated with producing positive out­ comes. The United States is worse off deploying forces with sanctions already in place than it is deploying forces where they are not (Figure 3.11). These results resonate with US experiences attempting to coerce North Korea and Iran, both of which have been subject to decades of harsh sanctions and intermittent military coercion, with new sanctions doing little other than provok­ ing even less desirable behavior. In early 2012, for example, Tehran responded to new sanctions – intended to coerce cessation of its nuclear program – by threa­ tening to close the Strait of Hormuz and conducting a series of military exercises.15 The recent reinstatement of sanctions and uptick in coercive military activity under the Trump Administration has thus far yielded similar results. The analyses above explore the impact of actions the US can take and the con­ ditions under which these actions are likely to be successful. Before taking an action, however, US policymakers may be interested in knowing how other characteristics, those that are controllable and those that are not, might also affect its chances of success. Indeed, three features of coercive military action over which policymakers can exercise at least some control do affect outcomes: whether to

FIGURE 3.11

Sanctions decrease the effectiveness of force deployment

Making use of history

53

levy verbal threats; the clarity of the demand made of the target; and the will­ ingness of a great power ally to participate in the coercive effort. First, publicly levied threats were found to be decidedly counterproductive. This adds affirmatory evidence to the conventional wisdom that talk, although loud, also is cheap, and reveals more about what the US doesn’t want to do than it does about what it is willing to do. The negative effects of threats may also reflect that talk also is weak when the message it contains is general or non-specific, as was true of many US threats during the post-Cold War era. Moreover, direct threats from the US may be seen as provo­ cative in target countries, making it more politically costly for leaders to back down. Second, the United States has greater success when it levies highly specific demands as compared to when its demands are diffuse or weakly formed (Figure 3.12). Third, and perhaps unsurprisingly, acting with the support of powerful allies gives additional political and military weight to coercive demands. In particular, the participation of at least one of France, the UK, China, Russia, or Germany is far preferable to undertaking a coercive military action unilaterally. Domestic factors matter too. As might be expected, it is clear that the US is less likely to succeed when attempting military coercion during a presidential election year than during any other year. Having the weight of upcoming elections seems to weaken the US position, perhaps because rivals believe Washington will be less willing, or politically able, to follow through on threats. Somewhat counterintuitive, by contrast, is the finding that military coercion is less likely to succeed under a unified government. That is, the probability of US coercive success is higher when the executive and legislative branches are controlled by different political parties.

FIGURE 3.12

Demand specificity and powerful allies make success more likely

54 J. Aronson et al.

Although additional inquiry is necessary to make meaningful inferences about this result, one possibility is that coercion undertaken by a unified government signals only partisan support for the effort, and leaves the administration vulnerable to political counter-attacks by the opposition party that could limit its options. Such moves made by a divided government, on the other hand, indicate that both parties endorse the action and therefore communicate a greater degree of national resolve. Another possibility is that military coercion under divided government is a more costly signal for the president, putting at risk his reputation and his, or his party’s, electoral future, thereby revealing high resolve. Finally, it should be noted that the types of US policy goal pursued do not have appreciably different effects on the likelihood of positive outcomes. US efforts to retain the territorial status quo are the most likely to succeed, a result that likely is influenced heavily by the norm of sovereignty and historical responses to territorial aggression. Land grabs are a serious matter, and states can be assumed not to under­ take them lightly. It therefore should not be surprising that this baseline deterrent, bolstered by supportive US military moves, would make successful retention of the territorial status quo relatively likely. Also unsurprising is that regime change (short of war) has the lowest rate of success, as state leaders are usually highly motivated to retain power. The remaining policy goals have a success rate between these extremes and are not significantly different from each other, a result perhaps driven by the fact that these objectives may require very calibrated and coordinated combinations of political, military, and economic pressure.

Actionable implications The information presented above about how the features of coercive US military actions affect foreign policy outcomes does not constitute a protocol that, if only followed, will guarantee success. It does, however, offer useful guidance to deci­ sionmakers as they develop coercive strategies. Two sets of findings are especially noteworthy both for their statistical strength, and for their policy relevance. First, is that analysis of post-Cold War coercive US military actions indicates that moving military assets into the theater in which a conflict of interest is occurring increases significantly the likelihood of US success. This finding holds true across a wide range of conditions and is resilient to several different model specifications. It is notable that these results are not platform-specific – that is, the fact of outside-in deployment alone increases the likelihood of achieving US policy goals. Yet so too does analysis support the tailoring of asset selection to respond to adversary power: deployment of airplanes and ships is more effective against weaker rivals, while the use of ground forces is more effective against stronger rivals. When deploying ground troops against weak or strong targets, moreover, it is imperative that the US sends a sizeable force. Taken as a whole, these findings inform policymakers both about which assets may be more useful relative to whom, and suggest that they have the latitude to design force packages that accommodate resource constraints, operational risks, and other considerations without necessarily affecting the likelihood of success.

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While deployment of additional forces was shown to be effective, the same cannot be said for two popular policy options using the armed forces: military exercises and no-fly zones. While the utility of these actions is not dismissed in a broad sense, analysis does reveal that their use in coercive bargaining situations does not increase the odds of US policy success. The second substantive area of insight has to do with the coercive effect of combining military actions with sanctions. Sanctions were used frequently during the post-Cold War era – indeed, they already were in place vis–a-vis the targeted actor in 89 out of 115 instances of US military coercion. This prevalence reflects the appeal of sanctions, insofar as they are perceived to offer policymakers a tool with teeth that does not inflict violence or introduce an immediate risk of war. They fit neatly, that is, in positive narratives about applying force only after exhausting all other options. Sanctions, however, have a strong and consistently negative effect on the like­ lihood that military coercion will succeed. This suggests that the very attributes that make sanctions desirable may also make them poor complements to military coer­ cion. While arguments about using force as a last resort likely comport in many cases with policymakers’ personal principles and with those of domestic political audiences, targets of coercion may understand them very differently. Rather than understanding sanctions as indicating only a desire to avoid physical violence, sanctions may instead be perceived by the target as revealing the United States as unwilling to accept costs or risks, either because the level of investment in the interests at stake is low or because the political consensus needed for military action is absent. Sanctions applied after a coercive military operation are especially coun­ terproductive, perhaps because they indicate to the target that the limits of US willingness to use the military already have been reached. At the time the military is called to contribute to a coercive effort, sanctions may well already be in place. The implication is not that those sanctions should be lifted; it is, rather, that policymakers at a minimum will need to adjust their expectations of success accordingly, and perhaps consider whether strategies that do not involve military coercion would be a more prudent choice. By contrast, it is clear that adding new sanctions after military action has begun is especially detri­ mental to the likelihood of success, and so the clear implication is that this sequence should be avoided. As is true for instances in which sanctions pre-date consideration of military coercion, policymakers must make choices under other conditions over which they do not exercise control. Coercive attempts during presidential election years, for example, are likely not to fare well. Unified government is associated with a weaker negotiating position; it seems that a certain degree of discord in the American gov­ ernment, rather counterintuitively, is more likely to produce coercive success.16 Three features that are controllable, however, can strengthen the US position: US success is more likely when it refrains from making public threats; it is more likely when the US is highly specific in communicating its demands; and it is more likely when the US acts with major power partners rather than unilaterally.

56 J. Aronson et al.

Examination of US coercive military actions during the 27 years between 1991 and 2018 thus renders important lessons. First, policymakers must take into account that there are some international economic and political conditions that make it more likely, and some that make it less likely, that military coercion will succeed. Sending US forces into action is costly. It requires spending money, placing demands on service members and military families, and accepting opportunity costs. So, too, are military operations dangerous, putting members of the armed forces in tense and volatile environments and increasing the potential for escalation and violence – intended or inadvertent. When sanctions already are in place and when partner participation is unlikely, accepting the burdens and risks of military action should be weighed carefully against the availability of other tools of influence. The second lesson is that when the decision is made to call the military into action, its coercive effect is optimized when US demands are made clearly and with specificity, and the operation includes the movement of forces from outside into the theater of challenge. The type of action also matters. Air and naval assets are demonstrated to be the especially effective in certain situations, while in others, ground forces are a powerful and influential tool. If and when the choice is made to invoke ground troops, however, they should be sent in sizeable numbers.

Notes 1 There are subtle but important differences in the literature concerning the definitions of deterrence, compellence, and “coercive diplomacy,” principally between the canonical contributions of Thomas Schelling and Alexander George. George, for example, defines deterrence as distinct from coercive diplomacy, which he conceives as necessarily responding to some precipitating event. However, we sought to reconcile this by including the concept of “rollback deterrence,” defined as a proximate response to a perceived violation of a standing deterrent posture, within “deterrence,” thus rendering the deterrence/compellence framework adequate for our purposes. In this way we attempt to bridge the conceptual divide between Schelling’s and George’s definitions of coercion while staying consistent with the most widely accepted understanding of these core concepts. c.f., Thomas C. Schelling, Arms and Influence (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1966); Alexander L. George, Forceful Persuasion: Coercive Diplomacy as an Alternative to War (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1991); Robert J. Art and Patrick M. Cronin, eds., The United States and Coercive Diplomacy (Washington, DC: US Institute of Peace, 2003); Kelly M. Greenhill and Peter Krause, Coercion: The Power to Hurt in International Politics (Oxford University Press, 2017). 2 The dataset and statistical analyses done on it represent a thorough collection of unclas­ sified, publicly available information about the efforts undertaken by the military and the public explanations of those efforts made by policymakers and defense officials. It does not account for the clandestine elements of coercive operations. Elaboration of the research approach taken is provided in the Short of War Dataset Technical Appendix. 3 Troop Presence is based on permanently stationed personnel as reported by the Defense Manpower Data Center. www.dmdc.osd.mil/appj/dwp/dwp_reports.jsp Data on troops totals from 1991–2005 were collected by Tim Kane of the Heritage Foundation and are available here: www.heritage.org/defense/report/global-us-troop-deployment-1950-2005; troop levels for 2006 and 2007 were unavailable and are estimated by averaging the data from 2005 and 2008.

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4 Structuring of case transitions is explained in the Dataset Technical Appendix. It also is to be expected that each targeted actor was aware of, and potentially highly attuned to, the reasons, type, nature, and outcomes of US efforts to coerce others, though these effects are difficult to capture through data. 5 The full set is elaborated in Technical Appendix A

6 Coding rules available in Technical Appendix A.

7 These are generated using a bootstrap.

8 See note 3 above.

9 The forms of coercion undertaken by the United States during this period were deter­ rence and compellence. For purposes of analysis, this means that when the United States applied the “treatment” of deterrence, the “non-treatment” category was compellence. 10 Comparison is of brigade- to battalion-sized ground deployments, large to small air power commitments, and large to small naval commitments. The presence of the other military branches was included as a control. The size of ground forces captured in the dataset vary widely, from a few as 20 to as many as 130,000. Air assets range from 1–731 planes, and naval assets range from 1–133 ships. 11 An ARG generally comprises an Amphibious Assault Ship (LHA or LHD), an Amphi­ bious Transport Dock (LPD) and Dock Landing Ship (LSD), as well as a Marine Expe­ ditionary Unit of approximately 2,200 Marines and Sailors. See “The Amphibious Ready Group,” United States Navy, accessed September 20, 2019. www.navy.mil/navydata/ news/.www/arg.html; “15th Marine Expeditionary Unit,” United States Marine Corps, accessed September 20, 2019. www.15thmeu.marines.mil/About/What-is-a-MEU/ 12 James Siebens, “How Postponing a Wargame Helped Create a Diplomatic Opening,” Defense One, March 12, 2018, accessed July 10, 2019. www.defenseone.com/ideas/ 2018/03/how-postponing-wargame-helped-create-diplomatic-opening/146595/ 13 Meghan L. O’Sullivan, “Iran and the Great Sanctions Debate,” The Washington Quar­ terly, 33(4), (October 2010): 7–21, accessed August 1, 2019. www.belfercenter.org/sites/ default/files/files/publication/Iran%20and%20the%20Great%20Sanctions%20Debate.pdf; Gary Clyde Hufbauer, Jeffrey J. Schott, and Barbara Oegg, eds, Economic Sanctions Reconsidered, 3rd Edition, (Peterson Institute for International Economics, June 2009); Thomas G. Weiss, “Sanctions as a Foreign Policy Tool: Weighing Humanitarian Impulses,” Journal of Peace Research 36(5), (1999): 499–509, accessed August 14, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022343399036005001 14 The dataset captures only the existence of sanctions, not their type, and not whether they were applied specifically to achieve the same outcomes sought through military action. T. Clifton Morgan, Navin Bapat, and Yoshi Kobayashi, “The Threat and Imposition of Sanctions: Updating the TIES dataset,” Conflict Management and Peace Sci­ ence 31(5), 2014: 541–558; US Department of the Treasury. Sources used: “Sanctions Programs and Country Information,” Resource Center, accessed July 11, 2019. www. treasury.gov/resource-center/sanctions/Programs/Pages/Programs.aspx; Clara Portela and Christian von Soest, “GIGA Sanctions Dataset,” Datorium, accessed July 11, 2019. DOI: 10.7802/1346. 15 CNN Wire Staff, “Iran says U.S. warships in Persian Gulf spawn ‘mayhem’,” CNN, January 5, 2012, accessed August 14, 2019. www.cnn.com/2012/01/04/world/meast/ iran-strait/index.html; Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, “U.S. Slaps Sanctions On Iranian Intelligence Ministry,” Radio Free Europe, February 16, 2012, accessed August 14, 2019. www.rferl.org/a/us_slaps_sanctions_on_iranian_ministry/24486845.html; Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, “Iran holds military maneuvers,” Radio Free Europe, May 23, 2012, accessed August 14, 2019. www.refworld.org/docid/4fc8adb928.html 16 Kenneth A. Schultz, Democracy and Coercive Diplomacy (Cambridge, UK; New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2001).

4 SYRIA Stumbling into stalemate Alex Bollfrass

Both the Obama and Trump Administrations objected to, and attempted to deter, Syria’s use of chemical weapons. The specific aim was to cause the Assad regime to refrain from using chemical munitions in fighting its civil war without the United States becoming a combatant. Neither administration achieved this aim in full. Nonetheless, the combined effect of their approaches was a creditable reduction in the chemical munitions available to the Syrian government’s forces and a poten­ tially lasting reduction of their use. Both administrations suffered flaws in their overall policies and strategies toward Syria. Among the most consequential errors in US efforts to shape events were the Obama Administration’s establishing the goal of regime change while excluding the use of military force, a self-imposed limitation that presumably factored into Assad’s decision-making. Another was President Obama’s failure to act when Assad crossed his stated “red line” against chemical weapons use, thus reducing the credibility of any US threats against Assad, throughout the region, and perhaps elsewhere around the globe.1 With cruise missile strikes on an airfield and on Assad’s chemical weapons facil­ ities, both following particularly egregious use of lethal chemical agents, the Trump Administration partially restored the belief that the United States will fulfill its threats. However, Trump’s own stance toward the Syrian conflict – including repeated statements that the US still would not become involved in the civil war – undermined American credibility in other ways and may have encouraged the Syrian regime to continue to commit atrocities against its own population, including the use of crude chlorine bombs. The Syrian government’s motivations for using its chemical weapon stocks against internal enemies and civilians have been difficult to understand. To external obser­ vers, the costs have always appeared higher than the benefits. Though consistently denied by the Assad government, the use of chemical munitions not only has been

Syria 59

met with considerable international condemnation, including the eventual imposi­ tion of sanctions, but also has never correlated with battlefield successes for Syrian government forces. A recent analysis in fact found “no evidence that their use pro­ vided clear military advantages or significantly reshaped control of contested terri­ tories.”2 Even years later, then-Secretary of State John Kerry struggles to explain why Syria has been willing to accept international opprobrium for no clear benefit: I wondered what combination of desperation, miscalculation, weakness and bloodless evil had led him to this point. I’d probably spent more hours with Assad in 2009 than any American other than, perhaps, the American ambas­ sador. Assad always seemed slightly in over his head. I wondered whether he had been led into this barbaric act by his family or if this was his initiative to regain battlefield momentum and remake the brutal playbook his father had used in the Hama massacre, when twenty thousand of his Syrian countrymen were wiped out.3 In the absence of hard evidence, the best explanation to emerge several years into the conflict is that Syria’s government, “took a calculated risk to demonstrate its own impunity and the West’s impotence, thereby demoralizing opposition forces.”4 In effect, chemical attacks are Assad’s show of confidence in eventual victory and a signal to the opposition that “continued rebellion was futile and international support was lacking.”5 Because it has not been possible to study internal documents and the Assad regime continues to deny that it uses chemical weapons, the question of what motivates their use remains a fundamental problem for American policymakers: it is difficult to change a government’s behavior if one does not understand what causes it.

Syria’s civil war in context The United States was confronted with whether and how to prevent the use of chemical weapons in Syria in the broader context of the so-called “Arab Spring” and its own long-standing involvement in the region and its conflicts. Both administrations would contend with the immediate social, cultural, and political dynamics of the Arab Spring, as well as with the historical implications and future imperatives of US interests in the Middle East.

The Arab Spring A series of anti-government demonstrations that began in Tunisia in 2011 and quickly spread to several other Arab nations, known as the Arab Spring, presented the Obama Administration with the problem of whether and how to invest the weight of American influence to support democratization in the region. While the issue was sorted out in most countries with only modest American involvement, if any, what began in March 2011 as peaceful anti-regime protests in Syria escalated to a

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revolution, became a civil war, and continued through this writing as an international proxy conflict. Over the months and years following its inception, the Syrian revolu­ tion would shatter into multiple fronts involving violent groups of many ideological and ethnic stripes, ranging from ISIS to pro-Iranian militias to Kurdish nationalists. The most critical precursor to American actions – and non-actions – in Syria arose in Libya. NATO’s air campaign against the Qaddafi government in Libya began during the same week as the start of the Syrian uprising. For Syria, the Libyan experience would curtail American policy options both domestically and internationally. Fearing that Libya’s leader, Muammar Qaddafi, would suppress an uprising with indiscriminate killing, the United States and other North Atlantic Treaty Organiza­ tion (NATO) nations in March 2011 mounted air operations that successfully degraded forces loyal to Qaddafi’s and made it impossible for them to extinguish the revolution. The intervention was justified (and authorized by the United Nations Security Council, or UNSC) by Qaddafi’s threats to use indiscriminate force against civilians. US and allied forces were able to achieve their objectives at low cost.6 The Obama Administration was aware of the parallels between the situations in Libya, where US air power was being brought to bear against a repressive autocrat, and in Syria, which had received only stern warnings about respecting human rights. From its earliest days in office, the administration had explored improving the United States’ long-standing adversarial relations with Syria.7 In a March 27, 2011 television interview, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton grounded the differ­ ence in policy in an assessment of the two leaders. While Qaddafi had “behaved in a way that caused grave concern in the past forty-plus years,” Assad had potential as a reformer who needed to reign in his security forces: Many of the members of Congress of both parties who have gone to Syria in recent months have said they believe he’s a reformer. What’s been happening there the last few weeks is – is deeply concerning. But there’s a difference between calling out aircraft and indiscriminately strafing and bombing your own cities, then police actions, which frankly have exceeded the use of force that any of us would want to see.8 During the opening phases of the Syrian civil conflict, the Obama Administration largely acted as an uneasy observer. As the fighting escalated, Obama issued his first major announcement on US Syria policy in August 2011. Moving away from passive observation and hope for reform, Obama announced that, “the time has come for President Assad to step aside.” However, he continued, while the United States would work toward a change in Syrian leadership, “by pressuring President Assad to get out of the way of this transition, and standing up for the universal rights of the Syrian people along with others in the international community,” Obama emphatically excluded the use of force: “The United States cannot and will not impose this transi­ tion upon Syria.”9 Assad stepping aside thus would be a wish, not a goal.10 Report­ edly, this passive stance came about in part because policymakers assumed that the Syrian government would fall on its own over the course of the next months.11

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On September 1, Clinton called on those governments seeking Assad’s resigna­ tion to, “translate our rhetoric into concrete actions to escalate the pressure on Assad and those around him, including strong new sanctions targeting Syria’s energy sector to deny the regime the revenues that fund its campaign of violence.” In a UN speech a few weeks later, Obama called for UNSC sanctions against the Syrian government, framing the decision with the question, “Will we stand with the Syrian people, or with their oppressors?” Over the following month, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dempsey, twice clarified that this stand with the Syrian people would stop well short of military action.12 In October came the denouement of NATO’s intervention in Libya, arriving with a US Predator drone firing a hellfire missile at Qaddafi’s car. An injured Qaddafi was recovered by militants on the ground, and his gruesome death sub­ sequently recorded on a video quickly seen around the world.13 Russian thenPrime Minister Vladimir Putin, infuriated by what he deemed an unacceptable use of a UNSC-sanctioned civilian protection mission to justify American-led regime change, was reported to have been especially shocked by the tape.14 The then-Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, directly linked Qaddafi’s death to Assad’s later use of chemical weapons in the determination to remain in power at all cost.15 Four days later, the United States withdrew its ambassador from Syria. While the Assad government could have interpreted this as a signal of forthcoming American military operations, on November 28th Dempsey once again announced that military options were not in consideration.16 Dempsey was the first senior leader to speak again about the conflict in Syria in February 2012.17 He dismissed the possibility of providing arms to selected oppo­ sition groups, calling it, “premature to take a decision,” because it was difficult to find appropriate opposition forces and that the US did not want to be seen by the many regional and global actors as taking sides in the broader “Sunni-Shia com­ petition.”18 He also described Syria as “an arena right now for all of the various interests to play out,” depicting the conflict as an international proxy war and noting specifically the roles of Turkey, Russia, and Iran. As a result, in mid-2012, American policymakers remained reluctant to become actively involved in Syria. Obama and now President Putin had discussed the conflict, but the US president was unable to persuade the latter to sign on to stricter sanction on the Syrian government.19 The administration also continued to resist calls in Congress to arm the Syrian opposition. This reluctance, and later US decision-making, arose from the broader context of President Obama’s Middle East policy.

US interests in the Middle East In the midst of the changes wrought by the Arab Spring, American policymakers had still to account for its system of Middle East alliances. Its NATO ally, Turkey, vacil­ lated during the war, first calling for Assad’s resignation and then, “as the conflict deepened,” becoming “nervous about feared domestic and regional fallout.”20 Ankara also grew increasingly concerned about Kurdish-administered areas of Syria on its own

62 A. Bollfrass

border, which it viewed as a base for separatist Kurds in Turkey.21 These Syrian Kurdish groups were allied with the US-backed anti-Assad coalition. Russia shared the hortatory aim of ending violence in Syria but was not willing to sanction the use of force through the United Nations. It would become the most consequential sponsor of the Syrian government. Over time, its support would include direct military assistance, the deployment and active participation of Russian forces in fighting the rebels, and providing diplomatic cover at the UN Security Council. Iran also emerged as a major backer of the Assad government, including through the deployment of Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps forces and training Syrian pro-government militias. The conflict in Syria thereby became inextricably linked with US efforts to resolve the dispute over Iran’s nuclear program through nego­ tiations. Saudi Arabia was not on Dempsey’s list, although the reference to SunniShia competition was unmistakable. Israeli interests, too, were critical to the regional context. The United States’ close military partnership with, and fundamental commitment to, Israel’s security was constant during both the Obama and Trump Administrations. Israel disagreed seriously with the Obama Administration’s approach to Iran, however, while the Trump Administration embraced long-desired Israeli policy goals, such as recogni­ tion of Jerusalem as its capital. Both the Obama and Trump Administrations also had general foreign and domestic policy agendas that influenced their decisions on Syria. A core premise of Obama’s candidacy was rejection of the George W. Bush Administration’s Middle East policy. Obama considered the 2003 invasion of Iraq to democratize Iraq and disarm Saddam Hussein of his alleged WMD programs the showcase of “dumb wars.”22 Once in office, the administration sought to wind down the American involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as to improve relations with Iran. A core Obama foreign policy aim became an effort to direct attention away from the Middle Eastern counter-terrorism focus and toward the economic and geopolitical challenges and opportunities in the Asia-Pacific region. For his part, Donald Trump had been critical of Obama’s approach Syria even before taking office, despite also expressing reluctance about US military involve­ ment. Unlike his predecessor’s concerns about regional complexities, however, President Trump’s core theme had been that American involvement in the Syrian civil war would detract resources that could be used for other national interests, both domestic and foreign. Finally, politically, the relationship between the executive and legislative bran­ ches on governing the use of force has mattered, although differently for the Obama and Trump Administrations. If plans to enforce the taboo on use of che­ mical weapons were to involve force, especially kinetic targeting of another state’s military and infrastructure, the congressional authority to declare war, repeated in the War Powers Resolution of 1973, could limit executive actions. The composi­ tion of the legislature therefore can shape an administration’s ability to coerce abroad effectively.

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Yet in the post-9/11 era, presidents also have the option of invoking the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), which was exercised by both the George W. Bush and the Barack Obama Administrations for ongoing military operations. Even so, presidents have at times sought congressional expressions of support for military activities overseas, in order to share the risk of political blowback if the action proves unpopular at home.23 Notably, by the time Syria’s vio­ lence began, Obama was faced with both houses being under the control of the opposing Republican Party, while during Trump’s first two years in office, the Republican Congress generally supported his foreign policies. Obama and Trump thus both took the position that Assad’s use of chemical weapons was unacceptable and sought to enforce that position while accounting for the complicated politics of the Middle East, US regional interests, and domestic constraints. They did so, however, while holding highly divergent worldviews and facing different compositions in Congress.

From objectives to actions As the Syrian conflict evolved, the United States was confronted repeatedly with challenges to the long-standing prohibition on the use of chemical weapons. In the summer of 2012, the Syrian government’s position appeared to weaken, and its for­ eign ministry admitted to holding stocks of CW.24 Syria pledged that these would never be used domestically, but rather solely in defense against external enemies.25 On August 20th, Obama first addressed this thinly veiled threat about the use of chemical weapons in Syria: I have, at this point, not ordered military engagement in the situation. […] We cannot have a situation where chemical or biological weapons are falling into the hands of the wrong people. We have been very clear to the Assad regime, but also to other players on the ground, that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized. That would change my calculus. That would change my equation.26 Asked by a reporter in the same discussion whether he was confident that Syria’s weapons were safely stored and unlikely to be used, Obama articulated the “red line” that would come to define his administration’s Syria policy: We have communicated in no uncertain terms with every player in the region that that’s a red line for us and that there would be enormous consequences if we start seeing movement on the chemical weapons front or the use of chemical weapons. That would change my calculations significantly (emphasis added).27 Linking “military engagement” with the status of Syria’s chemical and biological weapons, Obama articulated as a “red line” not only the use of these munitions, but their movement. In a signal that the issue was being taken seriously by the

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entire administration, a State Department official announced three days later that the United States was actively monitoring the status of Syrian chemical weapons.28 Nonetheless, chemical weapons were first suspected in the deaths of seven people on December 23, 2012 in Homs. In public, the White House denied that there was reliable evidence, but chemical weapons use became incontrovertible after two separate March 19, 2013 incidents that produced symptoms of exposure to sarin.29 The next day, Obama appeared to acknowledge that his August state­ ment had failed to deter, confirming that “the use of chemical weapons is a game changer.”30 His red line had been breached. The Obama Administration grappled with how to respond to the “game chan­ ger,” if at all. It dedicated the first few months to establishing whether the nowmounting reports of chemical warfare were accurate. Recollections differ about the cause of the delay in establishing the facts. In the memoir of a senior presidential aid, the “intelligence community was resistant to snap judgments” following the incorrect assessment of Iraq’s supposed WMD programs in 2003, producing a delay of “a period of months before the intelligence community formally determined that the Assad regime had in fact used chemical weapons.”31 The then-Director of National Intelligence recounts in contrast that the Obama Administration was resistant to a formal determination of the facts: Because President Obama had previously declared that any use of chemical weapons would warrant US military action, in 2013 the White House would much rather we not announce we had proof that Assad and Syria had crossed President Obama’s famous “red line.” National Security Advisor Tom Doni­ lon seemed to keep raising the evidentiary bar we needed to meet before he believed our reports, and we kept meeting each new challenge until I finally told his deputy, Denis McDonough, in a sidebar meeting at a Principals Committee meeting that we could no longer avoid telling Congress about what had become an elephant in the living room.32 Because the Syrian government denied that it had used chemical weapons, blaming insurgents for the attacks, and many people in the US and abroad were indeed skeptical of Western intelligence assessments after the misinformation on WMD that had been used to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq, several international actors called for independent investigations.33 The UN’s secretary general had already announced a joint investigation with the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) and the World Health Organization, which the French and British governments had been advocating. The administration also attempted to redefine the red-line in a manner that expanded the boundary conditions in an on-the-record press conference by a senior presidential aide: The President has been clear that the use of chemical weapons – or the transfer of chemical weapons to terrorist groups – is a red line for the United

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States, as there has long been an established norm within the international community against the use of chemical weapons.34 The aide explained that, “the Assad regime should know that its actions have led us to increase the scope and scale of assistance that we provide to the opposition,” and that these measures would “increase going forward.”35 He also drew attention to the “other legal, financial, diplomatic, and military responses available” to the United States. This restraint from active response ceased following an August 2013 sarin attack that produced hundreds of fatalities. The blatant breach had the effect of unifying the US administration around the desirability of a limited punitive strike, with even the previously hesitant DOD leadership concurring: Now there seemed to be unanimity that we had to respond forcefully, even with uncertainty about the next step. The question was what and when. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey and Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel both expressed their support for limited military action.36 Members of the administration had multiple overlapping reasons for favoring air strikes; interestingly, however, there is no evidence that primary among these reasons was the belief that limited military punishment would achieve the objective of deterring Assad from using chemical weapons in the future. Instead, arguments lar­ gely were dominated by concerns about American credibility. Former Secretary of State Clinton was clear that a response was necessary to meet an iron law of state­ craft: “If you say you’re going to strike, you have to strike. There’s no choice,” and Vice President Biden “argued passionately that ‘big nations don’t bluff’.”37 John Kerry too was concerned with preserving a reputation for honoring commit­ ments, though was more balanced in acknowledging the possibility of other benefits. Kerry both was attentive to the effects of non-response on Russia and Iran, and con­ sidered that a strike may have “bigger potential value” in initiating diplomacy, or even that “Assad might see that he couldn’t gas his way out of a civil war.”38 The most vocal dissenter from this consensus was Denis McDonough, the president’s chief of staff, who was “concerned it was not in our strategic interest to get pulled into Syria.”39 This wariness reflected the Obama Administration’s strategic intention of extricating the country from its military engagements in the Middle East. To his cabinet and staff’s surprise, Obama sided more with this dissenting view and postponed the strikes in favor of seeking congressional approval. He later explained his reasons: The overwhelming weight of conventional wisdom and the machinery of our national-security apparatus had gone fairly far. The perception was that my credibility was at stake, that America’s credibility was at stake. […] And the fact that I was able to pull back from the immediate pressures and think through in my own mind what was in America’s interest, not only with respect to Syria but

66 A. Bollfrass

also with respect to our democracy, was as tough a decision as I’ve made – and I believe ultimately it was the right decision to make.40 If he was to lead the United States into another Middle Eastern war, Obama seemed to think, he wanted the political responsibility to be broadly shared with the legislative branch and the opposition party. The closest to a full account of Obama’s explanation at the time is in the memoir of a senior aide, Ben Rhodes, a witness sympathetic to the former president: Obama laid out his thinking: He had decided to seek congressional authorization for strikes on Syria. At some point, he said, a president alone couldn’t keep the United States on a perpetual war footing, moving from one Middle Eastern conflict to the next. In the decade since 9/11, we’d gone to war in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, and Libya. Now there was a demand that we go into Syria; next it would be Iran. “It is too easy for a president to go to war,” he said. “That quote from me in 2007—I agree with that guy. That’s who I am. And sometimes the least obvious thing to do is the right thing.” If he attacked Syria without congressional author­ ization, the Republicans would come after him, and it would be impossible to sus­ tain any military engagement in Syria. If we got congressional authorization for an attack on Syria, everyone would be in on the action, and we’d have more cred­ ibility – legally, politically, and internationally. If we couldn’t, we shouldn’t act.41 It is also possible that Obama expected Congress to vote against military action, as had happened with the prime minister of Great Britain who was unable to secure a parliamentary majority authorizing participation in a military operation. Such an outcome would allow Congress to absorb the political responsibility for a course Obama secretly favored. Indeed, congressional approval for military action in Syria was widely viewed at the time as being, at best, highly unlikely.42

The strikes that weren’t Strike preparations and consultations with French military leaders ensued, and on September 9 Kerry, in response to a reporter’s question about what Assad might do to forestall strikes, said: Sure, he could turn over every single bit of his chemical weapons to the international community in the next week - turn it over, all of it without delay and allow the full and total accounting (of it) but he isn’t about to do it and it can’t be done.43 In his memoirs, Kerry described his statement as “bait” for Russia and Syria. No interagency policy process had developed the option, although it had been a point of discussion between him and Russia’s foreign minister.44 The Russian govern­ ment seized the bait on the same day. In response to the Kremlin’s initiative,

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Obama announced the administration would postpone seeking congressional approval for military action while he tested the viability of “this diplomatic path.”45 These improvised comments provided an opening for a Russian-brokered and UN Security Council-approved plan for the verified elimination of Syria’s chemi­ cal munitions and their supporting infrastructure.46 Syria agreed to join the Che­ mical Weapons Convention (CWC) and was required to give an accounting of its entire CW stockpile within a week and its destruction by the first half of 2014.47 A UNSC resolution that authorizes the use of force backed the agreement internationally. OPCW inspectors started their work under the auspices of the agreement almost immediately. Six months after the cancelled strike and Russian-brokered agree­ ment, international inspectors were operating in the country and about one third of Syria’s declared chemical weapons stocks had been shipped out of the country for destruction. Despite Syria’s less-than-enthusiastic cooperation with OPCW inspectors, most particularly about disclosure of the full extent of the program, weapons removal was considered complete in June 2014. OPCW continued to monitor the disabling of the military infrastructure, such as hangars and bunkers, that had supported CW use, and reported at that time that the OPCW had “ver­ ified the destruction of 25 of the 27 chemical weapons production facilities” with preparations under way for elimination of the final two.48 This removal of large quantities of advanced chemical weapons was a major interim success for the Obama Administration. Nevertheless, it is difficult to ima­ gine that repeating what was for the Obama Administration an uncharacteristically chaotic policy process would lead reliably to the same outcome. Indeed, a more probable explanation may be that Russia was as slow as were Kerry and other administration insiders to detect the depth of Obama’s reluctance to use force. Like the American cabinet, the Russian government may have believed military action was imminent and so moved to convince Syria to surrender its chemical weapons — or at least many of them – to preempt American military involvement.

Assad isn’t done yet The use of chlorine bombs at the beginning of April 2014 marked the return to chemical warfare in the ongoing Syrian conflict, even as more advanced chemical munitions were still being exported for destruction. The US-Russia disarmament agreement had not included chlorine, a common industrial chemical, although its use as a weapon is prohibited under the terms of the Chemical Weapons Con­ vention the Syrians had signed. Moreover, the use of a “Sarin-like substance” in February 2015 and sulfur mustard later that summer indicated that Syria had not declared its full stock of chemical weapons.49 In October, the OPCW-UN Joint Investigative Mechanism announced its conclusions that the Syrian government had been responsible for several of these chlorine attacks.50 A March 6 UNSC resolution threatened the use of force if chemical weapons were used again.

68 A. Bollfrass

Unsurprisingly for an administration reluctant to become involved in Syria, the Obama Administration started from a position of restraint. Its overall goals – var­ iously identified as protecting Syrian civilians against CW use, defending the antiCW norm, and preventing the spread of chemical weapons to terrorist actors – were expansive relative to the resources it seemed willing to bring to bear to achieve them. The notion was that a communicated policy of no-tolerance for chemical weapons use would be adequate to put, “a chill into the Assad regime,” and that it was possible to do so without, “trapping [Obama] into any pre­ determined action.”51 Obama’s phrasing of the “red line” exceeded the aim of retaining presidential latitude. Although anonymous White House officials later claimed Obama had only intended to deter large-scale attacks, in essence implying that the incidents that had occurred were not of sufficient magnitude to cross the red line, it was Kerry’s introduction of the potential for a negotiated resolution that ultimately salvaged Obama’s overreach.

Enter Trump The Trump Administration assumed office after the Russian-brokered and UN/ OPCW-monitored CW removal program had been shown to have been incom­ plete by the alleged sarin and mustard gas attacks and to have overlooked another noxious agent, chlorine gas. Just over one month into the Trump Administration’s first term, additional chlorine attacks in Syria were reported. A larger CW cam­ paign in March followed a brief respite, this time including sarin. Contrary to his earlier statements about American non-involvement with Syria, the president stated on Twitter: Many dead including women and children in mindless CHEMICAL attack in Syria. Area of atrocity is in lockdown and encircled by Syrian Army making it completely inaccessible to outside world. President Putin Russia and Iran are responsible for backing Animal Assad. Big price. […] If President Obama had crossed his stated Red Line In The Sand the Syrian disaster would have ended long ago! Animal Assad would have been history!52 An emergency UNSC meeting was held to discuss these attacks, but the permanent members could not negotiate a consensus position. While the United States favored creating a UN Independent Mechanism of Investigation to determine who had carried out the attacks, Russia insisted on having the UNSC keep strict control. The Trump Administration soon demonstrated it would act on its own, instead. On April 6th, a combined 59 British, French, and American missiles struck targets at the Shayrat air base believed to have been involved in the chemical attacks.53 Two Arleigh Burke-class destroyers in the Mediterranean, the USS Porter and the USS Ross, fired the American cruise missiles. Neither Syrian nor Russian air defenses attempted to intercept the missiles.54 This strike package was more limited than had been

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envisioned in 2013, and Trump in fact selected the smallest attack plan presented to him. The United States also forewarned the Russians so that they – and the Syrians – could remove assets from the targeted airfield.55 As intended, the missiles did not harm the Russian helicopters and crews at the air field, and damage to Syrian air forces was limited, with only around ten aircraft destroyed and an equal number of fatalities.56 The base could conduct operations again in a matter of days. In June, the White House announced intelligence findings suggestive of pre­ parations for yet another chemical offensive. Reminding the world of the admin­ istration’s narrow counterterrorism objectives in Syria, the official issued a direct warning. Should “Mr. Assad conduct another mass murder attack using chemical weapons, he and his military will pay a heavy price.”57 Sporadic chlorine, but not other chemical agents, attacks continued through 2017 and into 2018, focused largely on rebel-held territory in Douma, a suburb of Damascus. The United States, the UN, and other international actors and multi­ lateral organizations continued to condemn Assad, yet no direct reprisals were forthcoming. This changed when, in early April 2018, reports emerged indicating that Assad had escalated his use of CW to resolve the standoff in Douma. Although it was unclear what agent or agents had been used, dozens were killed.58 The event produced a proliferation of agonizing videos, images, and reports that captured international attention – including Trump’s. The administration’s response was, as a Trump tweet promised, to dispatch “nice and new and ‘smart!’” missiles. On April 13, 2018 the United States, Britain, and France conducted coordinated air strikes on three of Assad’s chemical weapon facilities. Double the size of the operation on the airfield one year earlier, Trump described this more sizable strike’s purpose as establishing, “a strong deterrent against the production, spread, and use of chemical weapons” and asserted that the US was, “prepared to sustain this response until the Syrian regime stops its use of prohibited chemical agents.”59 On Twitter, the president expressed his satisfaction after the fact: “A perfectly executed strike last night. Thank you to France and the United Kingdom for their wisdom and the power of their fine military. Could not have had a better result. Mission Accomplished!” Unlike his predecessor’s announced intention, Trump did not consult Congress in advance of either strike. While he almost certainly would have received support, it may be that he did not wish to establish a precedent of needing congressional approval for military activity. Although it had signaled disinterest in the events in Syria at the beginning of its term, once confronted with large-scale attacks, the Trump Administration adopted a set of objectives consistent with those of its predecessor. For both administrations, hortatory language alone did not influence the Assad government. Instead, Syria moved only when US threats were backed by demonstrated capability and intention. For Obama, the red line did not produce adjustment in Assad’s position; rather, Syrian ratification of the CWC and accession to verification and removal of stocks in August 2013 required observable military preparations. Russian involvement

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must also be considered a necessary ingredient, presumably because it could both pressure and assure the Syrian government. As a reliable veto preventing UN sanctions and a huge provider of military and intelligence aid, Russia held enor­ mous leverage.60 For Trump, although his statements criticizing the Obama Administration’s Syria policy may have had the unfortunate and unintended effect of suggesting to Assad that he would be even less likely than had been Obama to respond to CW use, the 2017 strike seems to have corrected that perception. Despite again testing limits through a ratcheting up in scale of improvised chlorine devices into 2018, Syria did not retaliate against US interests directly and, insofar as is known to date, has ceased using advanced chemical weapons.

Assessing US coercive actions How does the above chronology of chemical weapon events in Syria and US responses align with US policy objectives? How closely can Assad’s actions be related to anticipated and/or affected US military actions? And what is to be understood from those associations that might inform decision-makers in the future?

US policy objectives Both Trump and Obama were confronted with the challenge of addressing Assad’s use of chemical weapons without compromising the United States’ other interests in the Middle East. As noted previously, this involved managing simultaneously the relationships with Israel and other allies, keeping watch on Iran, being wary of Russia’s geopolitical ambitions, and reassuring the US domestic audience that another engagement in regional conflict was not in the offing. Within this context, the Obama and Trump Administrations arrived at the same desired end-point: that Assad should stop using chemical weapons, and that despite preferring that he not remain Syria’s leader, the United States should not remove Assad from power or otherwise become a direct participant in the civil conflict. In the first instance, the United States had reason to be uncomfortable with the frag­ mented, opaque, and in some cases extremist nature of the opposition.61 So, too, were both administrations sensitive to the conflict’s proxy nature and the resulting larger strategic risk of involvement. President Trump, in particular, highlighted the possibility that becoming a combatant in Syria could draw the United States into an unwanted escalation dynamic, most likely with Russia: “What will we get for bombing Syria besides more debt and a possible long-term conflict?”62 Both presidents also shared the goal of limiting US military engagement in the broader Middle East beyond counterterrorism missions. Obama’s desire to redirect US attention and resources away from the Middle East was long-held and well known, and his administration was explicit about the limits of American influence in the region:

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The stability of Syria is vital to the region – and to Turkey, Lebanon, Iraq, and Israel. All of these countries and the United States have a strong interest in preventing a humanitarian crisis in Syria.… We all wish there was a clear and unambiguous way forward to directly influence the events in Syria. That unfortunately is not the case.63 At the same time, the United States was committed to preventing the immediate human suffering chemical attacks were causing in Syria, and to forestalling degra­ dation of the global norm against use of weapons of mass destruction. Both the Obama and Trump administrations referenced the potentially global implications of Assad’s possession and use of chemical weapons, and the United States response thereto.64 The significance of, and the need to defend, the norm against CW thus was highlighted by both administrations in statements which emphasized that third parties should believe that there is a special cost for killing civilians in this way: It matters that nearly a hundred years ago, in direct response to the utter horror and inhumanity of World War I, that the civilized world agreed that chemical weapons should never be used again. That was the world’s resolve then, and that began nearly a century of effort to create a clear redline for the international community.65 [I]t’s important to recognize that as Assad has continued to use chemical weapons in these attacks with no response – no response from the international community – that he, in effect, is normalizing the use of chemical weapons, which may then be adopted by others. So it’s important that some action be taken on behalf of the international community to make clear that the use of chemical weapons continues to be a violation of international norms.66 Protection of Syrian civilians and defense of the global norm against chemical weapons could be achieved in one of two ways: by eliminating Syria’s CW cap­ ability; or by convincing the Assad government not to use them. Both approaches, however, would be subject to the limitations imposed by the United States’ pos­ ture of strategic restraint. Destroying CW stocks through air or missile strikes – the avenue available to the United States given its unwillingness to engage more directly – can lead to their dispersal. This renders physical destruction an obviously poor fit with the goal of ensuring the weapons cause no harm. Moreover, there would be no way to verify that aerial bombardment had reduced Syria’s stores to zero. Obama understood the implications of this limitation: We could not, through a missile strike, eliminate the chemical weapons them­ selves, and what I would then face was the prospect of Assad having survived the strike and claiming he had successfully defied the United States, that the United States had acted unlawfully in the absence of a UN mandate, and that that would have potentially strengthened his hand rather than weakened it.67

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Different from Obama’s approach, when confronted with larger-scale incidents, the Trump Administration fashioned its response as an effort to affect Assad’s behavior, rather than to eliminate his capabilities. To be sure, the bombing of CW factories can be expected to impede their development, and yet the administration was direct in identifying the strike’s purpose as seeking to shape Assad’s future choices. Assad could continue to use prohibited weapons, so long as he also was willing to accept a sustained military response from the United States. A final consideration bears noting here. Although to fashion it as a policy objective would be to endow it with more premeditation than the historical record currently suggests it merits, it is nonetheless the case that defense of US credibility came to be a factor in both administrations’ decision processes. For both, it was the derivative product of Obama’s improvised red line. The fact of, and Obama’s stated reasons for, his decision not to strike after the red line had been both established and violated indicate that he found imperatives other than personal or national credibility to be more compelling. Trump’s derision of Obama’s policy of “appeasement,” his assessment that this had, “set us back a long ways, not only in Syria, but in many other parts of the world, because it was a blank threat,”68 and his insistence that under his own administration the US would be “tough” provide reason to conclude that his concern with reputation exceeds that of his predecessor.

