COERCIVE DIPLOMACY IN U.S. FOREIGN POLICY JEPSON SCHOOL OF LEADERSHIP STUDIES

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1 COERCIVE DIPLOMACY IN U.S. FOREIGN POLICY LDST WEDNESDAY 3:00-5:40 FALL TERM 2011 JEPSON SCHOOL OF LEADERSHIP STUDIES UNIVERSITY OF RICHMOND DR. JACK L. KANGAS INTRODUCTION. This course focuses on the strategy of coercive diplomacy as a key policy option available to the U.S. government in times of international crisis and the threat of war. The strategy focuses on the adversary s political will rather than his military capability and emphasizes the latent threat of force or minimal and selective use of force rather than the employment of a more robust and indiscriminate military capability. The course examines a number of historical cases and then proceeds to analyze more contemporary cases such as those involving U.S. efforts to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Successful coercive diplomacy typically requires a high degree of leadership skills in that policymakers are required to orchestrate diplomatic efforts with threats of force and often with actual demonstrations of force of a highly selective nature. COURSE REQUIREMENTS. The student s final grade will be based on the following: 1) Mid-term examination (30 %) 2) Final examination (50%) 3) In-class powerpoint presentation of a selected case study and contribution to class discussions (20%) BOOKS RECOMMENDED FOR PURCHASE: Thomas C. Schelling, Arms and Influence (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008 edition) Bruce Cumings, The Korean War: A Brief History (New York: The Modern Library, 2011) Jonathan Pollack, No Exit: North Korea, Nuclear Weapons, and International Security (New York: Routledge, 2010) Dana H. Allin and Steven Simon, The Sixth Crisis: Iran, Israel, America and the Rumors of War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010) I. INTRODUCTION TO THE COURSE AND SYLLABUS (AUGUST 24) II. THE STUDY OF COERCIVE DIPLOMACY There are a number of reasons for studying the strategy of coercive diplomacy. First, the strategy if successful can result in the avoidance of the escalation of a conflict to fullscale war. Second, case studies can provide policymakers with a framework or template

2 of what worked or failed to work in previous incidents or crises, i.e. the case studies can have policy-relevance to current and future governmental decisionmaking. Thirdly, case studies have the potential for building theory in the political and decision sciences. Fourthly, case studies have the potential for extending and enriching the students understanding of past and current U.S. approaches to U.S. foreign policy, crisis management, and national security decisionmaking. Alexander L. George and William R. Simons (eds.), The Limits of Coercive Diplomacy, 2 nd ed. ( Boulder: Westview Press, l994). Introduction and Chapters 1-2 (Aug 31) Thomas C. Schelling, Arms and Influence. Chapters 1 ( The Diplomacy of Violence and Chapter 4 ( The Idiom of Military Action ) (Aug 31) Daniel Byman & Matthew Waxman, The Dynamics of Coercion: American Foreign Policy and the Limits of Military Might (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). Chapters 1-4 Gordon A. Craig and Alexander L. George, Force and Statecraft: Diplomatic Challenges of Our Time (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006) Peter Viggo Jakobsen, Western Use of Coercive Diplomacy After the Cold War: A Challenge for Theory and Practice (New York: St. Martin s Press, l998) Robert A. Pape, Bombing to Win: Air Power and Coercion in War (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, l995) J.D. Williams, The Compleat Strategyst: Being a Primer on the Theory of Games of Strategy (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., l986) Lawrence Freedman, Strategic Coercion: Concepts and Cases (Oxford: Oxford University Press, l998) III. PARADIGMATIC CASE STUDY Various methodologies are available in political science to examine U.S. coercive diplomacy. The methodology adopted in the original wave of studies was that of case study, which will be the approach employed here. Different kinds of case study have been identified in the literature but the so-called paradigmatic / focused, structured comparison will be the specific kind followed here in that a pre-established analytical framework or working template will be used to examine a number of cases. The advantages and limitations of this kind of case study will be discussed in class.

