Episode 30: Coercion: Deterrence and Compellence

Profiles in strategy, a podcast series of talks by the U.S. Naval War College Strategy and Policy Department. I'm your host, Lieutenant Colonel John O'Gorman, United States Marine Corps. The views expressed herein do not necessarily represent the views of the Naval War College or the United States. [Music] All right. Hello and welcome everyone to Profiles in strategy. This is episode 30. We are talking about coercion, deterrence and compelence. I'm the Lieutenant Colonel John O'Gorman, United States Marine Corps, your host from the U.S. Joining me today, first one of my colleagues from the strategy and policy department, Commander Dan Post, Military Professor. Dan, welcome. Next we have outside guests joining us today for the first time on the podcast. First is Dr. Reed Polly. He is the Dean's assistant professor of Nuclear Security and Policy at the Watson Institute of Brown University and also an assistant professor of political science. Welcome, Reed. Pleasure to be here. And last but certainly not least Brigadier General Greg Bowen, United States Army retired, former deputy director of operations at U.S. Strategic Command and a member of the National Institute for Deturns Studies. General, welcome. Thank you very much. All right. So for our listeners, we're going to talk about coercion theory, what it is, what it does, and then hopefully by the end here how it could potentially apply to different scenarios, namely perhaps Russia in the Ukraine or China in Taiwan. But first, let's start with the theory. So coercion 101 and its sub-departments of deterrence and compelence. So Reed, let's start with you. Give us the, give us the low down here, the background on coercion. Sure. So I'm excited to have this conversation. I teach a class here that's called coercion deterrence and compelence. So I also teach classes on nuclear strategy in general. And you know, coercion theory is fascinating to civilian and military students. And it's something that that has been consistent throughout human history. If we define it just as the practice of making threats to try and get what you want in international politics, right? So every coercive interaction requires three things. One is that I've made a threat that there is some punishment. There's a looming that that I can impose upon you as the target of my threat. The second thing is that it has a demand. There's something that actually wants you to do that is tied to that threat. And the third thing, whether I've made it explicit or not, but can just be implied by threat making, isn't assurance that it's a choice that I am giving you that if you disobey, that you will suffer the consequences and that will carry out my threat. But also that if you do obey, that you can avoid the punishment. We call that an assurance in the language of Tom Schelling. So those three things are required. My field goes and kind of studies this even more broadly. And if you add in terrets, we often call it coercive diplomacy. If you're adding in kind of bribes to help just bargain with a rational target to try and get them to do what you want. The key concept behind all this is credibility. The target does not have any incentive to do what you want them to do if your threats are not perceived as credible or your assurances are not perceived as credible. I should clarify by the way that every time I go to Washington, when I talk about assurance this way, it's confusing because people only think about assurance and the sense of allies, right, that we reassure our allies that we will be there to defend them. But that's a very different concept than what Schelling meant when he used the term assurance to mean the contingency of the choice implied by every threat. And so I'm an an act of white of Schelling and I come at this from studying in his legacy in the discipline thinking about when threats work and when they don't, when coercion succeeds and when it fails. And the key distinction that Schelling made was between compelling threats and deterrent threats, deterrence being to prevent from action by mean fear of consequences. So if deterrent succeeds, the target simply has to do nothing. They sit on their hands and we think our deterrent has worked. It's a selection problem to try and figure out whether that actually is what worked. But long story short, they don't have to do anything for deterrent's work. Compalence is a lot harder because I am actually trying to force you to take action through fear of consequences. So there are lots of reasons why it's more difficult. But if I make a compelling threat, I have to get you to get off your seat and actually take action. I have threatened to make the first move if you do not. I have to assure you that once I take action that I'm going to stop if you start to comply, that's harder to do. And you have to do something in public as an take action. So there's a face saving problem associated with the components. So components are a lot harder. Those are the two main types of coercion. And that's the language that I'm going to use today and continue to use in class that we should clarify because some people think of coercion as distinct from deterrents. But I'm in the shelling school that says there's this concept of coercion and there's two types of coercion deterrents and components. And components is a lot harder. Now I laid out a lot of concepts there. I think I should stop talking for now. But I'll be very interested to dig into all of these things with practitioners in the room. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you, Reid. So speaking of practitioners, Gerald Bowen, why don't we go to you next in terms of what you think of as a practitioner when we talk about deterrents' components? Yeah. So being the dumb army guy that I am, I'll have to simple it down just a little bit because Reid's description reminded me of being married. And as you all know, we're all afraid of our wives and we comply with her guidance, right? So but from from my perspective and shelling a lot of good stuff, I happen to be a Herman Kahn fan myself, but just a kind of a different approach to the problem. But the way that I look at it, if you break it down into deterrents and components, really what we're doing in deterrents is we're trying to prevent an adversary or some actor from doing something that we don't want them to do. And conversely, for components, we're trying to force them to do something that they don't want to do. And we do that through a variety of means. And as you know, you guys in the Naval War College, I'm sure, also teach DIME. So we're looking at all the elements of national power, not just kinetic threats, but looking at across the DIME domains and what can we do as a country to force somebody to do something that they don't want to do or prevent them from doing something that we don't want them to do. So I kind of look at it, it's a little bit more simplistic in my world, but all really good points. Okay, thank you. Dan, any thoughts on this? Just a quick thought about coercion in general is in contrast in Shelling's language to the other option you have to get the adversary to do what you want to do, which is brute force. So that's