Outcomes The Obama Administration’s rhetorical objective of removing Assad from power has not been achieved. Instead, with Russian and Iranian assistance, his chances of emerging victorious seem assured, even if re-imposing Syrian sovereignty on small portions of the country may take many years. US counter-ISIS operations indirectly assist the Syrian government, but various US initiatives to arm opposi­ tion factions have had little effect. Notably, before seriously considering air strikes, the Obama Administration had announced that providing lethal aid to government opponents was in retaliation for CW use. The confrontation esca­ lated beyond that issue, but it raises the question of whether the US would have been ready to cease support of Syrian insurgents if Assad had credibly committed not to use chemical weapons. While the Trump Administration succeeded in coordinating with British and French allies, its punitive strikes were not part of a larger regional diplomatic strategy: I also worry that the about-face against the Asad regime is not coordinated diplomatically. We are acting in haste, without making sure that our use of force is serving our political strategy rather than determining it. It is not clear what we are asking Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and other potential partners to do differently or how we are trying to get Asad’s backers, particularly Russia (Iran is a lost cause on this) to decrease their support for the regime.69

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Other than restoring confidence in US willingness to use force in the region, the momentum of positive reactions to the strikes has not been harnessed into achieving longer-term objectives. Nonetheless, even if not as the product of pre­ meditated policy, the Obama Administration was able to go a great distance toward eliminating Syria’s capability by levying enough of a threat to use force that Russia and the Assad government became willing to negotiate the removal of Syrian CW – 1,300 tons of it.70 This did not prevent Assad from turning to the use of undeclared stores or to the use of chlorine, a weapon prohibited by the Chemical Weapons Convention he had just signed. Members of the Obama Administration have since stated that these facts are consistent with their goals, which were to minimize the use of CW, not to prevent them in full.71 Whatever one’s view on this justification, it is the case that inspections remain in place, and the weapons available to combatants in Syria are far fewer and less lethal than before the OPCW-supervised removal and destruction process. Trump inherited an ambiguous circumstance, wherein Assad was nominally, but not as we now know actually, fully disarmed and still willing to test the United States’ limits. His use of sarin in March 2017 was followed shortly thereafter by the first of Trump’s missile strikes; it is, to date, the last advanced chemical weapon attack identified by the OPCW. Not yet convinced of the United States’ serious­ ness, however, Assad then adjusted course and began using chlorine gas more profligately. Trump responded with force in April 2018 after a particularly egre­ gious and visible attack. As of the time of this writing, no subsequent report of the Syrian government’s use of chemicals has emerged. No credible information has yet emerged to illuminate the Syrian government’s calculations concerning its chemical weapons generally, about specific instances of their use against internal enemies, or about their reasons for acceding to inspection and dismantlement. Importantly, the extent of Russia’s involvement in Syria’s decision-making also is unknown, as is the extent to which Russia found the jux­ taposition of military preparations alongside what was openly predicted to be an unsuccessful bid of congressional authority to be a convincing threat of force. While Syria has been disarmed considerably, that there has been an at-least twoyear cessation in the use of advanced chemical weapons, and an ongoing period in which there has been no reported use of chlorine or other noxious chemicals against Syria’s civilian population, it is not possible to attribute these outcomes singularly to US policy. This is not to discount the overall positive outcome of the United States’ efforts to coerce Assad. To the contrary, for a conflict without an end in sight, a significant reduction in available chemical weaponry is a positive contribution to limiting the horrors that otherwise could be inflicted on the civi­ lian population. By the measure of retaining the general taboo against use of chemical weapons, the outcome appears somewhat less positive now than it did in the immediate aftermath of the United States’ military actions in Syria. North Korea used chemical weapons in an assassination at a Malaysian airport in February 2017.72 One day after the State Department publicly confirmed that it had been a chemical assassination,

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Russia used chemical agents in an assassination on British soil on March 4th.73 Tar­ geted assassinations are in a different category than the battlefield use of chemical munitions, of course, and so there is still reason to be optimistic, as a number of analysts are, that the US overall has sent the right message about CW use: To the extent that the Syrian case inspires further proliferation and/or use, it is most likely to do so among states who are already outside of the CWC, face an existential threat, or already possess chemical weapons. Even in such instances, the international response to the use of sarin in Syria underscores the costs that may be imposed if more advanced CW are used. Thus, on the basis of our analysis, there is no reason to believe that the Syrian case will lead to significant proliferation and use that will overwhelm the CW norm.74 It also is worth noting that the performance of UN and OPCW inspectors was a considerable bright spot in an otherwise horrific set of events. These organizations have demonstrated an ability to carry out objective verification work amid a war. Even more, despite obstruction by Russia, OPCW inspectors soon will be tasked with identifying the perpetrators of chemical attacks rather than merely analyzing the type and quantity of weapons used.75 This attribution authority by indepen­ dent experts should make it more difficult for states like Syria, Russia, and North Korea to reject evidence of chemical weapons use. Whether what was perceived at the time as Obama’s equivocation about fol­ lowing through on the red line affected US credibility negatively, and whether Trump’s strikes repaired it, is a matter of ongoing debate. Some participants in Obama’s Syria policy later reported that it had made the United States less influ­ ential in the region,76 and a National Intelligence Council report described a per­ ception of US unreliability across the Middle East, arising in part from “unenforced redlines in Syria.”77 Trump, having disparaged Obama on this count, not surprisingly compared his own response to Assad favorably, noting a need to break from the Obama Admin­ istration’s “years of failure.”78 Nonetheless, Trump has had to conduct not one, but two, strikes. Assad’s behavior will be the real arbiter of whether this pair of military responses was adequate to restore the credibility of the United States’ interests in Syria, and its willingness to act in their furtherance, or if more is needed.

Implications The complexities of US interests and relationships in the Middle East, coupled with the specific nature of the Syrian civil war itself, created an especially trouble­ some policy problem for the United States. International and domestic considera­ tions constrained Obama and Trump’s available options to respond to Assad’s use of chemical weapons. Stated another way, strategic imperatives and operational effectiveness were at odds. This challenge was compounded by the fact – so far as open sources reveal – that little was understood about Assad’s reasons for using

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chemical weapons at all, and at specific times and places, beyond the simple and obvious observation that he desired to retain power. This eliminates the possibility of analyzing the extent to which the United States matched its threats and uses of force to the motives animating Assad’s undesirable behavior. Although an important, and arguably the most important, dimension of coercion, it nonetheless is useful to consider the effects of United States behaviors along other dimensions as well, most especially those identified in classic theories of coercion in international politics.79 Such a review reveals that the United States overall did not set itself up for success. Contrary to the generally accepted principle that, in coercion, precision is an indispensable asset, it failed to establish and to communicate clearly and con­ sistently to Assad the behaviors that were proscribed, and the response their dis­ covery would invoke. It therefore is no surprise that the shifting nature of the red line, and both administrations’ vague articulations of policy, have been widely criticized.80 During Obama’s term there was a lack of clarity on which type of action would cross that line and therefore trigger an American response – taking CW out of storage, transferring operational control, use, how much was used? This lack of specificity was matched by equally vague indications of what the United States would do in reaction to any one, or all, such infractions. Trump, too, as candidate and as president with a high rate of rotation among his policy principals, sent signals covering the entire spectrum of policy options without direct ties to specific offenses.81 Theories of coercion give equal emphasis to the credibility of assurance that the threat will not be carried out if the target complies with the demand. Obama’s red line was preceded with his declaration in August 2011 that Assad’s was not a legitimate government, and that it was the US desire that he “step aside.”82 This statement would come to sit uncomfortably next to the outcome of the US intervention in Libya, wherein the United States similarly stated its desire for regime change and, despite a US and NATO pledge that Qaddafi would be cap­ tured and tried, he was in fact captured and killed with direct US and NATO assistance.83 As a direct consequence, once the US announced regime change in Damascus as its aim, the Syrian government – and Bashar al-Assad in particular – had reason to question the reliability of US follow-through. This collapsed the bargaining space; Assad not unreasonably may have perceived that the ultimate US aim was his removal from office, and with no guarantee for his life during or after the fact. Both administrations, moreover, spent more air time emphasizing what they would not do – no military force, then no boots on the ground, only sporadic and limited support of insurgent groups, and so forth – than articulating the con­ sequences of Syrian CW use. To be sure, there were important domestic and international audiences for this message, but the overwhelming theme of the United States’ unwillingness to become involved in another ground war in the Middle East, in conjunction with a lack of clarity about what constituted an impermissible infraction, left Syria the option of interpreting vague US demands

76 A. Bollfrass

from the relatively comfortable position of knowing a full-fledged intervention was not in the offing. So, too, did it almost certainly weaken the credibility of US threats – the United States was firm that it would not be in for a pound, so could it really be in for a penny? It is unknown whether the Obama and Trump Administrations’ only very loose association of proscribed Syrian behaviors with expected US responses was the product of improvised or otherwise unstable policy processes or done by design to preserve presidential freedom of choice. Whatever the case, the approach was inadequate to convince Assad to refrain from mounting small attacks and from spreading uncertainty about their culpability. To the contrary, he returned to chemical use four months after Obama’s red line statement, with reports of incidents accelerating in frequency and in lethality thereafter.84 Although Assad had accepted an agreement that disarmed him of large quantities of the most lethal agents, he nonetheless persisted in using chemicals well into Trump’s term. He tolerated one missile strike and continued to use chlorine up to a scale that prompted another; one can hope that Trump’s second response will be the last one required. This sequence suggests a set of calculations Syria might reasonably have made about the costs and benefits of CW use given the United States’ ambiguity. One possibility is that Assad believed that despite perfunctory bluster, the United States ultimately would not respond militarily to CW use. Obama’s prevarication, Trump’s repeated invectives against the use of force in Syria, and both administra­ tions’ posture against direct involvement in the conflict may well have persuaded Syrian leaders that they could continue using chemical weapons without fear of reprisal. Another possibility is that Assad continued to desire to use CW but, uncertain about the consequences, sought to acquire additional information – engaging in tests of US responses by varying the chemicals used, the scale of the deployment, and the frequency of attacks. So, too, Assad could have believed that the US would follow through, but that the reaction was likely to be minimal and the costs tol­ erable relative to the benefits of killing and demoralizing his opponents. Finally, Assad simply could have concluded that he was willing to use CW regardless of the severity of the US response. Assad’s actual behaviors indicate that the final option is the least plausible – his cessation of attacks following Trump’s 2018 strikes suggest he – or, possibly, his Russian benefactor – is not wholly cost-acceptant. So, too, is the first option, of disbelieving entirely that the United States would respond, unlikely given that the United States now has responded on more than one occasion. This leaves the two middle-ground possibilities, working either independently or in conjunction. Syria’s incremental approach may have been designed to test the United States for its limits, and Assad for his – moving from small scale attacks to larger ones pro­ vided information both about what would precipitate a US response, its nature, and how readily it could be absorbed. For now, the costs imposed seem to have been undesirable enough for Assad to cease and desist.

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Although it is the inherent prerogative of policymakers to adjust their goals and strategies, events in Syria suggest that doing so may come at the expense of effec­ tiveness. In coercive interactions, obscuring or moving the goal-posts alters the incentive structure of the target. Regardless of what remains unknown about Assad’s motives, it is undeniable that the United States did not establish clear and firm if/then expectations, disclosed time and again that its investment in the issue was limited, and left enough ambiguity that the Assad government found it at least worthwhile to test those limits, to the detriment of Syrian civilians.

Notes 1 “We have communicated in no uncertain terms with every player in the region that that’s a red line for us and that there would be enormous consequences if we start seeing movement on the chemical weapons front or the use of chemical weapons” (Barack Obama, United States President, August 20, 2012). 2 Geoffrey Chapman, Hassan Elbahtimy, and Susan B. Martin. “The Future of Chemical Weapons: Implications from the Syrian Civil War,” Security Studies 27, no. 4 (2018). DOI: 10.1080/09636412.2018.1483640. 3 John Kerry, Every Day Is Extra, (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2018). 4 James R. Hollyer, and B. Peter Rosendorff. “Using Chemical Weapons Is a Risky Move. So Why Did Syria Use Sarin?” Washington Post, April 12, 2017. www.washing tonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/04/12/using-chemical-weapons-is-a-risky­ move-so-why-did-syria-use-sarin/ 5 Ibid 6 Karl P. Mueller, Precision and Purpose: Airpower in the Libyan Civil War (Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation, 2015). 7 The US State Department has listed the country as a State Sponsor of Terrorism since 1979. U.S. Department of State, “State Sponsors of Terrorism” (Washington, DC: Department of State, 2018). www.state.gov/j/ct/list/c14151.htm 8 Hillary Clinton, “Interview with Bob Schieffer.” CBS Face the Nation, March 27, 2011. 9 Barack Obama, “Statement by President Obama on the Situation in Syria,” August 8, 2011, The White House, transcript. https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-of fice/2011/08/18/statement-president-obama-situation-syria 10 Through the press, administration officials hinted that the announcement foreshadowed more active measures to bring Assad’s rule to an end, and that these were being coor­ dinated with European allies Peter Grier, “Why It Took so Long for Obama to Say Syria’s Assad Must Go,” Christian Science Monitor, August 18, 2011. www.csmonitor. com/USA/Foreign-Policy/2011/0818/Why-it-took-so-long-for-Obama-to-say-Syria­ s-Assad-must-go 11 Steven Mufson, “‘Assad Must Go’: These 3 Little Words Are Huge Obstacle for Obama on Syria,” Washington Post, October 19, 2015. www.washingtonpost.com/business/ economy/assad-must-go-these-three-little-words-present-a-huge-obstacle-for-obama -on-syria/2015/10/19/6a76baba-71ec-11e5-9cbb-790369643cf9_story.html; Ben Rhodes, The World as It Is: A Memoir of the Obama White House (New York: Random House, 2018). 12 Martin Dempsey, “Interview with Jeremy Paxman of ITV News,” November 28, 2011, Joint Chiefs of Staff, transcript. www.jcs.mil/Media/Speeches/Article/571839/gen­ dempseys-interview-with-jeremy-paxman-of-itv-news/ 13 Kareem Fahim, Anthony Shadid, and Rick Gladstone, “Violent End to an Era as Qad­ dafi dies in Libya,” New York Times, October 20, 2011. www.nytimes.com/2011/10/ 21/world/africa/qaddafi-is-killed-as-libyan-forces-take-surt.html

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14 Julia Ioffe, “What Putin Really Wants,” The Atlantic, January/February 2018. www.thea tlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/01/putins-game/546548/. 15 James R. Clapper and Trey Brown, Facts and Fears: Hard Truths from a Life in Intelligence (New York, New York: Viking, 2018). 16 Martin Dempsey, “Gen. Dempsey’s Interview with Fareed Zakaria for ‘GPS’ (CNN),” February 14, 2012, Joint Chiefs of Staff, transcript. www.jcs.mil/Media/Speeches/Arti cle/571847/gen-dempseys-interview-with-fareed-zakaria-for-gps-cnn/ 17 According to an unpublished analysis by Maxwell Kelly. 18 Martin Dempsey, “Gen. Dempsey’s Interview with Fareed Zakaria for ‘GPS’ (CNN),” February 14, 2012, Joint Chiefs of Staff, transcript. www.jcs.mil/Media/Speeches/Article/ 571847/gen-dempseys-interview-with-fareed-zakaria-for-gps-cnn/; Martin Dempsey, “Gen. Dempsey Briefs the Pentagon Press Corps,” June 7, 2012, Joint Chiefs of Staff, tran­ script. www.jcs.mil/Media/Speeches/Article/571944/gen-dempsey-briefs-the-pentagon­ press-corps/ 19 “Timeline: U.S. Policy Shifts on Syria in Obama Administration,” Reuters, July 27, 2012. www.reuters.com/article/us-syria-usa-obama-timeline/timeline-u-s-policy-shifts-on-syria­ in-obama-administration-idUSBRE86Q05D20120727 20 Donette Murray, “Military Action but Not as We Know It: Libya, Syria and the Making of an Obama Doctrine.” Contemporary Politics 19, no. 2 (2013): 146–66. 21 Carla E. Humud, Christopher M. Blanchard, and Mary Beth D. Nikitin, Armed Conflict in Syria: Overview and U.S. Response (U.S. Library of Congress, Congressional Research Service, RL33487, 2017). www.everycrsreport.com/files/20171013_RL33487_8f2b70d 86d35865546e2024b53f512263c4a3562.pdf 22 Barack Obama, “Transcript: Obama’s Speech Against The Iraq War,” NPR, January 20, 2009, accessed August 14, 2019. www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99591469 23 For example, in Bosnia. See Chapter 5 of this volume. 24 Syria acquired chemical weapons in the 1970s (NTI, 2018). The 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention had led to the establishment of the Organization for the Prohi­ bition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), charged with inspecting treaty compliance. Syria was one of only 5 countries that had refused to sign the Convention. 25 “Any stocks of W.M.D. or any unconventional weapon that the Syrian Arab Republic possess would never be used against civilians or against the Syrian people during this crisis” (Jihad Makdissi, Syrian Foreign Ministry, July 23rd, 2012). 26 Obama, Barack, “Remarks by the President to the White House Press Corps,” August 20, 2012, accessed August 14, 2019. https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/ 2012/08/20/remarks-president-white-house-press-corps 27 Ibid. 28 Arms Control Association, “Timeline of Syrian Chemical Weapons,” Fact Sheets and Briefs, accessed July 16, 2019. www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/Timeline-of-Syria n-Chemical-Weapons-Activity 29 Contemporaneous State Department reporting suggested contrarily that the evidence that Syrian troops had used chemical munitions was compelling. Josh Rogin, “Exclusive: Secret State Department cable: Chemical weapons used in Syria,” Foreign Policy, January 15, 2013. https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/01/15/exclusive-secret-state-department-ca ble-chemical-weapons-used-in-syria/ 30 “Obama: Syrian government use of chemical weapons a ‘game changer’,” Reuters, April 26, 2013. www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-syria-obama/obama-syrian-government-u se-of-chemical-weapons-a-game-changer-idUSBRE93P15L20130426 31 Rhodes, The World as It Is. 32 Clapper and Brown, Facts and Fears. 33 Insurgent groups would use crude chemical weapons later in the conflict. For example, fighters under the Islamic State banner attacked with mustard gas in 2015 and 2016. Mary Beth D. Nikitin and Cyrus A. Jabbari, Resurgence of Chemical Weapons Use: Issues for Congress (U.S. Library of Congress, Congressional Research Service, IN10936, 2018). https://fas.org/sgp/crs/nuke/IN10936.pdf

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34 Ben Rhodes, “Text of White House Statement on Chemical Weapons in Syria,” June 13, 2013 New York Times, transcript. www.nytimes.com/2013/06/14/us/politics/text-of­ white-house-statement-on-chemical-weapons-in-syria.html 35 Ibid. 36 Kerry, Every Day is Extra. 37 Jeffrey Goldberg, “The Obama Doctrine,” The Atlantic, April 2016. www.theatlantic. com/magazine/archive/2016/04/the-obama-doctrine/471525/ 38 Ibid. 39 Ibid. 40 Ibid. 41 Rhodes, The World as It Is. 42 Peter Baker and Jonathan Weisman, “Obama Seeks Approval for Strike in Syria,” New York Times, August 31, 2013. www.nytimes.com/2013/09/01/world/middleeast/syria. html 43 “Kerry: Only Assad and Two Others Control the Syrian Government’s Chemical Weap­ ons,” Reuters, September 9, 2013. www.businessinsider.com/kerry-only-assad-and-two-o thers-control-the-syrian-governments-chemical-weapons-2013-9 French forces, now planning a bilateral operation, intended to fire “a dozen SCALP-EG cruise missiles […] on targets in and around Damascus, including chemical-weapons command centres and bri­ gades, as well as Scud missile sites” (Lewis and Tertrais, “The Thick Red Line”). Public reporting of US strike preparations suggests that Navy destroyers in the Mediterranean had been readied for a two-day campaign of, “a barrage of Tomahawk cruise missile strike” (Luce, “Hagel”), which Lewis and Tertrais estimate as requiring between 100 to 150 missiles for “nearly 50 targets.” See Jeffrey Lewis and Bruno Tertrais, “The Thick Red Line: Implications of the 2013 Chemical-Weapons Crisis for Deterrence and Transatlantic Relations,” Survival 59, no. 6, (2017), 77–108; Dan de Luce, “Hagel: The White House Tried to ‘Destroy’ Me,” Foreign Policy, December 18, 2015. https://foreignpolicy.com/ 2015/12/18/hagel-the-white-house-tried-to-destroy-me/ 44 Kerry, Every Day is Extra. 45 Barack Obama, “FULL TRANSCRIPT: President Obama’s Sept. 10 speech on Syria,” September 10, 2013, Washington Post, transcript. www.washingtonpost.com/politics/ running-transcript-president-obamas-sept-10-speech-on-syria/2013/09/10/a8826aa6-1a 2e-11e3-8685-5021e0c41964_story.html?utm_term=.25238428b027 46 “In addition to chemical weapons, stocks of chemical weapons agents, their precursors, specialized CW equipment, and CW munitions themselves, the elimination process must include the facilities for the development and production of these weapons.” (“Joint National Paper by the Russian Federation and the United States of America: Framework for Elimination of Syrian Chemical Weapons” 2013, 3) 47 “The United States and the Russian Federation expect Syria to submit, within a week, a comprehensive listing, including names, types, and quantities of its chemical weapons agents, types of munitions, and location and form of storage, production, and research and development facilities.” (“Joint National Paper by the Russian Federation and the United States of America: Framework for Elimination of Syrian Chemical Weapons” 2013, 2) 48 Director General, Progress in the Elimination of the Syrian Chemical Weapons Programme, (Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, 2018). www.opcw.org/sites/ default/files/documents/EC/88/en/ec88dg16_e_.pdf 49 The OPCW’s analysis eventually confirmed the use of sulfur mustard. Technical Secre­ tariat, Report of the OPCW Fact-Finding Mission in Syria Regarding Alleged Incidents in Marea, Syrian Arab Republic: August 2015 (Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weap­ ons, 2015). www.opcw.org/sites/default/files/documents/2018/11/s-1320-2015_e_.pdf 50 Technical Secretariat, Report of the OPCW Fact Finding Mission in Syria Regarding Alleged Incidents in the Idlib Governorate of the Syrian Arab Republic Between 16 March and 20 May 2015 (Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, 2015). 51 Peter Baker, Mark Landler, David E. Sanger and Anne Barnard, “Off-the-Cuff Obama Line Put U.S. in Bind on Syria,” The New York Times, May 4, 2013, accessed August

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52 53 54 55 56

57

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59 60

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62 63 64

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14, 2019. www.nytimes.com/2013/05/05/world/middleeast/obamas-vow-on-chem ical-weapons-puts-him-in-tough-spot.html Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump), Twitter, April 8, 2018, 6:00 a.m. https://twit ter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/982966315467116544? Lewis and Tertrais, “The Thick Red Line.” David Martin, “U.S. Navy commodore in charge of Syria strike destroyers discusses mission,” CBS News, April 7, 2017, accessed August 14, 2019. www.cbsnews.com/ news/us-navy-commodore-destroyers-porter-ross-discusses-syria-strike/ Gordon Lubold and Dion Nissenbaum, “Trump Bowed to Pentagon Restraint on Syria Strikes,” The Wall Street Journal, April 16, 2018. www.wsj.com/articles/trump-bowed­ to-pentagon-restraint-on-syria-strikes-1523837509 John Davison, “Syrian Jets Take Off from Air Base U.S. Missiles Struck: Syrian Obser­ vatory,” Reuters, April 7, 2017. www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-airport/ syrian-jets-take-off-from-air-base-u-s-missiles-struck-syrian-observa tory-idUSKBN1792XA Abby Phillip and Dan Lamothe, “White House says Syria’s Assad Preparing Another Chemical Attack, Warns of ‘Heavy’ Penalty,” Washington Post, June 27, 2017. www.washingtonpost. com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/06/26/white-house-says-syrias-assad-preparing-another­ chemical-attack-warns-of-heavy-penalty/? As of this writing, OPCW inspectors, whose access to Douma had been delayed sig­ nificantly, have not reported their final findings on the nature of the chemical agents used. Technical Secretariat, Interim Report of the OPCW Fact-Finding Mission in Syria Regarding the Incident of Alleged Use of Toxic Chemicals as a Weapon in Douma, Syrian Arab Republic, on 7 April 2018 (Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, 2018). www.opcw. org/sites/default/files/documents/S_series/2018/en/s-1645-2018_e_.pdf Donald Trump, “Statement by President Trump on Syria,” April 13, 2018, The White House, transcript. www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/statement-president-trump-syria/ Pavel Felgenhauer, “Russian Propaganda Pushes Back Against on Western Airstrike on Syria’s Chemical Weapons Program,” Eurasia Daily Monitor 15, no. 60, April 19, 2018. https://jamestown.org/program/russian-propaganda-pushes-back-against-western-airstri ke-on-syrias-chemical-weapons-program/; Adam Rawnsley, “Russian Trolls Denied Syrian Gas Attack—Before It Happened,” Daily Beast, April 12, 2018. www.thedailybea st.com/russian-trolls-denied-syrian-gas-attackbefore-it-happened Faysal Itani, “The End of American Support for Syrian Rebels Was Inevitable,” The Atlantic, July 21, 2017. www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/07/trump-syria-assa d-rebels-putin-cia/534540/; Mark Mazzetti, Adam Goldman, and Michael S. Schmidt, “Behind the Sudden Death of a $1 Billion Secret C.I.A. War in Syria,” New York Times, August 2, 2017. www.nytimes.com/2017/08/02/world/middleeast/cia-syria-rebel-arm-tra in-trump.html Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump), Twitter, August 29,2013, 11:14 a.m. https:// twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/373146637184401408?lang=en Leon E. Panetta, “Statement on Syria before the Senate Armed Services Committee,” March 7, 2012, U.S. Department of Defense, transcript. https://archive.defense.gov/Sp eeches/Speech.aspx?SpeechID=1660 Ever since renouncing its own chemical weapons program in the 1970s, the United States has sought to remove them from other nations’ arsenals, not least to avoid encountering them on the battlefield or in the hands of terrorists. The norm enjoys broad consensus and observance: “Syria represents the only open challenge to the norm against chemical weapons in more than 25 years.” Richard Price, “After Syria, is there still a taboo against the use of chemical weapons?” Washington Post, April 7, 2017. www. washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/04/07/after-syria-is-there-still-a-ta boo-against-the-use-of-chemical-weapons/ John Kerry, “Statement on Syria,” August 30, 2013, U.S. Department of State, tran­ script. https://2009-2017.state.gov/secretary/remarks/2013/08/213668.htm Price, “After Syria.”

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67 Lewis and Tertrais, “The Thick Red Line.” 68 Jake Miller, “Former chief of staff Denis McDonough defends Obama on Syria,” CBS News, April 7, 2017. www.cbsnews.com/news/former-chief-of-staff-denis-mcdonough-defends­ obama-on-syria/ 69 Daniel Byman, “What Effect Will Trump’s Airstrikes Really Have?” Lawfare (blog), April 6, 2017. www.lawfareblog.com/what-effect-will-trumps-airstrikes-really-have 70 Scott Shane, “Weren’t Syria’s Chemical Weapons Destroyed? It’s Complicated,” The New York Times, April 7, 2017. www.nytimes.com/2017/04/07/world/middleeast/wer ent-syrias-chemical-weapons-destroyed-its-complicated.html 71 Derek Chollet, “Obama’s Red Line, Revisited,” Politico, July 19, 2016. www.politico. com/magazine/story/2016/07/obama-syria-foreign-policy-red-line-revisited-214059 72 “OPCW Executive Council Condemns Chemical Weapons Use in Fatal Incident in Malaysia,” OPCW News, March 9, 2017. www.opcw.org/media-centre/news/2017/ 03/opcw-executive-council-condemns-chemical-weapons-use-fatal-incident 73 U.S. Department of State, “Joint Statement on the Salisbury Attack,” September 6, 2018, U.S. Department of State, transcript. www.state.gov/joint-statement-on-the-salis bury-attack/ 74 Chapman, Elbahtimy, and Martin, “The Future of Chemical Weapons.” 75 Richard Pérez-Peña, “O.P.C.W., Chemical Weapons Watchdog, Gets Power to Assign Blame,” New York Times, June 27, 2018. www.nytimes.com/2018/06/27/world/middleeast/ chemical-weapons-attacks.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story­ heading&module=first-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news 76 Lewis and Tertrais, “The Thick Red Line.” 77 Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Global Trends: Paradigms of Progress, (National Intelligence Council, 2017). www.dni.gov/files/documents/nic/GT-Full-Rep ort.pdf 78 The White House, “President Donald J. Trump Has Taken Action to Stop Syrian Chemical Weapons Use,” Fact Sheets, last modified April 13, 2018. www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-sta tements/president-donald-j-trump-taken-action-stop-syrian-chemical-weapons-use/ 79 Thomas C. Schelling, Arms and Influence, (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1967). 80 Bruno Tertrais, “Drawing Red Lines Right.” The Washington Quarterly 37, no. 3 (2014): 7– 24; David Greenberg, “Syria Will Stain Obama’s Legacy Forever,” Foreign Policy, December 29, 2016. https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/12/29/obama-never-understood-how-history­ works/; Pete Kasperowicz, “Corker: Obama’s red line the ‘lowest point’ for US foreign policy,” Washington Examiner, December 19, 2016. www.washingtonexaminer.com/cor ker-obamas-red-line-the-lowest-point-for-us-foreign-policy 81 The administration emanates mixed messages about Syrian policy regularly: “Just a few days ago, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and UN Ambassador Nikki Haley seemed to signal that the United States was no longer committed to removing Asad.” Byman, “What Effect Will Trump’s Airstrikes Really Have?” 82 Chris McGreal and Martin Chulov, “Syria: Assad must reign, says Obama,” The Guar­ dian, August 18, 2011. www.theguardian.com/world/2011/aug/18/syria-assad-must-re sign-obama 83 Max Fisher, “Qaddafi Was Captured Alive—Who Killed Him?” The Atlantic, October 21, 2011. www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/10/qaddafi-was-captured-alive­ who-killed-him/247113/ 84 Arms Control Association, “Timeline of Syrian Chemical Weapons.”

5 IRAN AND IRAQ Strange successes, strange failures Kenneth M. Pollack

Since 1980, the US military has been very busy in the Persian Gulf. Following the Iranian revolution and the rise of Saddam Hussein, Washington has frequently tried to deter and compel both Iranian and Iraqi behavior. It failed more often than it succeeded. As a result, the United States fought as many as five wars in the Persian Gulf. It was dragged into the Iran-Iraq War, then waged the Persian Gulf War of 1990–1991, conducted major combat operations as part of the enforcement of containment against Iraq from 1991 until 2003, led the invasion and occupation of Iraq from 2003 till 2011, and then fought the ISIS war of 2014–18. It was never America’s intention to fight all of those wars. Setting aside the exceptional period immediately after 9/11, every US administration sought to pursue its foreign policy in the Gulf while avoiding combat. Indeed, the major influx of American military forces into the region after 1979 was meant to prevent wars and shape the environment to eliminate threats to US vital interests without having to employ force. On numerous occasions, Washington attempted to signal to Tehran, Baghdad, or both with shows of force to convince them either to stop or not to start taking an action that would threaten American interests and so head off another round of conflict. In the final reckoning, the United States achieved mixed results during the period 1991–2018. With Iran it probably succeeded more than it failed, and with Iraq it probably failed more than it succeeded. However, both cases are unusual. Neither followed anything like the canonical pattern of deterrence or compellence success or failure. The explanations for both speak to the potential of cross-cultural dissonance, individual personalities, and domestic politics to overwhelm what might otherwise seem like text-book cases for the use of force without war.

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Deterring, compelling, and containing Iraq Saddam Hussein’s Iraq proved to be a problematic adversary that stubbornly defied American logic time and again. The United States tried repeatedly to signal with its military forces to compel or deter Iraqi behavior, only to find that Iraq seemed to pick and choose the warnings it wanted to heed. As a result, the US government repeatedly found itself in situations where it felt it had no choice but to employ force because its non-combat actions had failed to have the desired effect.

From cooperation to confrontation Iraq’s emergence as America’s public enemy number one in the Gulf stemmed from the outcome of the Iran-Iraq War (1980–1988). Saddam emerged from the conflict with a massive war machine, but no territorial gains from his victories, and an economy bankrupted by the cost of eight years of war. Perhaps inevitably, given his personality, he tried to use the new tool of Iraqi military might to secure the wealth and glory he craved. In August 1990, he invaded Kuwait and then annexed it, hoping to add its considerable oil revenues to Iraq’s own and overawe the region, if not the world, with his new military might. President George H. W. Bush chose to confront Saddam rather than accept this act of naked aggression. His administration famously built a coalition of over 30 nations, including all of America’s key European and Arab allies, many of whom dispatched substantial military forces for the effort. Interestingly, the huge build-up of forces in the Gulf and repeated demands that Saddam withdraw from Kuwait were not sufficient to compel him to withdraw. Thus, in January 1991, the coali­ tion launched OPERATION DESERT STORM with 39 days of air strikes that hammered Saddam’s forces and terrified his troops. Even then, Saddam refused to withdraw. When the US-led coalition finally unleashed its ground assault, four days was all it needed to rout the dregs of his broken army.1

Falling into containment Although the George H.W. Bush Administration had no desire to invade and occupy Iraq, it was determined to be rid of Saddam – and certain that the cata­ strophic defeat of his army would result in his overthrow.2 Much to Washington’s frustration, it didn’t, although revolts by unhappy Shi’a in southern Iraq and separatist Kurds in northern Iraq presented the gravest threats his regime had ever faced. Indeed, Saddam’s brutal suppression of these revolts, in which as many as 100,000 people were slaughtered, led the United States and its allies to establish no-fly zones (NFZs) over northern Iraq above 36° N and below 32° N in southern Iraq. Saddam’s survival forced Washington to shift to a containment strategy. Saddam had proven himself a serial aggressor (and miscalculator) and he retained enough military power to do great harm to the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states and some of his other, weaker neighbors if left unchecked. Thus, the United States and

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its allies would need to put in place political, diplomatic, economic, and military structures that could deter or block an Iraqi attack on any of its neighbors. However, it would be an extremely aggressive form of containment, one which imposed severe restrictions on Saddam not only to quash any military move he might make, but also to keep intense pressure on him and his regime. For George H.W. Bush, that pressure was meant to produce the fall of his regime – the fate he had eluded after the Gulf War. For the new Clinton Administration when it took office in 1993, that pressure was meant to keep Saddam on the defensive so that he could not take new, aggressive actions that would threaten American allies or derail the Arab-Israeli peace negotiations which would become the centerpiece of Clin­ ton’s Middle East policy.3 Many of the most important elements of the containment strategy served both purposes simultaneously. The United States convinced the international commu­ nity to retain the draconian sanctions on Iraq in perpetuity, until Saddam demon­ strated that he was no longer a threat to the region – which US officials believed was impossible as long as he was in charge of Iraq. These sanctions effectively barred all trade with Iraq, although there were provisions to allow Iraq to sell some oil to buy food, medicine, and other humanitarian supplies. The sanctions pre­ vented Iraq from re-arming, but they were also meant to infuriate Saddam by keeping Iraq weak and to turn his people against him. The weapons inspections complemented the sanctions both by stripping Iraq of its massive accumulation of weapons of mass destruction and repeatedly demonstrating that as long as Saddam ruled in Baghdad, Iraq would not be a fully sovereign state. Moreover, at times, the United States would use the inspections to gather information against the regime and its security apparatus. The no-fly zones prevented Saddam from using the Iraqi Air Force against his own people, but they were also meant to humiliate him by further demonstrating that he lacked full control of his own country, in the hope either that this would provoke him to lash out or trigger a coup. Finally, containment embraced the potential requirement to respond militarily against Saddam’s efforts to “break out of his cage.” Although American policy-makers did not welcome these challenges and the military responses they required, there was a widespread recognition that they would probably be necessary given Saddam’s long, belligerent history. There were other aspects of containment that were wholly provocative. Regime change was always a part of the policy, although at times the US emphasized it and at others relegated it to the back burner. President George H. W. Bush signed a Presidential Finding authorizing a covert action campaign to, “create the conditions for the removal of Saddam Hussein from power.”4 In response, the CIA reached out to a range of expatriate oppositionists to encourage them to promote a coup or revolution.5 The Clinton Administration backed a number of efforts to mount a coup against Saddam, including a plot in 1996 that came closer than many thought possible.6 Even if none of these operations panned out – and it was always well understood that they were all long shots – they amped up Saddam’s paranoia, causing him to kill and imprison members of his inner circle which turned others

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against him and reminded him that the world’s last remaining superpower really was gunning for him. Still other aspects of the containment of Iraq were purely defensive. On the diplomatic front, the United States made a major effort to solidify its bilateral relations with various Middle Eastern states, including some that had been stand­ offish in the past. It also tried to build and expand multilateral efforts, both military and political, that would enable the regional states to work more effectively with the United States against Iraq. However, the most important defensive steps the United States took were to improve its military capabilities in the region. Defeating the Iranian naval threat in the 1980s had required beefing up America’s forces somewhat over their close to non-existent starting point, but not by much since Washington still hoped that the Gulf states could maintain a balance of power that would allow the US to remain a bit player. Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait demonstrated that an Iraq strong enough to balance Iran would inevitably be strong enough to overrun Kuwait and the Saudi oilfields. Thus, the US would have to build up its forces in the region so that it could balance both Iran and Iraq.

The build-up of US forces in the Gulf After the Iran-Iraq and Gulf wars, the US armed forces significantly increased their routine presence in the region, but only modestly so. The American military “footprint” in the Middle East has always been much smaller than commonly believed. This reflected a recognition on Washington’s part that many Middle Easterners disliked the United States and saw its soldiers as “occupiers,” not pro­ tectors. However, it was also driven by the limited military threat posed by any of the regional states, starting with Iraq and Iran, given America’s demonstrated ability to crush their forces with ease. For most of the 1990s, the United States had no more than about 20,000 military personnel of all kinds in the region. The Army did not permanently base any forces there. Instead, after DESERT STORM, it left the equipment for one heavy brigade in Kuwait, another in Qatar, and a third on ships anchored at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. The Army kept a constant rotation of troops from one heavy brigade to Kuwait. The soldiers of each new brigade would fall in on the equipment set left there, so that there was always a fully manned heavy brigade in Kuwait – just not one permanently based there. For their part, the Marines typically had a Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU, a battalion-task force) deployed on Navy ships in the Gulf and, like the Army, kept the equipment for a Marine Expeditionary Force (MEF, a brigade-task force) on ships at Diego Garcia. Thus, in terms of ground forces, the US typically had just the rotational Army brigade in Kuwait and the Marine battalion floating in the Gulf. With the equipment reserves in Qatar and Diego Garcia, however, these forces could be built-up to a full-strength Army heavy division and a reinforced Marine brigade in about a week. Still, it was a far cry from the 10–11 division equivalents the US had employed in the Gulf War.

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The Air Force and Navy bore a greater share of the day-to-day force presence, but their deployments were equally modest. The Navy made the biggest contribution, committing an aircraft carrier battle group (CVBG) and an amphibious readiness group (ARG, carrying the MEU) on station in the Gulf or Indian Ocean at virtually all times. This was a major commitment since the Navy could only sustain the deploy­ ment of three to four CVBGs and two to three ARG/MEUs on a regular basis. It meant that almost one-quarter of the US Navy’s at-sea operational strength was committed to the Gulf at all times. Aircraft from the CVBG regularly participated in patrolling Iraq’s southern no-fly zone. Moreover, one or more minesweepers and a number of frigates and destroyers were also kept in the Gulf to deter and defend against air, surface, subsurface, and mine attacks on Gulf shipping by either Iraq or Iran. To coordinate so many naval assets in the region, the Navy reconstituted the 5th Fleet headquarters, which was established in Bahrain in 1995. As for the Air Force, it kept about 150 planes (F-15s, F-16s, A-10s, and the full range of support aircraft) in the Gulf. Initially, these aircraft were deployed in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, but the planes from Saudi were increasingly shifted to Qatar and the UAE after Riyadh refused to allow US planes to strike Iraqi targets from Saudi bases in 1996. In 2003, the US pulled the last of its aircraft from Saudi altogether. Another composite wing of about 40–50 aircraft patrolled Iraq’s northern NFZ from Incirlik airbase in Turkey. The purpose of the forces routinely kept on station in the Gulf was not to defend American allies against a deliberate attack by Iran or Iraq, but primarily to reassure them – and the Iraqis and Iranians – that the United States remained committed to their security. These forces were more than adequate to defeat an Iranian amphibious assault against the GCC across the Gulf by themselves, but again, no such offensive was ever expected because Iran lacked that capacity. The air and naval assets normally present could defeat a small Iranian or Iraqi act of aggression in the Gulf, like firing on a commercial vessel, if the ships and planes happened to be in the right place at the right time. But they did not have the coverage to ensure that they could block any such attack. The Iranians or Iraqis might be able to get away with a quick strike, but the presence of these forces meant that neither Baghdad nor Tehran could assume they would not have to contend with American military forces, and so hopefully would deter them from trying. Similarly, the air forces present were capable of enforcing the NFZs, including mounting small retaliatory strikes when needed, but that was it. It was well understood in Washington and Tampa (the home of US Central Command) that any threats or operations larger than these small-scale, routine missions would require reinforcements brought in from outside the region, but the prepositioned Army and Marine equipment made that far easier and faster than in the past.

Challenging containment and the Iraqi threat to re-invade Kuwait Saddam never accepted the strictures of containment. He was determined to return Iraq to its former power, glory, and freedom of action. At first, however, he was at

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least somewhat chastened by his crushing defeat in the Gulf War. He turned over large quantities of chemical warfare munitions for the UN weapons inspectors to destroy, although he tried to hide other pieces of his WMD program, particularly its nuclear and biological components. But the weapons inspectors kept uncovering what Saddam had hoped to retain: massive calutrons to enrich uranium for nuclear weap­ ons, documentation and key hardware for his nuclear program, Gerald Bull’s infamous “Super Gun” which could fire rocket projectiles at Israel, evidence of his biological warfare program. Each new discovery only reinforced the international consensus that the inspections, the sanctions, the no-fly zones, and the rest of containment needed to remain in place to keep Iraq weak and force Saddam to comply. Consequently, the early 1990s saw a series of incidents in which Iraq attempted to challenge containment, only to have American (and often French and British) forces respond with limited force to beat back its challenges. In December 1992, Iraq flew a MiG-25 into the southern NFZ only to have it shot down by an American F-16.7 The next month, January 1993, Saddam blocked the UN inspectors from flying their own aircraft into Iraq (which allowed them to conduct surprise inspections), moved new SAMs into the southern NFZ, raided facilities in Kuwait to retrieve Iraqi Silk­ worm missiles left behind during the 1991 retreat, and called on the people of Kuwait to rise up and overthrow the ruling al-Sabah family. In response, American, French, and British warplanes struck various Iraqi air defense sites, shot down a MiG­ 23 that had violated the northern NFZ, and struck buildings in southern Iraq where the Iraqis had stored the Silkworms. On January 17, the United States fired 40 cruise missiles at the Zafaraniyah nuclear facility south of Baghdad to force Saddam to grant the inspectors unrestricted access. In April 1993, American and Kuwaiti intelligence uncovered a plot by Iraq to assassinate former President George H. W. Bush and the Emir of Kuwait when Bush was in Kuwait to commemorate the Gulf War.8 The US responded in June, firing 23 cruise missiles to destroy the headquarters of the Iraqi intelligence service in Baghdad.9 By late 1994, Saddam’s patience had worn thin. He had never expected that the inspections or sanctions would last so long. He probably had not expected to have to surrender so much of his WMD programs – although at that point there was still much he was hiding – and he seethed at having to endure the legal, economic, and military shackles that kept Iraq weak and himself impotent even in much of his country. Moreover, the sanctions were having a real impact not just on the Iraqi people, but on the things that mattered to him: the Iraqi dinar was in danger of collapsing and coup plots began to proliferate, including dangerous cabals involving members of the Republican Guard and other regime protection units in 1995 and 1996. This appears to have been the last straw for Saddam. Faced with mounting internal threats, a deteriorating economic situation, and no relief in sight, Saddam decided to try to force the issue. At the beginning of October 1994, Iraq issued a number of ominous warnings, promising unspecified consequences if the UN did not lift the sanctions. To back up these threats, Saddam began mobilizing Repub­ lican Guard divisions and sending them south to the border with Kuwait. Within days, US intelligence located elements of the Hammurabi and al-Nida Republican

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Guard Armored Divisions north of the Kuwaiti border (the same area from which the Guard launched the August 1990 invasion). Other units were on the way. Along with the regular Army divisions permanently deployed near Kuwait, this amounted to roughly 80,000 Iraqi troops either in the area or headed there.10 We cannot be certain what Saddam’s intentions were. It may be that he was trying to use the threat of force to goad the UN into action on the sanctions. He may have thought the US so distracted with problems in Haiti, Bosnia, and North Korea that Washington would not be able to respond effectively. However, all of the evidence we have from the Iraqi side indicates that Saddam actually intended to invade Kuwait again to try to force the UN to agree to a lifting of the sanctions. After his defection to Jordan in 1995, Saddam’s son-in-law and former defense minister, Hussein Kamel al-Majid, argued vociferously that Saddam was deter­ mined to invade Kuwait to force the removal of the sanctions.11 This was also the conclusion of the authors of The Iraqi Perspectives Report, which combed through Iraqi documents, tapes of Saddam’s meetings, and interviews with senior Iraqi lea­ ders collected after the 2003 invasion to provide a better understanding of Iraqi decision-making. The clear threat of Iraqi forces assembling on the border of Kuwait triggered an immediate American response. The United States commenced OPERATION VIGI­ LANT WARRIOR, a rapid reinforcement of the American military presence in the region to bring American forces in the Persian Gulf up to roughly 60,000 troops, including an 18,000-man Marine Expeditionary Force, 16,000 troops of the 24th Mechanized Infantry Division, a carrier battle group, and 350 additional aircraft including B-52s and F-117 Stealth fighters. Britain also sent more aircraft and warships, and even the French dispatched a frigate in a show of solidarity. Within about ten days it had become clear that, unlike in 1990, the United States could now reinforce its pre­ sence in Kuwait faster than Iraq could build-up the forces to threaten it. On October 15, the Security Council demanded that Baghdad remove the forces it had moved into southern Iraq and refrain from further such deployments south of the 32nd Parallel. The US and Britain let Iraq know that if it did not immediately begin withdrawing the Republican Guards from the Kuwaiti border, the Coalition would begin striking them. Iraq not only complied with these demands, but on November 10, the Iraqi National Assembly endorsed the new, UN-delineated borders with Kuwait and Saddam himself signed the decree. Although this would seem like a clear use of military power short of war that successfully deterred a threatening move by an adversary, the historical record is a bit complicated. First, the Iraqi deployment was a far cry from the 1990 build-up. Baghdad only tried to send three or four divisions – not the eight it had employed previously, when it faced only the hapless Kuwaiti armed forces. Most other Iraqi formations simply were not in any shape to move, let alone fight the Americans. Those that arrived apparently suffered significant delays, breakdowns, and other logistical SNAFUs. Thus, at least an element of Saddam’s change of heart may have been the realization that his military was no longer up to the logistical task of invading Kuwait, let alone fighting whatever US forces were now there.12

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At least to his subordinates, Saddam gave the impression that he did not regard the outcome of the 1994 Kuwait crisis as a defeat. He belittled the American response and the demands made of him. He made it seem like he regarded the outcome as proof that if Iraq stood tough, the Americans would back down because they did not want another fight with Iraq – something that the cruise missile “pinpricks” he had been subjected to during the past three years also seemed to reinforce.13 By the 1990s, Saddam had become deeply delusional, as the evidence from post­ war Iraq now makes clear.14 Even still, it seems impossible to argue that the Amer­ ican force build-up and the threat it represented to his plans was not an important factor in Saddam’s decision to back down. It may well have been that he realized after giving the order to attack that his forces were in bad shape. However, it seems at least as likely that if all they had faced was the Kuwaiti armed forces, Saddam would have gone ahead with the new invasion, even if he left broken down tanks all the way from Basra to Kuwait City. Moreover, the unexpected and unrequested Iraqi decision to recognize Kuwait and its newly-defined borders is hard to square with an argument that Saddam ended the crisis only because he realized his forces weren’t up to the task and had won some sort of victory over the Americans. Indeed, recognizing Kuwait and its new borders was a victory for the United States and something Saddam had refused to do for the previous four years. Even if he ultimately saw it as a small price to pay to get himself out of the crisis he created, one much less than what a more belligerent United States might have extracted from him, it was still a painful concession. It is hard to explain it in any way other than out of fear, either that he had created the diplomatic opportunity for Washington to hit him again militarily, and/or fear that he had badly bungled his effort to have sanctions lifted and was now trying to repair that damage. In that sense, the 1994 crisis represented both a failure of general deterrence and a triumph of immediate/local deterrence for the United States. The build-up of American forces in the region, the demonstrated American willingness to fight to defend the GCC states and hold containment of Iraq in place, and the repeated demonstration of that willingness in America’s limited uses of force against Iraq in 1991–1993 all failed to deter Saddam from making another bid to invade Kuwait – either to gain its oil resources or to force the UN to lift the sanctions. However, the quick reinforcement of American military strength in the region during VIG­ ILANT WARRIOR, probably augmented by the demonstrated incapacity of Iraq’s armed forces, deterred Saddam from executing his plan.