3 REQUIRED READING Harry Eckstein, Case Study and Theory in Political Science, in F.I. Greenstein and N.W. Polsby (eds.), Handbook of Political Science (Reading, Mass: Addison-Wesley, l975) (Sept 7) Alexander L. George and Andrew Bennett, Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2005) IV. JAPAN: PROLOGUE TO PEARL HARBOR This case study represents a failure in U.S. coercive diplomacy. President Roosevelt tried through sanctions and embargos to keep the Japanese from aggressively building throughout Asia its Greater Co-Prosperity Sphere but the effort was not successful. Believing the United States would eventually take military action against Japan, the decisionmakers in Tokyo planned and executed a surprise attack on U.S. naval forces at Pearl Harbor and the United States found itself at the center of World War II. Scott D. Sagan, From Deterrence to Coercion to War: The Road to Pearl Harbor, Chapter 4 in The Limits of Coercive Diplomacy (Sept 14) Clayton James, American and Japanese Strategies in the Pacific War, in Peter Paret (ed.), Makers of Modern Strategy: From Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age (Princeton: Princeton University Press, l986) (Sept 14) Herbert Feis, The Road to Pearl Harbor (Princeton: Princeton University Press, l950) Robert Dallek, Franklin Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, l932-l945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, l979) Robert Butow, Tojo and the Coming of the War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, l961) Herbert P. Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan (New York: Harper Collins, 2000) V. THE KOREAN WAR U.S. involvement in the Korean War is a case where policymakers essentially neglected diplomatic courses of action while pursuing coercive escalatory measures against the adversary and the result was a serious strategic setback for the United States on the

4 Korean Peninsula, in Asia, and in the Cold War. The United States made several efforts to deter North Korean aggression against South Korea, but in the final analysis the Truman Administration failed to clearly communicate through policy statements that South Korea was within the defense perimeter of the United States.How important this failure was in the over-all calculus of the North Korean leadership (and of Moscow and Beijing) remains unclear. The United States of course also failed later in the conflict in that it chose not to take seriously China s warnings about the United States encroaching on Chinese territory. The result was the Chinese decision to cross the Yalu River which opened up an entirely new dimension of the war. Here is a classic example of the United States avoiding diplomatic initiatives and sounding the tocsin for armed intervention. REQUIRED READING Bruce Cumings, The Korean War: A Brief History (New York: The Modern Library, 2011) ADDITIONAL READING David Halberstam, The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War (New York: Hyperion, 2007) (Sept 21) Allen S.Whiting, China Crosses the Yalu: The Decision to Enter the Korean War (Sept 21) Roger Dingman, Atomic Diplomacy During the Korean War, International Security, Vol.13, Winter, l988/89 Robert L. Beisner, Dean Acheson: A Life in the Cold War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), Chapters 19, 20 and 23 Dean Acheson, The Korean War (New York: W.W. Norton, l969) Sergei N. Goncharov, John W. Lewis and Xue Litai, Uncertain Partners: Stalin, Mao, and the Korean War (Stanford: Stanford University Press, l995) Bruce Cumings, The Origins of the Korean War, Vols. I and II (Princeton: Princeton University Press, l981 (Vol. I) and l990 (Vol. II) VI. THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS The Cuban missile crisis is seen by many analysts and policymakers alike as a successful execution of the coercive diplomacy paradigm. However, recent scholarship into archival material of JFK s foreign policy shows that the decision process in the Executive Committee s deliberations was in many ways seriously flawed. Nevertheless, the Soviet missiles were withdrawn without a U.S.-Soviet military confrontation. The basic question