the language that Shelling uses. And he uses some other words other times, but that's kind of the main thing. And so one of the things that like our students at the War College, everybody kind of comes in thinking about I'm the military, I'm the forceful side of the equation here. So we tend to get focused on how do we make the enemy do what we want through the use of force, right? So that, but that that type of thinking that that's the contrast to coercion. So and in any conflict and in any any strategy even when you're thinking about this, you're always doing a little bit of both. If you've gone to if you've gone to the use of military force, you're probably you've decided to use force. You're probably trying to just, you know, defeat the enemy and make them do what you want to do. That would be brute force. They don't have to make any choices. It's the equivalent of picking them up and physically moving them out of a room, right? You pick them up, you push them out the door. They don't have to comply with you for that. But if you try to convince them to walk out that now you're trying to coerce them. So you have the brute force element and then you have the coercion element. And I think it's important for our students and practitioners in general to think about when you're you know, when you're trying to do each of those things or you know, what's the what's the balance? Am I just trying to force this enemy to do what I want or am I actually trying to do a do something coercive with my use of force? And it helps to think about that. And then the other point I'll just add is and this was also kind of shelling's one of his broader points, which is even though so I agree with read 100% components is much more difficult. And we can talk a little bit more about that if you want. But both deterrence and compelence coercion in general is also difficult and that was something shelling I think wanted to get across to his students or you know in his work was that both of these are difficult because it requires the adversary to do something and you know or to not do something but it requires a cooperation in some sense of the adversary and so it's difficult there are no easy answers to which capabilities make this work etc so you know hopefully we're going to I think we're going to talk a little bit more about that like what makes this work so I just want to add that thanks yeah that's so that's an interesting an interesting segue in terms of what what makes it work because I there's there's a couple examples that that jump to my mind of you know we bomb Saddam Hussein for years and with whatever effects and then we decided in 2003 that wasn't enough we tried to bomb the Serbs when they were uh fighting against in in in Kosovo and whatnot and that didn't that didn't work until Kroak ground forces came in so there's there's a way to um you know see where the see where theory breaks down but read I'm sorry you wanted it we'll want to respond go ahead to that well I just saw that uh Dan man excellent point right to point out the original distinction between brute force and coercion um and you know as much as uh coercion has been consistent consistent practice from by you know political leaders for um millennia um it is no surprise that we got really into studying it in the United States only in the nuclear age thinking about how nuclear weapons changed international politics this is shelling still the whole point of you know his book is to say look the world is different now and I'm not so confident anymore that we can make credible threats and I have to we have to talk about figure out ways how we can signal our interests to try and get what we want in our international politics when everybody knows that there are very small a small set of circumstances in which we'd actually be willing to use nuclear weapons and so so it's this um you know distinction between an age of brute force where it used to be the case that you had offensive power to try and impose your will on others and defensive power to try and resist the will of others to be imposed upon you and now thinking that the world will be governed more by coercive interactions and the perception of of the threats that are credible or not and that's how political disputes are going to be shaken out rather than through brute force now you know this leads to lots of interesting thinking about when coercion can succeed or fail but dance point is a really good one that in general coercion is a very low probability strategy of success right so if you especially look at components there've been scholars who try and count it you know and do a quantitative analysis throughout history um and they come up with numbers that are pretty consistently around one third success so the United States has achieved success in about a third of the compelling threats that has made against other actors in the international system and there are lots of reasons why that's hard it's because the deck is stacked against you you know for starters could shake out our disputes a different way we wouldn't make threats so like we're already selecting into the really hard cases where we try coercive means another thing that there's a really fascinating article written on just last year by Katie Powers and Dan Altman is about the psychology of coercion people don't like doing what they're told if you come and tell them you know you have to behave a certain way otherwise I'm gonna hurt you there's just like a bristling that happens there where they say well I don't know what I was gonna do before necessarily but I don't want to do it now that you've told me I can't you know I want to resist and so there's there are lots of reasons why it is it is a difficult strategy to make successful but it's also one that is the chief means by which you know nuclear world especially nations can shake out any disputes over the status quo that they have by trying to communicate how resolved I am and whether I am more resolved than you over this issue so it's critically important to study but not surprising that it has a low success rate so that that what you said rhyme is with a lot of the stuff we talk about in the strategy and policy course because we studied the Cold War and you know the advent of nuclear weapons and how so we're the only nation to use nuclear weapons and then five years later when Korea was going on the fact that we had nuclear weapons didn't prevent the North Koreans from crossing the 30th parallel nor did it prevent the Chinese from getting involved in that in that conflict after we'd intervened but Eisenhower when he's elected president in 52 does kind of make some very coercive threats with with the nuclear big stick that says hey we're gonna end the war because all means are on the table or you know worst that effect he makes that threat and you know whether or not it has something to do with Stalin dying and then pieces may or you know an armistice son in any way Korea but after that period of time that threat of we have nuclear weapons doesn't seem to work in any of our other Cold War conflicts Vietnam you know Afghanistan the fact that we have nukes doesn't really stop people from crossing borders or attacking what would you say to