The erosion of containment and OPERATION DESERT FOX The failure of Saddam’s bid to retake Kuwait was followed quickly by a series of dangerous internal revolts and coup plots in 1995 and early 1996, likely encouraged by that humiliation.15 In response, he changed gears and made a series of tactical retreats. In the summer of 1996, Saddam finally agreed to begin selling Iraqi oil and using the revenues to buy (in theory) food, medicine, and other humanitarian

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supplies – something that had been on offer since 1991. Immediately, the Iraqi economy began to rebound. What’s more, oil-for-food, as it came to be known, proved an enormous boon to Saddam. Because his government alone determined where Iraqi oil was sold, where it bought food and humanitarian goods, and which Iraqis would receive them, he had more power than ever and effectively undermined the international sanctions. As the postwar UN report on Iraq’s manipulation of oil-for-food (the so-called “Volcker Commission Report”) revealed, Saddam sold oil and bought food only from countries that agreed to support his goals politically, he cut them sweetheart deals as a further incentive, convinced them to pay him kickbacks so that he sud­ denly had hundreds of millions and eventually billions of dollars to spend, and allowed him to increase his control over the lives of ordinary Iraqis who now depended on the regime for their daily bread. Between 1996 and 2000, he made roughly $300 million in illicit profits from oil-for-food; between 2000 and 2003, he made $1.5 billion. By 2003, over 2,500 companies from 110 countries were conducting illegal trade with Saddam, and the number continued to grow. Mean­ while, Saddam’s pay-offs to foreign governments only sweetened the deal for them to turn their backs on containment.16 For his part, Saddam trumpeted the break­ down of containment, using it to convince still more countries to back him – or just stop supporting the Americans – because his victory was inevitable. Perversely, just as Iraq began to import food and medicine, Saddam’s propaganda began to gain traction, convincing more and more people that the Iraqis were suffering horribly because of the sanctions. Today there is still considerable debate about the impact of the sanctions (or more accurately, Saddam’s manipulation of the sanctions) on ordinary Iraqis. Several careful scholarly assessments before the US invasion of Iraq made a powerful case that as many as several hundred thousand Iraqis died prematurely as a result.17 However, since the invasion, demographers employing Iraq’s own census data have found effectively no evidence of any “unnatural” increase in Iraqi deaths from 1991 to 2002. Indeed, these statistics show Iraq’s death rate following an absolutely normal progression during this time, one unaffected by new, artificial events. They also note that, anecdotally, many Iraqis who claimed in the 1990s to have had family members die recanted after Saddam’s fall.18 Regardless of where truth lies, the international community increasingly believed that the sanctions were a humanitarian nightmare that had to be ended even if it meant giving Saddam greater freedom of action. Around the same time that he accepted oil-for-food, Saddam also concluded that he had to give up the last remnants of his WMD programs. As the US intelligence community’s report on Iraqi WMD (the so-called “Duelfer Report”) discovered, after the defection of his son-in-law and the head of his covert WMD program, Hussein Kamel al-Majid, in 1995, Saddam realized that as long as he tried to hold on to these capabilities, the UN inspectors would continue to uncover them, and this would allow the United States to hold the sanctions in place. Consequently, if he was going to get the sanctions lifted altogether, he had to dispense with his WMD altogether. However, in typically inexplicable fashion, Saddam remained

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determined to persuade his own people and, secondarily, the Iranians, that he had retained a covert WMD capability to deter either from trying to move against him. Saddam convinced himself that these two contradictory approaches to WMD could be kept from undercutting each other. Like so many of his delusional assumptions, this proved entirely incorrect. Although the inspectors were not able to find more evidence of Iraqi covert programs, they continued to hear from countless Iraqis that Saddam had retained such capabilities – because Saddam was deliberately feeding those (false) rumors to deter internal and external threats. The conclusion that the intelligence communities of the United States, Europe, and the Middle East (par­ ticularly Iran and Israel) unanimously reached was that the inspectors were no longer finding evidence of covert Iraqi WMD programs because the Iraqis had learned how to conceal them more effectively.19 Nevertheless, the impact of Saddam’s decision to finally jettison his remaining WMD capabilities was important, especially as it interacted with both the oil-for­ food turnabout and the success of Iraqi propaganda to erode international support for containment. Increasingly, countries were willing to ignore the UN Security Council resolutions and Iraq’s violations of them. The United States and Great Britain found it more and more difficult to impose penalties on Iraq for its sanctions busting, non-compliance with inspections, and aggressive behavior toward the coa­ lition and his neighbors. When the United States and Great Britain floated new proposals in the Security Council to try to compel Saddam to allow the UN weap­ ons inspectors back into Iraq, they got no traction at all. Even Saudi Arabia and Kuwait felt the heat from Arab popular animosity to containment, evincing greater and greater discomfort with American and British enforcement of the no-fly zones, and signaling that they would not support new retaliatory strikes against Iraq. Thus, by the late 1990s, containment, as it had been originally designed in 1991–1992, was experiencing severe strains. In 1996, civil war broke out between Iraq’s rival Kurdish factions and Mas’ud Barzani’s Kurdish Democratic Party asked for Saddam’s help against Jalal Talabani’s Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, which was being generously backed by the Iranians. When Saddam’s Republican Guard overran the Kurdish capital of Erbil, the United States and Britain hoped to mount retaliatory air strikes against Iraq but were prevented from flying combat missions from Saudi and Kuwait bases. Washington was forced to settle for extending the southern no-fly zone from the 32nd to the 33rd parallel and launching several dozen cruise missiles against Iraqi air defense sites in that area, called OPERA­ TION DESERT STRIKE.20 The Saudi and Kuwaiti denials appear to have emboldened Saddam, and beginning in 1997, Iraq became increasingly uncooperative and even belligerent toward the UN inspectors. Throughout that year and on into the next, the Iraqis cooperated less and less, obstructed the inspections more and more, and even physically attacked inspectors on a number of occasions.21 In the fall of 1998, Saddam escalated further, blocking inspections, refusing to allow Americans in, threatening to shoot down U-2 spy planes supporting the inspections, and finally declaring that Iraq would no longer participate in the oil-for-food program unless

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the UN agreed to set a date for the lifting of sanctions. Each time, Washington and London tried to mobilize the UN Security Council, but with ever more dis­ appointing results. In response to Iraq’s continued defiance and the UN’s growing fecklessness, they began massing forces in the region for an air campaign against Iraq, but almost immediately, Arab and European governments began to distance themselves from Washington and London. The Saudis and other US allies signaled that they would not back an attack because their people were increasingly unhappy about the plight of the Iraqi populace. With its international support evaporating, the US agreed to a Russian brokered deal in which Iraq agreed to allow the inspectors back, in return for Russian promises to convince the UN to set a time­ table for the lifting of sanctions.22 Two months later, on January 17, 1998, the game began all over again. Saddam issued another ultimatum to the UN: lift sanctions by May 20 or Iraq would cease all cooperation with the inspectors. Again, the US tried the UN and began building up its forces in the region. But again, Washington found itself isolated. Russia and China condemned the threat of force immediately. The Saudis refused to allow the US to use its bases. Only Kuwait was willing to do so.23 This time, the US was forced to allow UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to strike a deal with Baghdad in which the Iraqis promised yet again to cooperate with the inspections in return for new restrictions on UN inspections of certain sensitive facilities that the inspectors wanted to see but that Iraq claimed were critical to Saddam’s security. Saddam took it up again in August 1998, when Baghdad announced that it would no longer cooperate with the inspections. Washington and London per­ suaded the Security Council to pass a resolution condemning Iraq’s decision, but the US could not get a declaration that Iraq was in “material breach” of the cea­ sefire resolution. After such a mild response, Saddam decided to press harder. He began expelling Americans from the inspection teams and at the end of October 1998, made good on his threat to end cooperation altogether. The UN passed another resolution condemning the Iraqi decision, but again refused to include the critical “material breach” language. This time, the US persuaded a handful of its key allies that it had repeatedly opted for diplomacy over war in response to Sad­ dam’s blatant defiance of the UNSC resolutions, but it was clear that Saddam would only listen to force. Washington eventually secured Riyadh’s agreement that American support aircraft could fly from Saudi bases, agreement from Kuwait and other GCC states to fly combat missions from their bases, and agreement from Great Britain to participate. On November 14, with American and British planes in the air and headed toward targets in Iraq, however, Baghdad announced it would allow inspectors back in and the UN immediately accepted the Iraqi overture. The US publicly opted to abort the mission rather than attack a nation that seemed to have already backed down. The Clinton Administration was lambasted by the Republican opposition for being weak-willed and handing over American policy to the United Nations. Naturally, Saddam reneged right away and began blocking the inspections exactly as he had before. In early December, the inspectors pulled out of Iraq and

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delivered a formal report to the UN charging that Iraq continued to engage in a repeated pattern of obstruction and deception. The next day, the United States and Great Britain launched Operation DESERT FOX, the mission they had halted in November, a limited, punitive operation deliberately uncoupled from any coercive demands on Saddam. DESERT FOX consisted of four days of air and cruise missile strikes. The US and Britain flew 650 aircraft sorties and fired 415 cruise missiles at Iraq. The ostensible goal of the attack was to “degrade” Iraq’s WMD programs and “its ability to threaten its neighbors.” However, the fact was that only 11 of the 97 targets attacked were WMD-related facilities because no one could find hard evi­ dence of WMD programs, even though it was virtually universally believed that Saddam still had them.24 Instead, for the first time, the US principally struck a set of targets related to Saddam’s control over the country, including 18 command and control facilities, eight Republican Guard barracks, six airfields, and 19 sites related to Iraq’s internal security. The theory behind striking targets mostly related to regime protection and control was that the way to coerce Saddam into doing something he otherwise would not was by threatening his control over Iraq.25 In this, DESERT FOX actually exceeded expectations. Saddam panicked during the strikes. Fearing that his control was threatened, he ordered largescale arrests and executions, which backfired and destabilized his regime for months afterwards. DESERT FOX also seemed to give new heart to opposition inside the country. Grand Ayatollah Sadiq al-Sadr (the father of Muqtada as-Sadr) began preaching subtle acts of defiance against the regime and his sermons attracted tens of thousands of disaffected Shi’a. In February, Saddam had Sadr and his two sons killed as they were leaving a mosque in Najaf. This sparked rioting in a number of Iraqi cities – including the Shi’ite ghettoes of Baghdad – that Saddam was forced to put down with con­ siderable bloodshed. The Shi’ite insurgency flared again in southern Iraq, and for a time it became dangerous for regime officials to travel in rural areas of the south. Eventually, the regime was able to snuff out all of these threats and none ever really threatened its control.26 No matter how much DESERT FOX may have rattled Saddam, it was yet another failure to convince him to act as the United States hoped short of the use of force. Neither the aborted air attack the previous month, nor the many limited uses of force over the prior seven years were enough to convince Saddam to desist from challenging the inspections regime. Saddam appears to have believed that the new American/ British strike would be nothing more than another “cruise missile pinprick” that he was now willing to absorb if doing so made the US look powerless and so further eroded containment. Of course, Saddam was almost certainly encouraged to defiance by the sudden shift in international opinion in his favor; the unwillingness of France, Russia, and China to support the Americans and British; and the willingness of those countries and dozens of others to flagrantly violate the sanctions on Iraq. Nevertheless, it was yet another instance in which the threat of force wasn’t enough to convince him from taking action contrary to American policy.

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The endgame: The 2000 Golan gambit and the invasion of Iraq After DESERT FOX, Saddam needed to demonstrate his defiance of the United States. He needed to show his people and his powerbase that the strikes had not cowed him, and cover over the danger they had conjured. Consequently, on December 27, 1998, Iraq declared that it would shoot down any aircraft flying in the NFZs and then tried to make good on the threat.27 Baghdad began by firing anti-aircraft guns (to no effect), and then escalated to launching SAMs at American and British aircraft patrolling the NFZs.28 The Coa­ lition jets responded in kind, bombing any Iraqi air defense site that fired on them. The Iraqis never shot down a single plane, and the Coalition responses damaged and destroyed a great many SAM launchers, but Saddam would not give up. He kept his troops shooting for fear of looking like he had been the first to blink, and perhaps because he believed the drip-drip-drip of missile firings would help wear down American and British resolve. This low-level conflict became the norm in the NFZs after DESERT FOX. There was one last episode of note before the American invasion. Saddam ima­ gined that the outbreak of the Palestinian al-Aqsa Intifada in Autumn 2000 pre­ sented him with an opportunity to try to speed the end of containment. He seems to have concluded that the Arab-Israeli violence worked to his advantage because it stirred up the Arab “street” against Israel and its American ally, making it harder for Arab governments to support US policy. Indeed, it appears that Saddam cal­ culated that a full-blown Arab-Israeli war would be a great opportunity for him because it would split the US from its Arab allies, compel the GCC countries to evict the American forces based there, and possibly trigger the wholesale collapse of containment. Iraq began secret conversations with the new Syrian regime of Bashar al-Asad. Bashar’s father, Hafiz, had hated Saddam and was far too cautious to allow himself to be used by the Iraqis. Bashar, on the other hand, was callow and rash, and saw in the Intifada an opportunity to demonstrate to Israel and the other Arab states that he was not someone to be trifled with. Although we do not know the specific details, Baghdad and Damascus struck a deal for Iraqi military cooperation with Syria – apparently permitting Iraqi troops to be deployed in Syria near the Golan Heights to demonstrate Arab solidarity and put pressure on Israel. In October, the Iraqis began moving divisions out to the Syrian border. They first moved the Hammurabi Republican Guard Armored Division west of Baghdad, followed by the 3rd Armored Division and three infantry divisions of the regular Army to Haditha near the Iraqi-Syrian border.29 Washington recognized that Israel would see any movement of Iraqi troops into Syria as a casus belli, something Bashar was too inexperienced to understand. Indeed, Bashar and some of the people around him were assuring other Arab lea­ ders that they knew what they were doing with Saddam. The United States mounted a full-court press on Syria, bringing in Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia to add Arab weight to Washington’s diplomacy. Saudi Crown Prince Abdallah

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summoned Bashar to Riyadh, and there he was upbraided by Abdallah and then warned by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who made a quick detour through the Kingdom. Abdallah and Albright told Bashar that either he abrogated his deal with Saddam or he would find himself out in the cold with no one but the Iraqis to help him face the Israelis. Bashar seemed to get the message, but we cannot be certain. In late October, the Iraqis reversed gear and brought the forces headed to Haditha back to their garrisons. However, once again, it is unclear whether this was because Bashar had cancelled their agreement or because Saddam found that the Iraqi military just couldn’t handle it. As had been the case in 1994, only worse this time, Iraqi vehicles broke down repeatedly and the Iraqi divisions never even made it out of Iraq. Either way, the Iraqis went home, and the threat of a wider Arab-Israeli war was averted.30 But also either way, Saddam was not deterred by the threat of war with the US, or even with Israel: Either he found that the Iraqi military was incapable of the operation, or the Syrians killed the deal. Thus, even after DESERT FOX, DESERT STRIKE, VIG­ ILANT WARRIOR, multiple cruise missile attacks, and even DESERT STORM, Saddam was still not deterred. Indeed, the ultimate expression of Saddam’s continued defiance, his sheer unwillingness to be deterred long after others would have been, was his response to the threat of American invasion in 2003. As postwar findings have well docu­ mented, Saddam refused to believe that the United States intended to mount a full-scale invasion. In the words of the Iraqi Perspectives Report, Saddam believed, that the Americans could not possibly launch a ground invasion that would seriously threaten his regime. At best they might be willing to launch an air campaign similar to OPERATION DESERT FOX in 1998 with a few small ground attacks around Iraq’s periphery. But from Saddam’s point of view, the idea that the Americans would attack all the way to Baghdad was ludicrous.31 It goes on to note that many of Saddam’s generals did recognize this likelihood and fully expected to lose when it happened.32 Thus, in early 2003, Saddam seems to have been the only person on the planet who did not understand that the George W. Bush Administration was determined to invade Iraq if there was any way that it could. The fact that other Iraqi decisionmakers saw the reality indicates that this was Saddam once again insisting that what was best for him had to be true. It was delusional. It was wish fulfillment. It was not a commonly held Iraqi misjudgment. It was his alone. And so he refused to recognize the threat from the American force build-up and be compelled to throw open his country once and for all to the inspectors, provide all of the relevant data about his WMD programs, and anything else he could have to demonstrate that he no longer had any weapons of mass destruction and so strip the administration of their most compelling rationale for war. It still might have failed: The George W. Bush Administration had many motives for invading and WMD was simply the most palatable to the outside world; but it was Saddam’s best shot – his only shot –

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at averting an invasion, and he refused to take it because he convinced himself that he did not have to take the painful step of admitting to his people and his enemies (often the same thing) that he had surrendered them years before. As a result, the United States went to war with Iraq yet again, and this time it led to the end of his regime and the end of Saddam himself.

The 2000s: Iran The American invasion of Iraq created as many problems as it solved. Saddam was gone and with him went the threats to Gulf security from his grandiose designs, his suicidally aggressive modus operandi, and waning military capabilities. The frustrat­ ing, recurrent problems of the 1990s were over. But the Bush Administration’s utter failure to plan realistically for post-invasion Iraq, or to employ adequate resources, strategy, or policy to address Iraq’s multiplying fractures meant that the invasion spawned new threats to replace the old ones. On the other side of the Gulf, the years since the end of the Iran-Iraq war had not been terrible ones for Tehran, at least with regard to its relationship with the United States, but there were definite wrinkles along the way. The United States had imposed new economic sanctions on Iran, but Washington had not yet figured out how to maximize their impact and so the damage to the Iranian economy was bearable. In 1996, domestic political squabbles between President Clinton and the new, militantly conservative Republican Congress led to a public fight over covert action against Iran that convinced Tehran that Washington had launched an all-out effort to topple the regime. The Iranians overreacted with a dangerous terrorist attack against the Khobar Towers housing complex in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 American servicemen and wounded over 400 others. But the Clinton Administra­ tion allowed itself to be mollified by the Saudis (who did not want a war with Iran at that time) and the election of a reformist Iranian president, Mohammed Kha­ tami, and so it passed without a fight.33 Meanwhile, for most of the 1990s, America was preoccupied with Iraq. Washington had to expend so much energy, resources, and political capital on Saddam that there was little appetite to do more to Iran. All that suited Tehran just fine. In the same spirit, after 9/11, the Iranians proved quite helpful to the Americans in taking down the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. There was even talk among some Iranian and American officials of a wider rapprochement between the countries.34 In retrospect, it seems unlikely that Iran and the United States might have pur­ sued a meaningful reconciliation at that time. The Iranian leadership remained far too vested in its own anti-Americanism.35 However, it was the United States that ultimately put an end to it. In his January 2002 State of the Union address, Pre­ sident Bush claimed that North Korea, Iran, and Saddam’s Iraq, “constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world,” After that, any ideas of a pos­ sible warming of ties ended, and the Iranians focused on how to react to a newly bellicose American policy.36

Iran and Iraq 97

The primary purpose of Bush’s speech was to begin to lay the groundwork for the invasion of Iraq in 2003. That event had a profound impact on the Iranian-American relationship. On the one hand, it eliminated Saddam Hussein’s Iraq as a threat to Iran. On the other, it put the United States – or at least much of its military and a great many other Americans – right next door to Iran, in a country whose society and economy were intimately connected to those of Iran. Moreover, far more than the American presence in Afghanistan, the US occupation of Iraq was seen as a tre­ mendous danger to the Iranian leadership. They were certain that toppling Saddam was merely a pretense for Washington’s real aim, invading Iran. Those fears were not entirely baseless. There certainly were some in the Bush Administration who wanted to do just that. However, the botched occupation and reconstruction of Iraq unleashed an insurgency and a civil war that completely con­ sumed the resources and attention of the United States for eight years. This meant that the United States did not have the bandwidth to respond to most Iranian pro­ vocations and instead needed to avoid a conflict with Tehran if at all possible. It made Washington far more willing to overlook Iranian misbehavior than otherwise would have been the case for the hardline George W. Bush Administration.

Skirmishing over Iraq The US war in Iraq entailed a massive new commitment of military forces to the Persian Gulf region. In Iraq itself, the US Army and Marines typically had between 130,000 and 160,000 troops there, plus an almost equal number of Coalition partner forces and contractors. The Navy maintained its force deployments from the 1990s, including at least one carrier on station in the Gulf or North Arabian Sea to provide air support, and at times a second in the Mediterranean or Red Sea. The US Air Force maintained its composite wing at Incirlik to support operations in northern Iraq, but added additional squadrons in Kuwait, the UAE, and the massive new al-Udayd base complex in Qatar. It is important to keep in mind that virtually none of this was aimed at Iran. It was essentially all there to support ongoing combat operations in Iraq and Afgha­ nistan. Nevertheless, Washington assumed that so mighty a force would also be sufficient to deter any Iranian mischief-making. The US continued to monitor Iranian activity – and was well aware of the slow, steady improvement in Iranian naval and air assets in the region – but made no particular moves or force aug­ mentations directed at Iran. For its part, Iran’s approach to Iraq and the US occupation shifted significantly over time. At first, the Iranians truly feared that the US invasion of Iraq was nothing but a stepping stone to get at them. They simultaneously recognized that Saddam’s fall represented an opportunity for them to encourage an Iraqi govern­ ment more amenable to Tehran’s interests. They also feared that the United States would install a pro-American regime that could be just as great a threat as Saddam had been. For all of these reasons, they couldn’t just sit on the sidelines: There was too much at stake for them.

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However, the Iranians also seem to have recognized that if Washington did what it said it intended and created a truly democratic Iraq, that outcome would be fine for Iran. In such an Iraq, the Shi’a majority would predominate and Tehran believed that it could exert enough influence over the Iraqi Shi’a to ensure that this new Iraq never became Iran’s enemy, and might even become its ally if things broke the right way. That created a pathway for Iran to reconcile its competing fears and interests in Iraq. So immediately after the US invasion and for several years thereafter, Iran’s approach toward the American occupation of Iraq was one of tacit, if wary, cooperation. Tehran sent the Iraqi Shi’a dissidents that had taken refuge in Iran back to Iraq, but encouraged them, as well as any other Shi’a who would listen, to cooperate with the Americans and become leaders in the new American-led effort to build an Iraqi democracy. This worked well for the Iranians, as various Iranianbacked entities like the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (now the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, or ISCI) and its Badr militia became pillars of the new Iraqi government. Inevitably over time, however, the Iranian policy changed. The United States horribly mismanaged the occupation, pushing the country into civil war by early 2006. For Iran, the Iraqi civil war was a huge threat, potentially as great as an American invasion. The emergence of thousands of armed and organized takfiri37 Salafi fighters determined to exterminate the Shi’a (as well as drive out the infidel Americans) in their closest next-door neighbor was a major new problem for Iran. So too were the other aspects of spillover from the Iraqi civil war – the refugees, economic problems, Kurdish secessionism, and radicalization that threatened to infect Iranian society via the myriad connections between the two countries. Although Tehran was initially wary of provoking the Americans for fear that it would provide the pretext for an invasion of Iran, by early 2006, the Iranians had changed gears and were encouraging their Iraqi allies and proxies to use organized violence to secure as much of the country as possible from the Sunnis and drive the Americans out of Iraq.38 In the words of the US Army’s superb official history of the Iraq War, by 2006, “the Iranian regime was content to fund, train, and supply all parties willing to attack the US-led coalition.”39 Iran’s proxies began to inflict more and more casualties on the United States, pushing Washington to act to try to convince Iran to desist. In the first eight months of 2006, the US suffered 23 casualties to explosively-forged projectiles (EFPs), which could only be manufactured in Iran. In the last four months of the year, it suffered 137.40 Moreover, by late 2006, the US military command in Iraq had incontrovertible proof that Iran was supplying the EFPs that were doing the bulk of the killing, including recovering EFPs with fresh, 2006 Iranian factory markings. Washington authorized a campaign to employ information operations and special operations forces against Iranian activities in Iraq.41 It began on December 21, 2006, with a raid to capture Mohsen Chizari, the head of Iran’s Quds Force operations department, who was meeting with Shi’a militia leaders in Baghdad. The raid acquired a wealth of documents demonstrating that Iran was

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actively coordinating, even planning the Shi’a side of the Iraqi civil war. Never­ theless, four days later Washington opted to release Chizari and three other Iranians who had been captured with him.42 Less than two weeks later, on January 11, 2007, the United States moved again, raiding the Iranian consulate in Erbil where they captured five Iranian Quds Force operatives. In actuality, the Americans had hoped to nab two bigger fish: Brigadier General Mohammed Ali Jafari, then the deputy secretary of the Iranian Supreme National Security Council, and Hamid Taghavi, the Quds Force’s operations chief for Iraq. However, the two senior Iranians were not present during the raid. Nonetheless, the US imprisoned the “Erbil Five” until July 2009.43 The US hoped that these raids would send a powerful signal to Iran to back off or face a more muscular American response.44 Apparently, it didn’t – Iran’s support to Shi’a militias, including the provision of EFPs and other weapons specifically meant to kill Americans, continued unabated. Iranian-supplied EFP attacks rose to 65 in April 2007 and then to 99 in July 2007.45 Moreover, Iran – or Iranians – retaliated rather than backing down.46 On January 20, Qais al-Khazali’s Asaib Ahl al-Haq attacked the Karbala Provincial Joint Coordination Center to try to capture Americans who could be traded for the Erbil Five. The operation was planned by Iranian Quds Force officers along with at least one Lebanese Hizballah operative. Although the attackers succeeded in capturing four Americans, they were pursued relentlessly by coalition forces and chose to kill their captives to better enable their own escape.47 Khazali, his brother, and the Lebanese Hizballah operative were all captured on March 20, 2007, along with the plans for the raid in Persian.48 Then, on March 23, 2007, while British forces were still in Iraq as part of the US-led occupation, 15 British sailors and marines were searching a ship suspected of smuggling in the Shatt al-Arab waterway that divides southeastern Iraq from southwestern Iran when a large force of Iranian Revolutionary Guard naval boats surrounded them. The IRGC personnel boarded the British boats and, because the local British commander was under orders from London not to fight back, the Iranians took the British boats and the 15 personnel back to Iran. Although this incident could have provoked a war between Iran and the UK (and its American ally), the operation apparently was the decision of the local Iranian IRGC navy commander, Captian Abol-Ghassam Amangah. He acted without conferring with Tehran. No captain in the US Navy – or any other worth its salt – would risk provoking a war without first checking with his chain of command. Remarkably, Tehran rewarded Amangah for his initiative.49 Tehran returned the British sailors and marines twelve days later, supporting the notion that this was the local IRGC navy commander conducting his own personal retaliation for the taking of the Erbil Five. However, within a month, the Revolutionary Guards would seize four Iranian-American dual citizens vis­ iting Iran – Ali Shakeri, Haleh Esfandiari, Kian Tajbakhsh, and Parnaz Azima – and put them in prison, accused of committing unspecified “crimes against national security.”50

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Meanwhile, the Iranians kept up the flow of EFPs and other weapons to their Iraqi allies, who continued to use them against American and other coalition tar­ gets with Iranian approval, encouragement, and at times, guidance. The US mili­ tary command in Iraq fumed at these attacks and repeatedly asked for permission to mount a wider special forces campaign against the Iranian Quds Force personnel themselves. However, the Bush Administration faced a ferocious fight with Democrats (and moderate Republicans) in Congress to keep the “Surge Strategy” going and they did not want to jeopardize it by picking a bigger fight with Iran. So, the US military leadership in Iraq was refused permission to target the Iranians, who continued doing what they were doing. What solved the problem was the Surge itself, particularly the component aimed at the Shi’a militia groups. By the spring of 2008, only Muqtada as-Sadr’s Jaysh alMahdi (JAM) remained as a large, armed, extra-governmental militia. However, it received extensive Iranian support and controlled Sadr City in Baghdad along with the cities of Basra, Amarah, Qurnah, Kut, and others in southern Iraq. In March and April 2008, Iraq’s Shi’a Prime Minister, Nuri al-Maliki, ordered Operation Charge of the Knights [Sawlat al-Fursan] to retake Basra with Iraqi army brigades – many of them Sunni formations from Anbar – leading the way, backed by Amer­ ican firepower and intelligence assets. The offensive was a remarkable success and in barely a week, JAM and its Iranian Quds Force liaison had been driven from the city. Maliki then went on to order similar operations against Qurnah, Amarah, Kut, and Sadr City. By August 2008, JAM, its special groups, and their Iranian advisors, had been driven from Iraq. Iranian influence reached its nadir in postSaddam Iraq, and monthly EFP attacks fell to single digits (with just a few excep­ tions) for the rest of the American occupation.51

Tensions over the Iranian Nuclear Program In August 2002, the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), an Iranian Marxist-Islamist oppo­ sition group, presented evidence that the Iranian nuclear program had made far greater progress than previously had been realized. (It is widely rumored that the Israeli Mossad provided the information to the MEK). The MEK revealed to the world the existence of Iran’s uranium enrichment facility at Natanz and its pluto­ nium extraction facility at Arak, both in violation of Iran’s requirements under its Safeguards Agreement with the IAEA, a critical component of its NPT obligations.52 With that, the Iranian nuclear program became a second source of tension in the US-Iranian relationship. Indeed, over time, it would become Washington’s central preoccupation when it came to Iran and, arguably, the Middle East. Without question, the American move that had the greatest impact on the Iranian nuclear program was the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. That was a use of force, but it was not a use of force against Iran, yet it ultimately had a highly salutary effect there. Tehran became so frightened that the United States would use the disclosures about Iran’s nuclear program to justify an invasion of Iran, just as it had used (false, but at the time, believed) disclosures about Iraq’s nuclear program to justify the invasion of Iraq.

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Thus, in 2003, Iran closed down its nuclear weapons program, retaining only its program to produce fissile material, which it claimed was simply to provide fuel for nuclear energy. In addition, the Iranians engaged in real negotiations with the Europeans about ending this, and even agreed to suspend uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing, sign the additional protocol of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (which gave IAEA inspectors greater access to Iranian sites), and resolve all outstanding nuclear discrepancies with the IAEA. That agreement lasted about three years, however, at which point the Iranians seem to have decided that a US invasion was no longer a threat.53 Over the years, the United States would take a range of actions to try to slow or deter Iran’s nuclear program, all of which fall outside the scope of “force without war.” Beginning in 2006, the United States inaugurated a cyber-attack campaign against Iran that would eventually rope in the Israelis and culminate in the launch of the Stuxnet virus against Iran’s nuclear enrichment program.54 The United States would impose a series of ever more draconian sanctions on Iran and in 2010 would succeed in having the United Nations Security Council impose compre­ hensive sanctions against Iran under Chapter VII of the UN Charter. For their part, the Israelis mounted an assassination campaign against Iranian nuclear scientists to add to the pressure.55 Ultimately, the pressure would convince Iran to sign the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2015, agreeing to limits on its nuclear program in return for the lifting of sanctions, which were unquestionably the primary impetus for the Iranian concessions. Throughout this period, Iran took a number of small, but highly provocative actions toward the United States – actions that might easily have caused Washington to respond with force – and yet the United States never did. In 2011, the Iranians shot down an American drone over eastern Iran. That same year, the Iranians tried to assassinate the Saudi Ambassador to the United States by blowing up a popular Georgetown restaurant. In 2012, an Iranian Su-25 attack aircraft chased another American drone operating over the Persian Gulf. Months later, the Iranians mounted a major cyber-attack of their own, crippling the computer systems of Saudi Aramco. In 2013, an Iranian F-4 chased an American drone in international airspace and had to be warned off by US fighters. In April 2015, Iranian naval vessels harassed the US-flagged Maersk Kensington in the strait of Hormuz and then four days later seized the (non-US flagged) Maersk Tigris, taking its crew hostage. Finally, in 2016, Iranian naval vessels seized two American riverine boats that had gotten lost and sailed well off course near Farsi Island in the Persian Gulf. In response to these incidents, the United States largely sat on its hands. In fact, the only American response of any significance came in May 2015, after the Ira­ nians seized the Maersk Tigris, when the US Navy escorted US- or UK-flagged vessels through the Strait of Hormuz for a few days while a single destroyer stood off and watched the Maersk Tigris until it was released on May 7. Otherwise, these Iranian actions went largely unchallenged. Of course, many were inconsequential or even represented American violations of Iranian sovereignty. Others didn’t. In particular, the bizarre Iranian plot to kill the Saudi Ambassador in an attack that

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could easily have caused scores of American fatalities is the kind of thing that might have triggered a war in other circumstances. Yet it didn’t. As it had during the 1980s, the United States consistently concluded that it had bigger fish to fry and did not want to get roped into a fruitless conflict with a stubborn, paranoid, and at times seemingly irrational regime like the Islamic Republic. Yet, it is equally true that Tehran never escalated beyond these (mostly minor) scrapes and for that reason, American inaction may well have been justified. Whatever their suspicions and conspiracies about the United States, Tehran’s respect for American military power appears to have remained undiluted, and that imposed a tremendous degree of restraint on what they were willing to do even amid a decade-long program to bring great pressure on Iran to try to force it to do something the regime was determined to avoid. There was one last incident worth noting. It was a minor event in its own right, but it may eventually be seen as the first of a wider pattern if the United States begins to try to counter Iranian expansionism across the region, as the Trump Administration has threatened and as America’s Middle Eastern allies would dearly like. On May 12, 2015, Iran dispatched a freighter to Yemen which Tehran claimed was carrying humanitarian aid. The ship was escorted by two Iranian naval vessels, Tehran issued a public warning that no one should interfere with the ship, and it refused to submit the ship for inspection to demonstrate compliance with the UN arms embargo on Yemen. The United States ordered the amphibious assault ship Iwo Jima (a small aircraft carrier) to track the Iranian squadron and Washington urged Tehran to divert the ships to Djibouti for inspection, which the Iranians eventually agreed to do a week later.56 In this instance, the Americans did not have to fire a shot, and the Iranians backed down. That same month would see the signing of the JCPOA and it may be that the Iranians did not want an incident at sea to derail the signing of the nuclear deal – and the lifting of sanctions. Indeed, it is quite likely that hardline elements in Tehran sent the ship in the hope of provoking just such a fight which would then justify delaying or scuttling the nuclear deal as they hoped. Thus, we should be careful not to draw too many conclusions from this single data point. Indeed, with the US withdrawal from the JCPOA in 2017; Iran’s recent gains in Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon; and the increase in Israeli military operations against Iranian targets in Syria; America may soon feel the need to begin pushing back on Iran across the Middle East, and then Iran might not be as compliant as it was in 2015.

Employing force short of war against Iraq and Iran America’s experience using military forces to shape the behavior of Iran and Iraq in the post-Cold War era was a very mixed bag. The history is not clear at all. There are no straight patterns that run throughout the experiences. Every conclusion that one can reach must be balanced against either important exceptions that undermine the rule or completely contradictory patterns.

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America’s defense of Kuwaiti oil in the 1980s arguably should have been adequate to convince Saddam that Washington would fight his invasion in 1990, whatever mixed signals may have been conveyed in the summer of 1990. But it wasn’t. DESERT STORM and the residual American forces left behind in the region after 1991 should have been enough to convince Saddam to cooperate with the UN arms inspectors, not try to kill former President Bush, and not threaten to invade Kuwait again in 1994, yet they too were not enough. In 1998, Washington made it clear that continued Iraqi obstruction of the weapons inspectors would trigger a military response – and the pantomime that November should have convinced Saddam that the US was serious, but it didn’t. Finally, despite his repeated humiliations by the United States in the past, Saddam still thought that moving an armored corps to the Golan in 2000 to threaten or attack Israel was a good idea. In every one of these cases, a powerful American military presence in the region and a demonstrated willingness by the United States to augment and/or employ those forces against Iraq weren’t enough to keep Saddam from threatening Amer­ ican interests. It does seem likely that the rapid American reinforcement in 1994, which changed the local balance of forces, was at least part of Saddam’s decision to pull back from a second invasion of Kuwait. Although even then, it is hard to know how much this is a case of local deterrence success and how much a product of the inability of Iraqi forces to execute another invasion. In the end, however, even immediate deterrence/compellence failed. Saddam’s final act as leader of Iraq was to dismiss the massive build-up of American forces in the Gulf for the invasion of Iraq as nothing but a show of force. Far from taking it seriously and doing everything he might to head off an American invasion, Saddam insisted that the Bush Administration would never invade and that he could with­ stand the brief air campaign he expected instead. Unintended though it may have been, that invasion did seem to have a salutary effect (at least for several years) on Iran, however. The Iranians learned the lesson that Saddam would not: that the United States would use massive force against countries that were threatening American interests. They pulled in their horns, decelerated their nuclear program, told their Iraqi allies to cooperate with the United States, and mostly refrained from taking provocative action against the United States. That too should be seen as a successful story of general deterrence of Iran. Still, over time, America’s military presence and willingness to use force were not enough to prevent Iran from launching a covert war against the US in Iraq and reigniting at least part of its nuclear program. There were also incidents of local deterrence failure as well, when Iran grabbed British and then American military personnel. Iran and its proxies ultimately had to be driven from Iraq by force, and it only agreed to shelve its nuclear program under the pressure of crippling international sanctions. Here too, it is hard to say that America succeeded in employing its military forces to secure its national interests without engaging in actual combat operations. Why? How do we explain the inability of the United States to employ its military forces to dissuade Iran and Iraq from doing things that clearly threatened

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(or hurt) American interests, especially after the United States repeatedly demon­ strated its willingness to use force if other means failed? The effects of the nature of the two regimes that the United States faced, as well as their very different perspectives on the world, the United States, and their own societies, should not be understated. Iran was led by a revolutionary government. Such regimes often have a missionary zeal that places the achievement of ideolo­ gical goals far above the preservation of life or property. In addition, they typically bring to power men and women with little experience in governance, diplomacy, and warfare, causing them to miscalculate far more frequently than the norm. A second factor unique to the Iranian revolution was its severe anti-Americanism, which led the Iranians to miscalculate to an even greater extent when it came to American actions and their motivations. By the 2000s, Ayatollah Khomeini had died, succeeded by Ali Khamene’i. Khamene’i was different from Khomeini in important ways. Although he was no less anti-American than his predecessor, he was far more cautious. That innate caution was probably reinforced by Iran’s own experiences in the 1980s when thrashed relatively effortlessly by American military forces, and by the demonstra­ tions of American might against Iraq in 1991 and 2003. Yet Khamene’i was also a weaker figure than Khomeini, one who did not always provide clear direction to avoid offending powerful internal constituencies, and often indulged various groups to buy their support, particularly Iran’s hardliners. This contributed to Iran’s pattern: respecting America’s strength in general per Khamene’i’s desire to avoid providing the Americans with the excuse to hammer Iran, but suffering spasms of violence and risk when underlings either freelanced or convinced him that the US was about to attack Iran on its own initiative. A final factor was cross-cultural dissonance. The Iranians did not understand the Americans and the Americans did not understand the Iranians. It was far too often the case that American actions short of war that were intended to convey restraint coupled with a willingness to use force, were misconstrued by the Iranians as signs of a lack of American resolve. At times the Iranians misunderstood the balance of cap­ abilities between themselves and the Americans, but they more often misunderstood the intentions and will of the United States, and that misreading of American will – of seeing restraint not as a warning but a weakness – led to the failure of most American shows of force, necessitating American uses of force instead. Iraq in the 1990s was an even more personalistic regime than Iran before or since. Saddam Hussein ruled over a Stalinist totalitarian state in which he was the only decision-maker. Thus, what mattered for the United States was convincing him to do or not do whatever it was that suited America’s interests. Of course, that was the problem that the United States encountered because Saddam was an exceptionally difficult decision-maker to influence. Saddam was a poorly-educated (albeit intelligent) Sunni Arab from the tribal hinterlands of Iraq – a tiny village called al-Awjah outside of Tikrit. He brought with him all of the prejudices and ignorance of that upbringing. He did not travel much abroad, although he spent some time in exile in Egypt, and so knew little of the wider world, and effectively

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nothing of America. Consequently, Iraq’s foreign policy routinely and increasingly sprouted from Saddam’s fertile but uninformed imagination and was based on absurd caricatures of the United States. Saddam was also a megalomaniac and, like Stalin his idol, built a system in which few (but not none) would challenge his perspective. Even when his relatives or generals did, he dismissed any view that contradicted whatever he wanted to believe, no matter how fantastic. Moreover, the combination of this “bubble” of sycophants and the worsening internal and external threats to his rule over time stretched – and at some point, perhaps – severed his ability to perceive even the most basic realities. By the end, Saddam was wildly delusional and even the obvious intentions and corresponding military build-up of the George W. Bush Administration failed to force him to see his situation as it was, rather than as he wanted it to be. Cross-cultural signaling is always difficult. States from societies that do not necessarily share common values, perspectives, or modes of behavior often mis­ understand one another. That is more often so when signals, not words, are the means of communication, and it is especially so when the signals are made by military forces that inevitably inspire anxiety if not outright terror in the other side. Communicating with insular, autocratic regimes where the leadership is isolated from the people, and potentially from the wider world, is especially difficult. In such circumstances, groupthink and/or the eccentricities and limitations of that leadership become magnified, and piercing the bubble to make them understand a message as intended by the sender can be very difficult. Again, this is made doubly so by the fear and danger inherent in any military threat. We assume at our peril that the intent of a military move will be clearly understood by the target state, but it is too often the case that one side or the other believes that by using its military forces, its intent will be self-evident. Too often the other side will misread it – seeing it as more threatening or more benign, more aggressive or more passive, more courageous or more cowardly, than it was meant to be. That is even more often true when the signals are sent across wide cultural divides, and to or from isolated and even delusional leader­ ships that simply do not see the world the same way as the sender. As America’s long experience in the Persian Gulf demonstrates, employing military forces in pursuit of diplomatic ends can be fabulously effective, but without clear, rein­ forcing messages it also invites misinterpretation that may result in the war that military moves were meant to avoid.

Notes 1 Kenneth M. Pollack, Arabs at War: Military Effectiveness, 1948–1991 (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2002), 235–64. 2 Kenneth M. Pollack, The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq (New York, NY: Random House, 2002), 46–9. 3 Martin Indyk, Innocent Abroad: An Intimate Account of American Peace Diplomacy in the Middle East (New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 2009), 149–66.

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4 Andrew and Patrick Cockburn, Out of the Ashes: The Resurrection of Saddam Hussein (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 1999), 31; Jeffrey T. Richelson, The US Intelligence Community, 4th edn. (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1999), 353–4. 5 Pollack, The Threatening Storm, 52–64. 6 Pollack, The Threatening Storm, 80. This should not be confused with the better known but less feasible scheme in March 1995 hatched by Ahmed Chalabi and the Kurdish leadership. On the latter, see Pollack, 73–4. 7 Michael Gordon, “US Shoots Down an Iraqi Warplane in No-Flight Zone,” The New York Times, December 28, 1992. www.nytimes.com/1992/12/28/us/us-shoots-down-an-iraqi-wa rplane-in-no-flight-zone.html 8 The conclusions of the FBI report explaining the forensic evidence in the case is included in: Office of the Inspector General, Department of Justice, The FBI Laboratory: An Inves­ tigation into Laboratory Practices and Alleged Misconduct in Explosives-Related and Other Cases (Washington, DC, 1997), accessed on September 3, 2018. https://fas.org/irp/agency/doj/ oig/fbilab1/05bush2.htm 9 Ann Devroy and Julia Preston, “Iraq Given Ultimatum on Missiles,” The Washington Post, January 7, 1993; Ann Devroy and Barton Gellman, “US Attacks Industrial Site Near Baghdad; MiG Downed as Gulf Allies Display Might,” The Washington Post, January 18, 1993; Michael R. Gordon, “Iraq Apparently Rebuffs Allies on Missiles Deployed in South,” The New York Times, January 8, 1993; Gwen Ifill, “Raid on Baghdad: US Fires Missiles at Baghdad, Citing April Plot to Kill Bush,” The New York Times, June 27, 1993. 10 “Hammurabi Division (Armored),” Global Security, accessed September 20, 2018. www. globalsecurity.org/military/world/iraq/hammurabi.htm; “Al Nida (Armored),” Global Security, accessed September 20, 2018, www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/iraq/a l-nida.htm; Michael R. Gordon, “Threats in the Gulf: The Military Build-Up,” The New York Times, October 10, 1994; Michael R. Gordon, “Kuwait is Allowing US to Station Squadron of Warplanes,” The New York Times, October 28, 1994.; Dilip Hiro, Neighbors, Not Friends: Iraq and Iran after the Gulf Wars (New York: Routledge, 2001), 80–81; Thomas W. Lippman and Bradley Graham, “Iraqi Troops Move Near Kuwait Border,” The Washington Post, October 8, 1994. 11 After his defection, Hussein Kamel insisted that Saddam did intend to invade Kuwait to force the UN to lift the sanctions. As a defector looking to mobilize international opi­ nion against Saddam, he had an incentive to portray Saddam in as bad a light as he could. However, Hussein Kamel was one of the very few people in the Iraqi regime who may have been privy to Saddam’s thinking on this matter and many of the US intelligence personnel who debriefed Hussein Kamel after his defection believe he was telling the truth. See “Hussein Kamel on Army Strength, Saddam Fedayeen,” al-Watan al-‘Arabi, in FBIS-NES, November 27, 1995, 33. 12 After the invasion of Iraq, the Coalition recovered one tape of a conversation between Saddam and some of his senior subordinates regarding the deployment to the Kuwait border in October 1994. In it, Saddam makes clear that his actions are driven by a need to get the sanctions lifted, but he speaks only of creating a crisis for the international community, and not whether this refers merely to the threat to Kuwait or an actual invasion. See Kevin M. Woods, David D. Palkki, and Mark E. Stout, The Saddam Tapes: The Inner Workings of a Tyrant’s Regime, 1978–2001 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Uni­ versity Press, 2011), 266–9. 13 Kevin M. Woods, Michael R. Pease, Mark E. Stout, Williamson Murray, and James G. Lacey, The Iraqi Perspectives Report: Saddam’s Senior Leadership on Operation Iraqi Freedom From the Official U.S. Joint Forces Command Report (U.S. Naval Institute Press, 2006), 14. 14 In addition to The Iraqi Perspectives Report, see also Amatzia Baram, “Deterrence Lessons from Iraq,” Foreign Affairs 91, no. 4 (July/August 2012): 76–85; Kevin M. Woods, James Lacey, and Williamson R. Murray, “Saddam’s Delusions: The View from the Inside,” Foreign Affairs 85, no. 3 (May/June 2006). 15 See Amatzia Baram, Building Toward Crisis: Saddam Husayn’s Strategy for Survival (Washington, DC: The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 1998), 37–86.