5 addressed in this section is why the strategy seemed to work. What were the primary elements in the successful resolution of the crisis? Alexander L. George, The Cuban Missile Crisis: Peaceful Resolution Through Coercive Diplomacy, Chapter 6 in The Limits of Coercive Diplomacy (Sept 28) Barton J. Bernstein, Understanding Decisionmaking: U.S. Foreign Policy and the Cuban Missile Crisis, International Security, Vol.25, Summer 2000 (Sept 28) Ernest R. May and Philip D. Zelikow, The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, l997) Sheldon M. Stern, Averting The Final Failure : John F. Kennedy and the Secret Cuban Missile Crisis Meetings (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003) Graham Allison and Philip Zelikow, Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis. 2 nd. Edition (New York: Addison Wesley Longman, l999) VII. THE VIETNAM WAR The Vietnam War is a case where a strategy of coercive diplomacy was consciously pursued by U.S. policymakers at the time but the result was ultimate defeat at the hands of the adversary. Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon all tried their hand at bringing the war to a close but the North Vietnamese prevailed. The Vietnam War is a classic example of what military analysts and policymakers today call asymmetric warfare where one side dominates the other in terms of firepower and technological capability but can in the final analysis lose to a determined and committed foe. REQUIRED READING William E. Simons, U.S Coercive Pressure on North Vietnam, Early 1965, Chapter 7 in The Limits of Coercive Diplomacy (Oct 5) James McAllister, Who Lost Vietnam: Soldiers, Civilians, and U.S. Military Strategy, International Security, Vol. 35, No. 3, Winter 2010/2011 (Oct 5) Robert A. Pape, Coercive Air Power in the Vietnam War, International Security, Vol.15, No.2, Autumn 1990 (Oct 5 ) ADDITIONAL READING

6 Wallace J. Thies, When Governments Collide: Coercion and Diplomacy in the Vietnam Conflict, l (Berkeley: University of California Press, l980) Fredrik Logevall, Choosing War: The Lost Chance for Peace and the Escalation of War in Vietnam (Berkeley: University of California Press, l999) William Conrad Gibbons, The U.S. Government and the Vietnam War, Part III: January- July l965 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, l989) VIII. PRELUDE TO OPERATION EL DORADO CANYON (LIBYA 1986) In April 1986 the Reagan Administration carried out a military strike on five target complexes in Tripoli, the capital of Libya. The strike was in part a retaliation for a terrorist bombing at a disco in West Berlin, which resulted in some U.S. casualties and was believed by the Administration to be instigated by Libyan intelligence organizations. For some time Libya had been on the U.S. State Department list as a terrorist state and the disco bombing provided the catalyst for the Administration to employ substantial force against Qaddafi and his government. The Administration s stated goal was to roll back Qaddafi s terrorist activities (put him back in his box ) by means of this military attack. REQUIRED READING Tim Zimmermann, Coercive Diplomacy and Libya, Chapter 9 in The Limits of Coercive Diplomacy (Oct. 12) Edward Schumacher, The United States and Libya, Foreign Affairs, Vol.65, No. 2, Winter 1986/87 (Oct 12) ADDITIONAL READING Robert E. Venkus, Raid on Qaddafi (New York: St. Martin s Press, l992) David Martin and John Walcott, Best Laid Plans: The Inside Story of America s War Against Terrorism (New York: Harper and Row, l988) George P. Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph (New York: Charles Scribner s Sons, l993) Lawrence Freedman, A Choice of Enemies: America Confronts the Middle East (New York: PublicAffairs, 2008) MID-TERM EXAMINATION (OCT 19) IX. THE PERSIAN GULF WAR

7 The 1991 Gulf War or Persian Gulf War started when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and Western powers led by the United States intervened to force the Iraqi dictator to retreat to his own country. Numerous kinds of sanctions had been imposed by the UN and the United States prior to the invasion and intervention but these sanctions failed to deter Iraq from avoiding IAEA inspections of its suspected WMD sites and from threatening his neighbors with aggressive actions. Lawrence Freedman and Efraim Karsh, How Kuwait Was Won: Strategy in the Gulf War, International Security, Vol.16, Fall 1991 (Oct 26) Richard Herrmann, Coercive Diplomacy and the Crisis over Kuwait, l990-l991, Chapter 10 in The Limits of Coercive Diplomacy (Oct 26) Lawrence Freedman and Efraim Karsh, The Gulf Conflict : Diplomacy and War in the New World Order (Princeton: Princeton University Press, l993) Michael R. Gordon and Bernard E. Trainer, The Generals War: The Inside Story of the Conflict in the Gulf (New York: Little Brown, l995) Steve A. Yetiv, Explaining Foreign Policy: U.S. Decisionmaking & The Persian Gulf War (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004) Alan Munro, Arab Storm: Politics and Diplomacy Behind the Gulf War (London: I.B. Tauris, 2006) X. COERCIVE DIPLOMACY AND NUCLEAR PROLIFERATION One can distinguish between two different kinds of U.S. policy toward the proliferation of nuclear weapons. U.S. non-proliferation or anti-proliferation policy seeks to deter or prevent a country from initially acquiring nuclear weapons. U.S. counterproliferation policy seeks to reverse or roll back a country s nuclear weapons program that has developed some momentum and appears to be on a course that will lead to a credible nuclear capability. The coercive diplomacy paradigm is therefore appropriately addressed to U.S. policies aimed at countering weapons programs already underway. The great concern of the United States with regard to nuclear proliferation is that a country inimical to U.S. national security may use the weapons to advance that country s terrorist agenda. REQUIRED READING Scott D. Sagan, Why Do States Build Nuclear Weapons? Three Models in Search of a Bomb, International Security, Vol. 24, Winter l996/l997 (Nov 2))