that read yeah from from that very early conflict in the in the nuclear age and onwards we have we have learned more and more about the small set of circumstances under which nuclear weapons are useful tools in international politics so you know the nuclear taboo is starting to take hold already at that time that and you see Eisenhower administration officials you know especially dullest staying things like this is really bad it's scary you know we don't want there to be a taboo against the use of nuclear weapons because we would like other people to think that we will use our nuclear weapons you know it undermines the credibility of our deterrent but you know in general what it what it's revealing is is just that you know we continue to learn throughout the nuclear is that nuclear weapons are are not you know the ultimate weapon that prevents political disagreements of so-called international politics international politics is the same as it's always been but we now are rowing in the same boat as our adversaries where we have to all agree that we're not going to you know cause civilization ending war but we still have these disagreements so it's not surprising to see uses of conventional force and crises still in the nuclear age because politics is still politics we just do it a little more on tenter hooks worried about escalation but you know they putting a scholarly lens on this the concept that that clarifies all they're supposed to clarify all this comes originally from Snyder about the stability instability paradox I was just about to introduce that well why don't you do that I've been doing too much talking yeah Dan the the bright brown university student to tell us more about the stability and stability paradigm well you you you were essentially describing it you know which is you were of course why you let me write to this but you know essentially one thing that nuclear weapons arguably seem to do is sort of put a cap on what states are willing to attempt to do you know so they're they're have not been those types of major great state state on state wars between the great powers since the you know whichever those great powers are at any given time in the nuclear era and yet you still have all these lower level conflicts and so that's what Snyder was describing and what the stability instability paradox sort of is which is that everyone knows no one will will risk the world ending nuclear confrontation and therefore it makes it safe to do these things at the lower levels of competition and conflict because they understand that they may lose but they'll they'll lose in that limited context they're not they're you know because they're because they're not demanding you know the ultimate aims they're not going to suffer the ultimate consequence and so this this has become you know kind of the state of the world in my opinion is that we have a certain level of stability and then vast amounts of instability below that level of conflict and it's what policymakers now are struggling with and you know the the ultimate goal is for you know policymakers and is to how can we succeed in this environment where you know there's a limit to what we can do and what our adversaries are going to do in response but you know how can we use our power. because we're kind of limited in a way. Yeah, I wonder if this is Ukraine today. This is the more confident you are that nobody is interested in fighting a strategic nuclear war. The more confidently you can engage in conventional uses of force. And that has permitted Vladimir Putin to engage in a conventional war brutally in Ukraine while using nuclear weapons as a shield behind which to engage in that conventional aggression. Right. Yeah. Right. So why don't we get general bow and thoughts on this concept? Well, interesting conversations. So I think a lot of most countries probably view the United States as is always trying to be the good guy to hold the moral high ground. And they probably know that based on that we've that there's a reasonable chunk of our population that is opposed to nuclear weapons. You see all the anti new people and, you know, I think that Putin's move into the Ukraine has his silence them a little bit because maybe they're realizing it's still a dangerous world out there. But there's this kind of this moral component to it and read kind of touched on it. But we're the good guys. So we're not going to go and nuke some little country. If we can go in there with our conventional forces and get the job done that we need to do. So I think it. From a nuclear perspective when you're looking at deterrence. We don't we don't have credibility or we they probably question if we have the resolve to actually follow through with the threats that we're making. And as a result of that, I mean, we don't make we don't threaten countries with nuclear war that much. We threaten them if they attack us. We're going to attack you back. But we don't we don't use that as a course of tool. I don't think it's kind of in the background. It's sort of unspoken. It's there. But I think everybody in the world is pretty convinced that the United States isn't going to conduct a first strike on some country to get their attention. So it's it's kind of a difficult. It's a messy business to try to quantify what that would look like in the real world. So I you know, I kind of. The point Dan made, you know, there hasn't been great power competition or war on the planet since 1945. So you can make an argument that nuclear deterrence has worked with the only country who's ever dropped on an anger to. And you know, it's it's changed the dynamic, I think of of international conflict. But that said, I don't think that the nuclear threat is a valid one in any situation or case except for something, something large like. And that's a good thing, right? Maybe maybe accepting that that's true is is okay. But also and also the threat, the credibility like read mentioned earlier, the credibility of nuclear threats for less than existential or major things is not unique to the United States every nuclear power suffers that credibility problem. So it's something. I would maybe take a step back from that because I'm watching Kim Jong-un and I'm not sure if that would apply to him. He seems a moderately unhinged at times. I don't think he's irrational. I think he's he's got a plan. But I'm not sure that applies to the the earlier nuclear powers us the Russians, the Chinese and others, the French, the Brits. I think you're spot on. But now you've got these other actors out there. You've got the North Koreans. I'm sure soon enough the Iranians are going to be banned in the same bunch. And how does how does it work with them? That's actually an interesting question because it seems like so if you know as read mentioned the concept of assurances or credible threats. If you're a, we'll call it a smaller actor like North Korea or someday a wrong or whatever, how do you build up the credible threat that you have nukes and you're willing to use them in order to deter or compel, you know, to get the United States out of your area of operations or just intimidate your neighbors and people around you. Go ahead. Go ahead. Well, we pushed them into it. If you think