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16 Independent Inquiry Committee into the United Nations Oil-for-Food Programme, “Manipulation of the Oil-For-Food Programme by the Iraqi Regime: Oil Transactions and Illicit Payments Humanitarian Goods Transactions and Illicit Payments The Escrow Bank and the Inspection Companies Other UN-Related Issues,” The United Nations, October 27, 2005. www.humanrightsvoices.org/assets/attachments/documents/volcker_ report_10-27-05.pdf; on the impact of the sanctions on ordinary Iraqis and their relation to the state, see also Lisa Blaydes, State of Repression: Iraq Under Saddam Hussein (Prince­ ton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018), 112–30; Joseph Sassoon, Saddam Hussein’s Ba’th Party: Inside and Authoritarian Regime (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 242–9. 17 Richard Garfield, Morbidity and Mortality among Iraqi Children from 1990 to 1998: Assessing the Impact of Economic Sanctions (Goshen, IN: Institute for International Peace Studies, University of Notre Dame, 1999).; Sarah Graham-Brown, Sanctioning Saddam (New York: I.B. Tauris, 1999). At least one postwar study of the sanctions continued to maintain that “at least 500,000 children under five” died because of the sanctions, although this judgment appears to be based on prewar studies of widely varying quality and not on any of the postwar findings. Joy Gordon, Invisible War: The United States and the Iraq Sanctions (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), 87. 18 Tim Dyson and Valeria Cetorelli, “Changing views on child mortality and economic sanctions in Iraq: a history of lies, damned lies and statistics,” British Medical Journal of Global Health 2, no. 2 (July 2017). https://gh.bmj.com/content/bmjgh/2/2/e000311.full.pdf; Liz Sly, “Saddam Hussein said sanctions killed 500,000 children. That was ‘a spectacular lie.’,” The Washington Post, August 4, 2017; Michael Spagat, “Truth and Death in Iraq Under Sanctions,” Significance 7, no. 3 (September 2010): 116–20. I will also note that even before the invasion, the great Israeli scholar of Iraq, Amatzia Baram, had already noted this discrepancy. See Amatzia Baram, “The Effect of Iraqi Sanctions: Statistical Pitfalls and Responsibility,” Middle East Journal 54, no. 2 (Spring 2000): 195–202. 19 Central Intelligence Agency, Comprehensive Report of the Special Advisor to the DCI on Iraq’s WMD, (Virginia, 2004). www.cia.gov/library/reports/general-reports-1/iraq_wmd_2004/ ; see, in particular, the section on “Regime Strategic Intent,” in Volume I, 41–65. 20 Pollack, The Threatening Storm, 80–5. 21 Richard Butler, The Greatest Threat, (New York, NY: Public Affairs, 2000), 3; Pollack, The Threatening Storm, 87–8. 22 Interview with Martin Indyk, Washington, DC, June 2002. 23 Steven Lee Myers, “US Will not Ask to Use Saudi Bases for Raid on Iraq,” The New York Times, February 9, 1998. 24 US Library of Congress, Congressional Research Service, Iraq-US Confrontation, by Alfred B. Prados and Kenneth Katzman, IB94049 (2002). www.everycrsreport.com/ files/20020328_IB94049_9cfeac5612071928e3d15ec80c19e9c7b7c40d0e.pdf 25 Daniel Byman, Kenneth Pollack, and Matthew Waxman, “Coercing Saddam: Lessons from the Past,” Survival 40, no. 3 (Autumn 1998): 127–52; Kenneth M. Pollack, “Responding to Iraq: Crises and Opportunities,” The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, October 31, 1997; Michael Eisenstadt, “Target Iraq’s Republican Guard,” Middle East Quarterly, December 1996, 11–16. 26 Hiro, Neighbors, Not Friends, 165–73; Regis W. Matlak, “Inside Saddam’s Grip,” National Security Studies Quarterly, Spring 1999, 8–9; Woods et. al., The Iraqi Perspectives Report, 44. 27 Steven Lee Myers, “US Jets Attack Iraq Missile Post,” The New York Times, December 29, 1998. 28 Steven Lee Myers, “Iraq Vows to Defy US Ban and Fly in ‘No Flight’ Zones,” The New York Times, December 30, 1998. 29 Leon Barkho, “Saddam Says Iraqi Army Ready to Fight Israel,” The Associated Press, November 10, 2000; “Hammurabi Division (Armored).” www.globalsecurity.org/milita ry/world/iraq/hammurabi.htm; David Zeev Harris, “Iraq Moves Troops West,” Jer­ usalem Post Radio, October 12, 2000. http://wander.co.il/samples/; “Israeli Chief of Staff Warns of ‘Regional Deterioration’: Arafat plane ‘Smuggling Arms,’” BBC Summary of

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30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38

39 40

41 42 43 44 45 46 47

48 49 50 51 52 53

World Broadcasts, November 9, 2000; Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, “Iraqi Armored Units in Western Iraq Withdrawing,” Iraq Report 3, no. 36 (November 3, 2000). Pollack, The Threatening Storm, 103–4. Woods et. al., The Iraqi Perspectives Report, xviii. See also, 25–31, 77. Ibid., xviii–xix, 31–2. Kenneth M. Pollack, The Persian Puzzle: The Conflict Between Iran and America (New York, NY: Random House, 2005), 273–86. Pollack, The Persian Puzzle, 345–9; Ray Takeyh, Guardians of the Revolution: Iran and the World in the Age of the Ayatollahs (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 212–14. Kenneth M. Pollack, Unthinkable: Iran, the Bomb, and American Strategy (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2013), 12–16, 23–26, 111–25; Takeyh, Guardians of the Revolution, 35–59, 215–19. George W. Bush, “State of the Union Address,” January 29, 2002, Washington Post, transcript. www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/onpolitics/transcripts/sou012902.htm In Islam, a takfiri is someone who brands others as apostates, who must therefore be killed. For recent, copious first-hand evidence of Iran’s support to Iraqi Shi’a terrorists/militias, see the declassified interrogation reports of Qais al-Khazali. Khazali was an important member of Muqtada as-Sadr’s Jaysh al-Mahdi, and battled both Sunnis and Americans. He broke with Sadr in 2004 when Sadr declared a truce with the Americans. He then formed his own, even more vicious terrorist group called Asaib Ahl al-Haq (AAH), which was heavily backed by Iran and conducted some of the worst terrorist attacks against Americans during the occupation. After the American withdrawal in 2011 and the Da’ish attack in 2014, AAH grew into a full-fledged militia, now one of the most dangerous in Iraq and still entirely aligned with Iran. The declassified interrogation reports (all in English) can be found here: www.aei.org/spotlight/qayis-al-khazali-pap ers/ (accessed September 30, 2018). Joel D. Rayburn and Frank K. Sobchak eds., The US Army in the Iraq War: Vol. 2, Surge and Withdrawal (Carlyle, PA: US Army War College Press, 2018), 66. For a month-by-month breakdown of EFP attacks and casualties in Iraq, see “OIF EFP Detonations by Month,” accessed October 15, 2018. https://admin.govexec.com/m edia/gbc/docs/pdfs_edit/enclosure_tab_a_document_for_review_(150813_oif_efp_pull_ no_summary)_(1).pdf Rayburn and Sobchak eds., The US Army in the Iraq War: Vol. 2, 67. Ibid., 73. Ibid., 73–4. Ibid., 73. Ibid., 222. On the March 2007 seizure of the British boats as retaliation for the Erbil Five, see Robin Wright, Dreams and Shadows: The Future of the Middle East (New York: Penguin Press, 2008), 335. “72nd Interrogation of Qayis al-Khazali,” Report No. Tactical Interrogation Report TIR-TF17-TSF-0704–72, 07 May 2007, 5; “96th Interrogation of Qayis al-Khazali,” Report TIR-TF17-TSF-0705–96, 20 May 07, 3, accessed October 14, 2018. www.aei. org/spotlight/qayis-al-khazali-papers/; see also, Rayburn and Sobchak eds., The US Army in the Iraq War: Vol. 2, 74–6. Rayburn and Sobchak eds., The US Army in the Iraq War: Vol. 2, 129.

David Crist, The Twilight War: The Secret History of America’s Thirty-Year Conflict with Iran

(New York, NY: Penguin House, 2012), 514–15. Wright, Dreams and Shadows, 335–6. Rayburn and Sobchak eds, The US Army in the Iraq War: Vol. 2, 359–80. David Patrikarakos, Nuclear Iran: The Birth of an Atomic State (London: Tauris, 2012), 181–201; Pollack, Unthinkable, 37. Patrikarakos, Nuclear Iran, 198–217.

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54 David Sanger, “Obama Order Sped Up Wave of Cyberattacks Against Iran,” The New York Times, June 1, 2012; David E. Sanger, Confront and Conceal: Obama’s Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power (New York, NY: Crown, 2012). 55 Ronen Bergman, Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations (New York, NY: Random House, 2017), 571–80, 607–9, 622–31; Pollack, Unthinkable, 38, 148–9, 173; Sanger, Confront and Conceal, 141–8, 219–32. 56 “Yemen-bound Iranian ship diverted to Djibouti,” Al-Jazeera, May 21, 2015, accessed August 12, 2019, www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/05/yemen-iran-ship-aid-djibouti­ houthi-saudi-arabia-150521194815704.html

6 WESTERN BALKANS Hard targets and harder victories William J. Durch

The breakup of Yugoslavia paralleled the end of the Cold War, the withdrawal of Soviet ground forces from Eastern Europe, the dissolution of the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact, and the rise of major political instability. Some of the earliest unrest broke out in Serbia’s mostly poor, largely Albanian Muslim province of Kosovo, which, as the site of a historic Serb defeat by the Ottomans, became the political fulcrum for Serb demagogue Slobodan Milosevic’s rise to power, first within Serbia and then over a fast-disintegrating Yugoslavia. Its westernmost republics (Slovenia and Croatia) bolted the Federation in 1991 and were soon recognized as inde­ pendent states, but only after Croatia experienced serious internal violence. Whether “ancient hatreds,” opportunistic politicians, or both drove and shaped the wars of Yugoslav secession from 1991 onward, intelligence warnings of grow­ ing instability and forecasts of the country’s breakup were ignored or discounted by the leaders of the largest nations. Responsibility for dealing with Yugoslavia’s pro­ blems first fell on multilateral political entities, especially the European Community (EC), now the European Union (EU). In fact, EC members initially welcomed the chance to demonstrate their influence and political ingenuity in the emerging postCold War environment. US interests in the region were diffuse, and goals plentiful, though not all of them had to do directly with the peoples or problems of the Western Balkans. US military engagement in the region was motivated by the ensuing humanitarian crises, and also by a desire to assert global leadership, to encourage multilateral engagements that promoted greater operational and political burden-sharing, to demonstrate the via­ bility and desirability of retaining a potent NATO alliance, and to build a new relationship with the Russian Federation under President Boris Yeltsin. In service of these goals, the United States and its partners undertook multiple distinct military actions in the Western Balkan provinces of Bosnia and Kosovo between 1992 and 1999, with stability operations sustained through 2004. These

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actions had independent operational goals but were interrelated insofar as they collectively were intended to stop the intense bloodshed in the Balkans by bringing the warring parties to a negotiated settlement. The US armed forces were used to achieve operational and strategic goals variously by deterring unwanted actions and compelling desired behaviors. The United States ultimately achieved the overarching objective of resolving the conflict through negotiations, though progress toward this goal was halting, time-con­ suming, and costly, most especially for the brutalized Bosniac and Kosovar populations. US-NATO military missions often were only partial solutions to larger problems, not least because they were constrained by force protection requirements introduced by the extremely casualty-averse Clinton Administration. The result was the application of means that did not always align well with policymakers’ desired ends. So too is the record strongly suggestive of a desire on the part of US policy­ makers for threats and low-level involvement to suffice, and an unwillingness or inability to accept that they would not. The result was almost a decade of incre­ mental military and diplomatic maneuvers that were tentative, incomplete, and occasionally counterproductive.

Bosnia Bosnia’s largely Muslim political leadership sponsored an independence referendum in March 1992 that was boycotted by Bosnia’s Serbian minority. Nonetheless, based on its results the nation’s majority Muslim leaders declared Bosnia’s inde­ pendence, whereupon the Bosnian Serb Army (BSA) – with equipment and troops “released” from the Yugoslav National Army (JNA) – attacked Muslim population centers in eastern Bosnia, closest to Serbia proper. The BSA began to bombard Bosnia’s multi-ethnic capital city, Sarajevo, from the surrounding hills shortly after the United States and others recognized Bosnia as an independent state.1 In September 1991, the United Nations voted unanimously to impose an arms embargo on the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. An effort to minimize swelling violence, the costs of the embargo adhered most negatively to the Bosniac Army, with Serb forces retaining a sizable arsenal and receiving additional infusions from the Croatian Army. Although in support of the embargo, the George H.W. Bush Administration otherwise stood back as Yugoslavia exploded, weighing the risk of doing little against the risk of getting too involved as the 1992 US elections loomed. Bush decided to draw the line at humanitarian aid.2 Thus unlike in Croatia, where war was interrupted and calmed by outside political and military intervention, external response took the form of humanitarian aid and UN peacekeepers with limited authority to use force to protect Bosnians, and themselves. Shelling of Sarajevo continued for nearly two years, with minor respites. As many as 3,000 shells per day hit the city at critical points in the war.3 The result was that far from Croatia’s 10,000 or so casualties incurred over a few months, Bosnia instead suffered 100,000 dead and two million displaced, over the course of two-and-a-half years.4

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Starting small: aid, blockade, and limited action The United States inserted its military into the Bosnian war only incrementally, starting with the use of air assets to provide humanitarian aid to the Bosniac population. This coincided with a maritime blockade and ground- and air-based efforts to limit the intensity and spread of the conflict. The humanitarian relief provide by Operation PROVIDE PROMISE was preceded by expansion of the UN Protection Force’s (UNPROFOR) mandate from Croatia to Bosnia in June 1992. UNPROFOR’s securing of the Sarajevo airport enabled PROVIDE PROMISE to execute on two components. The first, the Sarajevo airlift, initiated in July 1992, was undertaken in collaboration with 20 other countries and coordinated by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in what would become the longest-running relief airlift in history. Nearly 13,000 flights over three and a half years delivered 160,536 metric tons of aid, of which 62,802 tons (39 percent) were delivered by the US Air Force.5 The second component of PROVIDE PROMISE involved airdrops of huma­ nitarian supplies (food, medicines, and up to 30 tons of winter supplies), nominally without regard to faction. Flights commenced on presidential order in late Feb­ ruary 1993. Drops focused on eastern areas, especially the Bosniac “safe areas” of Tuzla, Srebrenica, Zepa, and Gorazde.6 US aircraft flew 2,222 airdrop sorties over the course of the operation.7 Hostile fire damaged aircraft flying the Sarajevo airlift, periodically halting operations. In an early incident, on September 3, 1992, a participating Italian air­ craft was shot down by surface-to-air missiles with loss of crew; US rescue heli­ copters responding to the crash site took ground fire. The airlift halted for 30 days, with serious impact on Sarajevo, as flights then brought in 90 percent of the city’s food. Ground convoys through Serb-held territory – subject to multiple check­ points, confiscation of goods, and sniper fire – were unable to compensate. The airlift resumed at less than half its maximum rate in early October but was sus­ pended again for three weeks in early December when a US C-130 was hit. Overall, nine US aircraft sustained damage from ground fire, but none were shot down and no US lives were lost.8 These operations had the effect of frustrating BSA sieges of Sarajevo and other UN “safe areas.” The BSA might otherwise have captured Sarajevo and the other enclaves relatively quickly, potentially at high cost in lives. But by maintaining the stalemate, PROVIDE PROMISE also prolonged the war without blunting the BSA’s ability to inflict pain. Sarajevo alone suffered an estimated 9,500 war-related deaths, including 5,000 civilians, and many more wounded, over the course of the siege.9 Overlapping with the humanitarian efforts of PROVIDE PROMISE were military actions intended to limit the intensity and spread of fighting. In 1993, the United States and NATO initiated three separate military operations: SHARP GUARD, a blockade to enforce an arms embargo (June 15, 1993 – June 19, 1996); ABLE SENTRY, a deployment of troops to prevent the spread of

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violence into Montenegro (July 12, 1993 – February 28, 1999); and DENY FLIGHT, armed enforcement of the UN’s 1992 no-fly zone (April 12, 1993 – December 20, 1995). In SHARP GUARD, the US Navy and ships from thirteen other NATO allies patrolled the Adriatic Sea and the approaches to Montenegrin harbors to enforce UN economic sanctions and an arms embargo against the former Yugoslavia. One task group patrolled the northern Adriatic and another patrolled the Strait of Otranto separating Italy and Greece. Each ship in SHARP GUARD patrolled a “sea box,” supported by surveillance aircraft, “identifying and challenging all ships entering or leaving the Adriatic.” Suspect ships were diverted to Italian ports. SHARP GUARD vessels also “had permanent clearance to operate in Albanian territorial waters,” to prevent smugglers evading inspection by that route.10 Over the course of three years, Combined Task Force 440 logged 19,699 ship days and 62,300 flight hours; challenged 74,192 vessels; boarded 5,951; diverted 1,480; and determined that six were attempting to evade the arms embargo.11 SHARP GUARD appears to have been both thorough and effective in the narrow operational sense of blocking the most straightforward path to delivering large quantities of heavy weapons to the former Yugoslavia’s warring parties. But the Adriatic was not the only route into Croatia, Serbia, or Bosnia from the outside world, and those other routes remained unchecked. On the ground, United States forces participated in ABLE SENTRY, the first deployment of a US infantry unit under UN operational control that brought roughly 350 US troops on six-month rotations into the United Nations Preventive Deployment Force (UNPREDEP), configured like traditional UN peacekeeping on an international border. The action was intended to deter the spread of conflict into Macedonia, the southernmost republic of the former Yugoslavia, which declared its independence in 1992.12 US participation was seen to raise the stakes for any Serbian military challenge to Macedonian independence. Its most impor­ tant role, however, was to reassure a shaky Macedonian government in the face of both Greek political hostility and nationalist stirrings among the country’s large Albanian minority.13 The third of the overlapping early operations, DENY FLIGHT, was a response to the more than 200 Serbian violations of a UN no-fly zone between October 1992 and April 1993, used to continue to effect violence on the Bosniac popula­ tion. Managed by a combined air operations center (CAOC) at Vicenza, Italy, Operation DENY FLIGHT involved aircraft from twelve NATO members, flying more than 100,000 sorties over 32 months.14 USAF’s 36th Fighter Wing based at Bitburg, Germany, flew some of the earliest missions, along with aircraft from France, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom.15 In June 1993, the UN authorized NATO to provide close air support if needed to protect the UN ground operation.16 Thus in August 1993, when BSA forces closed the last supply road into Sarajevo, NATO was able to threaten air strikes, and the Serbs relented.17 Six months later, however, a Serb mortar shell struck the outdoor Markale Market in Sarajevo, killing 68 people and wounding 197. NATO

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demanded that the BSA either withdraw heavy weapons 20 kilometers from the center of the city or place them under UN control. It also demanded that the Bosnian government place its heavy weapons in Sarajevo under UN control. Weapons not under UN control found inside this “exclusion zone” would be subject to air strikes. After tense negotiations, Russia helped obtain Serb com­ pliance with NATO demands, in exchange for deployment of 800 Russian peacekeepers in Serb sectors in and around Sarajevo as part of the United Nations Protection Force.18 The intense shelling of Sarajevo abated: war-related deaths in the city diminished from March 1994 onward by an average of 80 percent com­ pared with the months immediately preceding NATO’s ultimatum.19 Unfortunately, since the rest of Bosnia remained a combat zone, moving artillery out of range of Sarajevo allowed it to be moved into range of other targets. Serb forces deepened the siege of another eastern safe area, Gorazde. While US Secretary of Defense William Perry initially said that the US would not intervene militarily to protect Gorazde, as BSA forces closed in on UN positions, the UN requested close air support, and on April 10 NATO bombed enemy forces for the first time in its history. However, the airstrikes only angered Serb forces, who continued their assault, dama­ ging and downing at least two NATO aircraft in the process and capturing Gorazde within a week.20 Subsequent NATO actions, roundly characterized as “pinpricks,” were blunted in part by the BSA seizing UN military hostages.21 Eventually, NATO threats and Russian pressure led Serb forces to withdraw by April 23.22 This pattern repeated in the northwestern Bihac “pocket,” long a Muslim strong­ hold and “safe area” wedged up against Serb-held parts of Croatia. Bihac was home to the militarily effective Fifth Corps of the Bosnian Army, which by late 1994 had bloodied the Serbs sufficiently that the BSA called in its own air support, flying from Serb-held Udbina airbase in Croatia. On November 21, US and other NATO aircraft cratered Udbina’s runway and two days later struck BSA surface-to-air missile sites near Bihac. The BSA took 450 UN personnel hostage. The US pushed for a wider air campaign, but the allies resisted, noting the lack of US troops at risk on the ground.23

Escalating: air power As 1994 closed, decaying security made it look like NATO would need to activate contingency operations to extract UNPROFOR, under fire if necessary.24 But in mid-December 1994, the warring parties agreed to a winter ceasefire, reducing pressure on UNPROFOR and giving the Bosniacs room to rearm (quietly) and reorganize their forces. When fighting resumed in March 1995, the Bosniacs went on the offensive and the BSA threatened Sarajevo. On May 24, UNPROFOR demanded BSA compliance with the NATO weapon exclusion zone. When the BSA refused, UNPROFOR sought NATO air strikes. Over two days (May 25– 26), US and other NATO aircraft hit Serb ammunition dumps east of Sarajevo. The BSA shelled the Tuzla “safe area” to the north, killing 71 civilians, and again seized up to 400 UN hostages. NATO air strikes were paused, and the UN began to pull its personnel out of BSA reach.25

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Meanwhile, France, the UK, and the Netherlands developed a heavily armed, 12,500-strong Rapid Reaction Force (RRF) for UNPROFOR that deployed artillery on high ground near supply routes into Sarajevo.26 As the RRF was forming up, the BSA turned to finish the ethnic cleansing of eastern Bosnia, start­ ing with the Srebrenica “safe area,” which held several thousand lightly armed Bosniac fighters, a Dutch peacekeeping contingent of 600 (about half support troops), and many thousand displaced civilians. The town had been cut off from fuel and spare parts for months and the BSA had blocked all movement of UN troops in and out. Probing attacks starting July 6 prompted several Dutch requests for air support, which were turned down by UNPROFOR.27 NATO aircraft finally dropped two bombs on advancing Serb vehicles. Immediately following this first deployment of NATO close air support, the BSA radioed a message to Dutchbat. They threatened to shell the town and the compound where thousands of inhabitants had begun to gather, and to kill the Dutchbat soldiers being held hostage, if NATO continued with its use of air power.28 NATO refrained from further action and the enclave was overrun on the afternoon of July 11. Over the following week, BSA forces killed about 8,000 Bosniac men and boys in and near Srebrenica.29 Reports of these events accumulated in official circles over several weeks and then seeped into wider consciousness. They did not result, however, in immediate international military action. That was sparked instead by another, more familiar and more visible atrocity, when the BSA again mortared the Markale Market in Sarajevo on August 28, killing 37 people and wounding 90 others. This led directly to the implementation of NATO Operation DELIBERATE FORCE, a concerted aerial bombing campaign to compel a stop to BSA attacks, a withdrawal of Serb heavy weapons, and a cessation of hostilities throughout the country.30 These demands were levied to the BSA on September 1, with a compliance deadline set for 2300 hours on September 4. When no weapon withdrawals had been seen by the morning of September 5, air strikes resumed.31 The BSA then agreed to withdraw heavy weapons from the Sarajevo exclusion zone and lift the siege of the city, so air strikes paused again on September 14. By September 20, NATO com­ manders determined that Serb actions met conditions for ending DELIBERATE FORCE and it stood down. The operation flew 3,515 sorties, roughly two thirds by US aircraft. Most of the ordnance dropped was precision-guided, hitting 338 individual targets. Before, during, and after DELIBERATE FORCE, an intense US diplomatic offensive, including regional shuttle diplomacy led by Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke, pressed the combatants to come to terms.32 Holbrooke’s team was determined to uphold the proposed 51–49 percent territorial split between the Federation and the Bosnian Serbs’ Republika Srpska (RS). They leaned on the Federation to halt its ground offensive, which by September was bearing down on RS military headquarters in Banja Luka. NATO also declined to intercept Serb aircraft hitting Federation forces outside Banja Luka in technical violation of the no-fly-zone.

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NATO’s air campaign, the Croat-Bosniac ground campaign, US-NATO reining in of that ground campaign, and months of diplomacy finally led to the US-bro­ kered “proximity talks” at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, involving all the regional principals, to hammer out a peace agreement. The resulting “General Framework Agreement on Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina” (the GFAP or Dayton Agreement) was initialed on November 21, 1995.33

After the fight: enforcing peace The Dayton Agreement included the provision that a NATO-led force, the Implementation Force (IFOR), would enforce peace in Bosnia. IFOR was to include US troops for 12 months – a duration, David Halberstam observed, that would get the Clinton Administration through the 1996 election.34 IFOR’s mission was to “establish a durable cessation of hostilities.” Local forces “failing to redeploy, withdraw, relocate, or to cease threatening or potentially threatening activities following such a demand by the IFOR” would be “subject to military action by IFOR, including the use of necessary force to ensure com­ pliance.” IFOR would have complete freedom of ground movement, control of Bosnian airspace, and “unrestricted use of all of the electromagnetic spectrum.”35 IFOR’s presence in Bosnia peaked at roughly 54,000 troops, with about 6,000 support troops deployed elsewhere in the region.36 It periodically inspected local parties’ weapon cantonments, usually without incident, and largely effected its military mandates successfully and on time.37 Unfortunately, focusing on military threats left a wide range of other, informal or less visible security challenges unad­ dressed. “Some 60,000 to 100,000 Serbs [fled] Sarajevo just three months after the peace agreement was signed.” Serb thugs drove them out and Bosniac thugs looted what they left behind.38 Those who might have been able to stop the violence, including French and Italian IFOR units, did not do so. On November 15, 1996, one week after his election to a second term, Bill Clinton announced that IFOR had, “succeeded beyond our expectations,” and would therefore, “end as planned,” on December 20. However, some loose ends remained and, “NATO has been studying options,” on how to wrap them up. Clinton was amenable, “in principle,” to US participation in a follow-on force.39 Thus when IFOR ended, 8,500 troops from the US Army’s 2nd Brigade, 1st Infantry Division (1ID) were “designated to remain” as the US contribution to SFOR, which totaled 32,000 troops initially, dropping to 7,000 by late 2004 when its duties were transferred to the EU’s Operation ALTHEA.40

Kosovo As Bosnia settled down, Kosovo heated up. Kosovo was a province of Serbia in the rapidly-diminishing Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY), with a mostly Muslim, ethnic Albanian population that long had been a prop in Slobodan Milosevic’s Serbian nationalist theater. In 1989, the 600th anniversary of Serbia’s great,

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romanticized loss to the Ottoman Turks on the plains of Kosovo, Milosevic revoked Tito-era rights of Kosovar Albanians – then 82 percent of its population – to be educated or hold government jobs in their own language; tens of thousands were dismissed from government posts as a result.41 As armed resistance had no prospect of success at that time, Albanian Kosovar leaders opted for peaceful resis­ tance, building an underground economy, an informal education system, and even a shadow government.42 By 1996, some Kosovars had lost faith in peaceful resistance. Albania’s thenpresident, Sali Berisha, favored a Greater Albania, and supported the new Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) as a step toward that goal.43 Training on Berisha’s own farmlands, the KLA numbered 15,000–20,000 fighters by 1997. During Albania’s economic and political meltdown in the first half of 1997, “Berisha-controlled mobs broke into military depots and confiscated as many weapons as possible. Berisha transferred most of these weapons to the KLA,” which used them to kill Serb police.44 The Serbs struck back at the KLA stronghold of Drenica in February 1998, killing about seventy-five Kosovar Albanians, including civilians.45 The Clinton Administration, though more familiar with Balkan politics by 1998, was loath to be involved in yet another Balkans crisis, especially on the ground, and was divided as to US interests there and what response costs were tolerable. Madeline Albright, now Secretary of State, again favored forceful action, but Defense Secretary William Cohen did not, nor did the Joint Chiefs. General Wesley Clark, by then SACEUR, saw value in forceful NATO action. Clark, also commander of US forces in Europe, chose which of his “hats” to wear based on which hierarchy most favored the actions he thought NATO should pursue, irri­ tating many of his senior political and military colleagues.46 Much as had been the case in Bosnia, general reticence and disagreement amongst top officials were manifested in an incremental approach to engagement.

Starting small: shows of force and aerial verification Alan Kuperman has described US intervention in Kosovo as following “a typical pattern of escalation in response to growing media attention to suffering: rhetorical condemnation, economic sanctions, threats of force, and ultimately bombing.”47 The KLA expected civilian casualties to prompt outside military intervention but, like Bosniac leaders in 1992, underestimated the timeliness and efficacy of the eventual intervention.48 As violence in Kosovo grew in late spring 1998, the United States supported a North Atlantic Council (NAC) decision to demonstrate NATO air power around the borders of Kosovo, in Exercise DETERMINED FALCON. The purpose was “to demonstrate NATO’s capability to project power rapidly into the region,” according to NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana; and, “to deter Mr. Milosevic from further violence against the ethnic Albanians,” according to the BBC.49 But Secretary Cohen, the day after the exercise, “played down the prospect of a quick NATO military response if Yugoslavia refused to stop its crackdown in Kosovo,”

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noting, “disagreement as to what the legal foundation would be for the exercise of military options if they become necessary and all of us have to consult with our parliaments and congresses.”50 If DETERMINED FALCON was supposed to be a warning, this statement and others undercut it. Serb offensives pummeled the KLA throughout the summer. By late August, more than 400,000 Albanian Kosovars had been displaced internally or expelled from Kosovo. Roughly 1,500 had been killed.51 On September 24, NATO defense ministers, “authorized an ‘activation warning’ for limited air strikes and a phased air campaign in Kosovo.” On October 12, they authorized an “‘activation order,’ placing the necessary forces under the NATO command,” and stipulating “execution in approximately 96 hours.”52 The following day, in talks with Richard Holbrooke, Slobodan Milosevic reached an agreement that postponed air strikes, if Serbia: 1. 2. 3. 4.

would reduce its troops and security forces in Kosovo to “pre-crisis” levels; permit unarmed NATO reconnaissance flights over Kosovo; accede to an international force of 2,000 unarmed civilian monitors to over­ see the ceasefire; and begin meaningful negotiations towards Kosovar autonomy.53

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) deployed 2,000 unarmed monitors to the Kosovo Verification Mission (KVM), led by US Ambassador William Walker, and NATO commenced surveillance flights to monitor Serb forces’ compliance with the agreement. Serbia paused its counter­ insurgency operations but did not draw down its forces, and there were no meaningful negotiations on Kosovar autonomy.54 Meanwhile, the KLA, not party to the October agreement, used the temporary lull to rebuild its strength and prepare for the next round of fighting. In January, the killing of three Serb police officers near the village of Racak in south-central Kosovo goaded Serb security forces into one of their periodic higher-visibility atrocities. This massacre of 45 Albanian civilians, like the 1994–1995 shellings of the Markale Market in Sarajevo, starkly highlighted the seriousness of the situation and “became the critical lever for those in the American government and in allied Western governments to move for military action against the Serbs.”55 A final round of diplomacy at Rambouillet, France, begun on February 6, produced a partial settlement that the Kosovo Albanian delegation eventually signed but that Serbia rejected. The negotiations broke up March 18. The Kosovo Verification Mission withdrew on March 20, without the need of NATO ground force assistance. On March 24, NATO launched Operation ALLIED FORCE, concerted aerial bombardment of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia; Serbia launched Operation HORSESHOE – the wholesale ethnic cleansing of Kosovar Albanians.56

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Escalating: air power Addressing the nation on March 24, President Clinton laid out US goals for NATO’s Allied Force air campaign: Our mission is clear: to demonstrate the seriousness of NATO’s purpose so that the Serbian leaders understand the imperative of reversing course; to deter an even bloodier offensive against innocent civilians in Kosovo; and, if necessary, to seriously damage the Serbian military’s capacity to harm the people of Kosovo.57 Strikes began with cruise missiles launched from US and British warships and from US B-52s flying from the UK against military and “security police” command and control facilities, air defenses, and airfields in Serbia.58 US B-2 stealth bombers on long flights from Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri penetrated Serbian airspace to drop precision-guided bombs.59 Over 300 NATO aircraft, about two-thirds of them US, flew missions on the first full day of ALLIED FORCE. Only a quarter of all sorties dropped weapons; the rest were reconnaissance or support missions, including up to 200 tanker aircraft to refuel sorties flown from Italy, Germany, Turkey, the UK, and the United States.60 US and NATO decision-makers anticipated a two- or three-day air campaign to bring Milosevic to heel and approved just over 50 targets for the first phase of attacks. Multiple political authorities were initially involved in target approval, from national command authorities (via the NAC), to the Supreme Allied Com­ mander, Europe (SACEUR), US Air Force Europe planners, and the authorities of states hosting aircraft used in the strikes. Plans overestimated the political leverage of early strikes and underestimated Serbian tenacity. On the fourth day of ALLIED FORCE, the NAC approved a wider range of fixed targets in Serbia proper and strikes against “fielded forces” in Kosovo.61 By day ten, de facto political control of targeting decisions had been delegated by the rest of NATO to the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Italy (the “Quint”).62 To maximize force protection, strike pilots were instructed to remain above 15,000 feet altitude but, to minimize collateral damage, they were also instructed not to release weapons without visual confirmation of targets. Cloud cover often hampered confirmation.63 Since NATO had no forces engaged or observing on the ground, Serb forces had little reason to concentrate and every chance to make themselves harder to hit and could respond to detection faster than NATO forces could be directed to strike (a minimum of three hours).64 Little ground force contingency planning was done until ALLIED FORCE failed to meet initial expectations. In his March 24 address to the nation, Clinton even declared that, “I do not intend to put our troops in Kosovo to fight a war.”65 This public rejection of a ground force option likely encouraged the acceleration of Serbia’s ethnic cleansing campaign, before the West could change its conflicted collective mind.66

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Despite NATO attacks, FRY forces in Kosovo tripled in size and pushed nearly 800,000 Albanian Kosovars into neighboring countries, joining earlier refugees. A further 500,000 were internally displaced. By the end of the war, between 4,400 and 10,400 Albanian Kosovar civilians had been killed, and up to 600 Serb troops and police and 500 civilians in Serbia had died in NATO air strikes. Altogether, NATO aircraft released more than 20,000 weapons.67 When NATO bombing initially failed to produce the desired results, UK Prime Minister Tony Blair met with SACEUR Wesley Clark and his staff in Brussels, coming away convinced of the need for NATO ground troops and a more aggressive air campaign. He pressed Clinton on these points before NATO’s 50th anniversary summit, held April 23–24 in Washington. Blair agreed to tone down his call for ground troops if Clinton would initiate ground force planning. They agreed that NATO strategy, until then focused on saving the alliance, had to refocus on winning the war.68 The accelerated ethnic cleansing that Milosevic hoped would fracture the NATO alliance had a unifying effect instead.69 A NATO summit ultimatum demanded that Milosevic: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Ensure a verifiable stop to all military action and the immediate ending of violence and repression in Kosovo; Withdraw from Kosovo his military, police and para-military forces; Agree to the stationing in Kosovo of an international military presence; Agree to the unconditional and safe return of all refugees and displaced per­ sons, and unhindered access to them by humanitarian aid organizations; and Provide credible assurance of his willingness to work for the establishment of a political framework agreement based on the Rambouillet accords.

NATO attacks on strategic targets in Serbia – command and control, govern­ ment offices, transport networks, bridges, and power grids – ramped up as the campaign continued. Meanwhile, sundry NATO ground force units appeared in surrounding states, on secondary missions: the UK 4th Armored Brigade and French forces already in Macedonia turned to building camps for the sudden mass of Kosovar refugees, while other NATO forces did the same in Albania. Two battalions of US troops also deployed to Albania to defend a unit of US Army Apache attack helicopters. On March 26, General Clark asked for the low-flying, night-capable Apaches to attack dispersed Serb armor and artillery in Kosovo, flying from NATO bases in Macedonia, where existing NATO forces could protect them. But when the Macedonian government forbade offensive operations from its territory, planning for “Task Force Hawk” shifted to Rinas Airfield outside Albania’s capital, Tirana, the only suitable runway in Albania, which was already heavily utilized.70 Some 500 C-17 heavy transport sorties were needed to deploy Task Force Hawk, as the switch to Albania caused it to balloon from 1,700 to more than 5,000 troops,71 including, “a corps aviation brigade headquarters, a corps artillery brigade

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headquarters with a Multiple-Launch Rocket System (MLRS) battalion, an attack helicopter regiment (Apache), [and] a ground maneuver brigade combat team,” added to protect the Apaches from potential Serb attack.72 The first squadron of Apaches reached Rinas by April 21 and the task force was fully operational May 7. By then, however, mission rehearsal accidents had claimed two helicopters and a flight crew, increasing Washington’s concerns about potential casualties in combat. The White House never cleared Task Force Hawk for operational use, but its associated ground forces may have looked threatening to Milosevic, and were likely reassuring to Albania.73 Russia had been firmly in Belgrade’s corner as the Kosovo crisis developed but began to edge away as the air war and the ethnic cleansing accelerated. Former Russian prime minister Viktor Chernomyrdin was appointed envoy for the Balkans in mid-April. He persuaded Milosevic to accept a post-war international military presence in Kosovo and jawboned Germany to seek a UN role in approving that presence and administering Kosovo ad interim. On May 6, peace terms proposed by the G-8 incorporated the UN role as well as “a crucial statement on respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity” of the FRY.74 From late May, Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott (representing NATO), Chernomyrdin, and Martti Ahtisaari, president of Finland and the recently appointed EU representative for the Balkans, met to work out terms for ending NATO air operations. Chernomyrdin and Ahti­ saari took them to Milosevic, who accepted them on June 3.75 While fighting and air strikes continued, military representatives of NATO and the FRY negotiated a Military Technical Agreement for moving Serb forces out of Kosovo and NATO forces in. The MTA was signed June 9 and air operations were suspended. G-8 foreign ministers, meanwhile, worked on terms for United Nations Security Council Resolution 1244, which formally ended the conflict on June 10, 1999.

After the fight: enforcing peace Included in UNSCR 1244 was a provision for a NATO Kosovo Force (KFOR) with the duties of deterring renewed hostilities, demilitarizing the KLA, establishing a secure environment for the return of refugees, ensuring public safety and order, supervising de-mining, and monitoring provincial borders. The resolution also ensured freedom of movement for the members of KFOR, of the international presence, and other international organizations.76 The US committed 7,000 troops to KFOR, which would peak at 45,000 troops in Kosovo itself, plus several thou­ sand additional support troops in Macedonia. KFOR did not have the equivalent of Dayton to focus its peacekeepers on specifically military tasks, nor did it have an inter-entity boundary line separating the local parties. Masses of Serb civilians began to flee Kosovo as soon as Serb security forces started to leave. Some 33,000 (out of 150,000 pre-war troops) left during KFOR’s first week of operations.77 US ground forces thus first encountered Kosovo Serbs as minority victims of violence orchestrated by their Albanian neighbors. The KLA’s village-level terrorists were nimbler than KFOR, and KLA

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“parallel structures” of governance spread throughout the territory within a cul­ tural-linguistic medium to which KFOR largely lacked access. The KLA targeted remaining pockets of Serbs and anyone else deemed a sympathizer or a rival.78 KFOR negotiated a demobilization agreement with the KLA on June 21 that stipulated disarmament of its fighters in 90 days. In that time, about 11,000 weap­ ons and five million rounds of ammunition were collected by KFOR – not everything, but something. About one in five fighters was recruited for the new, 3,600-strong Kosovo Protection Corps (KPC) run by KFOR, unarmed and focused on civil emergency response.79 But to more effectively counter the power of the KLA, KFOR had to team up with the UN. Bosnia’s problem had been a surfeit of governments. Kosovo’s was the opposite. In June 1999, Kosovo lacked all formal public authority. All the police were gone. Utilities were non-functioning. Kosovo’s temporary government was to be the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), a civil administration and reconstruction entity stick-built from a standing start as a partnership of four international organiza­ tions.80 Until UNMIK was functional, KFOR would need to be Kosovo’s de facto provider of order and restorer of services, yet, “US defense officials went to great lengths to rule out the establishment of a temporary military government in Kosovo.”81 This reflex left the troops on the ground without proper orders, instructions, or the right force composition to address the problems they faced in Kosovo. Local administrative matters were low on the list of primary concerns of the average battalion commander upon entering a potentially hostile environment, but the troops on the ground were the first to face the political vacuum in the towns and villages they entered in June 1999.82 Since high-level operational orders said little or nothing about such tasks, the respective sectors and their units improvised. By October, UNMIK had sufficient operational coherence to begin to address the “parallel structures” problem; by December, it had persuaded rival Albanian political factions to share in running a Joint Interim Administrative Structure for local governance. By February 2000, the JIAS was functional.83 The OSCE established a Kosovo Police Academy with US Justice Department assistance and began developing a Kosovo Police Service. By 2001, the Kosovo Police Service began to take over precincts and by 2006 was responsible for policing throughout Kosovo.84

Outcomes Military operations in Bosnia and Kosovo ultimately preserved the credibility of NATO as a military tool, though achieving this success was ugly and costly. The Clinton Administration’s extreme casualty aversion and disharmony among top leaders resulted in prolonged periods of weak signals and hesitant uses of force. It was a combination of circumstance and timely pressure from allied heads of gov­ ernment (Chirac in 1995, Blair in 1999) that convinced the Clinton White House to graduate into more assertive uses of force.

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In Bosnia, years of prevarication had at least produced an air campaign in DELIBERATE FORCE that was intense and to the point from the outset, and thus relatively brief. The value of a strong start to military action in Kosovo, by comparison, was lost amidst wide-ranging reluctance within the alliance, and in much of official Washington, to again commit to conflict suppression in the Bal­ kans. Once it became clear that NATO’s initial targeting strategies were too timid and its target approval procedures were too clumsy to meet NATO’s objectives, allied governments eventually agreed to sharpen the air strikes and simplify target­ ing decisions. But the US and its allies were only spared the trouble of organizing a much larger, costlier, and aggressive ground force than KFOR by Russian coop­ eration in telling Milosevic that it would not ride to his rescue. The military actions preceding DELIBERATE FORCE in Bosnia and ALLIED FORCE in Kosovo proved only partially successful in achieving their stated operational objectives, and as such were insufficient to achieve the larger strategic objectives of restoring stability in the Balkans and burnishing NATO’s credentials. PROVIDE PROMISE prevented starvation in the largely Bosniac enclaves besieged by the BSA, but most of those enclaves held Bosniac fighting forces, which meant that PROVIDE PROMISE also fed the resistance to the BSA. While the operation may have capped the intensity of suffering, that suffering was pro­ longed and, in some places, such as in Srebrenica, merely postponed. SHARP GUARD similarly was partly successful. Intended to deter and to halt armament acquisitions by sea, SHARP GUARD did curtail a low-cost route for smuggling substantial amounts of heavy arms. Because other supply routes were not similarly blocked, however, in practice the operation gave the United States and its allies a low-risk and visible appearance of enforcing a UN embargo, even as it was other­ wise circumvented. Thus, in the larger scheme of things, SHARP GUARD essentially was one hand clapping. DENY FLIGHT, too, worked reasonably well in its air-to-air aspect, but not in its air-to-ground mode. Serbian fixed-wing incursions into Bosnian air space halted, and aircraft that defied DENY FLIGHT’s verbal challenges were shot down. Since its fighter jets could not readily respond to violations by helicopters, however, rotary-wing craft were absent from the challenge list, leaving a large gap in enforcement. Meanwhile the operation’s air-to-ground role deterred very little, so long as UNPROFOR and other international personnel remained within the BSA’s grasp. Neither UNPROFOR’s military leaders nor their principals in capitals were willing to bear the costs of either hostage-proofing UN operations or calling the BSA’s bluff. In Kosovo, Slobodan Milosevic was unimpressed by DETERMINED FAL­ CON’s implied threat of air strikes to deter Serb escalation, in part because this time NATO lacked a stake on the ground. Moreover, several NATO members and US Secretary of Defense Cohen signaled publicly, around the time of the exercise, that they were not united about the need or the feasibility of using force on Kosovo’s behalf. Not until NATO issued the Activation Order for ALLIED FORCE with a 96-hour countdown to action did Milosevic relent. He then

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complied just enough to forestall air strikes while watching for political cracks to appear in the alliance. Deterrence failed because Washington, Brussels, and Milo­ sevic all miscalculated. Once ALLIED FORCE began, moreover, Milosevic tried to outlast the strikes, fracture NATO, and keep control of an emptied-out Kosovo.85 His effort was aided by rules of engagement (and weather) that made it difficult for NATO to engage tactical military targets and, while attacking strategic targets inside Serbia increased the level of pain, the alliance was still steeling itself, in late May, to inject ground forces into the war. Russia then decided that the best outcome was to just stop everything: the bombing, the displacements, and the Serb occupation of Kosovo. Although ALLIED FORCE certainly helped drive Milosevic’s decision to yield, it was Moscow’s shift – while getting NATO to temper its demands – that finally compelled the Serbian leader to yield. After Dayton, IFOR’s massive military presence and the agreement’s territorial separation of combatants can be credited with deterring the resumption of militaryscale armed combat in Bosnia. There is little question but that IFOR’s presence and mandate to use force at its discretion substantially calmed the early post-Dayton set­ ting. Yet, that building presence did not deter RS authorities’ early rousting of Serb civilians from Sarajevo, despite the presence of IFOR (ex-UNPROFOR) troops in the city. Sarajevo lay in the French, not the US, sector but it is not clear that newly deploying US troops would have been any better prepared for – or, given Dayton’s strictures and the US aversion to “non-military” tasks and “mission creep,” any more inclined to undertake – the crowd control, crime control, firefighting, and myriad other tasks necessary to maintain urban order in the face of organized and violent efforts to destroy it. The clear separation of tasks that made IFOR acceptable to the US military made the Bosnian peace incomplete. In the aftermath of ALLIED FORCE in Kosovo, KFOR’s mission was com­ plicated by the departure of Serbian police and military forces. Intended at the outset to ensure Serb compliance with the terms of UNSCR 1244, their absence changed the state of play and turned focus to enforcing the agreement with the KLA. The KLA, however, did not present a mass that could be easily confronted, certainly not with the military’s accustomed concentrated firepower. The US’ initial plans for KFOR’s immediate hand-off of civil responsibilities to a UN administrative and police presence, moreover, overestimated the capacity of insti­ tutions like the UN and OSCE to provide such capabilities. That left KFOR as the sole source of civil order, at least at first, drawing on the instincts and life experi­ ences of unit commanders in each sector because there was no accepted applicable law and KFOR lacked high-level plans for civil order maintenance. Although US-NATO military operations in the Balkans achieved less-than-total success, they did have important ancillary effects. US troops’ participation in ABLE SENTRY, for example, helped preserve the political integrity of Macedonia and, later, NATO troops pre-staged for other purposes helped refugee agencies cope with unexpected numbers fleeing the fighting and ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. Croatia and its “extended family” in Bosnia were induced to support the

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Federation arrangement with the Bosnian Muslims and an overall settlement that left Bosnia and Herzegovina territorially intact with a two-entity internal structure. While it may not have been the US intent that Croatia use its new army to expel the population of Serbian Krajina, the effect was a cleaner territorial and security arrangement for both Croatia and Bosnia. Croatia was not pressed to repatriate the Krajina Serbs and ended up with a religiously and culturally more homogeneous state. Finally, during the Kosovo crisis, NATO minimized air strikes in Montene­ gro, acknowledging that it had little to do with the crisis. In 2006, Montenegrins voted for independence from Serbia. By 2017, the country was a candidate for NATO membership. For the people living in the Western Balkans, the outcome of US intervention is painfully mixed. Intense outside pressure finally brought an end to the Bosnian war but also imposed a complex and self-contradictory settlement that both enshrined and undermined local parties’ long-term aspirations. The Dayton Peace Agreement ratified most of the BSA’s wartime territorial gains but also called for the return of persons displaced from those territories; set up governing institutions that grew weaker the closer they approached state-level; and ensured long-term ethno-political disagreement and conflict. Moreover, IFOR’s one-year timeframe induced early national elections that favored nationalist parties and wartime leaders. Dayton’s top civilian implementation official, the “High Representative,” had minimal powers at first that were augmented later by the agreement’s largely self-appointed Peace Implementation Council, but which were then used so freely as to absolve local politicians of responsibility for their actions.86 Twenty years after Dayton, Bosnia was, “neither a functioning state nor a democratic one. Instead, the parties that were responsible for the war in the country remain the most dominant political actors.”87 Bosnia’s “legitimate and criminalized power structures are one and the same.”88 Some of the parties responsible for wartime atrocities were, however, eventually hauled before the UN’s International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). Slobodan Milosevic lost his bid for re-election as president of Serbia in October 2000. He was arrested by Serbian authorities and bound over to the ICTY in June 2001. He died of a heart attack while in custody in March 2006, before his trial could be concluded.89 That same year, Serbia joined NATO’s Partnership for Peace.90 RS leader Radovan Karadzic, finally arrested in 2008 and convicted in 2016, was sentenced to 40 years in prison. BSA commander Ratko Mladic was detained in 2011, convicted in 2017, and sentenced to life in prison (the ICTY’s harshest sentence). Both sentences were appealed, but in March 2019, Karadzic was sen­ tenced to 40 years in prison.91 In short, although the US “campaign” to bring peace to Croatia and Bosnia succeeded in physically curtailing what might have been an even greater slaughter and, eventually, persuaded Serb leaders to negotiate a peace agreement, it cannot be said to have achieved the United States’ broad strategic goal of bringing peace and stability to the Balkans, a shortfall which soon manifested itself in new conflicts over Kosovo. Both interventions involved US military escalations from shows of force and limited enforcement actions to full

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scale air campaigns to compel the separation of the belligerents and the negotiation of political settlements, as well as long-lasting deployments of international peace­ keeping forces on the ground. In February 2008, the provisional government of Kosovo, weary of drawn-out international tutelage, declared the territory to be sovereign and independent. The International Court of Justice decided in 2010 that the declaration did not violate international law or UN Security Council Resolution 1244. In 2012, the UN and EU agreed to end international supervision of Kosovo and Kosovo and Serbia commenced EU-moderated talks to regularize their relations.92 The United States, UK, France, Germany, and over 100 other countries have recognized Kosovo’s independence, though China and Russia have not. Their vetoes in the Security Council block Kosovo’s admission to the UN.93 In 1989, Serbs constituted 18 percent of Kosovo’s population; in 2017, about 1.5 percent.94 The country, while at peace, remains the second poorest in Europe, with a 33 percent unemployment rate, 60 percent youth unemployment, and a significant “underground economy.”95 KFOR is a continuing NATO mission but its size had dropped to 4,000 troops by 2018. The US draws its share, about 675 troops, from Army National Guard units.96 As in Croatia/Bosnia, the US/NATO campaign towards Kosovo achieved its operational goal of ending the fighting. Since the United States and other inter­ venors lacked consensus on Kosovo’s ultimate political status, Kosovar-Albanian nationalism created its own end-game, but the ultimate strategic goal of a peaceful and prosperous state remains elusive.

