Coercive diplomacy
Coercive diplomacy involves the application of air and sea power on a great scale. The application of short brute force in settling dispute is part of this strategy (Jakobsen). There similarly a set of ideal policy which is attributed to four success instances which are vital for coercive diplomacy in the past cases; a justifiable threat of force to outdo the enemy or take away his objectives fast with limited cost, a deadline to adherence, an assurance to the adversary that adherence would result to several demands and an offer carrots when one adheres.
Coercive diplomacy is bound to fail if the ideal policy is not applied. Considering that application of ideal policy it does not ensure success. It may fail if it is wrongly interpreted so as to preserve honor. The policy is intended to limit threat of wrong interpretation. The policy was applied to Kosovo and Afghanistan in 1999 and 2001 respectively.
There are varied advantages that have been noted about the ideal policy framework; it notes where the coercer in the least had to perform to succeed, it may note the results of coercive diplomacy efforts with limited knowledge of the adversary, it may clarify the results after the circumstance, it is easy to understand and apply for practitioners and it identifies the threat of the strategy; war. It disadvantages lie in the deliberate identification of the foes as they will not be able to put to work the tool of coercive diplomacy promotions. Using this technique requires a lot of information about the opponent. The concept is a way to make it possible for policy makers to know if the coercive diplomacy mechanism will work or not. Post-hoc is applied to know if the coercive diplomacy letdowns were as a result of wrong attribution.
To handle aggression, terrorism and WMD proliferations, certain predictions would work which involve the exceptional application of the ideal policy considering that there is no political will and practical problems. The western policy makers were termed to as highly likely to remain to depend highly on air power and land forces to limit the threat of causalities.
Reference
Jakobsen, P. V. (n.d.). Coercive Diplomacy. 278-296.