about it, they watched what we did to Saddam when Saddam didn't want to play nice and cut off. Okay, we just went in there and rolled right through and he's looking at his situation. And he thinks his only way to remain in power is to have nukes and be able to threaten us and it's working. Yeah, and I think there's a certain amount of credibility that comes with the threat for these actors is existential or could be and certainly could be perceived as an existential threat to them. And that's that's the circumstance under which nuclear threats are more credible. Perhaps inherently credible. If you know, I don't think anyone doubts that the United States would use every tool at its disposal if we were suffering a massive invasion of the continental United States. No one doubts that right that that would be or you know, few people would probably doubt that. And so if in the North, you know, North Korea or a smaller actor that could conceivably the regime could be changed at least if not the entire country overrun and and destroyed. And I say, no, I know what you can do to me and I'm willing to resist that. It's they do have a they do have an edge in credibility under those circumstances. I think you're probably right about that. But go ahead, read jump in. Well, no, I think I broadly agree with this right and and want to I think part of my job and this conversation is to inject the academic, I don't know, thinking or definitions. It's very difficult right to answer questions that says, you know, but you know, we hear this in policy all the time that like, oh, our threats are less credible than theirs or, you know, our deterrent is not as strong as it could be or whatever. Anything that's phrased in generalities like that. It's actually not. It's not like, you know, possible to kind of evaluate in an academic way. What I mentioned earlier is the demand portion of a course of interaction. I can always be thought of as like stakes right or what is this thing over. So if somebody says in my students, say it's all time, right, like is deterrence working. And then we can make a question because you got to tell me about what you who you are attempting to deter from doing what very specifically. And then we can make an assessment of, you know, whether it is work well in that circumstance and what might work better. So, so yes, you know, that we think the North Koreans are making credible threats of nuclear retaliation in the event that someone attempts to invade North Korea. Because everybody would probably make pretty credible threats. Any nuclear power would probably have an easier time making credible threats to retaliate against someone who has used force that existentially threatens their sovereignty, you know, they're continued existence as the government of that state. And how do you make it credible? You know, you do exactly what Kim Jong-un is doing. You have to test the capability. You have to demonstrate that you are, you are capable. You're integrating the military forces into your doctrine and your command of control system is robust and he's talking about predaligation now, right, because we're worried about leadership targeting. He's behaving the way that you would expect this nascent nuclear power to behave. And it's working. He is saying that he has taken, for instance, and this will be interesting for us to be able to talk about. He's taken the important step from the perspective of deterrence to build out his tactical nuclear weapons arsenal, so that he can make more credible threats of retaliation. Because he believes that, you know, like, just like NATO during the Cold War that it's really difficult to credibly threaten to nuke Moscow the moment the toe of the first Soviet soldier crosses the border into West Berlin. And that you're susceptible to salami slicing salami tactics as shelling called it. And, and people willing to test where your red lines are. And so what do we do? We try to improve the credibility of the threats we're making by making threats of lower scale use of nuclear weapons. And, and I think it's working from the perspective of is is Kim Jong-un going to successfully deter an invasion of North Korea. So is that the point where theory breaks down because it seems like you have these two theories that fly in the face of one another, the stability and stability paradox as well as this deterrence components. Does nuclear weapons kind of change that in terms of? Um, maybe you should say more about the contradiction you see what I what I see is what I see that that I think is is revealing about how we think about nuclear war. Is that some of these problems of nuclear deterrence are universal and that we have a, we face a choice as the country who is then going to attempt to, you know, preserve a status quo on the Korean Peninsula and prevent provocation from this. Some people think a rational dictator in the North. We have a choice within the stability and stability paradox about how tightly we want to link the conventional and nuclear realms. Right. So, so if we prioritize, right, stabilizing strategic nuclear deterrence between the United States and North Korea, then we are leaving more room for, for what we might call provocation or just crises and maybe even low scale violence right on the peninsula. And then it's a trade off to do anything else though because if we decide that it's really important for us to deter provocations, you know, we're starting now to just get rid of this one on the Korean Peninsula by saying we're, for a long time, we've, we've heard from the US government that we're attempting to deter missile tests. Well, that's obviously not working. And now we're starting to hear language from people that says, okay, no, obviously we're not trying to deter every missile tests and not every missile test as a provocation. Well, whatever, right. We, the, the choices up to us about what the demand is, what are we attempting to deter. And if it's something that's quite low level like a missile test, then you're going to really have to accept the risk of linking more closely the escalation ladder, right. And, and there are choices that you can make in the, in the military signals that we carry out that are explicitly do things that are more about risk and breakmanship. We haven't talked about breakmanship quite yet. It would be interesting to do that. But that's what states turn to when they can't make credible threats of punishments that instead you have to turn to risk and accept risk. But I think, you know, that's a reasonable debate to have. And I shy away from it a little bit to think that, that, you know, I'm not so interested in accepting risks of escalation to deter things like missile tests, but we can fight about where the line is, right. We'd like to deter, you know, the sinking of the Chonon, for example, right. That's a serious use of conventional force that we would like to be able to deter. But then you, you've got these debates amongst ourselves about how much risk of escalation are you willing to accept in order to prevent the stability and stability paradox from making those provocations somewhat more acceptable, or at least reduce the credibility of the punishment to prevent them. Okay, interesting. General