Notes 1 For details, see Misha Glenny, The Fall of Yugoslavia: The Third Balkan War, (New York: Penguin Books, 1994), 149–52; Samantha Power, “A Problem from Hell:” America and the Age of Genocide (New York: HarperCollins, 2002), 249. 2 Power, “A Problem from Hell,” 252–62. 3 United Nations Security Council, “Annexes to the Final Report of the Commission of Experts Established Pursuant to Security Council Resolution 780 (1992),” S/1994/647/ Add.2, Vol. II, December 28, 1994, Annex VI: Study of the Battle and Siege of Sar­ ajevo, paras. 42–3. 4 Alan J. Kuperman, “The Moral Hazard of Humanitarian Intervention: Lessons from the Balkans,” International Studies Quarterly 52 (2008): 62, 65. Rigorous work by researchers for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia indicates that the war in Bosnia resulted in about 105,000 fatalities, “combining ‘battle deaths’ (i.e. deaths in combat of both soldiers and civilians) and … ‘one-sided violence increases’ (non-combat deaths of civilians and soldiers, including mass violence victims).” See Jan Zwierzchowski and Ewa Tabeau, “The 1992–95 War in Bosnia-and-Herzegovina: Census-based Mul­ tiple System Estimation of Casualties Undercount,” Conference Paper for the Interna­ tional Research Workshop on ‘The Global Costs of Conflict,’ The Households in Conflict Network (HiCN) and The German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin),” 1–2 February 2010, Berlin. accessed July 12, 2018. www.icty.org/x/file/ About/OTP/War_Demographics/en/bih_casualty_undercount_conf_paper_100201.pdf

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5 National Museum of the US Air Force, “USAF Humanitarian Efforts in Bosnia-Herzego­ vina,” June 2, 2015. www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/DesktopModules/ArticleCS/Print.aspx? PortalId=7&ModuleId=1155&Article=197596; Daniel L. Haulman, “Provide Promise,” US Air Mobility Command website, https://amcmuseum.org/history/provide-promise/ 6 The safe areas also included Sarajevo and Bihac, and were decreed by UN Security Council resolutions 819 (April 16 1993) and 824 (May 6, 1993). For discussion, see William J, Durch and James A. Schear, “Faultlines: UN Operations in the Former Yugoslavia,” UN Peacekeeping: American Policy and the Uncivil Wars of the 1990s (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996), 230–1. 7 Daniel L. Haulman, “The United States Air Force and Bosnia, 1992–1995,” Air Power History (Fall 2013): 23–31; Haulman, “Provide Promise,” US Air Mobility Command website. https://amcmuseum.org/history/provide-promise/; National Museum of the US Air Force, “USAF Humanitarian Efforts in Bosnia-Herzegovina.” Published June 02, 2015. www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/DesktopModules/ArticleCS/Print.aspx?PortalId=7& ModuleId=1155&Article=197596 8 UN Security Council, S/1994/647/Add.2, Vol. II, December 28, 1994, Annex VI: Study of the Battle and Siege of Sarajevo, paras. 826–7, 840, 1161. Haulman, “Provide Promise.” 9 UN Security Council, S/1994/647/Add.2, Vol. II, December 28, 1994, Annex VI: Study of the Battle and Siege of Sarajevo, 31–5. Ewa Tabeau, Jakub Bijak, and Neda Loncaric, “Death Toll in the Siege of Sarajevo, April 1992 to December 1995, A Study of Mortality Based on Eight Large Data Sources,” Expert report prepared for the Case of Slobodan Milosevic – Bosnia and Herzegovina (IT-02–54) (The Hague: United Nations, International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, Demographic Unit, OTP, 18 August 2003). 2. 10 Kathleen M. Reddy, “Operation Sharp Guard: Lessons Learned for the Policymaker and Commander,” Paper, Department of Joint Military Operations, US Naval War College, Newport, RI, June 13, 1997, 9, accessed August 8, 2018. www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/ u2/a328118.pdf 11 NATO, “NATO/WEU Operation Sharp Guard,” IFOR Final Fact Sheet, October 2, 1996, accessed August 8, 2018. www.nato.int/ifor/general/shrp-grd.htm 12 United Nations Preventive Deployment Force, archived webpages, accessed August 18, 2018. https://peacekeeping.un.org/sites/default/files/past/unpred_b.htm#PREVENTIVE 13 Durch and Schear, “Faultlines,” 256, n2. 14 Haulman, “The United States Air Force and Bosnia, 1992–1995,” 26. Deny Flight by numbers: “No-Fly” Zone fighter sorties flown over Bosnia-Herzegovina = 23,021; Close Air Support and Air Strike sorties over Bosnia-Herzegovina = 27,077; Sorties by SEAD, NAEW, tanker, reconnaissance, and support aircraft = 29,158; Training missions flown = 21,164; Grand total = 100,420. NATO Allied Forces Southern Europe, “AFSOUTH Fact Sheets: Operation Deny Flight,” updated July 18 2003, accessed July 12, 2018. www.webcitation.org/5zHdEB6Zg?url=www.afsouth.nato.int/archives/opera tions/DenyFlight/DenyFlightFactSheet.htm 15 Durch and Schear, “Faultlines,” 242. Haulman, “The United States Air Force and Bosnia, 1992–1995,” 27. 16 United Nations Security Council, S/RES/836, June 4, 1993, para. 10: “member states, acting nationally or through regional organizations or arrangements, may take, under the authority of the Security Council and subject to close coordination with the SecretaryGeneral and UNPROFOR, all necessary measures, through the use of air power, in and around the safe areas in the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina to support UNPRO­ FOR in the performance of its mandate.” 17 Steven L. Burg and Paul S. Shoup, The War in Bosnia-Herzegovina: Ethnic Conflict and International Intervention (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1999), 142–4. 18 Durch and Schear, “Faultlines,” 231–2, 241–2. Russian troops transferred from the ongoing UN peacekeeping operation in eastern Croatia. 19 Tabeau et al., “Death Toll in the Siege of Sarajevo,” 9 (tables).

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20 Michael O. Beale, “Bombs over Bosnia: The Role of Airpower in Bosnia-Herzego­ vina,” (Air University Press, Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama, August 1997), 25, accessed June 5, 2019. www.jstor.org/stable/resrep13772 21 Durch and Schear, “Faultlines,” 242–3. 22 Beale, “Bombs over Bosnia,” 26 23 Durch and Schear, “Faultlines,” 243–4. 24 Burg and Shoup, The War in Bosnia-Herzegovina, 160. Preparations for a possible deployment of US Army ground forces to Bosnia “began in April 1992 soon after the war started,” accelerating when the extraction of UNPROFOR loomed in 1994; plans earmarked up to nine combat brigades for that purpose (R. Cody Phillips, Bosnia-Her­ zegovina: The Army’s Role in Peace Enforcement Operations, 1995–2004, CMH Publ. 70– 97–1 (Ft. Leavenworth, KS: Center for Military History, 2005), 16). 25 United Nations, Report of the Secretary-General pursuant to General Assembly reso­ lution 53/35: The Fall of Srebrenica, UN document A/54/549, 15 November 1999, paras. 188–95; Durch and Schear, “Faultlines,” 244. Burg and Shoup, The War in Bosnia-Her­ zegovina, 324; Col Christopher M. Campbell, “The Deliberate Force Air Campaign Plan,” in Robert F. Baumann, George W. Gawrych, Walter E. Kretchik, Armed Peacekeepers in Bosnia (Ft. Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute Press, 2004), 102. 26 The Rapid Reaction Force was authorized by the UN Security Council on June 16, 1995 (S/RES/998). For background on the politics of the RRF, see United Nations, The Fall of Srebrenica, paras. 214–7. 27 United Nations, The Fall of Srebrenica, paras. 239–305. 28 United Nations, The Fall of Srebrenica, para. 306. 29 Some 12–15,000 Bosniac fighters had departed Srebrenica for Tuzla on foot a few days before the town was overrun. About 3,000 were killed in fighting en route while another 4–5,000 surrendered, were taken to execution sites and killed by the BSA, July 14–17. Up to 6,000 eventually made it to Tuzla. See United Nations, The Fall of Sreb­ renica, paras. 343–51, 370, 385–8. 30 United Nations, The Fall of Srebrenica, paras. 438–9; para. 443 31 United Nations, The Fall of Srebrenica, para. 451. 32 For the chief negotiator’s play-by-play, see Richard C. Holbrooke, To End a War (New York: Random House, 1998). Also, Halberstam, War in Time of Peace, 363. 33 There was also a public signing ceremony in Paris on December 14. In Dayton’s Annex 1-A (“Military Aspects”), Article I.1.a, “The United Nations Security Council is invited to adopt a resolution by which it will authorize Member States or regional organizations and arrangements to establish a multinational military Implementation Force (hereafter ‘IFOR’).” One day after the Paris signing ceremony, the Council passed a carefully worded resolution – including the one-year timeframe – that authorized and thus legitimated IFOR globally for many of its non-US participants (United Nations Security Council, S/RES/1031, December 14, 1995). 34 David Halberstam, War in Time of Peace: Bush, Clinton, and the Generals (New York: Scribner, 2002), 359. 35 “The General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina [GFAP],” Annex 1A, Art. I, sections 2, 3; Art. IV, section 6; Art.VI, section 10. www.osce.org/ bih/126173 36 Steven R. Bowman. “Bosnia: U.S. Military Operations,” IB93056, US Congressional Reference Service, updated July 8, 2003, 10. 37 Elizabeth Cousens and David Harland, “Post-Dayton Bosnia and Herzegovina” in William J. Durch, ed., Twenty-first Century Peace Operations (Washington, DC: USIP, 2006), 90. 38 Cousens and Harland, “Post-Dayton Bosnia and Herzegovina,” 91. 39 William J. Clinton: “Remarks Announcing Participation in Missions in Bosnia and Zaire and an Exchange with Reporters,” November 15, 1996. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project. www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/? pid=52250

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40 US Army Europe, “The US Army in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” 21–22. This report gives all US unit rotations for SFOR and offers a weekly chronology of events from March 1998 to January 2003. 41 Michael Dziedzic, “Kosovo,” in William J. Durch, ed., Twenty-First-Century Peace Operations (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2006), 320–3; Alan J. Kuperman, “The Moral Hazard of Humanitarian Intervention: Lessons from the Bal­ kans,” International Studies Quarterly 52 (2008): 65. 42 Howard Clark, Civil Resistance in Kosovo (Sterling, VA: Pluto Press, 2000), cited in Kuperman, “Moral Hazard,” 65. 43 R. Cody Phillips, Operation Joint Guardian: The US Army in Kosovo, CMH Publ. 70– 109–1 (Ft. Leavenworth, KS: Center for Military History, 2007), 9. 44 The Woodrow Wilson Center, Washington, DC, “Albania – KLA Separatism Tied to Former President,” Last updated July 7, 2011, accessed October 8, 2018. www.wilson center.org/publication/albania. 45 Halberstam, War in Time of Peace, 366; Kuperman, “Moral Hazard,” 65. That Drenica may also have been selected for its symbolic intimidation value seems clear from remarks by Slobodan Milosevic to Gen. Wesley Clark in January 1999: “You know, General Clark, that we know how to handle these Albanians, these murderers, these rapists, these killers-of-their own kind. We have taken care of them before. In Drenica, in 1946, we killed them. We killed them all.” (Wesley K. Clark, Waging Modern War: Bosnia, Kosovo, and the Future of Combat (New York: Public Affairs, 2001), 151–2). 46 Once the Kosovo War concluded, Clark’s military career was abruptly cut short. Hal­ berstam, War in Time of Peace, 456–7; LTC Lance C. Varney, “Interaction within the Civil-Military Nexus: An Enduring Dilemma for Professional Officers,” Thesis (US Army Command and General Staff College, Ft. Leavenworth, KS, 2010), 26–30. 47 Kuperman, “Moral Hazard,” 66. 48 Ibid., 69. “[T]he rebels launched their rebellion based on a belief that they could attract humanitarian intervention sufficient to attain their goal of Kosovo’s independence at a tolerable cost in retaliation.… The KLA did not merely hope for intervention, but actively pursued a strategy to attract such aid by provoking Serb retaliation against Albanian civi­ lians. Indeed, the KLA viewed retaliatory killing not merely as an unavoidable cost to be endured, but actually an interim goal necessary to assure subsequent victory.” 49 NATO, “Statement by NATO Secretary General, Dr. Javier Solana, on Exercise ‘Determined Falcon’” Press Release (98)80, June 13, 1998, accessed August 14, 2019. www.nato.int/docu/pr/1998/p98-080e.htm; BBC News, Europe, “Nato hails air manoeuvres a success,” June 15, 1998, accessed Sept. 27, 2018. http://news.bbc.co.uk/ 2/hi/europe/112701.stm 50 John Pike, “Exercise Determined Falcon/Operation Determined Falcon,” n.d., accessed Sept. 27, 2018. www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/determined_falcon.htm 51 Kuperman, “Moral Hazard,” 71; Julie Mertus, “Operation Allied Force: Handmaiden of Independent Kosovo,” International Affairs (May 2009): 469; Phillips, Operation Joint Guardian, 10. 52 Bowman, “Kosovo and Macedonia,” 1; Bruce R. Nardulli, Walter L. Perry, Bruce Pirnie, John Gordon IV, and John G. McGinn, Disjointed War: Military Operations in Kosovo, 1999, (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Arroyo Center, 2002), 15. 53 Bowman, “Kosovo and Macedonia,” 1. 54 Phillips, Operation Joint Guardian, 10–11. 55 Tim Judah, Kosovo: War and Revenge, 2nd edn (New Haven and London: Yale Uni­ versity Press, 2002), 193–4; Halberstam, War in Time of Peace, 410. 56 Judah, Kosovo: War and Revenge, 206–27; Dobbins et al., Post–Cold War Nation-Building, 80. 57 William J. Clinton: “Address to the Nation on Airstrikes Against Serbian Targets in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro),” March 24, 1999. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, “The American Presidency Project.” www.pre sidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=57305

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58 By the end of May, NATO was capable of generating 1,000 sorties daily (Nardulli et al., Disjointed War, 24, 32). 59 B-2s proved capable of completing missions in poor weather that grounded other air­ craft, and reportedly “flew only 3 percent of the missions but hit 33 percent of all the targets” (Halberstam, War in Time of Peace, 458). 60 Eric Larson, Gustav Lindstrom, Myron Hura, Ken Gardiner, Jim Keffer, and Bill Little, Interoperability of U.S. and NATO Allied Air Forces: Supporting Data and Case Studies, MR 1603 (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2003), 44. 61 Nardulli et al., Disjointed War, 3–4, 27. 62 Martin A. Smith, “Afghanistan in Context: NATO out-of-area debates in the 1990s,” UNISCI Discussion Papers No. 22, January 2010, 28. 63 Cloud cover was greater than 50 percent more than 70 percent of the time. Weather conditions allowed unimpeded air strikes on just 24 of 78 days (US Department of Defense, Kosovo/Operation Allied Force After-Action Report, Report to Congress, 31 Jan­ uary 2000, 60). 64 Controversy surrounded the efficacy of NATO air strikes against Serb “fielded forces.” Of the 750 pieces of armored and artillery initially assessed to have been damaged or destroyed, only 52 were directly confirmed by on-ground survey teams after the war (Nardulli et al., Disjointed War, 27–8, 48–56, 91). 65 Nardulli et al., Disjointed War, 14; Clinton: “Address to the Nation on Airstrikes.” 66 For thoughtful rumination on Serb strategy, see Barry R. Posen, “The War for Kosovo: Serbia’s Political-Military Strategy,” International Security (Spring 2000): 39–84. 67 An estimated 861,700 refugees fled Kosovo in spring 1999 (including 444,600 to Alba­ nia, 244,500 to Macedonia and 69,900 to Montenegro). Andrew Cottey, “The Kosovo War in Perspective,” International Affairs (Royal Institute of International Affairs 1944) 85 (3) (2009): 597, www.jstor.org/stable/27695033 Also Mark Webber, “The Kosovo War: A Recapitulation,” International Affairs (May 2009): 450; Nardulli et al., Disjointed War, 45–6, 56. 68 Halberstam, War in Time of Peace, 461–2, 469–70.

69 Nardulli et al., Disjointed War, 7.

70 Jason Fritz, “Stability Operations in Kosovo 1999–2000: A Case Study” (Carlisle, PA: U.

S. Army Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute, January 2018), 13. 71 Nardulli et al., Disjointed War, 62, 74. 72 US Department of Defense, Kosovo/Operation Allied Force After-Action Report, 42–3. 73 Fritz, “Stability Operations in Kosovo,” 14. 74 Posen, “The War for Kosovo,” 67, 69. 75 Posen, “The War for Kosovo,” 59; Nardulli et al., Disjointed War, 43; US Department of Defense, Kosovo/Operation Allied Force After-Action Report, A9–10; Halberstam, War in Time of Peace, 477. 76 Boyadjieva, “NATO on the Balkans,” 41–2. 77 “NATO morning press briefing on Kosovo,” June 18, 1999. www.nato.int/kosovo/p ress/1999/b990618m.htm 78 Michael Dziedzic, “Kosovo – The Kosovo Liberation Army,” in Dziedzic, ed., Crim­ inalized Power Structures, 158–66. Also Dziedzic, “Kosovo,” 350–1; Dana Priest, The Mission: Waging War and Keeping Peace with America's Military (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004), esp. 278–81. 79 Thijs Brocades Zaalberg, Soldiers and Civil Power: Supporting or Substituting Civil Authorities in Modern Peace Operations (Amsterdam University Press, 2005), 306–10. 80 Dziedzic, “Kosovo,” 346–9. 81 Zaalberg, Soldiers and Civil Power, 373–4. 82 Ibid. 83 Dziedzic, “Kosovo,” 364–5. 84 Richard Bennet, Jonathan Friedman, and Morgan Greene, “Building the Police Service in a Security Vacuum: International Efforts in Kosovo, 1999–2011,” Innovation for

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85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96

Successful Societies (Princeton University, 2012). https://successfulsocieties.princeton.edu/ sites/successfulsocieties/files/Kosovo%20Police%20ToU_1.pdf Posen, “The War for Kosovo: Serbia’s Political-Military Strategy,” 39 Cousens and Harland, “Post-Dayton Bosnia and Herzegovina,” 66, 76–7. Soeren Keil and Valery Perry, “Introduction: Bosnia and Herzegovina 20 Years after Dayton,” International Peacekeeping 22(5) (2015): 2. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13533312. 2015.1100614; the entire issue of the journal was devoted to Bosnia. Oscar Vera and Karmen Fields, “Bosnia-Herzegovina – The Third Entity Movement,” in Michael Dziedzic, ed., Criminalized Power Structures: The Overlooked Enemies of Peace (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2016), 27. Human Rights Watch, “Milosevic Escapes Judgment, Not Justice Process,” March 10, 2006. www.hrw.org/news/2006/03/10/milosevic-escapes-judgment-not-justice-process Cottey, “The Kosovo War in Perspective,” 595. BBC, “Radovan Karadzic sentence increased to life at UN tribunal,” March 20, 2019, accessed August 14, 2019. www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-47642327 United Nations Security Council, Report of the Secretary-General on the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo, S/2012/818, November 8, 2012, para. 6. www.beinkosovo.com/countries-that-have-recognized-kosovo-as-an-independent-state/ CIA, “The World Factbook: Kosovo.” www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-fa ctbook/geos/kv.html Ibid. Dziedzic, “Kosovo,” 344–5; International Institute for Strategic Studies, The Military Balance: 2018 (London: Routledge, 2018), 145.

7 RUSSIA What’s old is new again Thomas Wright

The problem of extended deterrence defined US strategy in Europe for much of the Cold War. The United States had two specific challenges. The first was to convince the Soviet Union that it would fight for territories of limited strategic value, such as West Berlin. The second was that it would initiate the use of nuclear weapons to defend Western Europe, even if it meant starting a new world war that could result in the destruction of all major population centers in the continental United States. Successive presidents dealt with these challenges by making it clear – through the stationing of US troops and nuclear weapons in Europe and through countless reaffirmations of its commitments – that the United States would fight to defend its allies and that it would use nuclear weapons, even though the cost seemed disproportionate to what might be gained in a war. This was what the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr identified early on as the key dilemma of US strat­ egy – to prevent evil, it had to be prepared to do evil.1 The end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union removed the problem of extended deterrence in Europe, or at least it seemed to for a while. With no adversary capable of or intent upon invading Western Europe, deterrence could be accomplished with a much smaller force and consistent doctrinal state­ ments that the United States would fight if necessary. Nuclear weapons were marginalized, since the new balance of power allowed the United States to defend its allies by conventional means, although doctrinally NATO remained a nuclear alliance. The relatively benign environment enabled NATO to expand its mem­ bership further east, right up to Russia’s borders. While this strategy brought many benefits – such as consolidating democracy in Eastern Europe – it also exacerbated the risks posed to extended deterrence if Europe’s security environment took a turn for the worse, which it did. Today, NATO faces a Russian threat once again and the problem of making extended deterrence credible has returned. The problem is different than that

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posed in the Cold War, and more difficult, as the frontier is along Russia’s border, not at the heart of Germany. Russian conventional forces are substantially weaker than those of NATO’s forces. But parts of the Eastern frontier are very hard to defend, the will and morale of NATO member states is openly questioned, and Russian goals can be more limited – simply showing the defense commitment enshrined in Article 5 of the NATO Treaty to be a hollow gesture may be enough to begin NATO’s dismantling. This chapter examines US efforts to bolster deter­ rence in Europe from August 2008, when Russia invaded Georgia, to the time of this writing in 2019. There are three distinct phases during this period. The first lasted from the invasion of Georgia to the annexation of Crimea in 2014. During this period, the United States sought to downplay the Russian threat to Europe while seeking to cooperate with it on mutual interests. Russia used this time to modernize its mili­ tary to account for the weaknesses revealed in the Georgia War. The second phase lasted from the annexation of Crimea to the end of the Obama presidency in 2016 and featured a steady stream of measures to bolster deterrence in Europe. During this time, Russia initiated an even more aggressive foreign policy, largely outside of Europe, including a military intervention into the Syrian civil war and interference in the US 2016 presidential election and other elections in NATO member-states. The third phase began with the inauguration of President Donald Trump and continues to this day. It features tension between the president’s skepticism about NATO and fondness for Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, on the one hand, and his more internationalist team, along with many Republicans in Congress, who favor more traditional alliance-favorable policies, on the other hand. The net effect has been an odd combination of doubts about the credibility of the president’s promise to uphold NATO’s Article 5 and, yet, practical measures to strengthen US military capabilities in Europe.

The US flat-footed: the Georgia War and the annexation of Crimea Although there were signs of Russian revisionism in Europe prior to the summer of 2008 (most notably, Vladimir Putin’s address to the Munich Security Con­ ference in February 2007), it was the war in Georgia in August that marked the beginning of a new era.2 After over a decade and a half of acquiescing to American leadership in Europe, Russia demonstrated that it could push back, through force of arms if needs be. A full account of the Georgia War can be seen elsewhere, but the basic facts are as follows.3 Following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the formation of Georgia as an independent state, two Georgian provinces – South Ossetia and Abkhazia – sought to retain ties to Russia. Georgia controlled a number of towns and villages in these provinces, but they generally remained outside of its control. Tensions between Georgia and Russia rose in the 2000s as each took steps to enhance its influence in the two break-away provinces. In 2008, Europe’s recognition of Kosovo’s

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independence and support for Georgia and Ukraine’s bids for NATO membership further angered Russia, which placed troops in South Ossetia and Abkhazia. In April, Russia shot down a Georgian drone inside Russian airspace and in May, it built a railway to improve its capability to conduct military operations against Georgia. In August 2008, Georgia’s President Mikhail Shakasvilli responded by trying to expel the invading forces, but Russia had amassed troops on the border and, given the pretext of Shakasvilli’s action, invaded Georgia itself. After five days of fighting, French President Nicolas Sarkozy brokered a ceasefire. After the invasion, the Bush Administration allowed Georgia to bring home the 2,000 Georgian troops stationed in Iraq to help defend their country and provided transportation to do so. It launched a humanitarian convoy to Georgia protected by US warships, which the White House intended as a signal of Wes­ tern resolve. Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has written that the Bush Administration focused primarily on the defense of Tiblisi, which was under significant threat after the beginning of the war.4 However, as the then-director of the State Department’s Georgia Task Force pointed out, the Bush Adminis­ tration’s response was lacking in many respects. There were warnings of Russian aggression throughout the late spring and summer of 2008 but US intelligence failed to adequately understand the threat. No efforts were made to work with the Georgian government to build a force capable of deterring a Russian con­ ventional invasion. US forces were not moved to deter Russia before or during the invasion. The White House refused requests from Georgia to allow its troops to return home in the summer of 2008 prior to the invasion. The humanitarian convoy was begun only after the cessation of fighting. Crucially, no sanctions were imposed – the punishment of Russia was left to whoever would succeed President George W Bush.5 The Western response to Georgia was muted for several reasons, the most important of which was that Western leaders held Shakasvilli partly responsible for the conflict. It was his decision to attack Russian forces advancing toward South Ossetia and Abkhazia that provided the pretext for the invasion. Sarkozy and others had warned Shakasvilli of the risks, but he persisted. A second reason was that the Russian invasion, while successful, revealed real weaknesses in its military. Friendly fire casualties were very high, intelligence was faulty, and communications broke down.6 This allowed Western leaders to dismiss the conventional threat posed by Russia to their publics. Finally, the invasion occurred in the final months of the George W. Bush Administration and just before the 2008 financial crisis. The United States was otherwise occupied and had little appetite for a new Cold War with Russia. The Obama campaign devised a new Russia strategy, which it termed “Reset,” days after the invasion of Georgia. The strategy initially contained five points, including strengthening NATO and supporting democracy and sovereignty in Europe, but the overriding intention was to engage Russia on common interests.7 Candidate Obama condemned the invasion, but then moved on to areas of potential cooperation with Russia.

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Once in office, the Obama Administration officially condemned the invasion of Georgia. At the 2009 Munich Security Conference, Vice-President Joseph Biden told delegates, “We will not – will not – recognize Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent states. We will not recognize any nation having a sphere of influence. It will remain our view that sovereign states have the right to make their own decisions and choose their own alliances.”8 In the joint statement issued by Pre­ sident Obama and then-Russian President Medvedev after their first meeting, in London in April 2009, the two leaders noted their disagreement about the Rus­ sian-Georgia War but emphasized their mutual desire for greater cooperation. When President Obama visited Moscow that summer he said, In 2009, a great power does not show strength by dominating or demonizing other countries. The days when empires could treat sovereign states as pieces on a chessboard are over.… Given our interdependence, any world order that tries to elevate one nation or one group of people over another will inevitably fail.9 Inevitability was a theme of Obama’s foreign policy. He believed that world poli­ tics had been transformed from that of previous centuries. Countries like Russia could flex their muscles as they had in the past, but they would fail because it no longer worked. If the failure of aggressive policies was inevitable, active deterrence would be less important than if Russian power politics seems destined to succeed. Central and Eastern European countries were not free from the burdens of his­ tory, however, and grew concerned. Their concern rose considerably after the botched rollout of the administration’s missile defense review. On the anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939, Poland and Hungary learned that the US no longer planned to go ahead with the deployments of interceptor missiles and a radar, respectively, as the Bush Administration had committed to do. In July 2009, 22 Central and Eastern European intellectuals, including former Czech President Vaclav Havel and former Polish President Lech Walesa, signed an open letter to President Obama describing their fears about his foreign policy toward their region. They wrote that, we see that Central and Eastern European countries are no longer at the heart of American foreign policy. As the new Obama Administration sets its foreignpolicy priorities, our region is one part of the world that Americans have lar­ gely stopped worrying about.… That view is premature. All is not well either in our region or in the transatlantic relationship. Central and Eastern Europe is at a political crossroads and today there is a growing sense of nervousness in the region.10 President Obama, nonetheless, initiated the Reset with Moscow, effectively ignoring the invasion of Georgia. He did not see Europe as an important strategic theater, or at least as not one under imminent threat. He replaced the existing missile defense plan with a different one, focused more on southeastern Europe, for

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the perfectly understandable reason that the new locations would increase the sys­ tem’s effectiveness against the threat posed by Iranian missiles, which was the jus­ tification for the Bush Administration plan. Moreover, the Obama Administration soon thereafter announced that it would be making a strategic pivot to Asia. The administration denied that it was a pivot away from Europe, and soon replaced the term “pivot” with “rebalance,” but the implied message was clear – East Asia was where America’s strategic problems of the future resided. Consistent with this orientation, there was relatively little attention paid to enhancing deterrence in continental Europe itself. US forces in Europe were reduced from approximately 82,000 in 2009 to 69,000 in 2014, and military activity was generally confined to small-scale exercises. Indeed, during this period NATO began exercising jointly with Russia. Meanwhile, Russia embarked upon a program of modernization. The military’s poor performance led to comprehensive and radical reforms, led by the Defense Minister Serdyukov and his Chief of Staff, General Nikolai Makarov, to produce a more flexible, professional, modern, and ready army capable of carrying out a wide spectrum of operations, including small-scale interventions.11 Over 200 generals were dismissed and the number of officer positions was cut by over 200,000. The result was a much more capable military.12 By 2014, Gaelotti writes, the Russians were able to deploy perhaps 40,000 troops to the Ukrainian border within seven days at the start of their intervention into the eastern Donbas region. In 1999, it had taken three times as long to mobilize a similar force for Chechnya.13 Russian modernization would have profound repercussions, but would not become obvious for some time. For a while, it looked like the “Reset” was working. Pre­ sident Medvedev backed the Western intervention in Libya. He seemed open to structural economic reform. There seemed to be little intent to replicate the invasion of Georgia elsewhere. But, then, everything changed. The return to power of Vla­ dimir Putin in 2012 was the death knell for strategic cooperation with the West. He was destined to clash with the West, and the mass protests that greeted his return to power convinced him that the United States was out to depose him. The Obama Administration understood that the “Reset” was over, but the president and highranking officials had little appreciation of the rise of Russian power. The thesis that Russia inevitably would seek cooperative relations for economic reasons remained influential, including in the mind of the president. It would soon be shattered.

The US plays catch up, Russia plays catch me if you can The Ukraine Crisis erupted in November 2013. A full account of this crisis can be read elsewhere, but the core facts are these.14 The Ukrainian government was negotiating an association agreement with the European Union. Under pressure from Russia, however, Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych withdrew from

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the negotiations. Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians protested the government’s action, forcing Yanukovych to resign and seek refuge in Russia. The Russians denounced the revolution as a fascist coup and Russian special forces began to take active measures to loosen Kiev’s grip on Crimea and by March 2014, Russia effectively controlled the Peninsula. Putin then surprised the world by declaring that he would formally annex it to Russia, a move that was approved by a refer­ endum of Crimeans, but was condemned by the United States, the European Union, and most other democracies. Shortly after the annexation, Russian-backed militias, perhaps in collaboration with Russian national forces, initiated hostilities in the eastern part of Ukraine. The West saw the annexation of Crimea as the crossing of a Rubicon. There were fears that Putin would move on other territories, possibly including against a NATO member. NATO’s original mission came back into vogue. It was only after the annexation of Crimea that the United States and its NATO allies began to take significant steps to bolster deterrence in Europe. These steps included diplomatic initiatives and doctrinal shifts, troop deployments, military reforms, and improve­ ment to the readiness of the armed forces. The annexation came as a surprise – most observers believed that Putin would keep effective control over Crimea but not openly annex it – and signaled that the previously unthinkable was now very possible. And, one of those scenarios envisioned a Russian intervention in a member of NATO, particularly one of the Baltic nations. The Russian objective, many feared, would be to demonstrate the hollowness of Article 5, the mutual defense guarantee. As a first step, the United States, and its European allies, imposed sanctions and visa bans on 11 Russian and Ukrainian figures involved in the annexation.15 This was just the beginning. Over the next four years, the sanctions regime would be expanded and strengthened in response to aggressive Russian actions in Ukraine (including the downing of a civilian airliner, MH 17) and interventions in the 2016 US presidential election and elections in Europe. The Russian annexation of Crimea came several months after the “red line” episode in Syria in which President Obama went back on his threat to launch military strikes against the Assad regime for using chemical weapons. Although this episode did not involve a formal alliance commitment, and although the Obama Administration appeared to achieve the removal of lethal chemical weapons from Syria through a diplomatic agreement, the failure to make good on the military commitment raised questions about the credibility of US commitments more generally. The Obama Administration thus moved to demonstrate that the NATO Article 5 commitment was iron clad – an attack on a NATO member would be met with a military response. On June 3 in Warsaw, Obama announced the European Security Initiative: a new initiative to bolster the security of our NATO allies here in Europe. Under this effort, and with the support of Congress, the United States will pre-position more equipment in Europe. We will be expanding our exercises

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and training with allies to increase the readiness of our forces.… We’ll increase the number of American personnel – Army and Air Force units – con­ tinuously rotating through allied countries in Central and Eastern Europe. And we will be stepping up our partnerships with friends like Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia as they provide for their own defense. I’m calling on Congress to approve up to $1 billion to support this effort, which will be a powerful demonstration of America’s unshakeable commitment to our NATO allies.16 Then in September, prior to the NATO summit, Obama went to Estonia, one of the frontline states, and underscored the importance of Article 5.17 When NATO leaders met later that month at the Wales Summit they approved the Readiness Action Plan, which provided for a continuous air, land, and sea presence along the alliance’s frontier with Russia. These measures included the expansion of the NATO response force to include a Very High Readiness Joint Task Force of 5,000 troops and eight NATO Force Integration Units to train and reinforce troops at a time of crisis, the establishment of headquarters for multinational corps and divi­ sions in Poland and Romania respectively, improving infrastructure to allow for the deployment of troops eastward, adding aircraft to NATO Baltic policing opera­ tions, and new military exercises in Eastern Europe. NATO leaders also made the “Defense Investment Pledge,” which committed them to move in the direction of spending at least 2 percent of GDP on defense. NATO also ended, “all practical civilian and military cooperation,” with Russia.18 September 2014 also saw the initiation of an increase in the frequency and scale of US and NATO military exercises, spanning Ukraine and the Baltic states. The Atlantic Resolve series of exercises culminated in 2016 with the massing of more than 30,000 troops, the largest in Eastern Europe since the Cold War. NATO’s Warsaw Summit in July 2016 built on the Wales summit and provided for the “enhanced forward presence” of NATO forces into the Baltics and Poland, “to unambiguously demonstrate, as part of our overall posture, Allies’ solidarity, determination, and ability to act by triggering an immediate Allied response to any aggression.” However, the Warsaw summit also revealed potential limits to NATO’s solidarity. In the days leading up to the summit, Frank-Walter Steinme­ ier, Germany’s foreign minister, said NATO’s military exercises were “warmon­ gering” while French President François Hollande said Russia should be treated as a “partner” not an adversary. At the summit itself, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tspiras called for an end to the stand-off with Russia.19 It is hard to know whether and how the West’s response deterred Russia from further aggression. On the one hand, Russia’s military campaign in the eastern part of Ukraine continued. Russia also engaged in other provocations. For example, just two days after Obama’s speech, Russian operatives lured an Estonian intelligence officer to the border and kidnapped him. Russian aircraft regularly violated north­ ern Europe’s airspace and territorial waters. On the other hand, the actions may have deterred Russia from escalating its war with Kiev and invading the rest of Ukraine. What is clear is that Russian provocations and aggressions escalated in

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other theaters. Russia would intervene in Syria to prop up Bashar al-Assad’s regime, it would promote far right populist movements in Europe, and it interfered in the 2016 US presidential election, helping to elect Donald Trump who had very different ideas about Putin, NATO, and Europe.

The odd couple: the Trump Administration and deterrence in Europe To understand the Trump Administration’s policy toward deterrence in Europe it is first necessary to recognize a fundamental tension that exists within the admin­ istration. The president believes the United States should reconsider its role in Europe and seek a partnership with Russia. Most of his senior national security advisors and officials, however, believe the United States must bolster NATO where it is vulnerable to Russian aggression. Both the president and his team are acting on their beliefs, with predictably contradictory consequences. When he came into office, President Trump was widely regarded as a man of few, if any, convictions on foreign policy. He appeared to be on every side of every issue. However, a close look at his track record over a 30-year period reveals that he has been remarkably consistent on a small number of issues. Since 1987, he has been an arch skeptic of America’s alliances with other nations, regarding them as a means by which countries trick the United States into defending them for free or at a massively reduced rate. He has also opposed free trade and has expressed a fondness for authoritarian strongmen, particularly in Russia. These beliefs are sincerely held by the president. He has stated them repeatedly over a very long period of time. During the campaign, candidate Trump expressed a desire for a partnership with Vladimir Putin. He called NATO obsolete. He said that Ukraine was primarily Germany’s problem and it should take on a greater share of the burden. During his first weeks in office, his National Security Adviser, Michael Flynn, explored removing sanctions on Russia. Trump suggested that the United States would not defend countries that did not spend two percent of their GDP on defense. In his first visit to Europe, the president took out a line from his speech at NATO headquarters endorsing Article 5. After the ensuing controversy, he then endorsed the mutual defense commitment after a meeting with the Romanian president and again in a speech in Poland. In 2018, he insisted on a summit meeting with Putin over the objections of his advisors and he emphasized points of agreement with Russia. The day following the summit, he gave an interview to Fox News in which he questioned the wisdom of a defense guarantee to Montenegro. In the 2018 NATO summit, the United States and its NATO allies reached agreement on the communique on the first day. However, President Trump was displeased that the process had been so smooth and declared in an early morning tweet that he was willing to walk away from NATO unless it made further pro­ gress. The leaders then met in emergency session and provided the president with additional assurances that he subsequently packaged as a win. However, his will­ ingness to muse about the United States going its own way shocked many people

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on both sides of the Atlantic and reignited concerns about his commitment to the alliance.20 Former Trump Administration officials confirmed to The New York Times that he privately spoke about withdrawing the United States from NATO because he views it as a drain on the country.21 President Trump’s frequent comments on Russia and NATO raise a question for the very first time about whether the American president is personally committed to the US role in deterring Russian aggression in Europe. However, simulta­ neously, the Trump Administration has upped the ante in bolstering deterrence and NATO in Central, Eastern, and Northern Europe. The Trump Administration initially was populated largely by figures who believe in a traditional American foreign policy of strengthening alliances and the forward positioning of forces. Vice-President Mike Pence, the former Secretary of Defense James Mattis, the former National Security Adviser H R McMaster, the former Chief of Staff John F. Kelly all hold such views. Even though the president has resisted their advice and each of the last three individuals has been fired or compelled to resign, the administration is still filled with senior officials who hold traditional views on NATO, including the former Director of the CIA and current Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Weeks after Trump was inaugurated, Pence gave a speech at the Munich Security Conference that underscored support for NATO and Ukraine. In the two years that followed, the administration retained the post-Crimea pace and scale of military exercises, with the largest occurring in Norway in the fall of 2018, involving 40,000 troops. So too did the administration increase spending for the Eur­ opean Reassurance Initiative by $1.7 billion per year to $5 billion per year; identify Russia as a strategic rival in the 2017 National Security Strategy and the 2018 National Defense Strategy; provide lethal assistance (Javelin anti-tank weapons) to Ukraine; sanction 21 Russians and nine companies relating to Russia’s aggression in Ukraine; and continue planned increases in US troop strength in Europe (Figure 7.1).

FIGURE 7.1

US Troops in Europe 2008–2019

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Defenders of the Trump Administration point out that the practical steps it took to boost the US military presence in Europe enhanced deterrence: “Rather than weakening, the U.S. military commitment to Europe has actually increased during Trump’s presidency in ways that send direct signals to Russia and limit potential Russian involvement in Europe.”22 However, critics argue that ultimately NATO’s rather ambiguous Article 5 is a promise by a person, the president of the United States, to respond with force to aggression, especially Russian aggression against European member states. If there is any doubt about whether this promise will be upheld in a time of crisis, it creates uncertainty and weakens deterrence. Article 5 is ambiguous because it includes the words that member states must respond to an attack on a member with “such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force.”23 Secretary Mattis’ resignation letter laid this fear bare – he identified differences over America’s alliances as his key point of disagreement with the President.24 Both positions – that of the president’s defenders and that of the skeptics – are partially correct and counteract each other. As an analytical matter, it is impossible to know which one has greater weight in the mind of an adversary. The Trump Administration has changed post-Cold War US policy on nuclear matters as well. President Obama made nuclear disarmament a central theme of his tenure, articulating the goal of the “peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons,” signing the New START Treaty with Russia, and convening multiple summits to make progress toward securing nuclear facilities and materials.25 He also supported modernizing all three components of the nuclear Triad, a program expected to cost around $15 trillion dollars over 30 years, but made it clear through policy statements and nuclear doctrine that he intended for nuclear weapons to play a narrow role in American strategy. President Trump, by contrast, came into office promising a nuclear arms build­ up. In his tumultuous first week in office, he ordered a nuclear posture review, “to ensure that the United States’ nuclear deterrent is modern, robust, flexible, resi­ lient, ready, and appropriately tailored to deter 21st-century threats and reassure our allies.”26 In his first phone call with Vladimir Putin, he rejected the Russian president’s suggestion that they negotiate an extension to New START. He spoke about having a “bigger” nuclear button than other leaders and reportedly asked his advisors why he could not increase the size of US nuclear forces to the Cold War peak. In 2018, he announced that the US would withdraw from the 1985 USRussia Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, which prohibited either nation from deploying nuclear-armed, land-based cruise missiles of a certain range because of Russian cheating. The Obama Administration had also accused the Russians of cheating on INF, but remained in the treaty nonetheless.27 Rhetoric aside, the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review was broadly consistent with mainstream conservative critiques of US nuclear policy.28 Frank Rose, who served as assistant secretary of state for arms control, verification, and compliance in the Obama Administration, wrote that the 2018 NPR, “essentially ratifies the Obama Administration’s strategic nuclear modernization program: the Columbia-class

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ballistic missile submarine (SSBN), the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD), the B-21 bomber, and the Long-Range Stand-Off (LRSO) cruise missile.”29 Sig­ nificant departures were to open the possibility of a nuclear response to a “sig­ nificant non-nuclear strategic attack” by developing a new nuclear warhead with lower yields, and to reintroduce a nuclear sea-launched cruise missile that had been retired during the George H.W. Bush Administration. In its first two years, the administration’s approach on missile defense was broadly consistent with that of the Obama Administration but major questions loomed about whether it would seek to apply this capability to the Russian and Chinese threats and if it would develop space-based missile defense interceptor capabilities.30 After some delay, the administration’s Missile Defense Review was released in January 2019 and did indeed move in this direction, specifically men­ tioning Russia and China in the context of missile defense and endorsing a Space Based Layer.31 Such steps call into question the assumption of mutual vulnerability under­ pinning deterrence. When combined with the prospect of significant technological change in the coming decade, particularly in the fields of artificial intelligence and quantum computing, it is possible that the major nuclear powers may come to doubt whether they will continue to possess a second strike capability. If they were to reach that conclusion, they would undertake countermeasures to preserve their capability. In its response to the review, the Russian Foreign Ministry indicated Russia might be headed in that direction when it described the review as proof of “Washington’s desire to ensure uncontested military domination in the world” and warned that it, “will inevitably start an arms race in space with the most negative consequences for international security and stability.”32

Outcomes The United States did not think seriously about how to deter Russian aggression against NATO between the invasion of Georgia in 2008 and the annexation of Crimea in 2013. Since then, the United States has undertaken a number of steps with its allies to revive and bolster its deterrent. It has reaffirmed the importance of Article 5, placed more troops in Eastern Europe, imposed costs on Russia for its aggressive acts, and enhanced readiness through military exercises and increased defense spending. These measures appear to have been successful – the Kremlin must surely calculate that there is a significant probability that aggression against a NATO member state would be met with a military response. However, these steps do not reduce tensions with Russia; instead they channel tensions into other theaters and interactions. The Russians have not moderated their behavior to meet the West’s demands. Quite to the contrary. Putin has embraced the sanctions as a means of making Russia more self-reliant. He has continued to support pro-Russian forces in eastern Ukraine, as well as in Georgia. He has responded to NATO’s military exercises with major exercises of his own. Russian overflights on the territory of northern European nations and intrusions

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into territorial waters have risen, not fallen in recent years. He has used antiAmericanism to legitimate his own regime and as a key part of his foreign policy. He has also continued to pursue a risk acceptant and assertive foreign policy. The primary strategic problem the West now has with Russia is how to deter or respond to measures short of general war, including limited acts of aggression against a non-NATO country, active measures (including political interference) directed against NATO states, cyber-aggression, and intervention in the Middle East. This is not a failure of American deterrence policy, which was never intended to deter all hostile acts. However, it does mean that NATO will have to figure out how to respond to these measures short of war. As the examples of Georgia and Ukraine demonstrate, the most difficult element may be how to respond to aggression against a non-member state. Thus far, NATO has relied on a mix of sanctions, arms sales and training, and diplomatic pressure. Some scholars have argued that NATO should rule out further expansion to reassure Russia.33 However, others have argued that this could prove counter-productive as it would give Moscow a veto over future expansion, even to a country like Sweden. It would also not be enough to cause a change in Russian intentions – its aggression against Ukraine was in response to Kiev’s partnership with the European Union, not with NATO. Other scholars have argued for waging a more full-throated proxy war against Russia in non-NATO member states, but such steps would run the risk of direct conflict between Russian and American forces with all the associated risks of an escalatory spiral. Instead, the US seems likely to continue with a mix of nonkinetic responses to aggression short of a military attack on a NATO member state, including more sanctions, arms sales, larger exercises, and the repositioning of larger US forces closer to the Russian border. Overall though, the United States can be satisfied that extended deterrence remains intact in Europe. While always difficult, there is no reason to believe that it has become substantially harder in the Putin era. It is other threats from Russia that pose a much greater problem.