8 Noah Feldman, Islam, Terror, and the Nuclear Age, The New York Times Magazine, October 29, 2006 (Nov 2) William C. Potter and Gaukhar Mukhatzhanova, Divining Nuclear Intentions: A Review Essay, International Security, Vol.33, Summer 2008 (Oct 2) ADDITIONAL READING Michael E. Brown, Owen R. Cote, Jr., Sean M. Lynn-Jones and Steven E. Miller, Going Nuclear: Nuclear Proliferation and International Security in the 21 st Century (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2010) Kurt M. Campbell, Robert J. Einhorn and Mitchell B. Reiss, The Nuclear Tipping Point: Why States Reconsider Their Nuclear Choices (Washington, DC; Brookings Institution Press, 2004) Helen E. Purkitt and Stephen F. Burgess, South Africa s Weapons of Mass Destruction (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005) George Perkovich, India s Nuclear Bomb: The Impact on Global Proliferation (Berkeley: University of California Press, l999) XI. NORTH KOREA For more than a decade the United States has tried to keep North Korea from developing a full-fledged nuclear weapons capability. The United States has so far relied solely on a policy of diplomacy and sanctions to counter North Korea s progress but to no avail. Although North Korea was a signatory of the Non-Proliferation Treaty in the mid-1960s, it has consistently failed to meet its obligations to the treaty. As in the case of previous Administrations, the Obama Administration has avoided any suggestion that the use of overt force to compel North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons and programs is a nearterm policy option. Jonathan Pollack, No Exit: North Korea, Nuclear Weapons and International Security (Nov 9) Victor D. Cha and David C. Kang, Nuclear North Korea: A Debate on Engagement Strategies (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003) Gordon G. Chang, Nuclear Showdown: North Korea Takes on the World (New York: Random House, 2006)

9 Leon Sigal. Disarming Strangers: Nuclear Diplomacy with North Korea (Princeton: Princeton University Press, l998) North Korean Security Challenges: A Net Assessment. A Strategic Dossier. London: International Institute of Strategic Studies, 2011 XII. IRAN The weight of current evidence uncovered by the International Atomic Energy Agency is that Iran is embarked on a full-fledged nuclear weapons program. So far, the United States has been content to only apply various kinds of sanctions on Iran and has refrained from taking measures that could be identified as latent threats of force as part of a coercive diplomacy strategy. In this section we examine the various options open to the United States as the Iranians continue to make progress in its nuclear weapons program and consider in some detail what a coercive diplomacy strategy might look like should this be the preferred option for the United States. Dana H. Allin and Steven Simon, The Sixth Crisis: Iran, Israel, America and the Rumors of War (Nov 16) Shahram Chubin, Iran s Nuclear Ambitions (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2006) Saira Khan, Iran and Nuclear Weapons (London: Taylor Francis Ltd., 2011) Ray Takeyh, Guardians of the Revolution: Iran and the World in the Age of the Ayatollahs (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009) Iran s Nuclear, Chemical, and Biological Capabilities: A Net Assessment. A Strategic Dossier. London: International Institute of Strategic Studies, 2010 THANKSGIVING BREAK: NO CLASS NOVEMBER 23 XIII.CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS AND REVIEW FOR FINAL EXAMINATION (Nov 30)