Bowen, let's go to you on this one. I don't have a whole lot more to add honestly. I mean, it's a, Reed's point is spot on on in terms of deterring missile tests, for example. And at the time I was still on active duty, that's one of the things we were trying to do. And we struggled with it, you know, and obviously it didn't work. So you've got to be able to present the credible threat and and impose consequences if there's bad behavior. And we talk a good talk, but we don't always walk a good walk for a number of reasons. So then you had something to add to that. Yeah, well, I was just, I was just thinking because I feel, feel like we've talked about this in different ways already, but maybe we could wrap it up in a bow for our students at least and people listening, but you know, we've talked a little bit about how do you make what makes this work, right? What makes compelling threats work? We talked a lot about credibility is obviously a part of that, right? Your threat has to be credible. We talked about communication. So I was thinking maybe we could sort of summarize those points. And also I wanted to hear a little bit more about the role of assurance in all of this that I know Reed talks about in his class. But you know, and because I also was hoping we could take some of these threads, you know, talking about specifics like Ukraine or China and Taiwan a little bit later in the in the podcast, but in terms of, you know, what makes deterrence work is specifically deterrence, you know, we can talk about compelence as well as additional elements, I think, maybe. But what makes it work and how important is the insurance role? So anybody want to start on that question? I can, I mean, I can start. Because you're asking about assurance. Yeah, well, I'm asking about sort of like trying to put it all together and say, okay, you know, what at least theoretically makes deterrence work best, right? What are the best practices to make a deterrent, you know, a state that is attempting to deter another state from an action? What's the what are the best things to do? And how do you do them to make that successful? And I know assurance is part of that. I'll add, I'll just, you know, on on a little more of the theory here, right? What makes deterrence work? For starters, yes, it's critically important that you communicate an assurance that you are also happy with the status quo. Because deterrence defends the status quo. We're saying, don't do anything. Don't change the status quo. And if simultaneous to that, you send signals to the other country that you are interested in changing the status quo, well, then they have less of an interest to comply because you are not saying, don't do anything. You're saying, let me change the status quo. That's not deterrence anymore. That could be, you know, components are a fate of complete. I worry about this today. I know a lot of people do in the case of Taiwan, since you brought it up. Credibility of our threats is an eye of the beholder. So Beijing might look at American deterrent threats over Taiwan and say, okay, you know, we believe that the United States is either going to come to the aid of Taiwan or going to pose such great costs on us that if we choose to invade Taiwan and unified by force, that we are deterred from taking that action. We think that they will actually punish us. And so we think American deterrent threats are credible. But at the same time, the United States is signaling through this change of from strategic ambiguity, just strategic clarity, changing something about the one China policy. And if the status quo is the one China policy, actions that we start to take that signal that maybe we're interested in a sovereign Taiwan one day is going to undermine that's the stability of deterrence over Taiwan. So that's a critical assurance component. The other thing is just you're asking about best practices, right? We talk about the best practices in IR as signaling to try and tie your hands and sink costs over the stakes of the dispute. So forward deploying conventional forces to allied countries as a signal that we are willing to bear the costs of this deployment, maybe even the risk of this deployment, right, to signal that this is something we really care about. So that that improves the credibility in the eye of the beholder because I've shown you I'm willing to sink some costs into the issue. I really care about it. And another thing it does is it ties my hands because these forces can act as a tripwire that you might not think that I am interested in defending the Baltics. But if in taking the Baltics somebody, Russia has to kill Americans to do so, then I have tied the hands of a future administration by saying that, you know, look, it's not just the Baltics that are at stake here, but it's American military personnel as well. So sunk costs and tied hands are those sort of strategies we talk about. Yeah, to segue off of that if I may on assurance, one of the things that frustrates me or did frustrate me, yeah, it still frustrates me, is what is US grand strategy? It seems to me that it changes every time the occupant of the White House changes. There are some elements of it that stay the same, but when you think about assurance, you want to have some predictability, right? And if you compare our system to what China does, China has a long-term plan and they're executing it, our plan is all over the map depending on who we elect. And I would be interested in your guys' thoughts without getting political on this, is how do you think that our political system plays into our ability to have assurance? Yeah, you know, when you say that, Joe, the thing that jumps to my mind because I served in the campaign with the defeat ISIS mission was when the Syrians used chemical weapons on their own people. And President Obama had said months before, "Oh, if they use chemical weapons, then we'll consider strikes and whatever that would be a red line, use the term red line." And then what it happens. I didn't say I didn't say red line. But then the Syrians do it again fast forward two years, whatever it is. And then President Trump actually launches strikes into Syria. It seems like during, and that's one of the things that you talked about reading in terms of assurances where we lost a lot of credibility when the president failed to adhere to that red line. I don't know if that's, you know, that's a reputation for making good on threats, right? So reputation for threat making, but it would be entirely different than a reputation for making good on assurances. So the reputation will hit the, on the assurance side that's much more significant from the Obama administration is the intervention in Libya. This is the, you know, it's the fascinating one where I think it demonstrates sort of the limits of being able to assure anybody, coercively assure anybody, given that we have a democracy, let alone now a very partisan polarized democracy. But it's not like the Obama administration came in thinking what we really want to do is topple the Kedafi government, right? That wasn't a goal of the administration. If anything, this was an issue that was distracting from other things they wanted to accomplish in the