Notes 1 Reinhold Niebuhr, The Irony of American History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952), 1. 2 Vladimir Putin, Address to the Munich Security Conference, February 10, 2007. http://en. kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/24034 3 For an account of the Georgia War see Ron Asmus, A Little War that Shook the World: Georgia, Russia, and the Future of the West (New York: St Martin’s Press, 2010). 4 Condoleezza Rice, “Russia Invaded Georgia Ten Years Ago. Don’t Say America Didn’t Respond,” The Washington Post, August 8, 2018. 5 Michael Carpenter, Twitter thread, August 9, 2018. www.twitter.com/mikecarpenter/sta tus/1027567932577067011?s=21 6 Ma Mark Galeotti, The Modern Russian Army 1992–2016, Elite, Book 217, 2017, 21. 7 Michael McFaul, From Cold War to Hot Peace (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Press 2018), 80. 8 Vice President Joseph Biden, Address to the Munich Security Conference, February 22, 2009. https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2013/02/02/remarks-vice-presi dent-joe-biden-munich-security-conference-hotel-bayeri

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9 President Barack Obama, Address to the New Economic School, Moscow, July 7, 2009. www.nytimes.com/2009/07/07/world/europe/07prexy.text.html 10 Valdas Adamkus, Martin Butora, Emil Constantinescu, Pavol Demes, Lubos Dobrovsky, Matyas Eorsi, Istvan Gyarmati, Vaclav Havel, Rastislav Kacer, Sandra Kalniete, Karel Schwar­ zenberg, Michal Kovac, Ivan Krastev, Alexander Kwasniewski, Mart Laar, Kadri Liik, Janos Martonyi. Janusz Onyszkiewicz, Adam Rotfeld, Vaira Vike-Freiberga, Alexandr Vondra, and Lech Walesa, An Open Letter to the Obama Administration, July 16, 2009. www.rferl.org/a/An_ Open_Letter_To_The_Obama_Administration_From_Central_And_Eastern_Europe/1778 449.html 11 The Modern Russian Army 1992–2016, 25–6.

12 Ibid., 27.

13 Ibid.

14 For instance, see Andrew Wilson, The Ukraine Crisis: What it Means for the West (New

Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014); and Angela Stent, The Limits of Partnership: U.S.­ Russia Relations in the 21st Century, Revised Edition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015). 15 Steven Lee Myers and Peter Baker, “Putin Recognizes Crimea’s Secession, Defying the West,” The New York Times, March 17, 2018. www.nytimes.com/2014/03/18/world/europ e/us-imposes-new-sanctions-on-russian-officials.html; the European Reassurance Initiative, later the European Defense Initiative, had a budget of $789 million for 2016 and the Obama administration’s final budget request for FY 2017 was $3.4 billion. It transitioned from short, modest deployments of US forces for exercises in Eastern Europe to the rotational deployment of an armored brigade. The brigade was envisaged to consist of 4,200 personnel and would be dispersed among six countries: Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Romania. 16 Remarks by President Obama and President Komorowski of Poland in a Joint Press Conference, June 3, 2014. https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2014/ 06/03/remarks-president-obama-and-president-komorowski-poland-joint-press-conf 17 President Barack Obama, Remarks to the People of Estonia, September 3, 2014. https:// obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2014/09/03/remarks-president-obama­ people-estonia 18 NATO Communique, September 5, 2014. www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/official_texts_ 112964.htm 19 Sam Jones and Henry Foy, “Nato show of unity masks domestic divisions,” The Financial Times, July 10, 2016. www.ft.com/content/a8b4f536-467f-11e6-8d68-72e9211e86ab 20 Steven Erlanger, Julie Hirschfeld Davis, and Katie Rogers, “NATO survives Trump but the turmoil is leaving scars,” The New York Times, July 12, 2018. www.nytimes.com/ 2018/07/12/world/europe/trump-nato-russia.html 21 Julian Barnes and Helene Cooper, “Trump discussed pulling the United States out of NATO, aides say amid new concerns about Russia,” The New York Times, January 14, 2019. www.nytimes.com/2019/01/14/us/politics/nato-president-trump.html 22 Zachary Selden, “The Increased U.S. Commitment to Europe Under the Trump Administration,” Foreign Policy Research Institute, December 6, 2018. www.fpri.org/article/ 2018/12/the-increased-u-s-commitment-to-europe-under-the-trump-administration/ 23 The North Atlantic Treaty, Washington DC, April 4, 1949. www.nato.int/cps/ua/na tohq/official_texts_17120.htm 24 James Mattis, Letter of Resignation, December 20, 2018. www.cnn.com/2018/12/20/p olitics/james-mattis-resignation-letter-doc/index.html 25 Remarks by President Barack Obama In Prague As Delivered, April 5, 2009. https://obama whitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-barack-obama-prague-delivered 26 The White House, Presidential Memorandum on Rebuilding the U.S. Armed Forces, January 27, 2017. www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/presidential-memorandum-rebuil ding-u-s-armed-forces/ 27 Michael Gordon, “U.S. Says Russia Tested Missile, Violating Treaty,” The New York Times, July 28. 2014, www.nytimes.com/2014/07/29/world/europe/us-says-russia-tes ted-cruise-missile-in-violation-of-treaty.html

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28 Department of Defense, 2018 Nuclear Posture Review, February 2018. https://fas.org/wp -content/uploads/media/2018-Nuclear-Posture-Review.pdf 29 Frank Rose, “Is the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review as Bad as the Critics Claim it is,” Brookings Policy Brief, April 2018. www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/ fp_20180413_2018_nuclear_posture_review.pdf 30 Frank Rose, “Will the Upcoming Missile Defense Review Maintain the Current Course or Plot a New Direction?” Order from Chaos Blog, June 11 2018. www.brookings.edu/ blog/order-from-chaos/2018/06/11/will-the-upcoming-missile-defense-review-mainta in-the-current-course-or-plot-a-new-direction/ 31 Office of the Secretary of Defense, 2019 Missile Defense Review, January 2019. www.defense. gov/Portals/1/Interactive/2018/11-2019-Missile-Defense-Review/The%202019%20MDR _Executive%20Summary.pdf 32 Vladimir Isachenkov, “Russia Warns U.S. Missile Defense Plans Will Fuel Arms Race,” AP News, January 18, 2019. www.apnews.com/98f4ebc83c174cfb9d40474e61b1a656 33 Michael O’Hanlon, Beyond NATO: A New Security Architecture for Eastern Europe (Washington DC: Brookings Press, 2017).

8 CHINA Narrow Straits and Rising Tensions Michael S. Chase

The United States and China have been strategic rivals for decades, although it was only in 2017 that this relationship became elevated in official US doctrine to the status of great power competition. Between 1991 and 2018, as China’s power grew and its international behavior became more assertive, the United States responded in part by using its armed forces in ways intended to deter China from becoming overly ambitious and to reassure US allies and partners of its commitment to their security. Most of these US military activities are best understood as serving long­ term US strategic goals, such as maintaining regional stability, promoting an open, rules-based order, and ensuring freedom of the seas and skies. Some, however, were attempts to deter China from pursuing a specific action. Whether one judges that US general deterrence vis-a-vis China was successful depends in large part on what one presumes they were supposed to deter in the first place. US military activities have not, for example, stopped China from islandbuilding in, or the militarization of, the East and South China Seas. They probably should not have been expected to do so in the first place, however, as these and other such “salami slicing” tactics were designed by China deliberately to fall below the threshold that would make the threat of a US military response proportionate or reasonable. Whether US military actions have convinced China to refrain from engaging in even more assertive behavior is difficult to judge, owing to limited information on Chinese decision-making and intentions. Yet, by a different standard, US general deterrent efforts could be considered quite successful. Indeed, US military activities in the region reasonably can be claimed to have made an important contribution to reassuring US allies, preventing their solidification of close relationships with China, and to underscoring US determination to protect freedom of the seas. So too can the cases of immediate deterrence during this period fairly be characterized as successes. The United States, on three occasions, signaled its strong interest in Chinese restraint regarding

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Taiwan, and restraint obtained; it made clear that US ships were not to be harassed in the South China Sea, and harassment stopped; and it effectively drew a line in the water that seems to have deterred China from what looked to be its intention to build at the Scarborough Shoal. These long-term and immediate forms of military activity are means through which the United States competes with China for influence in the Indo-Pacific region. As such, they are the physical manifestations of a foundational conflict of interest between the two states that is more likely to intensify over the coming century than it is to subside. China is clear about its regional ambitions and has evidenced both patience and flexibility in pursuing them. The United States must anticipate needing to be similarly focused and disciplined in defending its own interests in the region, and selective in its use of the military as a tool for doing so. It must strike the delicate balance between tailored use of the armed forces to achieve a coercive goal and indiscriminate use that instigates conflict. Review of US uses of the armed forces short of war in Asia in the post-Cold War era suggest that the United States today is in need of a coherent and comprehensive strategy for competing with China – one that has clearly defined priorities, and multiple operational contingency plans at the ready.

Regional dynamics: picking sides China under President Xi Jinping is emerging, or from China’s point of view re­ emerging, as a major power, rapidly improving its military capabilities, pursuing the strategic goal of China’s “rejuvenation,” and taking a much more assertive approach to pursuing its maritime claims in the region.1 China has stepped up its air and maritime activities around the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, which are under Japan’s administrative control, intensifying friction in the Sino-Japanese relationship. Beijing also has engaged in an unprecedented island-building cam­ paign in the South China Sea, including construction of runways and other mili­ tary facilities on its artificial islands, raising tensions with its neighbors and making the South China Sea stand out as a potential flashpoint. China’s motives for this island-building campaign appear to include defending what it sees as its “maritime rights and interests,” increasing its ability to exercise coercive leverage over rival claimants, and strengthening its ability to conduct military operations in the more far-off areas of the South China Sea. Those areas previously presented challenges to Chinese forces because of their distance from bases on the Chinese mainland. More broadly, Xi also has made clear that he wants to reshape the regional security order in ways that are more favorable to China’s interests.2 In particular, China appears determined to increase its influence in the region, ultimately surpassing the United States as the most powerful and influential country in the Indo-Pacific, and ensuring that less powerful countries, including US allies, will have little choice but to defer to Chinese preferences. Because this vision of a new regional security order would sharply diminish the role of the United States

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and US alliances, it poses a serious challenge to US interests in the region. Indeed, all these actions are among the factors that have increased friction in US-China relations in recent years. Even as China appears to be gearing up for a more competitive relationship with the United States, Beijing still attaches considerable importance to maintaining stable US-China relations, which it sees as essential to maintaining the regional stability it needs to continue to focus on economic development. Many in China believe that US power is declining in a relative sense, but they acknowledge that the United States remains a very powerful country. For example, as former Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs He Yafei wrote, “The U.S. will no doubt remain the most powerful country for years to come. The end of Pax Americana does not mean the U.S. has automatically lost its top position in the world — only that the world is no longer unipolar.”3 Accordingly, it appears that Beijing still seeks to avoid what could be a costly confrontation with the United States, so long as it does not perceive one to be necessary to protect its core interests. During the Obama Administration, the United States clearly was concerned about how a more capable China would use its growing power in the region and beyond. Specifically, US officials and observers often stated that China’s growing military capabilities, lack of transparency, and greater assertiveness in dealing with its neighbors contributed to uncertainty about Beijing’s long-term strategic intentions. China’s growing military power emerged as an area of spe­ cific concern. In addition, incidents such as Beijing’s anti-satellite test, its harassment of US surveillance ships, and its assertive actions in support of territorial claims in the East and South China Seas intensified US concerns about China’s goals and how it would choose to pursue them. Accordingly, the United States shifted its strategic focus toward Asia in ways that were intended to maintain US influence and assure American allies. A November 2011 article in Foreign Policy, with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s by-line, described the central themes of the US “pivot” to Asia, shortly after which President Barack Obama travelled to and through the region making important policy statements along the way. President Obama and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta released new defense strategic guidance that reiterated the “necessity of rebalance toward the AsiaPacific region” and the United States strengthened its ties with such traditional allies as Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, and Australia, and reached out to other countries to diversify its regional relationships. The Trump Administration does not yet appear to have a fully coherent China policy, or an overall strategy for the region that would combine diplomatic, economic, and informational instruments of US national power together with its emphasis on strengthening US defense capabilities. Nevertheless, it is clear that Washington intends to focus on the Indo-Pacific region and that it aims to treat China as a strategic competitor economically and militarily. Although President Trump himself often has spoken glowingly of his personal relationship with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, his administration’s NSS and NDS portray China as a great power rival with which the

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United States must engage in a long-term strategic competition. The NDS offers a concise statement of US strategic objectives regarding China, including maintaining deterrence, defending allies, bolstering the capacity of US allies and partners, and, “ensuring common domains remain open and free.”4 This approach has elicited a mix of praise, hesitation, and skepticism from US allies and partners in the region.5 Indeed, leaders and analysts in a number of East Asian countries are becoming concerned that they might find it more and more difficult to maintain productive ties with both China and the United States, and even that they might ultimately have to choose between the two. A number of observers in the region expect rough sailing ahead as a result of what they antici­ pate will be growing competition for influence between the United States, which remains a vital contributor to regional security and stability, and China, which aims to use its growing leverage to reshape the regional security order in ways it sees as more favorable to advancing its own interests.6 China’s neighbors also are wary of China’s growing military power, renewed tensions across the Taiwan Strait after the election of President Tsai Ing-wen of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), and Xi Jinping’s more assertive approach to China’s maritime disputes, particularly its island-building in the South China Sea. Their concerns are amplified by the Trump Administration’s Asia policy, stemming from its abandonment of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), statements that have raised questions about its commitments to US allies and partners, its trade war with China, its tariffs on some US allies and partners, and indications that its Asia policy is centered mainly on trade issues and North Korea. Taken together, these dynamics suggest that US allies and partners will need to worry not only about China’s more assertive foreign policy and a more competitive US-China relationship, but also about the sustainability of key aspects of America’s traditional role in the region.

Long-term and persistent activity The United States uses its military to pursue objectives in Asia that are sometimes diffuse and sometimes specific. The United States undertakes a considerable amount of routine and consistent military activity in the region to improve operational proficiency, to bolster ties with partners and friends, to enhance inter­ operability, and to underscore the importance it attaches to open access to Asia’s seas and skies. US officials and military officers, however, often overtly characterize the purpose of these activities as promoting security and stability. These, of course, are oblique references to the US commitment to preserving the status quo, in which US interests are prioritized and China’s ambitions moderated.

Showing up and showing off The US maintains a significant military presence in East Asia and regularly conducts routine operations in the region. These routine operations are an important part of the US approach to deterrence of China and reassurance of allies and partners. The

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US Navy routinely conducts operations in the region and has been doing so for decades. Indeed, a May 2016 US Navy press release noted that “U.S. Navy ships conduct routine patrols … in the 7th Fleet area of operations throughout the year and average roughly 700 days annually in the South China Sea alone.”7 As Dutton and Kardon point out, this statement suggests that, on average, one or two US Navy ships are operating in the South China Sea on any given day.8 The United States also maintains a Continuous Bomber Presence (CBP) mission in Asia. Many observers in the United States and in the region view the presence of strategic bombers as aimed at deterring use of force by China or North Korea. Since the CBP mission began in March 2004, US B1B Lancer, B2 Spirit, and B52 Stratofortress strategic bombers have maintained continuous rotational deployments to Andersen Air Force Base in Guam.9 The USAF CBP website states that the CBP mission is intended to provide a global strike capability against potential adversaries, underscore the US commitment to extended deterrence, offer assur­ ance to US allies, and strengthen regional security and stability. Moreover, as the USAF website notes, the bomber rotations offer the PACAF and PACOM com­ manders, “opportunities to strengthen regional alliances and long-standing military­ to-military partnerships throughout the region.”10 In addition to these continuous activities, US armed forces also have undertaken temporary deployments to different locations in East Asia in recent years. These are intended to build readiness, provide reassurance to allies and partners, and to restrain greater Chinese assertiveness through general deterrence. In September 2015, Singapore agreed to host the US deployment of P8 Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft on a rotational basis; the first aircraft arrived in December of the same year. The BBC described the arrival of P8s in Singapore as, “the latest in a series of US military actions seen as a response to China’s increasingly assertive claims over territory in the South China Sea.”11 It was also significant that the deployment to Singapore came as the city-state’s leaders were becoming increasingly concerned about Chinese behavior in the South China Sea. As Shannon Tiezzi noted, for Singapore, a country noted for, “maintaining a careful balancing act between the United States and China,” hosting US P8 surveillance planes represented, “a rela­ tively low-risk way to conveying [sic] the seriousness of Singapore’s concerns to China while also reinforcing the Singapore-U.S. defense relationship.”12 The rotational deployment of US Marines to Darwin, Australia is similarly designed to underscore the US commitment to the alliance, and to its engagement in the region more generally. It also came at a time when there is considerable discus­ sion and debate in Australia about the future of its relationships with both China and the United States. In November 2011, the US and Australia announced that US Marines would be sent to Darwin on rotational deployments of about six months to conduct exercises and to train with Australian Defense Force units. The first such deployment took place the next year. The rotational deployments have yet to reach the envisioned level of 2,500 marines, but the number of troops involved has grown, reaching 1,250 troops in 2017, and they have begun incorporating MV-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft and other types of advanced equipment.13 Like other elements of

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the Obama Administration’s “rebalancing,” the presence of US Marines in Australia offers training opportunities as well as serving to underscore the US commitment to its allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific region. Although the presence of the Mar­ ines in Australia is not officially aimed at any country, many observers in the region would likely agree with a February 2018 article that characterized the deployments as representing, at least in part, “a hedge against the growing clout of China,” which is an ever-present concern in the region.14 Although the rotational deployments are not specifically linked to Australia’s concerns about Chinese activities, they none­ theless serve to illustrate the strength of the US commitment to the alliance at a time of considerable uncertainty in the regional security environment. US presence in Asia is augmented by the conduct of regular exercises, which serve as a means of reassuring allies and building cooperative military relationships with partners and other states. Some of these exercises involve only US forces, aimed at enhancing the tactical proficiency and readiness of US military units. Some are part of longstanding series of bilateral or multilateral exercises conducted in concert with allies and partners. Some exercises are intended in all likelihood for general deterrence purposes, but others are clearly focused primarily on other objectives, such as building US alliance relationships and reassuring allies and partners. All told, the Pacific Command (PACOM) has a very busy annual exercise schedule. Some of these are designed to underscore the value of existing alliances both for the direct participants and for regional observers. Balikatan (“Shoulder-to­ shoulder”), for example, is the premier bilateral exercise conducted by the United States and the Philippines, which has served as a cornerstone of US presence in the region historically. Speaking at the conclusion of the 33rd Balikatan exercise in 2017, Delfin Lorenzana, Secretary of National Defense of the Philippines, descri­ bed the exercise as, “a perfect demonstration of collaboration, proving that nations will be stronger if they work together and that the weight of threats and challenges is made lighter if we shoulder the burden together.”15 Annual iterations of such exercises as Cobra Gold, Cope North, and Malabar similarly are intended to enhance performance and interoperability, and to allow the United States to showcase its commitments to allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific region. These exercises involve forces from multiple friendly and allied nations, including Thailand Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Korea, Singapore, Australia, and India. They enable multilateral training on the conduct of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief missions as well as “to develop and improve combat readiness.”16 Activities in the 2017 Malabar naval exercise, for example, included aircraft carrier operations, air defense, anti-submarine warfare (ASW), surface warfare, visit board search and sei­ zure (VBSS), and search and rescue operations. Notably, the US in 2014 invited China to participate for the first time in Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC), a very large, multinational, biennial naval exercise that the US first organized in 1971. China sent a destroyer, a frigate, a supply ship, a hos­ pital ship and about 1,100 personnel to participate. China’s official media touted the invitation and the PLA Navy’s participation as, “a positive signal for building

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trust between China and the United States.”17 China also dispatched an uninvited spy ship to collect intelligence in the area, however, drawing criticism from a number of observers.18 China participated in RIMPAC again in 2016 – held in and around Hawaii and Southern California with 45 surface ships, five submarines, more than 200 aircraft, and over 25,000 personnel from 26 countries – with a slightly larger contingent composed of five ships and 1,200 personnel.19 The most recent RIMPAC exercise took place in 2018. This time, the United States rescin­ ded China’s invitation amid growing tension in the US-China relationship. Speci­ fically, Washington indicated that its decision was intended to underscore its objections to China’s militarization of its artificial islands in the South China Sea.20

Open seas and open skies As China has become more assertive with its pursuit of maritime claims and the building of artificial islands in the South China Sea, the United States has enhanced so-called freedom of navigation operations (FONOPS). FONOPS, which have been conducted for decades, are assertions of the international expectation of freedom of the seas. As stated repeatedly by the United States, its position is that defense of the commons is an important national interest and US forces therefore will, “fly, sail and operate wherever international law allows.”21 US FONOPS have led to a series of objections from China, which views them as part of a broader US effort to con­ tain or at least constrain China’s rising power and influence. On May 24, 2017, for example, the USS Dewey conducted an apparent FONOP near Mischief Reef, a disputed feature in the South China Sea. Mischief Reef is occupied by China, but is also claimed by the Philippines, Vietnam, and Taiwan.22 The South China Sea arbitration declared Mischief Reef to be a low tide elevation, meaning that unlike a rock or an island, it is not entitled to a 12­ nautical mile territorial sea. The USS Dewey reportedly operated within 12nm around Mischief Reef for about 90 minutes, during which time it sailed in a zigzag pattern and conducted a “man overboard” drill. As Peter Dutton and Isaac Kardon observe, “The Dewey was plainly operating in a mode consistent with high seas freedoms, and not in the ‘continuous and expeditious’ manner required of inno­ cent passage through a claimed and accepted 12nm territorial sea.”23 Although many observes in East Asia view US FONOPS primarily in the context of US-China security competition, FONOPS are in fact one component of the Freedom of Navigation Program established in 1979. According to the US Depart­ ment of Defense, this program consists of, “a two-pronged complementary strategy to maintain the global mobility of U.S. forces and unimpeded commerce by pro­ testing and challenging attempts by coastal States to unlawfully restrict access to the seas.”24 The first prong, which is led by the Department of State, consists of diplo­ matic protests against excessive maritime claims (defined as laws, regulations, or other claims of coastal states that the United States views as inconsistent with international law). The second prong of the strategy, which is led by the Department of Defense, consists of operations intended to complement and support US diplomatic protests

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by challenging these excessive maritime claims. These operations include both plan­ ned actions that have the primary purpose of challenging excessive maritime claims and other activities that have a secondary effect of doing so.25 FONOPS, moreover, are described by experts Peter Dutton and Isaac Kardon as: operationally minimal and diplomatically low-key. The point is not to menace the offending state with gunboats or to upstage them with publicity. Rather, the program asserts the relevant legal norm in word and in deed. FONOPs are not primarily designed to send targeted signals of resolve, reassurance, com­ mitment, deterrence, or any other of the many political- military signals the United States sends through its naval operations. A FONOP is a specialized tool to protect discrete legal norms that underpin the order of the oceans.26 Nevertheless, some Chinese observers view FONOPS as part of a broader pattern of activity aimed at intimidating China, and some US allies and partners in the region appear to view them as an important indicator of the United States’ will­ ingness and ability to balance China’s more assertive behavior in maritime disputes. For these reasons, US FONOPS could have deterrence or reassurance effects, and some observers might view the absence of US FONOPS over a prolonged period as weakening deterrence or undercutting attempts to reassure allies and partners. The United States also has used long-range bomber flights to bolster the asser­ tion that US forces will “fly, sail, and operate wherever international law allows” in Asia, just as they do elsewhere around the world. Perhaps the most notable example occurred in November 2013 when USAF B-52s were flown through the Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) that China had declared over the East China Sea, without providing the prior notification required by China’s ADIZ regulations. The bombers’ flight underscored the message that the US would challenge Chinese ADIZ requirements that are not in keeping with international standards. Indeed, a senior US Department of Defense official stated that the mis­ sion represented, “a demonstration of long-established international rights to free­ dom of navigation and transit through international airspace.”27 Similarly, in the summer of 2017, two US B-1B bombers flew over the South China Sea to demonstrate that the United States and other countries maintain overflight rights in an area where China has turned a number of rocks and reefs into artificial islands complete with runways and other military facilities.28 Beijing has tended to view FONOPS as part of a broader US effort to “contain” China despite US assertions of an interest only in maintaining free and open pas­ sage through international seas and airspace. China’s response, accordingly, has been both active militarily and critical diplomatically. For example, on October 10, 2017, the destroyer USS Chafee conducted a FONOP near the Paracel Islands (which China refers to as the Xisha Islands) to challenge China’s excessive claim regarding strait baselines. In response, China sent a guided-missile frigate, two fighter jets and a helicopter to warn the US vessel to leave the area and the Min­ istry of National Defense warned that the FONOP would undermine trust

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between the PLA and the US military, and warned that such operations risked triggering “unwanted incidents.”29 Meanwhile China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Hua Chunying made clear Beijing’s displeasure: The relevant behavior of the US warship has violated the Chinese law and relevant international law, severely undermined China’s sovereignty and security interests, put in jeopardy the life safety of the frontline personnel from both sides. China is firmly opposed to this and has lodged serious representa­ tion with the US side.30 In contrast to China’s criticism, regional reaction to US FONOPS has been largely positive, mainly because they sometimes are viewed more as indicators of US resolve to stand up to China than as operational activities designed to underscore US challenges to excessive maritime claims. Additionally, some other countries in the region have reportedly considered conducting US-style FONOPS, either independently or in coordination with the United States or each other, but have thus far refrained from doing so, presumably because of concerns about the impli­ cations for their relationships with China.

Near-term and insistent coercion FONOPs and exercises are long-term and persistent uses of the armed forces to forward US interests in Asia, but the United States also has had occasion to use the military to send more specific and targeted messages to China designed to affect its choice of behavior. In each of four instances of US military coercion between 1991 and 2018, the United States deployed assets in response to a perceived provocation with the intention of deterring further Chinese action. The first instance, the1995–96 Taiwan Strait crisis, began when Washington approved a visa for Taiwan’s President Lee Teng-hui to visit the United States to give a speech at Cornell University. Beijing understood that the move was moti­ vated largely by domestic political considerations, but still viewed it as a troubling reversal of prior assurances from Washington. Communist Party leaders at the time already were concerned that US policy was moving in a direction likely to embolden Taiwan to move toward independence, and it acted quickly to deter Taiwan from doing so. In July, China conducted a major show of force that included large-scale military exercises and the launching of conventional ballistic missiles into waters off Taiwan. The United States took no deliberate actions in response, and tensions continued into the new year. Beijing continued to view US-Taiwan relations as becoming increasingly detrimental to China’s interests, and so it continued in the conduct of substantial military exercises across the island. As Taiwan’s first presidential election approached in March 1996, Beijing went even further, launching missiles into waters very close to Taiwan to send a strong message to the United States that China was willing to risk a conflict over the issue to preserve its interests. Policymakers in

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Washington assessed that China was not preparing to attack Taiwan, but they determined that they needed to act to demonstrate US support for Taiwan and maintain the credibility of US commitments in the region more broadly.31 The United States, therefore, deployed two aircraft carrier battle groups to the region. The Independence carrier battle group sailed from Okinawa to waters east of Taiwan, and the Nimitz carrier battle group moved from the Persian Gulf to the Philippine Sea, where it was positioned to be able to join the Independence on short notice if the need arose.32 It did not, tensions cooled, and the outcome of the event was favorable for the United States. China did not attack Taiwan and the credibility of US security commitments in the region were generally affirmed. The second coercive event occurred in July 1999, a few months before planned talks with China, when Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui publicly characterized his government’s relationship with the PRC as “state-to-state,” effectively signaling his abandonment of the “One China” policy. China responded by pledging to use military force if necessary to maintain its “territorial integrity.”33 Perhaps coin­ cidentally, China announced on July 15th that it had developed of the capability to produce a neutron bomb and a miniaturized nuclear weapon.34 Although Lee attempted to walk back his previous remarks, Beijing was not appeased, and threatened to cancel the planned talks with Taiwan unless its government clearly reversed its apparent shift in policy, and warned the US not to interfere or encourage Lee.35 In late July, Chinese jets began conducting sorties over the strait, crossing into Taiwanese airspace on at least two occasions,36 and China’s North Sea Fleet con­ ducted drills in the Yellow Sea, including submarines and guided missiles. On July 28, Chinese state media announced that the PLAN was conducting mobilization exercises in the Taiwan Strait and along the coast of mainland China, including placing its forces on alert.37 The United States understandably interpreted these actions as potential precursors to an invasion of Taiwan, and began to take diplo­ matic and military steps to defuse the situation. At the ASEAN meeting in late July, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright reaffirmed the US’ “strong commitment to a ‘One China’ policy, to the impor­ tance of direct dialogue and a peaceful resolution of the dispute.”38 The US also delayed a military visit to Taiwan that had planned to include a DOD assessment of Taiwan’s air defenses because, as President Clinton told reporters, he “didn’t think this was the best time to do something which might excite either one side or the other, and imply that a military solution is an acceptable alternative.”39 However, the following week the US announced a $550 million arms sale to Taiwan,40 and on August 7–8, two US carrier groups, the USS Kitty Hawk and USS Constellation, conducted an exercise in the South China Sea. Even as he denied that the deployment was related to the crisis in the Taiwan Strait, the commander of the Kitty Hawk told reporters that China will know if they attempt to undertake any kind of operation – whe­ ther it’s Taiwan or anything – that they are going to have the U.S. Navy to

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deal with.… That’s a major issue for the Chinese and they will have to con­ sider it very, very carefully in any action they anticipate they may make against, principally, Taiwan.41 Here the US was walking a fine line. It sought to simultaneously reassure China politically that the One China policy was intact, while deterring it through military action and subtly reassuring Taiwan of its support. It deployed significant military forces to the region, sufficient to deter a Chinese invasion of the island, but employed them in such a way as to avoid adding escalatory pressure to the already tense situation in the strait. The public messaging around the deployment of two carrier groups to the region indicated that the forces were not there to threaten China, but that China should “consider it very, very carefully” before taking action against Taiwan. While China reiterated its warnings about US interference throughout August, as well as its willingness to use force against Taiwan if necessary, the crisis ended without conflict, and without either side violating US policy objectives. It should thus be understood as an instance of successful immediate deterrence.42 The third coercive event occurred in March 2009, when five Chinese vessels – a PLA Navy intelligence collection ship, two Chinese maritime law enforcement vessels, and two Chinese fishing boats – surrounded the USNS Impeccable, a sur­ veillance ship, as it was conducting operations south of Hainan Province. The crew of the Impeccable responded by blasting some of the Chinese fishermen with a highpressure water hose, but the fishermen stripped to their underwear and continued the harassment. The captain of the Impeccable requested that the Chinese ships clear a path to allow it to leave the area; the Chinese ships continued to block the US ship’s path for some time before ultimately allowing it to pass. US policymakers were unclear about Beijing’s specific intentions, but they determined that a firm response was required. The next day, a US Department of Defense spokesperson publicly criticized the, “unprofessional maneuvers by the Chinese vessels,” and charged that their actions amounted to, “violations under international law to operate with due regard for the rights and safety of other lawful users of the ocean.”43 In Beijing, US embassy officials lodged a protest with the PRC Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and US officials did the same at the PRC Embassy in Washington. A few days later, senior US officials discussed the incident with the Chinese foreign minister, who was in Washington for a previously scheduled visit. At the same time as these high-level talks, the USNS Impeccable returned to the area, but this time the United States also deployed the guided missile destroyer (DDG), USS Chung Hoon. The Department of Defense suggested that sending the DDG was intended to deter China from engaging in any further harassment of the USNS Impeccable as the ship completed its mission in the South China Sea.44 China did not attempt to interfere as the USNS Impeccable and the DDG oper­ ated in the area. Less than two months later, however, Chinese vessels again har­ assed the USNS Victorious as it operated in the Yellow Sea.45 PLAN warships, moreover, continue to maneuver closely – sometimes dangerously so – to US ships

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conducting FONOPs.46 Beijing maintains that these US operations within the EEZs of coastal states are illegal, and therefore places the blame for any tensions that arise over them squarely with the United States. The fourth, most recent, and perhaps most important coercive exchange between the United States and China occurred in April 2016, when the United States took several steps to deter China from conducting land reclamation at Scar­ borough Shoal, a disputed feature that occupies a strategically important position only 140 miles from the Philippines. Locating an air base on Scarborough Shoal, as China has done at three other locations in the Spratly Islands (Fiery Cross Reef, Subi Reef, and Mischief Reef), would mean that “Chinese radar, aircraft, and cruise missiles could one day easily cover Manila and several Philippine bases to which the United States recently gained access.”47 Building on Scarborough also would challenge standing international norms and laws, violating the 2002 ASEAN-China Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea and interrupting an underway process of international arbitration. Consequently, Scar­ borough Shoal was widely viewed as, “not just another reef, but a vital strategic feature,” and many in the region viewed preventing China from starting land reclamation there as, “a litmus test for US resolve.”48 Washington thus was attentive in early 2016 when Chinese survey activity was detected near the Shoal. Stated succinctly by CNO Admiral John Richardson, “I think we see some surface ship activity and those sorts of things, survey type of activity, going on. That’s an area of concern … a next possible area of reclama­ tion.”49 Although the US response was measured, seeking to “lower the tempera­ ture,” Washington also made it clear that the possibility of land reclamation at Scarborough Shoal was a matter not taken lightly.50 Indeed, in March, the Obama Administration sent the John C. Stennis Carrier Strike Group on a patrol in the South China Sea and US Secretary of Defense Ash Carter cancelled a planned visit to Beijing. Then, in mid-April, Secretary Carter and Philippine Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin conducted a highly publicized visit to the Stennis as it continued to conduct operations in the region. Shortly thereafter, US Air Force A-10s oper­ ating out of the Philippines conducted flight operations near Scarborough Shoal.51 The United States did not make any explicit public threats to use military force to prevent Chinese island-building at Scarborough Shoal, but it did draw attention to its military actions. The aircraft carrier visit by the secretary of defense and his Philippine counterpart was well publicized, as were the A-10 flights. One USAF press release noted that on April 21, 2016, four A-10 C Thunderbolt II planes flying from Clark Air Base in the Philippines conducted, “an air and maritime domain awareness mission in the vicinity of Scarborough Shoal.”52 Although the release constructed the mission statement in broad terms, it also included specific mention of “force projection” and “air and maritime domain awareness,” and underscored the goal of, “assuring access to the air and maritime domains in accordance with international law.”53 This language was a clear indication of a focus on Chinese actions in the South China Sea and the possibility China was preparing to engage in island-building at Scarborough Shoal.

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China has not extended its campaign of island-building and construction of military facilities into the Scarborough Shoal. This may be because it did not have the intention to do so, or it may be the result of a US approach that relied on demonstrating not only that the United States would stomach some risk of military escalation to prevent reclamation there, but also that Washington would avoid overt public pressure and give Beijing a face-saving way to climb down the escalation ladder.54

Outcomes and implications Much of the US military activity in Asia during the last two decades has been aimed at strengthening deterrence against Chinese encroachment and reassuring US allies and partners of the US commitment to their territorial integrity and to the maintenance of free and open global commons. Although the degree to which US operations have contributed to general deterrence is difficult to measure, they have probably been helpful in dissuading China from behaving even more aggres­ sively in its disputes with its neighbors. So too despite some occasional rough pat­ ches – visible, for example, in Philippine President Duterte’s efforts to improve relations with China – have US alliances in the region remained stable and rela­ tively strong. In the four instances between 1991 and 2018 in which the US used the armed forces to send coercive messages to China about prohibited behaviors the outcome was favorable. During the 1995–1996 Taiwan Strait Crisis the United States responded to Chinese military exercises and missile launches by displaying its naval power in a way that seems to have deterred further Chinese coercion of Taiwan. In 1999, this pattern largely repeated itself, with the US also sending diplomatic signals to Taiwan disapproving of its apparent shift on the “One China” policy. In 2009, the United States dispatched a destroyer in response to Chinese actions aimed at impeding the operations of a US surveillance ship; the harassment stopped and the ship completed its mission. Finally, in 2016, when it appeared China might be preparing to begin land reclamation activities at Scarborough Shoal Washington displayed US air and naval power. Chinese activity ceased and, notably, Beijing has in the years since continued to refrain from extending its South China Sea islandbuilding campaign to the Scarborough Shoal. The contribution of US military activity to general deterrence is difficult to measure with any precision, but it almost certainly is an important factor in China’s calculations. Additionally, US military activity in the region is clearly a positive force when it comes to strengthening relationships with US allies and partners and, for countries that already are worried about the durability of US commitments, it is an important means of reassurance. Conversely, any major decrease in US pre­ sence, exercises, or other activities would almost certainly exacerbate concerns among US allies and partners.

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Washington’s activities in the Indo-Pacific region, however, must also be understood to produce reaction and response from China in ways that extend well beyond the immediate event. US deterrence of Chinese aggression against Taiwan, for example, is not separable from Beijing’s subsequent determination to develop more credible military options precisely for such island scenarios.55 Neither can the measures taken to enhance the PLA’s ability to deter or counter US military intervention in the event of a future crisis be isolated from the extent to which China perceives the United States to be advantaged by its standing regional pre­ sence and serial deployments – China’s island-building campaign, after all, is not only to do with natural resource extraction. In short, China does not accept the status quo, and it has evidenced an ability to learn from US coercive efforts, immediate and long-term, both within region and beyond. The United States will need to do the same.

Notes 1 Timothy R. Heath, Kristen Gunness, and Cortez A. Cooper III, The PLA and China’s Rejuvenation (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2017). www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/ RR1402.html 2 Xi Jinping, “New Asian Security Concept for New Progress in Security Cooperation,” Remarks at the Fourth Summit of CICA, Shanghai Expo Center, May 21, 2014, China. org.cn, transcript. www.china.org.cn/world/2014-05/28/content_32511846.htm 3 He Yafei, “Arrival of ‘Post-American Era,’” China-US Focus 15 (September 2017), 6–11. www.chinausfocus.com/foreign-policy/the-arrival-of-a-post-american-era 4 U.S. Department of Defense, Summary of the 2018 National Defense Strategy of the United States of America: Sharpening the American Military’s Competitive Edge, January 2018, 4. 5 Bates Gill, “US Allies aren’t Buying its New Strategies to Confront China,” The Diplo­ mat, February 5, 2018. https://thediplomat.com/2018/02/us-allies-arent-buying-its­ new-strategies-to-confront-china/ 6 For more on this topic, see Michael S. Chase and Mara Karlin, “Navigating Asia’s Stormy Seas: Regional Perspectives on U.S.-China Competition,” The Diplomat, August 7 2018. https://thediplomat.com/2018/08/navigating-asias-stormy-seas-regional-persp ectives-on-us-china-competition/ 7 John C. Stennis Strike Group Public Affairs, “USS William P. Lawrence conducts South China Sea patrol,” May 4, 2016. www.cpf.navy.mil/news.aspx/110035; illustrating the frequency of such activities, the press release mentioned that other ships completing similar operations in recent months included guided-missile destroyers USS Stockdale (DDG 106), USS Curtis Wilbur (DDG 54), USS Lassen (DDG 82), USS McCampbell (DDG 85) and USS Preble (DDG 88), amphibious assault ship USS Essex (LHD 2), guided missile cruiser USS Chancellorsville (CG 62), littoral combat ship USS Fort Worth (LCS 3), and the amphibious dock landing ship USS Ashland (LSD 48). 8 Peter A. Dutton and Isaac B. Kardon, “Forget the FONOPS – Just Fly, Sail, and Operate Wherever International Law Allows,” Lawfare, June 10, 2017. www.lawfareblog.com/for get-fonops-—-just-fly-sail-and-operate-wherever-international-law-allows# 9 The B1B is capable of conventional strike missions only. The B2 and B52 can carry out conventional and nuclear missions. 10 “Continuous Bomber Presence Mission,” Andersen Air Force Base website, accessed July 25, 2019. www.andersen.af.mil/CBP/ 11 “US P8 Spy Plane Deployed to Singapore,” BBC, December 8, 2015. www.bbc.com/ news/world-asia-35036220

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12 Shannon Tiezzi, “China Decries US P-8 Deployment in Singapore as ‘Regional Militariza­ tion,’” The Diplomat, December 9, 2015. https://thediplomat.com/2015/12/china-decries­ us-p-8-deployment-in-singapore-as-regional-militarization/ 13 Alison Bevege, “Hundreds of U.S. Marines Leave Australia After Troop Rotation,” Reuters, October 14, 2017. www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-military-australia-return/ hundreds-of-u-s-marines-leave-australia-after-troop-rotation-idUSKBN1CK03U 14 D.S.O.R., “Darwinian Evolution: Why U.S. Marines are Deployed to Australia’s Far North,” The Economist, February 6, 2018. www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinam erica/2018/02/darwinian-evolution 15 Staff Sgt. Peter Reft, “Balikatan 2017 Comes to Closure with Ceremony,” U.S. Marine Corps Pacific, May 19, 2017. www.marines.mil/News/News-Display/Article/1187173/ balikatan-2017-comes-to-closure-with-ceremony/ 16 Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF), “Air Force to Test Skills in Exercise Cope North 2018,” accessed July 25, 2019. www.airforce.gov.au/news-and-events/news/air-force­ test-skills-exercise-cope-north-18 17 Shannon Tiezzi, “‘A Historic Moment’: Chinese Ships Head to RIMPAC 2014,” The Diplomat, June 11, 2014. https://thediplomat.com/2014/06/a-historic-moment-china s-ships-head-to-rimpac-2014/ 18 Jeremy Page, “Chinese Ship Spies on U.S.-Led Drills,” Wall Street Journal, July 19, 2014. www.wsj.com/articles/chinese-ship-spies-on-u-s-led-drills-1405752404 19 Commander, Naval Surface Force, US Pacific Fleet, “RIMPAC 2016,” July 25, 2019. www. public.navy.mil/surfor/Pages/RIMPAC-2016.aspx#.WoizymaZNYg; Ankit Panda, “With 5 Ships and 1,200 Personnel, China Expands RIMPAC 2016 Delegation,” The Diplomat, June 18, 2016. https://thediplomat.com/2016/06/with-5-ships-and-1200-personnel-china­ expands-rimpac-2016-naval-delegation/ 20 Megan Eckstein, “China Disinvited from Participating in 2018 RIMPAC Exercise,” USNI News, May 23, 2018. https://news.usni.org/2018/05/23/china-disinvited-parti cipating-2018-rimpac-exercise 21 See, for example, David Brunnstrom, “Carter Says U.S. Will Fly, Sail, and Operate Wher­ ever International Law Allows,” Reuters, October 13, 2015. www.reuters.com/article/ us-usa-australia-southchinasea-carter/carter-says-u-s-will-sail-fly-and-operate-wherever-in ternational-law-allows-idUSKCN0S72MG20151013 22 Dutton and Kardon, “Forget the FONOPS.” 23 Dutton and Kardon, “Forget the FONOPS.” 24 U.S. Department of Defense, Annual Freedom of Navigation Report, Fiscal Year 2017 (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Defense, 2017), 2. 25 U.S. Department of Defense, Annual Freedom of Navigation Report. 26 Dutton and Kardon, “Forget the FONOPS.” 27 Tom Shanker, “U.S. Sends Two B-52 Bombers into Air Zone Claimed by China,” New York Times, November 26, 2013. www.nytimes.com/2013/11/27/world/asia/us-flies-b-52s-in to-chinas-expanded-air-defense-zone.html 28 Tim Kelly and Ben Blanchard, “U.S. Bombers Challenge China in South China Sea Flyover,” Reuters, July 7, 2017. www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-china-southchinasea­ idUSKBN19S0IU 29 Liu Zhen, “China protests over US Navy patrol in contested South China Sea waters,” South China Morning Post, October 11, 2017. www.scmp.com/news/china/diploma cy-defence/article/2114941/china-protests-over-us-navy-patrol-contested-south; “China opposes U.S. provocation in South China Sea: defense ministry,” Xinhua, October 11, 2017. www.xinhuanet.com/english/2017-10/11/c_136672525.htm 30 Sam LaGrone, “China Chides U.S. Over Latest South China Sea Freedom of Naviga­ tion Operation,” USNI News, October 11, 2017. https://news.usni.org/2017/10/11/ china-chides-u-s-latest-south-china-sea-freedom-navigation-operation 31 Robert S. Ross, “The 1995–96 Taiwan Strait Confrontation: Coercion, Credibility, and the Use of Force,” International Security 25, no. 2 (Fall 2000): 87–123. 32 Ross, “The 1995–96 Taiwan Strait Confrontation.”