world. But, you know, thinking about through the lens of assurance, in the 2003 Bush administration deal to disarm Libyan WMD program had it with it and implied and sometimes explicit assurance that said, if you comply and give up your WMD program and you will remain, we will not invade, you will not become the next Saddam Hussein, we will not invade and you can remain the government of Libya. Then we get 2011 and the opportunity presents itself to a different administration to get rid of this dictator who's been afforded in the side of the, of many American presidents for generations and, and they take it, they take the opportunity to provide close air support to the rebels on the ground who killed Kedafi. What that suggests to me is that that there's an inherent limit to assurance in general in a democracy or maybe even just in any country because as time goes on, opportunities arise that you did not anticipate and, and you, you don't necessarily have had to seek out or be interested in in reneging on an assurance that you or somebody else has made in the past, but sometimes you're going to. And so given that nobody can guarantee that they know what the future holds, this is an inherent problem for coercion in general. Yeah, it's interesting. So why don't we move the conversation on that in terms of how this plays into making good strategy? Is, are we, you know, given the limitations that we just talked about in terms of assurances between administrations, we could also say as you as you alluded to read the, you know, the, the concept of signaling might also have some limitations in a, in a cross cultural world, right, a signal, a very clear signal to the United States may mean something completely different to the Chinese or the Russians. So, so how, given the limitations of what we're talking about in terms of what we can and can't do with coercion, whether it's conventional or nuclear, how do we then make strategy? How do we, how do we set strategy in terms of these different aims that we have around the world? And so actually, why don't we start, General Bowman with you in this one? Well, it kind of goes back to my last comment. It was one of my frustrations. If I were the benevolent dictator of the universe for one day, one of the things I would, I would make happen is that national security and our grand strategy would transcend politics, partisan politics. We should all be on the same team on that. We can argue about all the other stuff going on, but in my view, that we need to have that, that serious discussion and come to some agreements. So we can look at things in a more through a longer term lens than we do right now, instead of every four-year presidential election cycle. And of course, the budget that goes with it coming out of the Congress, there's no predictability in that. So I think if we could find some level of agreement on what are the big rocks strategically that are vital U.S. national interests and focus all of our attention on those, I think everything else would follow. But obviously easier said than done. Yeah, interesting. Yeah, sir, I agree with you that the frustration over grand strategy and what it is and what the United, what grand strategy is in theoretical sense, what is that? And then what is our strategy, the United States, do we have one? Does it change over time? These are questions we think about a lot at the war college. And I think like you said, I just want to kind of echo your point about being clear about what our, you know, we teach us to our students. This all starts with, what are the political aims? What is it you're trying to achieve? And so if we want to, when we think, how does this coercion stuff play into strategy, we should, we need to be clear about what it is we want to happen or not happen, be specific adversaries at specific times, right? Like Reed was talking about earlier, the, you have to, in order to evaluate the success of this on the back end, you need to know, well, what were we trying to do? And when, with regard to what actor? And then we can say, did it work or not, right? And so on the front end, we have to think about, so, you know, as a concrete example, when we thought that Russia was thinking about invading Ukraine, we had a choice to make. What is it that we really want? Do we really, really want to prevent an invasion? Or do we want to limit the scope of that invasion? Or do we want to, you know, what are we willing to commit? All of that has to be clear in order for us to have a cohesive strategy and it has to be clear in different parts of the world at the same time. So it's a really, really challenging problem. Or with, with regard to Taiwan, what do we really want in regard to Taiwan? I mean, the current policy is we, we support peaceful, resolution to the one China problem, right? As long as it's peaceful, we should be theoretically be okay with it. However, you see elements of the government that maybe are not okay, you know, or have different aims. And so that creates tensions in strategy, which I think we need to avoid. But this is stuff that maybe is beyond, maybe it's too much to ask that we are that unified in our goals and our political, I don't know, it's difficult. But I think it's really important to be clear. I'm kind of, I lean on the clear side because some people talk about a little bit of ambiguity being good in deterrence as well. But at a certain level for me, a little bit of clarity about what you want the other side to do and win or not do is important for successful strategy making. I'll stop there. Yeah, Dan, I was laughing as you said that because our very last podcast, we talked about the war in Ukraine. And we had our senior state department rep, who was served in the embassy in Kiev, Walparoyam Holder. And he said that not only did they get evacuated, but the first people they evacuated were the Marines, for the Guard, the embassy, because they figured that any dead US servicemen on TV when the Russians invaded would compel us to then do something about it. And they didn't want that to happen. So I would say we actually did a very clear show. We were not going to deter the Russians. We were saying things diplomatically, but what we were doing on the ground was signaling that, hey, if you invade, we want to get our. One, and some go so far as to say, and you can debate if you want, but to say the invasion, that was not a deterrence failure, at least the US versus Russia. People argue that that was not a deterrence failure. And in fact, deterrence is holding because there's certain things that haven't happened that we would prefer not to happen. So, you know, this, you know, I don't want to get into that now. But. Well, this goes back to that point. We need to give Rita a chance to get in the conversation. Yeah, but this goes back to that point about what is our aim is our aim to stop nuclear escalation, just like on the Korean peninsula, or is our aim to prevent conventional violence? Because it seems like if we can prevent the nuclear, that's one thing, but the conventional, then, I don't know, Rita's that the ticket for bad behavior for these guys like Putin and nothing came jaw-gung? Not, I think your line of reasoning of these is exactly what I would have brought up. It's a clear given what administration officials were saying prior to the invasion, it's a clear deterrence failure because they were attempting to prevent the invasion through the threat of sanctions. And that obviously failed. And then we get really funny statements from the President of the United States afterwards saying, "Oh, you know, this isn't a deterrence failure. I wasn't trying to deter it." Well, like if you look at the language, they were attempting to deter it, but maybe they didn't have a lot of confidence that sanctions were going to prevent, for change the mind of Vladimir Putin. But what we also get in the aftermath is much better coordination with Europe over what those sanctions are going to be and everyone is surprised by the severity of the economic coercion that comes in afterwards. The fascinating thing, because everyone's interested now in this moment because of the supposed new strategy of disclosing intelligence about the invasion ahead of time. And I do think it was fascinating. We get it probably because Bill Burns was a direct OCIA and he's very interested in the strategy of course of intelligence disclosures and his diplomatic experience and maybe he's thinking along these lines about what makes coercion work and what not, especially using the information piece of the dime. I think there's going to be a lot of exciting books right written about it later when we actually learn the details and other than press reporting on what went on. But the fascinating thing about it from a coercion perspective is that as soon as the administration started releasing information about the intentions of the crumbling to invade, false flag, attack preparations, video recording, propaganda that they were getting ready to release the plans for the puppet government and then after a quick victory to topple Kiev, etc. As soon as you start releasing that information, then demands start coming out in public for everyone to impose sanctions immediately. Why are you waiting? Why would you bother to wait for the invasion to happen before you impose the punishment? Well, that's an assurance problem because if you want a signal to the Kremlin that there is a contingent punishment that you are threatening in order to attempt to deter them from taking action and if you impose that punishment preemptively, you have removed their incentive to comply. So I think the fascinating thing to study on this in this moment of coercive intelligence disclosures is how that interacts with assurance in the coercion context. Interesting. So it strikes me in the time we have left, we should bring up another contemporary example that we've touched on. And that's the China Taiwan problem. So how can we take what we have here in terms of-- and given what we've seen as well with the Ukraine, similar scenario, nuclear on power wants to absorb a conventionally on power that we have ties with, if not security agreements with. Where do we go from here with that problem? General Bolin, let's start this one with you. Yeah, that's a really interesting question. So I've got a theory. And that theory is that the Chinese are going to self-determine from doing anything in Taiwan, at least in the near term. And here's why I say that. The Chinese watch what's happening in the world. And the Ukraine situation, I think, is going to be very instructive for them. Because on paper, the Russians should have rolled through the Ukraine in 60 to 90 days, and it should have been done. But it didn't happen that way. The Ukrainians are fighting much harder than anybody thought they would, because they're defending their homeland. The Russian military has underperformed epically. And the Chinese have got to be kind of taken to look at that going, oh, man, what if that happens to us in Taiwan? The Chinese have a lot of great gear. They've got a bunch of new fighters, and they've got ships, and they've got all sorts of stuff. But what they don't have is any combat experience. And as a Marine, you'll appreciate that. That pulling off an invasion from the sea is not an easy proposition. The last time we did that was what, Injohn. So we haven't done it a long time either. But the Chinese have got to be looking at this and starting to think to themselves, maybe we shouldn't do this. At least that's my hope that they're going to kind of self-determine. But-- and we can get into some of the nuclear deterrent stuff in a bit, I think we're running long time. But that's kind of my initial thought. I see kind of a connection between the two. OK, great. Reed, we'll go to you next. Yeah. I'm running a simulation with my class on politics of nuclear weapons on Taiwan crisis, probably because I think this is the most likely candidate for a crisis that will emerge in their lifetimes, that they need to-- my students need to be thinking about what happens if we get action that's short of war, but are meant to encourage the United States to abandon whenever commitment it has to the defensive Taiwan. So think about blockade. This is-- it's incredibly thorny because the students that have really fascinating debates about how to interpret things like the Taiwan Relations Act. What is the American commitment? What is the commitment we have made to the defense of Taiwan? What are our interests in Taiwan? What other interests should be-- are tied to Taiwan? What is the interdependence of our commitments around the world? It can't be that none of our commitments are interdependent, but it also probably is in the case that all of our commitments are interdependent. And just because-- that's how you get dominoes theories, just because Taiwan falls, means that people won't believe the United States when it makes promises anymore. So I've already shared my basic insight here, which is that this is an assurance problem as much as a-- how to make our threats credible problem. And I think we're struggling in the United States with both sides of that right now because you're starting to get the sense that commitment to supporting a long-war effort in Ukraine is diminishing combat power in such a way that maybe at least in a munitions supply sense, we're reducing the perceptions of the other side, at least, of our commitment to our capacity to fight a war over Taiwan if we wanted to. But at the very same time, even if you have solved that problem, and you have convinced Beijing that there will be significant costs to the invasion, we have also not solved-- we haven't solved the problem with how to convince them that we are actually going to be happy with the status quo and perpetuity. And I hope that those signals are coming through backchannels consistently. So-- and I don't know. So I'm worried, which is why I run the simulation with my class. I am worried that it's not a particularly stable deterrent situation right now. I agree with you, Reed, about the worry, in particular, because the United States seems happy with the status quo or with a peaceful resolution of some kind, a peaceful change to the status quo. But China is not clearly not happy with the status quo. And so you have that-- that's the baseline situation in terms of all the stuff we've been talking about. And so I think from a US perspective, if that's