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33 “Report: China holding naval exercises in Taiwan strait,” CNN, July 27, 1999, 34 John Pomfret, “China Ponders New Rules of ‘Unrestricted War’,” The Washington Post, August 8, 1999, accessed on May 20, 2019. www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/ 1999/08/08/china-ponders-new-rules-of-unrestricted-war/ad255e11-9670-4580-a0ff­ 7f7befb76f3e/ 35 “Report: China holding naval exercises in Taiwan strait,” CNN, July 27, 1999, accessed May 20, 2019. www.cnn.com/WORLD/asiapcf/9907/28/china.taiwan.01/ 36 Kathrin Hille, “Chinese fighter jets ‘repel’ US aircraft,” Financial Times, July 25, 2011, accessed May 20, 2019. www.ft.com/content/fcf3cfe6-b6ba-11e0-ae1f-00144feabdc0 37 “Report: China holding naval exercises in Taiwan strait,” CNN, July 27, 1999, accessed May 20, 2019. www.cnn.com/WORLD/asiapcf/9907/28/china.taiwan.01/ However, Taiwan claimed that it had not detected any unusual military movements across the Strait, so it is conceivable that some of the alleged Chinese military moves reported in the press were in fact psychological operations rather than real shows of force, though it is perhaps equally plausible that the Taiwanese government was attempting to maintain calm. For instance, a RAND study found that “Chinese uses of regional media to send psychological operations messages have also enjoyed success in affecting popular morale and public opinion.” In any case, the PLA conducted activities that were clearly aimed at intimidating Taiwan. See James C. Mulvenon, Murray Scot Tanner, Michael S. Chase, David Frelinger, David C. Gompert, Martin C. Libicki, Kevin L. Pollpeter, “Chinese Responses to U.S. Military Transformation and Implications for the Depart­ ment of Defense,” RAND, 47, accessed May 20, 2019. www.rand.org/content/dam/ra nd/pubs/monographs/2006/RAND_MG340.pdf 38 Andrea Koppel, “China-Taiwan tensions shadow Asia security forum,” CNN, July 27, 1999, accessed May 20, 2019. www.cnn.com/WORLD/asiapcf/9907/27/china.taiwan/ 39 Bob Drogin, “Clinton Orders Pentagon to Delay Mission to Taiwan,” LA Times, July 22, 1999, accessed May 20, 2019. www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1999-jul-22-mn­ 58583-story.html 40 Wade Boese, “U.S. Arms Sales to Taiwan Further Upset China,” Arms Control Today, August 8, 1999, accessed May 20, 1999. www.armscontrol.org/act/1999_07-08/taija99 41 Michael Brooke, “U.S. Navy ready if Taiwan crisis explodes,” Associated Press, August 13, 1999, accessed May 20, 2019. www.seacoastonline.com/article/19990813/news/ 308139988?template=ampart 42 It should be noted that Taiwan suffered a devastating earthquake on September 20th, which led to an outpouring of international support, including from both Beijing and Washington. It is impossible to speculate how the ongoing tensions might have played out absent this natural disaster. 43 Jim Garamone, “Chinese Vessels Shadow, Harass Unarmed U.S. Survey Ship,” U.S. Department of Defense, March 9, 2009. http://archive.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx? id=53401 44 Michael Green, Kathleen Hicks, Zack Cooper, John Schauss, and Jake Douglass, “Countering Coercion in Maritime Asia: Harassment of the USNS Impeccable (2009),” CSIS Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative, May 2017. https://amti.csis.org/counter-co-ha rassment-usns-impeccable/ 45 Barbara Starr, “Chinese Boats Harassed U.S. Ship, Officials Say,” CNN, May 5, 2009. www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/05/05/china.maritime.harassment/ 46 Steven Lee Myers, “American and Chinese Warships Narrowly Avoid High-Seas Col­ lision,” New York Times, October 2, 2018. www.nytimes.com/2018/10/02/world/asia/ china-us-warships-south-china-sea.html 47 Zack Cooper and Jake Douglas, “Successful Signaling at Scarborough Shoal,” War on the Rocks, May 2, 2016. https://warontherocks.com/2016/05/successful-signaling-at-sca rborough-shoal/ 48 Cooper and Douglas, “Successful Signaling at Scarborough Shoal.” 49 David Brunnstrom and Andrea Shalal, “Exclusive: U.S. Sees New Chinese Activity around South China Sea Shoal,” Reuters, March 17, 2016. www.reuters.com/article/

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50 51 52 53 54

55

us-southchinasea-china-scarborough-exclu/exclusive-u-s-sees-new-chinese-activity-arou nd-south-china-sea-shoal-idUSKCN0WK01B Cooper and Douglas, “Successful Signaling at Scarborough Shoal.” Ibid. Pacific Air Forces Public Affairs, “A-10s Complete Second PACOM Air Contingent Mission,” Kunsan Air Base, April 25, 2016. www.kunsan.af.mil/News/Article/741560/ a-10s-complete-second-uspacom-air-contingent-mission/ Pacific Air Forces Public Affairs, “A-10s Complete Second PACOM Air Contingent Mission.” Cooper and Douglas, “Successful Signaling at Scarborough Shoal”; Although the public record remains somewhat incomplete, there was presumably a diplomatic message that accompanied the more overt military signals. Indeed, as Cooper and write Douglas write, “U.S. intentions were likely plainly communicated to the Chinese behind closed doors” (Cooper and Douglas, “Successful Signaling at Scarborough Shoal”). Along with the role of the United States in the 1995–1996 Taiwan Strait crisis, the accidental bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade by the United States in May 1999 appears to have contributed to China’s determination to develop advanced weap­ ons programs aimed at deterring or countering US military intervention. See Tai Ming Cheung, “U.S.-China Military Technological Competition and Making of Chinese Weapons Development Strategies and Plans,” SITC Research Briefs 9, no. 2 (February 2017). https://escholarship.org/content/qt43m5m3gp/qt43m5m3gp.pdf

9 COERCION IN THE PAST, AND THE FUTURE OF COMPETITION Melanie W. Sisson, James A. Siebens and Barry M. Blechman

On June 20, 2019, the Trump Administration launched, and then aborted, an airstrike targeting radar sites and missile batteries inside Iran. In the days that followed the cancelled operation, President Trump publicly reminded Tehran that the US has, “tremendously powerful military force,” that is, “always on the table,” and imposed new economic sanctions to join those already in place.1 A few days later, the US destroyed an Iranian drone through electronic means.2 These incidents were the most intense and risk-acceptant in a sequence of short­ of-war military activities in the Gulf of Aden in 2019.3 Their immediate catalyst was that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had downed a US Global Hawk surveillance drone. The aborted strike mission – as well as the subsequent US electronic attack that occurred in its stead – were explained as necessary for the US to “re-establish deterrence.”4 In the immediate moment, the Iranian behavior to be deterred was any further threats to US personnel and assets, or to those of allies, though the Iranian activities that the United States would consider a threat were unspecified, at least in the public domain. The long-term and primary conflict of interest, however, was US intolerance of the, “potential for Iran to move closer to being able to build a nuclear weapon.”5 Indeed, upon assuming office, the Trump Administration had rescinded the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), an Obama-era agreement intended to curtail Iran’s nuclear ambitions in return for sanctions relief, and replaced it with a strategy of “maximum pressure.” Maximum pressure began with the re-imposition of strangling economic sanc­ tions and the levying of ample verbal threats, and then moved into military coer­ cion. The strategy was met at each step by Iranian defiance, manifested in iteratively attention-getting, but not war-precipitating agitations that included harassment and attacks on merchant ships, threats to exceed JCPOA-imposed lim­ itations on uranium production,6 and then the downing of the Global Hawk.7

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The likely intent of the maximum pressure strategy was to convince Iran of the extent of US commitment to its policy objectives and thereby to make believable its tacit and overt threats of military force. The Trump Administration, in other words, took the counsel of much collected wisdom and endeavored to use available foreign policy tools to reinforce its credibility and to convince Iran of its resolve. It did so, however, as many administrations have done before, without the benefit of information about whether the tools it chose were the right ones, used in the right ways, in the right combinations, or at the right times. As a result, the United States made choices based on many foundations – including, perhaps, intuition, assessment of risks, resource constraints, ethical considerations, and so forth – that although outwardly reasonable, do not speak directly to how best to achieve positive coercive effects. The outcome was inadvertent use of foreign policy tools at times and in combinations that worked at cross-purposes with each other, muddled communications, and inadequate notice of the characteristics and values of the targeted state and its leaders. Indeed, US-Iran interactions during the summer of 2019 demonstrate that knowing the coercion playbook, and knowing how to do it effectively, are very different things. This study narrows this gap between theory and practice, offering actionable guidance to policymakers seeking to achieve outcomes through persuasion rather than through war. Some of its lessons affirm conventional wisdom, even as they may generate frustration at the inefficiencies of administrations, government agen­ cies, and interagency processes. Others, however, are decidedly counterintuitive and, indeed, out of step with current US policy. The key findings are these: 1.

2.

3.

Target Characteristics can be Determinative: A lack of understanding of the target’s values and goals – of what is motivating the behavior of the decision-maker or -makers – reduces the likelihood of coercive success. Deterrence and compellence are achieved through the manipulation of anticipated costs, and it is the target’s perception of costs that matters. The Clarity and Specificity of Threats and Demands Affect Outcomes: Non-specific threats and demands by the Unites States decrease the likelihood of coercive success. This may be because a lack of clarity and specificity increases the likelihood of misinterpretation, confusion, and therefore of inadvertent defiance; or because they suggest the US policy position is not firm but rather fluid, potentially moveable under the pressure of intentional defiance. Deploying Forces from Outside-in is Effective: Moving forces from outside the theater of contest into it increases significantly the likelihood of US success, very likely because putting assets and servicemembers at risk is a good indicator of resolve. This result is robust and insensitive to changes in even seemingly important contextual characteristics – for example, the extant amount of US forces permanently or typically deployed in the region. The positive effect of moving forces into the contested theater, moreover, is achieved no matter the composition of the forces deployed, though if the decision is made to deploy ground troops, they should always number greater

Coercion in the past 165

4.

than 1,000. Policymakers thus have considerable flexibility when designing force packages for coercive operations. Sanctions and Military Coercion do not Partner Well: Sanctions degrade significantly the likelihood of successful military coercion. This is true when sanctions are in place prior to military operations, and the negative effects are magnified by the imposition of sanctions after coercive military activity begins. It may be that sanctions suggest that the US is not willing to accept the costs of a military struggle to alter the target’s behavior, preferring to use less directly lethal instruments, thus degrading perceptions of US resolve.

Although these findings access different characteristics of coercive exchanges, each affirms that the essence of persuasion is communication. Coercion, that is, is the process of revealing information both about the substance of desired behavior and about seriousness of intent. What is expected of the target must be made clear and so, too, it must it be made clear that noncompliance will produce painful con­ sequences that can and will be imposed if needed – even if doing so also imposes costs on the coercer. Effective coercive military action thus requires the United States to understand and to put at risk the target leaders’ values and goals, and to demon­ strate convincingly both the credibility of its threats and its resolve to follow through.

Target values and goals To observe that one needs to understand the adversary is hardly novel, and yet it seems consistently to have been under-regarded in post-Cold War US efforts to coerce.

FIGURE 9.1

Elements of coercion

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Indeed, there is ample evidence in two of the earliest-emerging and longestlived lines of coercive effort during the post-Cold War period – those relative to Iraq and to Serbia – of the perils of discounting differences and presuming that an adversary’s understanding of a strategic interaction mirrors that of the United States. Explanations for the failure of US efforts to bring Saddam Hussein to heel, for example, tend to follow one of two standard tropes: either the United States did not use enough force or Hussein was irrational and not coercible. An alter­ native proposition, however, is that although Hussein suffered at least from denial and at most from delusion, he nonetheless did have a prioritized order of inter­ ests – including domestic political control, regional status, and of course regime survival – and behaved in ways consistent with that ordering. In the Balkans, policymakers similarly underestimated the extent of Milosevic’s Serbian nation­ alism and overestimated the extent to which general threats and even demon­ strations of military power would persuade him to accede to US demands. For Kosovo in particular, the presumption that simply bringing force to bear would be effective was wrong.8 In both cases, there is evidence of a misalignment between US military actions and the target’s values and goals. Although Hussein was subject to cruise missile strikes starting in 1993, he trivialized them as “pinpricks” all the way into 1998, when Operation DESERT FOX finally attacked facilities essential for his control of the country. By putting at risk his primary interest – regime survival – the US was finally able to get his attention. Although DESERT FOX rattled Hussein’s cage, as an isolated, if substantial, salvo, it too proved inadequate to convince him to comply with the UN inspections he had been subverting. Slobodan Milosevic was similarly unmoved by the early bombing campaign over Kosovo, which was restricted to military targets and thus also did not threaten his hold on power. These air strikes were extended from the expected matter of days required to bring him to heel to numbers of months without success. It was only when NATO shifted from targeting Serb forces to targeting infrastructure in and around Belgrade that was important to the Serb elite, the support of which Milosevic needed to retain power, that he agreed to leave Kosovo.9 The implication is that US misperception of these actors’ motives and incentive structures affected negatively the ability of its military coercion to manipulate their cost-benefit calculations (Figure 9.2). Because the US did not target important interests, the costs of defiance were tolerably low, prolonging the coercive exchange until in one case (Serbia) the balance of costs was shifted and in the other (Iraq), the US chose war. Both cases also highlight that the perceptions of the target actor are an important mediator of US signals. Hussein and Milosevic each arrived early at a view of US and of NATO strategic positions, respectively, and these affected their perceptions of coercive activities throughout the campaigns. Hussein believed the United States, “did not want another fight with Iraq” – about which he was right, for a decade, until in 2003 he was wrong.10 In the meantime, he retained his hold on power in the face of much US frustration, multiple US military actions, and

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FIGURE 9.2

Effects of misperception of target values and goals

maintenance of the most prolonged no-fly zones in history. Milosevic, too, started with the conviction that NATO was not unified in its commitment to prevent Serb domination of Kosovo – despite his attempt to achieve it through the mass murder of Kosovar Albanians – and persisted in this belief until a critical mass of evidence finally was able to convince him otherwise.11 In the meantime he, too, retained his hold on power while displacing an estimated 1.2 million, and killing an estimated 10,000, Kosovar Albanians.12 One hazard of dismissing consideration of how military activity interacts with target characteristics is that it makes it all too easy to explain success or failure by reference to the quantity of force used and when, rather than to how it was used and why. For both Iraq and the Balkans, the temptation is to assert that the appli­ cation of more force, sooner, would have produced the desired outcomes. This argument relies on at least one, and possibly both, of two assumptions: i) that both targets would have been moved by more demonstration of sheer military cap­ ability, against which they clearly could not have prevailed; or, ii) that the use of more firepower overall, and especially sooner in the confrontation, would have sent a stronger signal of US resolve. In both cases, however, the United States used ample firepower on multiple occa­ sions and, despite their knowledge of how much the US still was holding in reserve, neither leader relented. Surely, that is, there was little uncertainty about which party would prevail on the battlefield in an escalated military conflict, much less in a fullscale war. US credibility on this count should very much have been unquestioned. The notion that the magnitude or intensity of kinetic activity signals greater resolve is similarly problematic, insofar as resolve is more about the ability to absorb

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cost than about the ability to impose it. The historical counterfactual worth con­ sidering, then, is if the United States had better targeted Hussein’s and Milosevic’s incentive structures – the values and goals that motivated them – whether less force ultimately could have been applied overall, if not avoiding violence entirely then at least foreshortening its use and reducing loss of life. These cases in particular serve as a reminder that messages are filtered through the target actor’s strategic culture, domestic political culture, and by the tempera­ ment, experiences, and predispositions of its leadership. Messages thus inherently are vulnerable to misinterpretation, an eventuality made more likely by incon­ sistencies in the statements made by policymakers, particularly when allies are involved, and by a lack of specificity in the nature of threats and demands levied.

Clarity and specificity of demands Theoretically, when the US position is understood accurately, the probabilities of target cooperation and defiance are determined by its calculation of the costs, benefits, and risks of the set of actions available to it. When the US position is not understood accurately, the probabilities of target cooperation and defiance are dis­ torted, making it much harder both to predict what the target will do and, after the fact, to understand why it did so. A target’s defiance, for example, certainly may be by design, or it may be unintentional if it did not really understand what it is that the United States was demanding, or what it was threatening. Where demands are opaque the target might continue its bad behavior unknowingly. Where threats are opaque it may continue its bad behavior as a means of acquiring information, using incremental defiance as a means of learning more about US limits and about the consequences it is willing to impose. In practice, when its demands are highly specific, the United States has a more than one-third greater likelihood of success than when its demands are defined weakly.13 At the very least, clarity minimizes the potential for targets to misunder­ stand US preferences and so to behave defiantly by accident. At the very most, a lack of clarity might suggest to the adversary that the US position is not wholly formed, much less firm – perhaps because of a lack of internal political consensus, for exam­ ple, or as a product of apprehension that the US public is not prepared to support a military engagement. This perception of a tenuous and weak US commitment may encourage the adversary to pressure the United States through noncompliance, spe­ cifically to exploit these or other possible causes of US ambiguity. The US record of demand clarity is relatively poor. In 30 percent of its postCold War coercive exchanges, the United States levied entirely non-specific demands and, conversely, was highly specific only 38 percent of the time. Policy­ makers would do well to improve these numbers in future. The US similarly has had a tendency to make general and non-specific threats to targets of coercion, to be vague, that is, about what target interests it is holding at risk. Three propositions might explain this tendency. First, it is possible that policy­ makers believed that the promise or application of any force, at all, would suffice to

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intimidate or punish an adversary into compliance, making explicit identification of target sets unnecessary. Second, the belief may have been that the uncertainty pro­ duced by being vague would encourage the adversary to presume the worst, and therefore to be less willing to run the risk of reprisal. Third, it might be argued that exposing operational plans allows the adversary to take defensive measures, thereby diluting the effect of the military action, and so should be avoided. None of these explanations, however, is consistent with the purpose of coercion. In coercion, success depends upon making the costs of nonperformance undesirable enough to convince the target to adjust its behavior preventively. Telegraphing to the challenger the intended military action thus is not compromising, but rather necessary, and uncertainty about the nature and extent of costs to be imposed is not reinforcing, but rather counterproductive. Rhetoric under both the Obama and Trump Administrations concerning US intolerance of Syria’s use of chemical weapons (CW) offers a prototypical – but far from unique – example of diffuse threats. Obama’s “red line” was surrounded by vague suggestions of “intervention,” quiet mentions of Pentagon “contingency plans,” and hints that the US, “might participate in locating and neutralizing the weapons.”14 Reports after the aborted air strikes indicate that plans had targeted six military installations inside Syria, though the reasons for those particular selections are not made clear in public sources.15 Ultimately, Assad was swayed by Russian pressure to agree to a CW elimination protocol, and not by the threat of US military strikes themselves. President Obama’s “red line” and the disarmament agreement notwithstanding, Assad persisted with the use of chlorine weapons up to, and then even after, the Trump Administration ordered a small set of missile strikes on a Syrian air base in April 2017. This was despite a constant refrain from US officials that the use of CW would mean, “[Assad] and his military will pay a heavy price,”16 warnings that, “Washington was ‘locked and loaded’ to strike again,”17 and presidential tweets promising, “that missiles fired at Syria ‘will be coming, nice and new and ‘smart!’”18 The cycle arrived full-circle in April 2018, when the US undertook a larger set of strikes, again on airfields and other military installations. These strikes were accompanied by commentary that the US intent was to complete a moder­ ately punitive action without generating a larger commitment, thus compromising the coercive message by making it clear the US did not wish to engage militarily.19 Accordingly, reports of chlorine use in Syria continued well into 2019.20 These illustrative examples of expansive and occasionally bombastic threats resonate with the finding that the United States is better off when it makes no verbal threats. Indeed, when the United States does not levy a publicly visible threat, its likelihood of successful military coercion is a statistically significant 22.5 percentage points higher than when it does.21 The consonance between the reduction in coercive effectiveness caused by illformed threats and the finding that threats, overall, decrease the likelihood of US success is suggestive. Non-specific threats not only make it possible for the adver­ sary to defy US preferences unintentionally, but also can be interpreted as reflecting

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indecision or a lack of political consensus. This impression is only reinforced by the airing of laundry about the limits of US investment in redressing a problem. Syria, again, is illustrative but not singular in this regard – to the contrary, it has been a recurrent habit when it comes to discussion of the involvement of US ground troops, with a line that extends from the Clinton Administration’s handling of the Balkans in the 1990s to the Trump Administration’s posturing vis-a-vis Iran in 2019.22 Poorly formed threats and public displays of commitment anxiety easily can be taken as symptoms of a larger US unwillingness to accept the costs and risks of engaging a challenge directly – that is, they degrade perceptions of the serious­ ness of US intent.

Credibility, resolve, and credibility about resolve Behavioral demands can be misinterpreted as a result of inconsistent or otherwise poor messaging and because they are mediated through language and culture. The likelihood of misconstruing US capability, by comparison, is relatively small. Although it does vary over time and space, the extent of US advantage relative to the rest of the world in military might and mobility during the post-Cold War period was obvious and, despite fears of decline relative to China, by objective measures remains so. It is tempting to conclude that clarity of relative capabilities translates into surety of credibility. Such reasoning would suggest that because there was no question during the post-Cold War period that the United States could impose the con­ sequences it threatened, its credibility should not have been in doubt. Yet the behaviors of US adversaries and policymakers alike are inconsistent with this rea­ soning. Indeed, far from reducing credibility to a matter of “can,” events from the real world suggest credibility also to be a matter of “will” – credibility, that is, is partly dependent on the target’s assessments of US resolve. Resolve is a human construct. It is not derived from chemistry, physics, mathe­ matics or any other hard science, and it is unclear whether it fundamentally is rational or emotional. This makes resolve difficult to define, delimit, and measure. The extent to which an individual person is resolute varies over time and across interactions and exercises, subject to influences both internal and external. US leaders similarly are acted upon by a plethora of influences, domestic and interna­ tional, and so their willingness to impose and to incur costs is also variable. The international environment is defined by dynamic processes – climate, weather, economic change, human migration – and the interactions among states. Domes­ tically, public sensitivities and priorities shift and change, and along with them the incentives to which political leaders respond. The temperament, personal values, principles, and convictions of leaders, the compositions of their leadership teams, the processes they employ – all shape policy and inform the nature and extent of political will. For the United States Government, acquiring, retaining, and com­ municating resolve thus is a complicated matter, requiring some semblance of cross-agency consensus, collective action, and discipline.

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How, then, can even an intentionally fractious system, such as that of the United States, demonstrate resolve to a challenger?23 Happily, history indicates that as much as there are traits of the US Government that work against such demon­ strations, so too there are tools that can be used effectively to overcome them. The logic of resolve is straightforward: How much policymakers value an out­ come is reflected in how much they are willing to pay in its pursuit. Costs – be they exacted in treasure, in blood, in loss of reputation or of authority, or in other ways – thus are the barometer of a state’s level of commitment. When the state is highly invested in achieving an outcome, it will be willing to pay a lot to get it; when it isn’t, it won’t. Decision-makers, of course, must first arrive at a conclusion about the value of the policy objective at issue. The process by which the United States Govern­ ment does this, and the positions taken, are shaped by the temperaments and talents of leadership teams and, often, by time as experience teaches a few lessons. In many instances in the post-Cold War era, it is clear that arriving at a consensus view of the nature of US interests, much less of their value, was not achieved easily, if at all. Returning to Syria, for example, after the President’s “red line” statement, debate within the Obama Administration became bifurcated. The President focused on the US interest in preventing chemical weapons use, and thus was willing to accept a diplomatic resolution of the situation, while members of his staff focused on the US interest in retaining credibility, and thus preferred to implement the threatened military strike. To demonstrate resolve, the US must also reveal its willingness to accept costs and risks, specifically by making clear that it is both able and willing to accept pain in the pursuit of its desired outcome. This information is private unless or until the United States manages to convey it to the targeted actor. Yet, as discussed above, verbal threats are inade­ quate to the task – indeed, they are counterproductive. Communicative actions, too – colored by domestic and international political considerations, tinged with history and strategic culture, and filtered through cross-cultural alignments and disconnects – are fraught with the potential for misinterpretation, error, manip­ ulation, and mistrust. The challenges, in other words, of elevating a specific signal from the ambient noise are many. Despite this churn, examination of the post-Cold War era affirms the entreaty to simplicity of Occam’s famous razor: The clearest signal of US commitment is the deployment of forces from outside the theater of contest, into it. The most effec­ tive means of communicating to an adversary the seriousness of US intent, that is, is the visible commitment of resources: spending the money required to project power, accepting the opportunity costs of not using capabilities in other ways, and putting military assets and servicemembers in potentially dangerous environments. This effect holds across actors and regions, across types and sizes of deployments, despite differences in the size and longevity of any prior permanent presence and, importantly, whether or not those new deployments include ground troops. This general result is perhaps unsurprising, insofar as it affirms the proposition that cost is a good indicator of value, and vulnerability a good indicator of commitment. What

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is both surprising and useful, however, is to learn that the United States has con­ siderable flexibility in selecting which combinations of air, naval and ground assets to send when it wishes to demonstrate its resolve.24 Since the end of the Vietnam War, there has been robust discussion among scholars and analysts about the effects of so-called “casualty aversion,” shorthand for the unwillingness of the US public, and therefore of US policymakers, to suffer the loss of service members’ lives.25 For some, because casualty aversion reduces the willingness of the United States to use ground troops in coercive efforts, it reduces also the likelihood of US success. The concern is that casualty aversion renders the US unable to threaten the adversary credibly, because it constrains its ability to impose adequate costs, making it, “unable to inflict pain anywhere near commen­ surate with its military power.” The argument continues that “casualty aversion” thus leaves the US exposed to counter-strategies that target US lives and implies that defiance is unlikely to be met with a sizable US escalation.26 The finding that it is the fact and not the form of outside-in deployment that generates the positive effect on the likelihood of US coercive military success therefore should be heartening. That ground troops are not necessary for the United States to signal resolve gives policymakers leeway to select assets based on other parameters – including for example proximity, timeliness, financial cost, regional sensitivities, officer succession planning, and so forth – without risking coercive effect. These considerations, or features of the mission itself, of course, might make ground troops a good choice. So, too, if the conflict escalates and the mission changes, the introduction of ground troops may be required to ensure operational effectiveness. Similar implications emerge for the aircraft carrier, an asset that is commonly interpreted as a particularly strong signal by analysts, commentators, policymakers, and the general public – US Ambassador Jon Huntsman’s “100,000 tons of inter­ national diplomacy.”27 Yet the effects produced by dispatching carriers are no greater than those produced by sending other types of naval assets. This is not to say that carriers ought not be included in coercive actions; just as for ground troops, there may be many compelling practical or operational reasons to do so. The lesson, again, is simply that policymakers have more flexibility in designing force packages than has previously been recognized. Although the effect of outside-in deployment is robust to changes in many important contextual features, there is one against which it is not resilient: eco­ nomic sanctions. When economic sanctions and military coercion are coincident, the likelihood of success decreases significantly. This is true for instances in which sanctions precede military action, and for instances in which sanctions are applied after the operation has begun. The negative effect is most pronounced where sanctions are applied before, and then again during, military activity. The markedly negative effect of sanctions on military coercion suggests they might be interpreted by adversaries as evidence of US hesitation and a readiness only to pursue objectives on the cheap. Even when the effects of sanctions on the recipient are very harsh, so long as they are believed to cost the US little and to put at risk

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even less, they may be perceived as evidence of low US resolve. That the effect is especially pronounced after the military has become involved suggests that rather than reiterating the extent of US commitment, sanctions degrade it. Following military action with new or additional economic sanctions may communicate to the chal­ lenger that the limits of US willingness to use force already have been reached, and that the likelihood of a punishing military escalation therefore is low. This is not to paint all sanctions with one brush – the debate on the utility of sanctions as an independent policy tool is left to be arbitrated elsewhere. When interacting with military coercion, however, the evidence is clear that the two tools do not work or play well together. This finding has two important implications for policymakers facing challenges to which they prefer to respond with coercion rather than war. The first is that careful consideration should be given to the extent of US investment in the contested interest, and therefore of US willingness to use the military, before sanctions are imposed. If policymakers are highly committed to changing the behavior of the targeted state, enough so that defiance by the target might lead to the invocation of military force, then deliberations need to take account of the fact that leading with sanctions will make achieving objectives through subsequent military coercion more difficult. Other approaches therefore also should be considered. A diplomatic alternative to sanctions, for example, would be for the United States to communicate directly, but privately, through State Department, DoD, and other available high-level channels, its willingness to involve the military. So, too, policymakers could move directly to military coer­ cion, in which case the results generated in this study indicate that the best option would be to make clear and specific demands of the target, to define consequences that put at risk its leader or leaders’ values and goals, and to move military assets into the region of challenge without any saber-rattling preamble. The second significant implication of the incompatibility of sanctions with military coercion is potentially more troublesome. If adding sanctions after an operation is underway is counterproductive, then it may be the case that meeting defiance with anything other than greater military coercion will be perceived as evidence of low resolve. If true, this dynamic presents policymakers with a choice between escalating or conceding, both of which carry their own risks. It also is possible, however, that following a military move with a diplomatic one might be effective; the scope of this work precludes drawing inferences about this possibility, leaving it an important area for future inquiry. That sanctions and military coercion are not mutually supportive is strikingly at odds with current practice, most especially with the strategy of “maximum pres­ sure.” The strategy itself, and the rhetoric that accompanies it, suggest an under­ lying assumption that coercion primarily consists of imposing costs. Threats, intimidation, and the capability to punish, that is, are the lynchpins of the US coercive posture. Although the Trump Administration is especially voluble in this regard, the larger body of US efforts to coerce militarily over the preceding 30 years – covering four Democratic and Republican administrations – certainly are of

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a piece. This approach has not served the United States particularly well, with a no-better-than-even record in which failures match successes. Continuing apace, in an international environment in which China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea already have demonstrated if not an imperviousness to, at least a resilience against, this coercive strategy increasingly will carry more unstable and immediate risks, that bring with them larger and more dangerous consequences.

The competition ahead In international politics, conflicts of interest are arbitrated on a spectrum. At one end are peaceful diplomatic resolutions and on the other are wars, with a vast middle in between in which the fundamental conflict persists, discord arises, immediate tensions and strife are managed, and instances of mutual accommoda­ tion are not absent, but rare. During the post-Cold War era, from 1991 through 2018, the United States frequently trafficked in the spectrum’s middle range, using military coercion more than 100 times in efforts to manage conflicts of interest rather than go to war. A relatively small number of these cases achieved true resolution, either through concessions by the target – as happened with Aristide’s departure from Haiti in 1994 – or through war, as was the culmination of more than a decade of US coercive military actions in Iraq. In many more cases, the United States did not achieve its full set of stated objectives and yet the military action ended, either because policymakers were unwilling to continue for pragmatic or political reasons, for example the Clinton Administration in Somalia and the Obama Administration in Libya, or because they were satisfied that enough had been accomplished. The latter category of short-term satisfaction without long-term resolution characterizes a set of immediate coercive exchanges with China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia that are symptomatic of the long-lived and fundamental con­ flicts of interest that persist today. The United States thus will continue to be required to make choices about whether to resolve these fundamental conflicts of interest by seeking cooperation – negotiating and abiding by treaties, accords, deals, or whatever term of art one wishes to apply to the codification of agree­ ment – or through war. The alternative is to continue to manage them through coercion, military or otherwise, and thereby to maintain an uneasy and ever more fragile status quo. Diplomatic and cooperative resolutions carry today the same risks as they always have: that one’s partners will misrepresent their intent, secretively disregard their obli­ gations, and in so doing gain threatening advantages. Similarly, as has been true since the mass deployment of nuclear weapons, war today could be truly catastrophic, not just for the combatant countries but for people in many parts of the globe. What is different is that coercion is now more delicate and dangerous than ever before. The rubric of competition is a euphemism for acknowledging that states with interests that do not align neatly with the United States’ preferred interna­ tional order are now greater in number, more varied in their political ideologies,

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systems, and cultures, and more economically and militarily capable than in decades prior. These characteristics of the international environment mean that the costs of military coercion gone badly, today, are less predictable, but probably greater, than they were in the past. The United States and the Soviet Union had decades of focused and intentional learning about each other, achieved through scientific, academic, and government discourse, along with a dense network of bilateral agreements that rendered a rea­ sonably accurate appreciation of the other’s values, goals, priorities, and red-lines. Together with data from intensive surveillance, intelligence analysis, and direct mili­ tary exchanges, this mutual familiarity rendered well-elaborated escalation ladders. The US and the USSR, in other words, knew each other well enough that coercive interactions, even highly charged ones, were more, rather than less, predictable. Not so today. Beginning in 2008, the United States and Russia have done more to unravel than to preserve this shared knowledge, and it has never existed between the United States and China, Iran, or North Korea. This makes effective coercion difficult, increasing the likelihood that the United States will not know how best to influence these states, along with the likelihood of message confusion when it tries to do so. So, too, does it make these states’ reactions to US military coercion more difficult to predict, raising the possibility of the US being confronted with behaviors it does not expect and for which it does not have a ready response. These dynamics are occurring, moreover, within a context of evolving military capability; each of these states has demonstrated an ability to deploy not only more powerful and lethal kinetic weapons, but also sophisticated and damaging approa­ ches to targeting US networks and technology infrastructure. The tools of com­ petition, in other words, are now broader in scope, faster in application, and more diffuse in possession than during any prior period of history. The United States spends lavishly on defense, a trend that is likely to continue as the armed forces make the case that modernization is a requirement of competi­ tion. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army General Mark Milley, explains the need as follows: “The only thing more expensive than preparing for a war is fighting a war, and the only thing more expensive than fighting a war is losing a war.”28 It is, of course, the responsibility of military leaders to prepare the armed services to prosecute war, and a sophisticated, well-equipped, well-trained, and highly capable military is fundamental to deterring high-end conflict. Yet the post-Cold War period makes clear that being demonstrably well prepared for war does not prevent low-end and mid-range challenges from arising, nor does it guarantee coercive success. Indeed, the courses and outcomes of these events argue for more, not less, nuance in thinking about, planning for, and calling into action, the US armed services for purposes other than war. The consequences of mirror-imaged or otherwise erroneous assessments of adversaries, inadequate coordination of priorities and policy instruments, of mud­ dled or contradictory communications, of visible hesitation to bear costs, will only become more damaging as challengers become increasingly capable and creative,

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able to take advantage of US missteps and vulnerabilities. So, too, do the risks of confrontation urge the careful selection and sequencing of tools, without the expectation that the levying of force alone will suffice. Pursuit of US interests in the coming decades, in other words, will require a discipline in the planning and in the implementation of coercive strategy that the relatively permissive environment of the last thirty years most often did not. The lessons for policymakers of postCold War US military coercion, then, are both guide and caution.

Notes 1 Edward Wong, “Trump Imposes New Sanctions on Iran, Adding to Tensions,” The New York Times, June 24, 2019. www.nytimes.com/2019/06/24/us/politics/iran-sanctions.html 2 BBC, “US Destroyed Iranian Drone in Strait of Hormuz, says Trump,” July 19, 2019. www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-49040415 3 The United States had previously deployed to the region of the Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group, along with a bomber task force, and 2,500 US troops. www.ft.com/con tent/7a100e72-9150-11e9-b7ea-60e35ef678d2 4 Julian E. Barnes and Thomas Gibbons-Neff, “U.S. Carried Out Cyberattacks on Iran,” The New York Times, June 22, 2019. www.nytimes.com/2019/06/22/us/politics/us-iran-cyber­ attacks.html 5 David E. Sanger, “Facing Intensifying Confrontation with Iran, Trump Has Few Appealing Options,” The New York Times, June 22, 2019. www.nytimes.com/2019/06/ 22/world/middleeast/trump-iran.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share 6 Karen DeYoung, “Iran Threatens to Surpass Uranium Limits as Tensions with the U.S. Continue to Grow,” The Washington Post, June 17, 2019. www.washingtonpost.com/ world/national-security/iran-threatens-to-surpass-uranium-limits-as-tensions­ with-the-us-continue-to-grow/2019/06/17/5de0d280-9124-11e9-b58a-a6a9afaa0e3e_ story.html?utm_term=.833135a61de5 7 US-Iranian conflict persisted through the summer of 2019; at the time of this writing the outcome is unknown, with tensions rising following a September attack on Saudi oil facilities. 8 Michael Mandelbaum, “The Failure of Intervention,” Foreign Affairs, September/Octo­ ber 1999, accessed August 14, 2019. www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/ 1999-09-01/failure-intervention 9 RAND, “Operation Allied Force: Lessons for the Future.” www.rand.org/pubs/resea rch_briefs/RB75/index1.html 10 Ken Pollack, in this volume, XXX. 11 RAND, “Operation Allied Force: Lessons for the Future.” www.rand.org/pubs/resea rch_briefs/RB75/index1.html 12 U.S. Department of State, Ethnic Cleansing in Kosovo: An Accounting (U.S. State Depart­ ment Report, December 1999). https://1997-2001.state.gov/global/human_rights/koso voii/homepage.html#exe 13 Point estimate for low-specificity demands = 41.8 percent; point estimate for high-spe­ cificity demands = 56.3 percent. 14 Mark Landleraug, “Obama Threatens Force Against Syria,” The New York Times, August 20, 2012. www.nytimes.com/2012/08/21/world/middleeast/obama-threatens-force-aga inst-syria.html 15 Josh Rogin, “Obama’s Syria Strike Plan Was Much Bigger than Trump’s,” The Washington Post, April 9, 2017. www.washingtonpost.com/news/josh-rogin/wp/2017/ 04/09/obamas-syria-strike-plan-was-much-bigger-than-trumps/ 16 Michael D. Shear, Helene Cooper and Eric Schmitt, “Syria Will ‘Pay a Heavy Price’ for Another Chemical Attack, White House Says,” The New York Times, June 26, 2017.

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26 27

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www.nytimes.com/2017/06/26/us/politics/syria-will-pay-a-heavy-price-for-a nother-chemical-attack-trump-says.html Edward Helmore, Patrick Greenfield, Jamie Grierson, Ben Doherty and Graham Rus­ sell, “Syria: US ‘Locked and Loaded’ if Chemical Weapons Used Again – As It Hap­ pened,” The Guardian, April 14, 2018. www.theguardian.com/world/live/2018/apr/14/ syria-donald-trump-announcement-chemical-attack-live Eileen Sullivan and Michael D. Shear, “Trump Promises Strike on Syria and Warns Russia Against Backing Assad,” The New York Times, April 11, 2018. www.nytimes. com/2018/04/11/world/middleeast/trump-syria-attack.html Peter Baker, Helene Cooper and Thomas Gibbons-Neff, “Trump Weighs More Robust Military Strike Against Syria,” The New York Times, April 10, 2018. www.nytimes.com/ 2018/04/10/us/politics/trump-military-strike-syria.html Edward Wong, “U.S. Says Assad May Be Using Chemical Weapons in Syria Again,” The New York Times, May 21, 2019. www.nytimes.com/2019/05/21/world/middleea st/bashar-assad-syria-weapons.html (p=0.002) John Wagner and Dan Lamothe, “Trump says War with Iran Would Not Involve Ground Troops or Last Long,” The Washington Post, June 26, 2019. www.washingtonp ost.com/politics/trump-says-war-with-iran-would-not-involve-ground-troops-and-no t-last-long/2019/06/26/9a0e9918-9813-11e9-830a-21b9b36b64ad_story.html Some evidence suggests that democracies are no better- or worse-off than other forms of government when attempting coercion: Alexander B. Downes and Todd S. Sechser, “The Illusion of Democratic Credibility,” International Organization 66, Summer 2012, 457–89 The study did not include analysis of the US use of drones because such information is not consistently publicly available. Casualty aversion also applies to the desire to minimize the killing the target country’s civilian population. There is no consensus about the extent to which the phenomenon is real – that is, the extent to which policymakers’ beliefs about the public’s casualty aversion are accurate. E.g., Christopher Gelpi, Peter D. Feaver and Jason Reifler, Paying the Human Costs of War: American Public Opinion and Casualties in Military Conflicts (Prin­ ceton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009). Daniel Byman and Matthew Waxman, “Defeating US Coercion,” Survival, 41, no. 2, (1999), 107–20, DOI:10.1093/survival/41.2.107 Matthew Bodner, “US rolls ‘100K tons of International Diplomacy’ into the Med. Will Russia Get the Message?” DefenseNews, April 26, 2019. www.defensenews.com/digita l-show-dailies/navy-league/2019/04/26/us-rolls-100k-tons-of-international-diplomacy­ into-the-med-will-russia-get-the-message/ Meghann Myers, “Milley: The War in Afghanistan is 17 Years Old, and now Storm Clouds Are ‘On the Horizon’,” Army Times, October 9, 2018. www.armytimes.com/news/your-a rmy/2018/10/09/milley-the-war-in-afghanistan-is-17-years-old-and-now-storm-clouds-a re-on-the-horizon/ Michelle Tan, “Army Chief: Soldiers Must Be Ready To Fight in ‘Megacities’,” DefenseNews, October 5, 2016. www.defensenews.com/digital-show-dailies/ ausa/2016/10/05/army-chief-soldiers-must-be-ready-to-fight-in-megacities/

TECHNICAL APPENDIX A SHORT OF WAR DATASET Melanie W. Sisson and James A. Siebens

This volume is an examination of the role of the US military in achieving favorable US foreign policy outcomes in ways other than imposing them directly during the period 1991–2018. The primary interest motivating the inquiry is to learn how, and under what conditions, military coercion can make attainment of US policy goals more, or less, likely. This focus both creates boundaries around the types of military actions that are considered, and necessitates that analysis includes a set of variables that is both expansive and detailed. The study’s design therefore required the development of a new dataset that contains information about the military assets used; the ways in which they were used; the purpose of their use; whether they were used with other tools of policy (e.g., diplomacy, sanctions); and about other contextual characteristics – domestic political dynamics, for example, or structural power differentials – that might also affect event outcomes. Each instance of military coercion thus is described in the dataset by variables identified by scholars, prac­ titioners, and analysts as being potential influences on the likelihood of achieving coercive success.1

What constitutes a case of short of war military coercion The Short of War Dataset is structured around four strict criteria for inclusion, rules that ensure the events it contains are instances of the same phenomenon: military coercion. The four rules that distinguish military coercion from other types of military activity and define a “case” of US military coercion are these: 1.

Change in disposition: There was a change in the status of at least one element of the US armed forces – one or more components were put on

Technical Appendix A 179

2. 3. 4.

alert, ordered into action, made a previously unscheduled move from one location to another, or engaged in non-decisive kinetic activity. Target: There was an actor identified by US officials as the target of the military activity. Policy objective: There is evidence that the US military action was intended by policymakers to achieve at least one defined objective. Coercion: There is evidence that the US military action was intended to influ­ ence the target actor’s behavior, and not simply to impose the desired outcome.

Each case, or observation, contained in the dataset therefore is, first, defined by these criteria and then, second, is described by an accompanying 132 variables. Cases are not presumed to be independent of one another and, indeed, in many instances are directly related. US efforts to coerce Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, for example, were many and occurred over a prolonged period of time. Indeed, coercive actions sometimes began with one set of objectives and the use of certain assets, and then changed as the interaction progressed. The presence of any one of four changes to a case were determined to be of a substantive significance to merit that case’s end and the initiation, or transition, into a new observation: 1. 2. 3. 4.

Coercion type: A change in the type of coercion performed by US forces; for example, a change from deterrence to compellence; Policy objective: A change – addition or revision – of stated US policy objective(s); Demand: A change in the specific behavior required of the target to be compliant; Kinetic action: A change from no kinetic activity in the coercive exchange to the use of kinetic action by at least one participant in the coercive exchange.

The research effort This volume is an open source document, in entirety. Dataset construction there­ fore relied exclusively upon access to and use of publicly available information. Efforts to locate a robust, unclassified official US government listing of military operations from which to begin were unsuccessful. The introduction to “Named Military Operations from January 1989 to December 1993,” a report of the US Army Training and Doctrine Command, from April 1994, states the challenge succinctly: We compiled this list in response to a flurry of reference questions posed to the HQ TRADOC Technical Library concerning recent military operations. We found that questions weren’t so easy to answer, because there is no one source which provides basic information about who [in the US armed forces]

180 Technical Appendix A

went where and did what to whom. We began by creating a simple list of [named military] operations giving the year and geographic region covered. This list generated even more questions, so we began gathering more specific details about each operation. The task was surprisingly difficult because little has been written about many of the events identified here.2 Research for the work thus used as a starting point the lists of named operations made publicly available by a small number of research institutions, most notably the Congressional Research Service, and the Center for Naval Analyses.3 Much use also was made of widely used sources of data for academic research, especially the Correlates of War project’s Militarized Interstate Disputes (MID) dataset.4 Cases from these datasets were used as entry point for open-source research to identify and assess against the study’s inclusion criteria US activities before, during, and after those catalogued by these academic datasets. Pure searches for activities not inclu­ ded in MID – accelerated or delayed deployments, for example, or the conduct of out-of-cadence military exercises – also were undertaken using Lexis Nexus quer­ ies. This approach produced a set of 115 distinct cases with accompanying descriptive data between 1991 and 2018.

Assessment against inclusion criteria The study adhered to strict standards in assessment of a military action’s consistency with the established criteria for inclusion. Only military actions that were identifi­ ably non-routine – that is, not part of a regular rotation or not consistent with pre­ existing schedules – were considered eligible for consideration and merited further research. The movement of an aircraft carrier from one theater to another, for example, was examined only if it was diverted from its regular schedule or other­ wise engaged in a coercive military operation. Evidence of the non-routine nature of an action, of the identification of a tar­ geted actor, and of the presence of at least one policy objective were derived from: Statements by the President of the United States or a White House spokesperson; the Secretary of State or a State Department spokesperson (including ambassadors); the Secretary of Defense or a Defense Department spokesperson (including military officers); or the US Ambassador to the United Nations. These were acquired from US Government sources when available, and primarily from the official quotes reported by credible media outlets. Relying on government statements had the benefits of reducing opportunity for the introduction of researcher bias, of facilitating inter-rater reliability, and of effectively guaranteeing that the events captured in the dataset were manifestations of deliberate US policy as opposed to accidental encounters or routine activities. No military actions or operations were included in the absence of clear evidence of coercive intent with an identifiable policy objective(s) vis a vis a specific target.

Technical Appendix A 181

Assessment of outcomes In many Short of War cases the United States had multiple policy objectives; they are grouped into eight broader categories of objectives or “policy goals.” These were convincing a target to: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

implement or abide by a cease-fire; stop or refrain from harming civilians; initiate or continue negotiations; change or maintain a military posture; stop or refrain from acquiring or transiting conventional weapons; adjust behavior surrounding WMD or ICBM capabilities; maintain or return to the ex-ante territorial status quo; or abdicate regime authority.

In some cases, the United States had more than one identified policy goal. Indeed, over the set of 115 cases there were a total of 234 stated policy goals coded into the Dataset. The outcome of each goal was also coded, and so outcome was assessed on a per-objective basis. In each instance, outcomes were assessed based on the weight of available opensource evidence. Some objectives lent themselves to review only of the target’s behavior – a demand, for example, for a change in the target’s military posture either occurs to the satisfaction of US officials, or it does not. This largely describes instances in which the US issued compellent demands Other policy goals, however, required the setting of thresholds to distinguish success from failure, as was the case for the policy goal of protecting civilians. For such goals, the standards adhered to by the relevant policy and research commu­ nities were applied. This largely describes instances in which the US issued deter­ rent demands, requiring the target not to take a particular action. If the target took the action within six months of the US military action, the objective was coded a failure; if the target did not violate the demand within six months of the US action, it was coded a success. If a military action led directly to war all objectives were coded as failures.

Descriptive variables As noted previously, each case in the Short of War Dataset is described in the dataset by 132 variables that access constructs identified by scholars, practi­ tioners, and analysts as being potential influences on the likelihood of achieving coercive success.5 •

Characteristics of the military action: it is possible that some force packages outperform others, whether because they alter the balance of capabilities on the ground or because they are more effective at signaling US resolve.

182 Technical Appendix A

• •

•

Structural characteristics: relative military and economic power are foun­ dational elements of inquiry into the outcomes of uses of force, most especially when the differential fails to be predictive. Diplomatic behavior: the timing, level, and substance of diplomatic com­ munications might affect coercive outcomes by supporting or degrading target understanding of US demands, and/or by bolstering or undermining percep­ tions of US credibility and resolve. Political, historical, and diplomatic context: Past and contemporary context may influence US behaviors and target actor perceptions, thus affect­ ing the outcome of military coercion. The US election cycle, for example, might factor into leadership decisionmaking about whether, what type, and how much military force to dispatch to resolve a conflict of interest. Target actors might consider this dynamic and include it in their assessments of US credibility and resolve, as they similarly might do when reviewing and asses­ sing past US efforts to coerce.

Limitations of the Short of War Dataset As noted previously, this volume is an unclassified work, with every piece of evi­ dence derived from publicly available sources. It doubtless is true that there were many US military actions that meet the study’s inclusion criteria that were covert and/or went unreported for other reasons. It is not possible to speculate about whether the incorporation of these events into the analyses presented in this book would alter the results. So, too, is it possible, in the absence of a sole source of truth about US military actions 1991–2018, that the research team missed one or more instance of applic­ able military coercion. Finally, as with all work that relies on the conversion of unstructured into structured data, it is inevitable that there will be individual instances in which other researchers would have coded a “1” a “0” or a “0” a “1.” Nonetheless, every effort was made to establish coding standards that minimize the need for subjective interpretation, and to apply these standards consistently.

List of short of war cases TABLE A.1 List of short of war cases

Action Name

Coercion

Start Date

Target Country

Operation Patriot Defender Operation Provide Comfort Iraq no-fly zones – 1 Operation Maritime Monitor Intrinsic Action/Eager Mace/Native Fury '92 Iraq no-fly zones – 2 Operation Sky Monitor/Deny Flight UNITAF Phase I Operation Maritime Guard/Sharp Guard Iraq no-fly zones – 3 Iraq no-fly zones – 4 Iraq no-fly zones – 5 UNITAF Phase II – IV Iraq no-fly zones – 6 UNOSOM II Operation Able Sentry UNPROFOR Air Support – I Iraq – Bush Assassination Plot Cedras Junta – Blockade Operation Deny Flight Yeongbyon Crisis '94 Operation Agile Provider Cedras Junta – Great Inagua Cedras Junta – Fort Bragg Cedras Junta – Roosevelt Roads Operation Uphold Democracy Operation Vigilant Warrior I Operation Vigilant Warrior II UNPROFOR Air Support – II Operation Vigilant Sentinel – Jordan Operation Vigilant Sentinel – Kuwait Operation Deliberate Force IFOR/SFOR Third Taiwan Straits Crisis Operation Desert Strike Iraq 1997 Nimitz Iraq 1997 UNSCOM Expulsion

Induce Compel Deter Deter Deter Deter Deter Compel Rollback Rollback Compel Compel Rollback Deter Compel Deter Deter Rollback Compel Rollback Compel Compel Compel Compel Compel Compel Deter Compel Rollback Deter Deter Compel Deter Deter Rollback Rollback Compel

1/19/1991 4/5/1991 7/24/1991 7/1/1992 8/2/1992 8/26/1992 10/16/1992 12/4/1992 12/16/1992 12/27/1992 1/6/1993 1/13/1993 1/15/1993 1/23/1993 5/4/1993 6/10/1993 6/10/1993 6/26/1993 10/6/1993 2/28/1994 3/19/1994 4/25/1994 7/14/1994 7/14/1994 8/20/1994 9/19/1994 10/7/1994 10/15/1994 4/10/1995 8/15/1995 8/18/1995 8/29/1995 11/20/1995 3/8/1996 9/3/1996 10/11/1997 11/14/1997

Israel Iraq Iraq Yugoslavia Iraq Iraq Yugoslavia Somalia Yugoslavia Iraq Iraq Iraq Somalia Iraq Somalia Yugoslavia Yugoslavia Iraq Haiti Yugoslavia North Korea Haiti Haiti Haiti Haiti Haiti Iraq Iraq Yugoslavia Iraq Iraq Yugoslavia Yugoslavia China Iraq Iraq Iraq (Continued)

TABLE A.1 (Cont.) Action Name

Coercion

Start Date

Target Country

Iraq no-fly zones – 7 Operation Desert Thunder I Operation Determined Falcon Kosovo – Withdrawal Ultimatum Operation Eagle Eye Operation Desert Thunder II Operation Desert Fox Kosovo – Racak Massacre Kosovo – Peace Talks Operation Allied Force KFOR/Operation Joint Guardian First Battle of Yeonpyeong DPRK Missile Test '99 Taiwan Straits Confrontation – 1999 Operation Northern Denial Iraq no-fly zones – 8 Iraq no-fly zones – 9 Operation Infinite Justice Operation Iraqi Freedom – 1 Foal Eagle '03 Operation Iraqi Freedom – 2 ECOMIL-Liberia/JTF Liberia Gulf PSI Exercise Gulf Exercise – 2007 Impeccable DPRK Nuclear Test '09 Gulf missile defense-Kuwait Gulf missile defense-Bahrain Gulf missile defense-UAE Gulf missile defense-Qatar Invincible Spirit 2010 Yeonpyeong Island Libya Intervention Prepositioning Operation Odyssey Dawn/Unified Protector Gulf build-up – 2012 DPRK Satellite Launch '12 Turkey Missile Defense – 2012 DPRK Nuclear Test '13 Foal Eagle '13 Syria 2013 – Army HQ

Deter Compel Compel Compel Deter Compel Compel Rollback Compel Compel Compel Rollback Deter Deter Deter Rollback Deter Compel Compel Compel Compel Compel Deter Rollback Rollback Rollback Deter Deter Deter Deter Rollback Rollback Compel Compel

11/21/1997 1/24/1998 6/13/1998 10/12/1998 10/27/1998 11/12/1998 12/16/1998 1/20/1999 1/29/1999 3/24/1999 6/11/1999 6/16/1999 7/7/1999 8/7/1999 12/1/2000 2/17/2001 8/11/2001 9/18/2001 10/12/2002 3/3/2003 3/17/2003 8/11/2003 10/29/2006 3/27/2007 3/12/2009 5/27/2009 1/22/2010 1/22/2010 1/22/2010 1/22/2010 7/24/2010 11/27/2010 2/28/2011 3/19/2011

Iraq Iraq Yugoslavia Yugoslavia Yugoslavia Iraq Iraq Yugoslavia Yugoslavia Yugoslavia Yugoslavia North Korea North Korea China Russia Iraq Iraq Afghanistan Iraq North Korea Iraq Liberia Iran Iran China North Korea Iran Iran Iran Iran North Korea North Korea Libya Libya

Deter Deter Deter Deter Deter Compel

1/22/2012 12/6/2012 12/14/2012 2/4/2013 3/11/2013 4/17/2013

Iran North Korea Syria North Korea North Korea Syria

TABLE A.1 (Cont.) Action Name

Coercion

Start Date

Target Country

Post-Exercise deployment – Jordan 2013 Syria 2013 – Warships Syria 2013 – Jordan Atlantic Resolve Lithuania Atlantic Resolve Poland Atlantic Resolve Latvia Atlantic Resolve Romania Atlantic Resolve Estonia Atlantic Resolve France Atlantic Resolve Germany Atlantic Resolve Iceland Atlantic Resolve Bulgaria Atlantic Resolve Slovenia Atlantic Resolve Georgia Atlantic Resolve-Saber Strike '14 Atlantic Resolve Serbia Atlantic Resolve Bosnia Atlantic Resolve Norway Saber Junction/Steadfast Javelin II Atlantic Resolve Czech Republic Atlantic Resolve-Jackal Stone '14 Atlantic Resolve-Sea Breeze '14 Atlantic Resolve Ukraine Atlantic Resolve Moldova Iran Naval Tensions 2015–1 Iran Naval Tensions 2015–2 DPRK Nuclear Test – January 2016 DPRK Ballistic Missile Test – February 2016 Balikatan 2016 DPRK Nuclear Test – September 2016 Tomahawk Strikes-Yemen Syria Tomahawk Strike 2017 DPRK Ballistic Missile Test – July 2017 DPRK Ballistic Missile Test – August 2017 DPRK Ballistic Missile Test – September 2017 DPRK Three-Carrier Exercise 2017 Vigilant Ace 2017 Syria Tomahawk Strike 2018

Deter Rollback Deter Deter Deter Deter Deter Deter Deter Deter Deter Deter Deter Deter Deter Deter Deter Deter Deter Deter Deter Deter Deter Deter Deter Rollback Rollback Rollback

6/20/2013 8/21/2013 10/10/2013 3/6/2014 3/31/2014 4/7/2014 4/29/2014 5/5/2014 5/11/2014 5/15/2014 5/15/2014 5/23/2014 6/2/2014 6/9/2014 6/9/2014 6/26/2014 7/12/2014 8/11/2014 8/13/2014 9/8/2014 9/8/2014 9/8/2014 9/16/2014 12/8/2014 4/29/2015 5/20/2015 1/10/2016 2/17/2016

Syria Syria Syria Russia Russia Russia Russia Russia Russia Russia Russia Russia Russia Russia Russia Russia Russia Russia Russia Russia Russia Russia Russia Russia Iran Iran North Korea North Korea

Deter Rollback Rollback Rollback Rollback Rollback Rollback

3/31/2016 9/12/2016 10/12/2016 4/6/2017 7/4/2017 8/31/2017 9/17/2017

China North Korea Yemen Syria North Korea North Korea North Korea

Deter Rollback Rollback

11/2/2017 12/4/2017 4/13/2018

North Korea North Korea Syria

Short of War Dataset: codebook

TABLE A.2 Short of War Dataset: codebook

Variable

Values

Definitions

Dispute

MID ID where applicable; DOF count where no MID is available

Identifies association at campaign level among military actions

DOF ID Transition to Transition from Transition Type

ID for DOF dataset Related Action Name Related Action Name 1=Intent 2=Demand

Name for subsequent related Action Name for preceding related Action Change in political intent, e.g. from deter to compel Change in behavior demand

3=Kinetic

Change to or from non-kinetic/kinetic

Action name

Succinct description of dispute/action

Action Narrative

Narrative description of event. This is to provide the reader detail adequate to understand the behavior being con­ tested; the US position, and how it was communicated; and includes explicitly explanatory language for: Objective type, and Outcome. Month US action began (default MID date if no other evidence available) Date US action began (default MID date if no other evidence available) Year US action began (default MID date if no other evidence available) Month US action ended (default MID date if no other evidence available) Date US action ended (default MID date if no other evidence available) Year US action ended (default MID date if no other evidence available) Number of days of incident duration; calculated field Group of cases with a common target and shared conflict of interest The start date of the first Operation in a Campaign The end date of the last Operation in a Campaign Number of days of campaign duration; calculated field The campaign was followed by War.

Operation Start month

Month

Operation start day

Date

Operation start year

Year

Operation end month

Month

Operation end day

Date

Operation end year

Year

Operation duration

Number

Campaign

Case determined

Campaign start date

Date

Campaign end date

Date

Campaign duration

Number

Followed by war

0=No 1=Yes “.”= (Unknown)

TABLE A.2 (Cont.) Variable

Values

Definitions

Number MP US

Number

Number MP target

Number

MP ID US

Country code

MP ID target

Country code

Number participants US Number participants Target NATO-endorsed

Number

Count of members of P5 on US side with participating forces Count of members of P5 on target side with participating forces CC of members of P5 on US side with participating forces CC of members of P5 on Target side with participating forces Count of states other than members of P5 on US side with participating forces Count of states other than members of P5 on Target side with participating forces NATO support for US action expres­ sed in written or verbal statement and/ or through the direct provision of funds; no commitment of military assets or troops Member-state forces operate under NATO command UN support for US action expressed in written or verbal statement and/or through the direct provision of funds; no commitment of military assets or troops Forces operating under United Nations command (e.g., peacekeepers (blue helmets), armed monitors, etc.) are participant in US action During observation period the US uses kinetic force against the target at least once During the observation period the target uses kinetic force against the US at least once Number of US fatalities incurred during observation period Number of Target fatalities incurred during observation period Number of other participating state fatal­ ities incurred during observation period Total fatalities incurred during obser­ vation period To coerce an actor to refrain from action before it has begun To coerce an actor to cease and desist violations of established deterrent demands To coerce an actor to take an action, often within a defined period of time

NATO mission UN-endorsed

Number 0=No 1=Yes “.”= (Unknown)

0=No 1=Yes “.”= (Unknown) 0=No 1=Yes “.”= (Unknown)

UN mission

0=No 1=Yes “.”= (Unknown)

US action kinetic

0=No 1=Yes “.”= (Unknown) 0=No 1=Yes “.”= (Unknown)

Target action kinetic

US fatalities

Value

Target fatalities

Value

Other fatalities

Value

Total fatalities

Value

Coercion

Deter Rollback deterrence

Compel

(Continued)

TABLE A.2 (Cont.) Variable

Values

Definitions

Induce

To use promised applications of/access to military assets to convince that target to take or not to take an action

US objectives Cease fire

US policy interest is cessation of kinetic action, or maintenance of existing cease-fire US policy interest is that warring parties cease or refrain from attacks on civilians US policy interest is that parties to dispute negotiate cessation of the con­ flict of interest US policy interest is that the target maintain or reposition military assets in less- or non-threatening configurations US interest is that the target comply with US and/or international prohibition on possession or transfer of conventional weapons. US policy interest is that the target allow inspection of, dismantle, and/or abstain from acquiring WMD/ICBM capability; or that the target abstain from providing WMD/ICBM capability to a third party US policy interest is that the target regime cede power US policy interest is that no change in existing borders occur Total number of US Objectives coded

Protect civilians Negotiations

Military posture

Conventional arms

WMD/ ICBM

Change regime Territorial status quo Total objectives Outcomes Outcome: Cease fire

1=Fail 3=Succeed "-99" = N/A

Outcome: protect civilians

1=Fail 3=Succeed "-99" = N/A

Outcome: negotiations Outcome: military posture

1=Fail 3=Succeed "-99" = N/A 1=Fail 3=Succeed "-99" = N/A

Outcome: acquire conventional arms

1=Fail 3=Succeed "-99" = N/A

Outcome: export conventional arms

1=Fail 3=Succeed "-99" = N/A

No evidence of widespread violence during period of observation and/or US statement of satisfaction with ces­ sation of violence Evidence that deaths during period of observation do/do not meet or exceed 1,000 Evidence of negotiate settlement during period of observation Evidence of US satisfaction that target met military posture demand during period of observation Evidence of US satisfaction that target met conventional arms demand during period of observation Evidence of US satisfaction that target met conventional arms demand during period of observation

TABLE A.2 (Cont.) Variable

Values

Definitions

Outcome: WMD/ ICBM

1=Fail 3=Succeed "-99" = N/A

Outcome: change regime Outcome: territorial status quo Primary target interest

1=Fail 3=Succeed "-99" = N/A 1=Fail 3=Succeed "-99" = N/A

Evidence of US satisfaction that target met WMD/ICBM demand during period of observation Evidence of regime change during period of observation No evidence of territorial revision during period of observation

1=Acquire regime control

3=Territorial Revision

Effort to acquire control over institu­ tions of governance Effort to retain control over institu­ tions of governance Effort to revise recognized state borders

4=Territorial status quo

Effort to retain recognized state borders

5=Eliminate population

Effort to harm, mistreat, forcibly relo­ cate, or kill a group of people based on ethnic, religious, or other characteristic (not political) Effort to use WMD or acquire the resources needed to build, deliver, or simply to purchase/otherwise take possession of WMD Acquisition or movement of conven­ tional military assets to enhance capability Insufficient evidence to justify coding of other value Event includes a trade/quid-pro-quo of behavior Both the demand(s) of target and timeframe are discrete and clear The behavior(s) demanded of target and is somewhat articulated and understandable, but not necessarily specific or timebound Behavior(s) demanded of target and timeframe are not clearly or explicitly articulated Average outcome of operations in campaign Full set of behaviors desired of target not achieved prior to end of observation, as defined by DOF or by MID incident end-date Full set of behaviors desired of target achieved prior to tend of observation, as defined by DOF or by MID incident end-date

2=Retain regime control

7=Enhance WMD capability

8=Enhance conventional capability Indeterminate (.) Quid pro quo Specificity of demand

0=No 1=Yes “.”= (Unknown) 3=High 2=Medium

1=Low

Campaign outcome Failure

Success

(Continued)

TABLE A.2 (Cont.) Variable

Values

Definitions

Participating forces Branch USA USAF USN USMC USCG USA ground forces (low/high) USMC ground forces (low/high) Air/missile Missile strikes (low/ high) Aircraft (low/high) Drones Carriers

Amphibious

Ships (low/high)

US Service Branch(es) Involved 0=No 1=Yes (Unknown) 0=No 1=Yes (Unknown) 0=No 1=Yes (Unknown) 0=No 1=Yes (Unknown) 0=No 1=Yes (Unknown) Number

“.”=

Army

“.”=

Air Force

“.”=

Navy

“.”=

Marine Corps

“.”=

Coast Guard

Number 0=No 1=Yes “.”= (Unknown) Number Number 0=No 1=Yes “.”= (Unknown) Unknown (.)

Number of US Army ground forces deployed Number of USMC ground forces deployed Air/Missile Defense Unit not Organic to USA Ground Forces Deployed Number of missiles launched against target Total Number of military aircraft involved (in addition to carrier group) Drones deployed

0

Includes full complement of ships in Carrier Strike Group No carriers

1

One carrier

2

Two or more carriers

Unknown (.)

0

Number of amphibious assault ships engaged (includes full complement of ships in Amphibious Ready Group) No ARG

1

One ARG

2

Two or more ARG

Number

Total Number of ships other than those in carrier/amphibious assault task force engaged

0=No 1=Yes “.”= (Unknown)

Advance/preparatory movement of supplies and/or materiel needed to support military activities

Nature of action Materiel deployed

TABLE A.2 (Cont.) Variable

Values

Definitions

Alert outside

0=No 1=Yes “.”= (Unknown)

Alert inside

0=No 1=Yes (Unknown) 0=No 1=Yes (Unknown) 0=No 1=Yes (Unknown) 0=No 1=Yes (Unknown) 0=No 1=Yes (Unknown) 0=No 1=Yes (Unknown) 0=No 1=Yes (Unknown) 0=No 1=Yes (Unknown) 0=No 1=Yes (Unknown) 0=No 1=Yes (Unknown) 0=No 1=Yes (Unknown) 0=No 1=Yes (Unknown) 0=No 1=Yes (Unknown) 0=No 1=Yes (Unknown) 0=No 1=Yes (Unknown)

“.”=

Increase in level of alert of forces out­ side of the theater where incident occurred Level of alert increased of forces within theater where incident occurred Reserve Units Mobilized

“.”=

Reserve Units Deployed

“.”=

“.”=

Forces outside theater deployed into that theater Forces inside theater withdrawn from that theater Planned withdrawal of forces in theater delayed Blockade – selective or complete

“.”=

Imposition of a no-fly zone

“.”=

“.”=

Interposition of US forces between two foreign actors US conducts military exercise or demonstration Exercise occurs in advance of planned timeline The exercise in question has occurred at least once in the past. Provide security assistance – escort, equipment, transport, intelligence US forces effect evacuation of US or allied personnel US forces board and/or otherwise acquire and retain control over a target asset, for any period of time US has economic sanctions on target at observation start date US imposes new sanctions on target during period of observation US lifts sanctions on target during observation period Threat of kinetic force

“.”=

Threat of blockade

“.”=

Threat to occupy territory

Reserve mobilized Reserve deployed Outside deployed Inside withdrawn Withdrawal delay Blockade No-fly zone Interposition Exercise occurs Exercise accelerated Recurring exercise Security assistance Evacuation Seizure

Sanctions current Sanctions imposed Sanctions lifted Threat to use force Threat to blockade Threat to occupy territory

0=No 1=Yes (Unknown) 0=No 1=Yes (Unknown) 0=No 1=Yes (Unknown) 0=No 1=Yes (Unknown) 0=No 1=Yes (Unknown) 0=No 1=Yes (Unknown)

“.”=

“.”= “.”=

“.”= “.”= “.”= “.”= “.”= “.”= “.”= “.”= “.”=

(Continued)

TABLE A.2 (Cont.) Variable

Values

Definitions

US verbal threat

0=No 1=Yes “.”= (Unknown) 0=No 1=Yes “.”= (Unknown) 0=No 1=Yes “.”= (Unknown)

Threat against target (use of force, blockade, or occupation) Statement of US objective(s) by Pre­ sident or White House representative Direct talk (face-to-face meeting or phone call) between representative of Administration and target actor Forwarding of US position at the UN in statement made by Ambassador to the UN and/or other high-ranking US official DOS Position Consistent with White House DOD Position Consistent with White House UN Ambassador Position Consistent with White House

Administration statement Direct talks

UN visit/statement

0=No 1=Yes “.”= (Unknown)

DOS consistent

0=No 1=Yes “.”= (Unknown) 0=No 1=Yes “.”= (Unknown) 0=No 1=Yes “.”= (Unknown)

DOD consistent UN consistent US characteristics President party Unified government Presidential approval month of

D/R 0=No 1=Yes “.”= (Unknown) %

Presidential approval month after

%

Election year

0=No 1=Yes “.”= (Unknown)

Target characteristics Assurance target Target CC Prior conflict Polity 2 score year of Polity 2 score year prior Total forces stationed in region year prior

Country code Country code 0=No 1=Yes “.”= (Unknown) Polity score Polity score Number

Party affiliation of US President Legislature and Executive of same party % in national poll who approved Pre­ sident’s general performance in first poll conducted in the start-month of the observation % in national poll who approved Pre­ sident’s general performance in first poll conducted in the month after the start-month of the observation Start year of the observation is in a Presidential Election Year

Named actor the US action is descri­ bed by the US as intending to assure Target CC Engaged in conflict with the US within the past 10 years. Target polity score Target polity score Total Forces permanently stationed in Region the year prior to the start year of the observation

Technical Appendix A 193

TABLE A.2 (Cont.) Variable

Values

Definitions

Total forces stationed in region year of

Number

Total forces stationed in region year after

Number

Target GDP per capita US trade in goods (in millions unadjusted USD) Target defense spend­ ing (current USD)

USD

Total Forces permanently stationed in Region during the start year of the observation Total Forces permanently stationed in Region the year after the start year of the observation GDP per capita (in current US$)

USD (millions)

US Trade in Goods (in Millions unad­ justed USD)

USD

Total Defense Spending (Current USD) of target state in the start year of the observation Total Defense Spending (Current USD) of US in the start year of the observation Target Defense Spending divided by US Defense Spending

US defense spending (current USD)

USD

Target % defense spending

%

Notes 1 The full list of cases is below. 2 Frances M. Doyle, Karen J. Lewis, and Leslie A. Williams, “Named Military Operations from January 1989 to December 1993” (Fort Belvoir, VA: Defense Technical Informa­ tion Center, 1994). https://doi.org/10.21236/ADA279529 3 Congressional Research Service, “Instances of Use of United States Armed Forces Abroad, 1789–2018.” Updated December 28, 2018. https://fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/R42738.pdf; Eugene W. Cobble, H. H. Gaffney, and Dmitry Gorenberg, For the Record: All U.S. Forces’ Responses to Situations, 1970–2000 (with Additions Covering 2000–2003) (Alexandria, VA: Center for Strategic Studies (CANC), 2005). www.cna.org/CNA_files/PDF/D0008414. A3.pdf; Frances M. Doyle, Karen J. Lewis, and Leslie A. Williams, “Named Military Operations from January 1989 to December 1993” (Fort Belvoir, VA: Defense Technical Information Center, 1994). https://doi.org/10.21236/ADA279529; Frank N. Schubert, Other than War: The American Military Experience and Operations in the Post-Cold War Decade (Washington, D.C.: Office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 2013). www.jcs. mil/Portals/36/Documents/History/Monographs/Other_Than_War.pdf 4 “Militarized Interstate Disputes (v4.3),” Correlates of War. Accessed September 12, 2019. www.correlatesofwar.org/data-sets/MIDs; Emizet F. Kisangani, and Jeffrey Pickering. “Inter­ national Military Intervention, 1989–2005” (2008). Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; Todd S. Sechser, 2011, “Replication data for: Militarized Compellent Threats, 1918–2001 (v3),” (2011). Harvard Dataverse. https:// doi.org/10.7910/DVN/VDJQ1E; Michael Brecher, Jonathan Wilkenfeld, Kyle Beardsley, Patrick James and David Quinn (2017). “International Crisis Behavior Data Codebook (v12),” International Crisis Behavior Project, Department of Political Science, Duke University. Accessed September 12, 2019. http://sites.duke.edu/icbdata/data-collections/; “UCDP Uppsala Conflict Data Program.” Department of Peace and Conflict, Uppsala University. Accessed September 12, 2019. https://ucdp.uu.se/ 5 The full set of variables is below.

TECHNICAL APPENDIX B Making use of history Jacob Aronson and Paul Huth

Overview This appendix lays out in greater detail the methodological approach we used in Chapter 3: “Making use of history.” In that chapter, we explored the impact of various US actions, US domestic characteristics, target characteristics, and dispute characteristics on US success in disputes short of war, as defined in Chapter 1 and “Technical Appendix A.” To do this we employed best-practice statistical approa­ ches and a new dataset of disputes involving a change in the readiness, movement, or activity of United States (US) armed forces between 1991 and 2018. In total, we ran over 50 different statistical models. This appendix describes how we specified and tested these models, and provides coefficient tables detailing the full results of our analysis. Because we were interested in producing policy relevant findings, we took sev­ eral steps to move beyond correlation and towards causation. Causation is impor­ tant because policymakers seek “levers” that they can manipulate to produce desired outcomes. Moving from correlations to causal assessment, however, is a challenge. Instead of judging models based on how well they can explain variance in a response variable or predict when an outcome is likely to occur, it is necessary to judge how well an approach can produce an unbiased, low-variance assessment of the effect of a variable of interest. We refer to this variable of interest as the “main variable” or alternatively the “treatment.” Absent access to both observational and experimental data, it is not possible to assess whether an assessment of a variable effect is unbiased. A researcher must instead make sure that they employ the correct steps and methods for analyzing the empirical problem and data that they have at hand. These steps and methods are based on what type of dependent variable we have (e.g., we use a different model

Technical Appendix B 195

for binary, count, and continuous variables because of model assumptions about the distribution of residuals). We also have confidence that the approach we use is appropriate, or at least less likely to produce biased estimates, because scholars have conducted extensive tests using simulated data that arbitrate between approaches. Below, we lay out the main methodological problems we seek to overcome, describe how we address these problems, provide descriptive statistics of the data we use, explain the statistical tests that we conduct, and provide results for all of the statistical models that we run.

Addressing problems with quantitative research Briefly, quantitative research must overcome four distinct problems to identify the correct, i.e., unbiased, effect of a main variable on an outcome. First, the data that is used to assemble a dataset should be measured with minimal random error and no systematic error. Second, the data used should be representative of the cases for which knowledge is desired and to which findings will be applied, i.e., external validity. Third, the model should be correctly specified, which means that no other variables that cause both our main variable and the outcome are omitted, and no other variables that are caused by the outcome are included. Third, the functional form between variables should be correctly specified, which requires that the appropriate statistical model be used and that the variables are transformed correctly. This is a high bar and, absent access to controlled randomized experiment, is usually not achievable. The steps we take move us towards this ideal destination rather than outright solving these problems. These steps are as follows. First, during the data collection process, we consulted numerous sources to make sure that data points represented best available estimates. Second, we worked carefully to make sure that the rules we used to identify cases produced a dataset representative of the situations that we wanted to better understand. Third, we identified and included a set of potentially confounding variables. Finally, we relied on assessment of the structure of the data and matching to reduce the sensitivity of our results to our chosen parametric statistical technique and our variable transformations.1 The process of selection on observables is worth discussing in greater detail. A key problem in causal analysis is to make sure that potential outcomes (success or failure of a policy) are independent of treatment assignment (e.g., an action taken by the US). This is called the “ignorability assumption.”2 If we could randomly assign use of a strategy to a dispute, we would be sure that no other variables cause the treatment as by design its use would be random. We also would not need to include other variables caused by the outcome, which are referred to as “colli­ ders.”3 This of course is not the case and we are left to analyze observational data. In addition, we had too few data points to make use of quasi-experimental research designs, such as use of difference-in-difference,4 two-way fixed effects,5 or regres­ sion discontinuity.6 We instead use a standard selection on observables approach.

196 Technical Appendix B

More discussion of the challenges of using observational data, which is the only type of data available to study this type of topic, is warranted. When using this approach, the assumption of a randomized treatment is frequently violated. For example, the US may choose the action that it takes based on the importance of a policy goal or the military capabilities of an opponent. Verbal threats may be used for less important policy goals or against weaker opponents who are more likely to capitulate to US demands regardless of the action taken by the US. If we just analyzed the effect of using threats, we may find that they are successful, but this correlation will be spurious, driven by the fact that threats are only used in less difficult cases. These other variables cannot be ignored in our research design as they “select” when we observe a treatment. (Woe to the policymaker who, mis­ lead by this finding, advises verbal threats against Russia to limit its involvement in Crimea!) To address the problem of ignorability, it is necessary to statistically account for the influence of confounding variables. A confounding variable is a variable that influences the observation of both a specific action and a specific outcome. To continue the previous example, the military capability of the target is a variable that confounds the relationship between the use of a verbal threat and the success of a policy goal. High military capability reduces the chance that coercive actions will be limited to verbal threats and reduces the chance that a policy goal will be suc­ cessful. If we record this variable and include it in our statistical analysis, we will have taken a step to satisfy the ignorability assumption. To fully satisfy this assumption and produce truly causal results it is necessary to measure and account for every confounding variable. Absent a randomized experiment, this is, again, difficult to achieve. Instead, we rely on prior subject matter expertise to identify the confounding variables that are likely to have the largest impact and to utilize statistical techniques that account for variables that we do not observe directly that are consistent within a class of cases. For example, there may be something unique about policy disputes with Russia that we do not observe but that we can account for in our statistical models. We refer to this Russia-specific effect as unobserved individual heterogeneity. We believe that unobserved heterogeneity may occur both by target state and by dispute goal. To account for this effect, we introduce intercepts or “fixed effects” at each of these levels. Through these techniques we improve our confidence that the impact of important confounding variables has been addressed, which improves the utility of our results for policymakers.

Data used in the statistical analysis The data that we draw on is described in Chapter 3 and in Appendix A. Here, we explain the main independent and dependent variables, and the case selection cri­ teria. We also describe in greater detail how we transform the data we use to turn it into a dataset suitable for statistical analysis. We finish this section with a table providing descriptive statistics for the dataset that we use in the analysis.

Technical Appendix B 197

Cases and variables To enter the dataset as an observation, actions must be characterized by a change in the disposition (location, activity, or readiness) of any part of the US armed forces. This imposes an important scope criterion that affects the external validity of our analysis: while we examine strategies that do not involve the use of force, such as sanctions or threats, we do so only in the context of a policy pursued through forceful means. As a result, our findings on non-military activity extend only to a subset of all cases where they are used, and we cannot compare our results to actions taken in pursuit of policy goals when no force of any type is used. The consequence of this approach, which was taken to ensure that we could systematically collect all data based on a clear inclusion criteria, is that our analysis represents results for a subset of cases where the US had both the willingness and the need to change the disposition of its force – a set of cases that are likely to feature more important policy objectives and more incalcitrant targets. Our results do not provide insights on why disputes occur in the first place. Our results only provide insight into the causes of US success or failure in a dispute with a target state given that a dispute has started. In many ways, this scope makes the findings more relevant to US policy makers as these are the cases where new, accurate findings are of the greatest value. Each observation in the dataset is an action taken by the US against a target state in pursuit of a single policy objective. If an action is taken in pursuit of more than one policy goal, each goal in a dispute becomes a new observation. This means that the 115 disputes collected in the original data are transformed into a total of 234 separate observations, each with a single dispute goal and outcome. Because we record outcomes for each goal separately, this data processing step allows us to accurately model the impact of a variable on the outcome of a goal in a dispute (success or failure). This data structure also allows us to model situations where the US had mixed success in accomplishing goals in a dispute. The outcome is a binary variable with a value of one denoting the success of a policy goal and a value of zero denoting failure. Our main independent variable is the US action (or other explanation for the outcome) that we are seeking to test. Our potentially confounding variables include the action goal, presidential approval rating, election year, consistency of DoD and DoS statements, opponent GDP percapita, opponent military capability as proxied by per-capita military spending, the presence of small/great-power US allies, the presence of opponent allies, the number of US forces in the region prior to the action, and fixed effects by opponent. We examine the following US actions: direct diplomacy between a US official and the target country, verbal threats made by US officials, deployment of force into the theatre of operations, deployment of materiel (arms, supplies, etc.) into the theatre of operations, the imposition of new sanctions, non-routine military exer­ cises, and no-fly zones. Each of these actions may or may not lead to kinetic action (e.g., a border skirmish or shooting down a plane violating a no-fly zone). For each

198 Technical Appendix B

observation, we also record additional information including US domestic vari­ ables, the characteristics of the target (e.g., military capability), the type of the policy objective, and the campaign in which an action occurs. Descriptive statistics for each of the variables used in our analysis is available below. The specific variables included in each model are listed in the set of coef­ ficient tables at the end of this appendix.

Descriptive statistics Table B.1 below provides descriptive statistics for the data that we use. The col­ umns list the name of the variable, which corresponds to the name of the variable used in the results Tables B.2 through B.10. Table B.1 provides information on the number of observations available for each variable, the mean value of the variable across all observations, the standard deviation of the variable across all observations, and the minimum and maximum value present across all observations. We selected variables for which data is available for all disputes or for which we could reason­ ably assume that a variable had a value of zero. For this reason, the N, 234, is equivalent to the total number of observations in our dataset. The descriptive statistics are provided for untransformed versions of the variable. For example, we show the raw size of forces in the region prior to a dispute whereas the statistical model includes a logged version of this same variable.

Empirical approach To conduct our analysis, we undertake the following steps. With a dataset in hand, processed as described above, we identify a general model specification that includes a set of potentially confounding variables likely to impact when we observe US actions, US domestic characteristics, mission characteristics, and target characteristics. We are also cognizant of choosing variables that are likely to be pre­ treatment. Given this set of variables and the set of main variables we seek to test, we specify all the models that we will test. This specification includes the main variable, interactions between the main variable and another conditioning variable of interest, and the functional form for all the control variables. Each model spe­ cification also includes the appropriate lagged indicator of the main variable and fixed effects by dispute (campaign) goal and target state. After we have the data transformed and the models specified, we conduct statis­ tical analysis on each model. In total, we provide results for 50 total models (in determining which models to show results for we also tested approximately 30 additional models that we do not present coefficient tables for). The process of sta­ tistical analysis for each model is as follows. First, we use a process called matching to produce new observation-specific weights that improve the “balance” of confound­ ing variables across values of our main variable. We then build 5,000 resamples with replacement where each observation is resampled based on its observation weight (weighted resampling allows us to “build-in” the observation weights without

TABLE B.1 Descriptive Statistics

Name

N

Allies (target) Allies (US, large) Allies (US, small) ARG Coercion: Compellence Coercion: Rollback Compellence Conduct Diplomacy Conduct Talks Conduct Talks (prior) Deploy Forces Deploy Forces (prior) DoD and DoS Consistent Election Year Goal: Ceasefire Goal: Disarm Goal: Negotiate Goal: Posture Goal: Protection Goal: Regime Goal: WMD High Trade Dependence Kinetic Action Kinetic Action (prior) Military Exercises Military Exercises (prior) Multiple Carriers New Sanctions New Sanctions (prior) No-fly Zone No-fly Zone (prior) Presidential Approval Single Carrier Target COW Code Target Economic Capability Target Military Capability 1,970.966 1 Threaten (prior)

234 234 234 234 234 234 234 234 234 234 234 234 234 234 234 234 234 234 234 234 234 234 234 234 234 234 234 234 234 234 234 234 234 234 234 234 Threaten 234

Mean

Std. Dev.

0.154 0.295 0.603 0.457 0.325 0.274 0.325 0.5 0.376 0.406 0.65 0.654 0.842 0.175 0.145 0.034 0.056 0.252 0.15 0.051 0.154 0.453 0.261 0.286 0.231 0.415 0.209 0.376 0.423 0.299 0.372 49.812 0.321 523.402 0.648 126.251 234

0.362 0.457 0.49 0.499 0.469 0.447 0.469 0.501 0.485 0.492 0.478 0.477 0.366 0.381 0.353 0.182 0.23 0.435 0.357 0.221 0.362 0.499 0.44 0.453 0.422 0.494 0.408 0.485 0.495 0.459 0.484 10.604 0.468 175.755 0.896 258.957 0.868

0.726

0.447

Min. 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 29 0 41 0.047 0 0.34 0

Max. 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 82 1 731 8.84 0 1 (Continued)

200 Technical Appendix B

Table B.1 (Cont.) Name Total Forces (region, prior) Total Ground Forces Total Ground Forces: Battalion Total Ground Forces: Brigade Total Planes (logged) Total Planes: High Total Planes: Low Total Ships (logged) Total Ships: High Total Ships: Low UN Diplomacy (prior) US-Target Goals Differ

N

Mean

234 234 234

81,781.665 69,609.776 4,593.376 15,485.195 0.35 0.478

234 234 234 234 234 234 234 234 234

0.235 60.474 0.363 0.372 6.077 0.239 0.261 0.538 0.308

Std. Dev.

0.425 99.036 0.482 0.484 15.37 0.428 0.44 0.5 0.463

Min.

Max.

256 0 0

258,839 130,000 1

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

1 590 1 1 133 1 1 1 1

needing to run a weighted regression). For each of these 5,000 resamples, we run our statistical model and model specification to generate a distribution of resulting values for coefficients, predictions, and first differences. (It is plausible that goals in a dispute are not independent. Our main results are robust to a block bootstrap that accounts for the non-independence of goals in the same dispute.) In all cases the dependent variable is a binary indicator recording either US success or failure in accomplishing a goal. For this reason, we use a “logit” model. Once we have finished running our model on all 5,000 resamples, we return the median value and use the percentile method (set to the 2.5th and 97.5th percentile) to produce robust confidence intervals for each coefficient, prediction, and first difference. The coefficient is the value directly returned from the statistical model and is often difficult to interpret directly. The prediction is the estimated prob­ ability of success for different value of our data. For example, we produced the estimated probability of success when the US deploys force holding all other con­ trol variables at their observed values. The first difference is simply the difference between two predicted values. To continue the previous example, to identify the effect of force deployment we produce a prediction for the deployment of force and a prediction for the non-deployment of force and compare the two values. The confidence interval allows us to determine if an effect is significantly different from zero (or from a comparison value) at conventional levels of statistical sig­ nificance. These median values and confidence intervals are used to produce the graphs and coefficient tables that we report. While inclusion of confounding variables addresses the problem of omitted vari­ able bias, matching addresses the more technical concern that we have incorrectly specified the functional form of the included variables. For example, a variable may have a curvilinear rather than a linear relationship with an action or outcome. Matching techniques that reweight the data to find similar treated and untreated

Technical Appendix B 201

cases turn control variables into nuisance parameters that have no causal interpreta­ tion. By turning the control variables into nuisance parameters, we also eliminate any problems due to misspecification of the functional form of these variables. This reduces an important source of bias in our estimates of main variable effects. To reduce the possibility that we misspecified the variables used in matching, we rely on a technique called Covariate Balancing Propensity Score (CBPS) that max­ imizes both variable balance and treatment prediction.7 When the treatment is cate­ gorical, control variables are balanced across treatment values. When the treatment is continuous, we instead produce weights that decorrelate the treatment with respect to the control variables. Variables that are unrelated to the treatment (i.e., variables that are effectively misspecified) thus do not meaningfully contribute to observation weights. As a result, the process is robust to misspecification of the matching model. We also address two other problems that may lead to bias: unobserved variables and the problem that treatment assignment in one observation affects outcomes in another observation. First, as noted, both selection of observables and matching only account for bias due to observed variables. To partially account for the effect of unobserved variables, we include “fixed effects” by dispute goal and target country to account for unobserved heterogeneity unique to these units. Once weights are generated and the data selected, we run a logit model with all variables included as the outcome is binary—success or failure. Second, because each observation is a discrete dispute period during which goals and actions taken were consistent, we may observe the same dispute multiple times. Sanctions used during an earlier period, for example, may impact outcome both the use of a treatment and outcomes in a later period. For this reason, we control for prior use of an action in the same dispute which removes the impact of prior treatment on the current outcome. This allows us to uncover the marginal impact of an action in the current dis­ pute period.

Model tested Our results are based on a logistic model specified as follows: Sd ¼ logit�1 ð þ gd þ #g0 þ Zd þ Id þ ’Td Þ þ "d This model seeks to estimate the impact of our treatment, controlling for nui­ sance covariates and fixed effects, on the probability that the US will achieve suc­ cess. Here, S is the probability of success in a dispute. The variable g records the main independent variable, which may be an action taken by the US or an important domestic, mission, or target characteristic, g’ is a dummy variable recording prior action taken by the US of the same type as the main independent variable (this variable is dropped when a US action is not the main variable tested), Z is the vector of pre-treatment control variables, I is the vector of fixed effects for the eight different dispute goals, and T is the vector of fixed affects for the 14 target states. The subscript d refers to one of the 234 dispute-goals in our dataset.

202 Technical Appendix B

Our analysis utilizes a small dataset. While there is a modest number of theoretically relevant inputs that we include – just ten for a sample size of 234 giving a ratio of 23.4 observations per input – the use of fixed effects and factor variables means that we have many predictors in the statistical model. For example, the model assessing the impact of Air Power has just 150 observations but 34 predictors giving a ratio of 4.4 observations per predictor. This is much below the recommend ratio of 10–15 observations per variable. One approach that we have experimented with is to use a Bayesian model with a weakly informative Cauchy prior.8 This approach is appro­ priate for generalized linear models (a Logit model in our case) with numerous pre­ dictor variables and the risk of complete separation. This prior distribution constrains estimated coefficients and standard errors such that they do not approach infinity as they would in an ordinary generalized linear model under cases of perfect separation. We explore the impact of many actions, domestic characteristics, target char­ acteristics, and mission characteristics. Due to the considerable number of models that we test, we focus on developing a general model specification with a set of pre-treatment variables that are likely to be causes of both the treatment and the outcome. With this general specification in hand, we turn to selectively adding and removing key variables from each individual model. For example, when looking at the impact of the number of ground forces, ships, and planes, we introduce vari­ ables recording the number of forces for each type not recorded in our main vari­ able (variables recording the number of ships and planes are added to the model for ground forces, variables recording ground forces and planes are added to the model for ships, etc.). This final vector of potential confounders is used for matching and is included in our logistic analysis. The set of parsimonious control variables that we believe may be potentially confounding are as follows: 1.

2.

3.

4.

We include presidential approval rating, which may affect the risks the US is willing to take in a dispute, affecting actions taken, and the resolve of the US, affecting the chance of success. We also include whether an action was taken during an election year for the same reason. We include a variable capturing whether the Department of Defense and the Department of State were consistent in their support of a policy goal. High consistency may provide greater choice in the types of actions that are avail­ able to take and demonstrate higher US resolve, affecting policy success. We also include variables capturing the capability of the target. These include the target military capability, which is a composite variable that captures the size of the targets’ standing army and the amount of military spending per sol­ dier. Both variables are drawn from the Correlates of War data repository9 and the Stockholm Peace Research Institute,10 and the target economic power identified as GDP per-capita drawn from the World Bank Development Indi­ cators.11 Both variables are also normalized by dividing values by yearly means. We include the number of existing forces in theatre at the start of a dispute. Although this variable is observable to the opponent, it does affect the

Technical Appendix B 203

5.

6.

coercive options available to the United States and an indicator of existing US resolve, which may impact outcomes. We include the trade dependence of the target on the US. Trade dependence is operationalized as the amount of trade that the target has with the US divided by the target’s GDP. This variable is turned into a dichotomous variable capturing low and high values based on whether the target had above or below median trade dependence. Trade dependence affects the strategies the US will be willingness to use to secure success and the willingness of the target to resist, which affects outcomes. Finally, we include a measure of how many small and large (P5+Germany) allies the US and the how many allies the target has. The presence of allies may either reduce US commitment (since allies can share more of the burden) or limit the range of actions if the target has many allies that can be relied upon to help resist US actions. For similar reasons, allies may impact the success of US policy goals.

We tested various procedures to “shrink” the effect of control variables and thus exclude them from the model to reduce the number of predictors. Specifically, we used a Bayesian LASSOplus technique to identify variables that had an impact on the treatment and those that were shrunk to zero and thus excluded.12 While this approach did limit the number of included control variables, it did not have a substantial impact on estimates of the effect of our main variables. Consequently, we made use of a simpler approach that did not include this variable selection step. We include fixed effects by dispute goal because we believe that the goal being pursued impacts the choice of strategy the US is willing to use (some goals may be more important and lead to more US effort or resolve) and because some goals are inherently harder to achieve than others. Goals include preventing acquisition of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), preventing acquisition of conventional weapons, changing the targets military posture so that it is less threatening to the US or its allies, having the target sign or abide by a ceasefire agreement, protecting civilians in the theatre of operations, bringing the target to the negotiating table, changing the target’s regime, and enforcing a territorial status quo. In the next section we provide tables listing the results for all the models we assess in our empirical analysis.

Coefficient tables In this section we present coefficient tables for nine “sets” of models. Each set of models contain results for several models that address a common theme or issue. Table B.2 presents results for the deployment of forces. Table B.3 presents results for the use of military exercises. Table B.4 presents results for the use of sanctions. Table B.5 presents results for other types of actions taken by the US. Table B.6 presents results for the magnitude and type of force deployed. Table B.7 presents results for the effect of several types of naval power. Table B.8 presents results for

204 Technical Appendix B

the impact of domestic characteristics. Table B.9 presents results for the impact of mission characteristics. Finally, Table B.10 presents results for the impact of target characteristics. Each column in the table presents results for a distinct model in the set. Each model is given a name and numbered. Coefficient values along with the 95 percent confidence intervals in parenthesis below the coefficient estimate are provided for all the variables that are included in a model. An empty cell indicates that a variable was not included in the specified model. When the lower and upper bounds of the confidence interval do not cross zero (e.g., the lower and upper bounds are both above zero) the effect is statistically significant at conventional levels. Asterisks next to the coefficient indicate the significance of the effect. Coefficients with P-values less than 0.05, marked with two asterisks, indicate statistical significance at con­ ventional levels. Coefficients with P-values between 0.05 and 0.1, marked by one asterisk, are suggestive of an effect but not statistically significant. The main variables (i.e., the treatments that we use to produce matching weights) are presented at the top and are followed below by the list of control variables that we include. We also indicate three characteristics of each model: whether the model included target fixed effects, whether the model included dis­ pute goal fixed effects, and the number of observations (the “N”) in the statistical analysis. Currently, all models include both target and dispute goal fixed effects but vary in the number of observations used. All nine sets of tables are listed below.

-0.178(-0.585, 3.416)

0.795(-1.676, 4.501) 1.342(-0.315, 4.159)

1.978(-1.412, 6.934)

Deploy postMateriel(5)

No Forces X Military Exercise

1.257(-3.087, 6.967)

-0.811(-4.235, 2.332)

2.604*** (1.221, 5.282)

Deploy Force X Exercise(4)

No Forces (prior)

-0.223(-1.007, 0.439)

2.527**(0.689, 6.154)

Deploy Force X Coercion(3)

3.951*(0.023, 10.450)

(no prior)

X

X Military

X No

X Military

1.895***(0.960, 3.582)

Deploy Force X Capability(2)

Deploy Forces (prior)

Deploy Forces Exercise Deploy Forces Exercise Deploy Forces Capability Deploy Forces Compellence Deploy Forces

Deploy Forces

Main Variables

Deploy Force(1)

TABLE B.2 Deployment of Forces

0.390(-2.405, 2.653)

0.824(-1.567, 3.433)

3.433*** (1.699, 7.000)

Deploy postSanction(6)

(Continued)

5.270*** (2.735, 10.489) 7.947*** (5.561, 16.591) 5.539*** (3.460, 14.300)

Deploy post­ Threat(7)

2.081*(0.013, 5.923)

1.298(-1.078, 7.911)

-2.615*** (-6.180, -1.250)

0.911(-1.994, 4.791)

-0.624(-2.083, 0.489)

1.338**(0.319, 3.087)

-2.357(-8.698, 2.689)

Allies (US, small)

Election Year

Presidential Approval

Total Forces (region, prior)

Target Military Capability

Target Economic Capability

-4.081(-7.847, 1.492)

Deploy Force(1)

Allies (US, large)

Control Variables Allies (target)

TABLE B.2 (Cont.)

-3.000(-9.740, 1.717)

1.650***(0.561, 3.557)

-0.485(-1.867, 0.574)

1.035(-2.398, 4.644)

-2.690*** (-6.271, -1.156)

1.610(-0.818, 7.690)

2.332**(0.434, 6.676)

-4.220(-8.021, 1.543)

Deploy Force X Capability(2)

-2.569(-8.868, 3.136)

1.405** (0.413, 3.447)

-1.064(-2.912, 0.108)

-3.080*** (-6.909, -1.571) 1.623(-1.643, 6.530)

1.122(-1.448, 9.113)

2.397*(0.255, 7.159)

-4.031(-7.769, 1.579)

Deploy Force X Coercion(3)

-1.059(-8.856, 6.781)

1.444*(0.013, 3.788)

-0.460(-2.255, 1.123)

-2.985** (-8.556, -0.780) 1.073(-4.059, 7.509)

2.247(-0.567, 13.270)

1.841(-1.033, 5.307)

-3.653(-9.543, 3.712)

Deploy Force X Exercise(4)

-4.714 (-17.533, 2.716)

1.529** (0.253, 4.459)

-0.344(-2.020, 1.201)

-3.151** (-9.145, -0.736) 2.388(-3.487, 9.505)

2.885(-0.822, 14.988)

-5.049** (-11.193, -1.312) 3.439*(0.653, 14.940)

Deploy postMateriel(5)

1.208(-5.420, 9.774)

1.657** (0.406, 4.056)

-0.213(-1.960, 1.507)

-4.317*** (-10.947, -2.339) 1.202(-3.537, 9.660)

0.526(-2.958, 12.918)

-5.304 (-11.333, 3.059) 1.081(-1.870, 5.797)

Deploy postSanction(6) -4.580 (-9.920, 2.658) 1.635 (-2.112, 5.388) 0.338 (-2.325, 9.104) -3.322** (-8.279, -1.004) 0.829 (-4.321, 5.508) -0.445 (-2.027, 1.123) 2.440*** (1.162, 5.147) -1.580 (-9.790, 4.911)

Deploy post­ Threat(7)

-1.984**(-4.679, -0.583)

Deploy Forces (prior)

arget Fixed Effects Goal Fixed Effects N Significance Level (95% CI in

Yes Yes 234 parentheses): * p