the case, then we need to make it clear and credible and all of that, that it will not be easy for China to non-peacefully change the status quo. I think if that's what we are-- if the United States is committed to, then that's what it's going to take. Because I think China understands the risks and costs that are involved. And they are unlikely to attempt to forcibly change the status quo unless it looks easy. So I kind of think of them as more opportunistic than anything else in terms of Taiwan specifically. I mean, they're obviously revisionist power. They want to change the world and make it work better for them. But in terms of Taiwan, I think it's an opportunistic type of situation where they're patient. And they're single-minded, but they're patient enough that there's hope that the resolution is peaceful at some point down the road. But not without some work on the United States part. And if they get the opportunity, if it looks easy enough, they may try it. But that's again, we don't know. Read, you want to respond to that? Yeah, let me just add, I know we're running out of time here. Just a couple things to think about on the next slide. nuclear lens of this, right? Taiwan, first of all, this is a, you know, government doesn't exist, right? Without the nuclear shadow, right? The American nuclear deterrence is what prevents the communist victors of the Chinese Civil War from from finishing the Civil War in their minds, right? And crossing the Taiwan Straits. And that's the case even though, you know, the United States is not officially extending the nuclear umbrella to Taiwan. But we do worry about this war if it if it ever started going nuclear. And what I would encourage everyone to read on this is Caitlin Townwich's work on inadvertent escalation in a war over Taiwan. Because there are clear pathways by which you can end up fighting a nuclear war with China despite the best interests and intentions of either side to avoid war. Yeah. That's one of our readings for the China War. Yeah. So good. I make sure they hit that one hard. I hit that one every time. So as since we are in an hour here, let's do final wrap up comments. It's been a great discussion. But Reed, why don't we start with you? Final thoughts and closing comments on the stuff we talked about. Oh, gee, an hour is far too short to all of the, the fresh surface of this important issue, right? I just think that that thank you for having me. And I think that the Naval War College is doing some of the best work right to think about these topics and train our next generation of national security leaders to think about them in a very clear and coherent way that is based in theory and as much empirics as possible, even though it's really hard to get good empirical evidence on when things like deterrence work because again, when it works, nothing happens. Right. So it's really hard to get evidence on what works and what doesn't this domain. But it's just critical that we be explicit about what we think works so that we can adjust and, you know, change strategy as necessary and as information kind of reveals itself to us. And, and, you know, I'm just up the street in Providence. So I look forward to more conversations like this. Awesome. Good deal. Dan, why don't we go to you next? Great. This was awesome. I will, I guess if I had any final thoughts about version in general and deterrence and compelence, I would, I would, I would leave our listeners with the, with a thought that we always have to keep in mind that this happens in the mind of the adversary, right. So this is all about the perceptions and understandings and incentives that the adversary possesses to make a choice that they're being presented with, right. And so I worry sometimes when we focus, when when the United States in particular focus too much on having the magic combination of capabilities, right. We need certain weapon systems or we need and these debates we have about how how these things contribute to deterrence, right. They're not always clear about how possessing that capability is going to directly affect the thinking of the adversary. And so that we need to make that second connection. Why is how in what way is what we are doing or what we have going to help or going to impact the other side, which requires deep intelligence work and knowledge and communication and all these things. And so I leave that with that, that final thought and just a, uh, relatively in the United States, the key, the buzz word now in this area is integrated deterrence, right. That's our new, that's the phrase you'll hear with regard to this topic in the government right now. And my fear applies there that we, when we think about it, I just heard the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense talk about this. And she talked about for plans and policy. And when she was asked about what is integrated deterrence, she talked about all about how what we, what we're doing on our side. And there was no discussion about how what we're doing is impacting the decision making of the other side. And I, and I thought it was, to me, that jumps out as an important thing. So we need to think about that second half. So that's my final thought on this. Well, good point. Yeah, thank you. Jerome Bona, one with you. Um, so I'll go with, I got a couple things, um, that I've been working on. One of them is deterrence in space. What does deterrence look like in the space domain? Um, and that's kind of what I've been doing with nids, uh, is looking at it at that. But one of the really thony problems that we're looking at right now, and I know the DOD is, is trying to work on this. And this would be a good thing for your students to think about is three party deterrence. Now we're, we're in the middle of a nuclear breakout that the Chinese are clearly going from a minimum deterrence policy to wanting to be on par with us. So now the US is facing two peer competitors in the nuclear world. And the, the preponderance of, uh, the writings out there on deterrence theory are all two party. They're, they're the US and the USSR or us in Russia. And, you know, so Dan and I together have killed millions of people in computer simulations. We did, we did. We did. And, uh, but we always were thinking about, uh, what we called third party deterrence. So if you're in a major firefight with somebody, uh, nuclear-wise, we always keep back, you know, some capability for opportunistic actors to deter them from taking advantage of the situation. Well, now we've got two peer competitors and potentially opportunistic, um, people out there or countries that may try to take advantage of the situation. So how, how do you, how do you do deterrence with, with three major parties and a few little ones? And then as a follow on to that, is the US triad appropriately sized to handle that kind of threat? So that's kind of what's rambling around in my head and, uh, what we've been thinking about at NIDS. Wow. Awesome. All right. Well, gentlemen, thank you very much. This was interesting and informative. Uh, as always, I, I learned a lot from doing these podcasts. So thank you for your time and, uh, participation. And we will see everybody next time on profiles and strategy. Thank you.