COERCIVE DIPLOMACY IN U.S. FOREIGN POLICY LDST 390-03 JEPSON SCHOOL OF LEADERSHIP STUDIES WEDNESDAY 3:00-5:40 UNIVERSITY OF RICHMOND FALL TERM 2011 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 full-scale war. Second, case studies can provide policymakers with a framework or templateof 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. REQUIRED READING: Alexander L. George and William R. Simons (eds.), The Limits of Coercive Diplomacy, 2nd 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) ADDITIONAL READING: 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.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) ADDITIONAL READING: 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. REQUIRED READING: 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) ADDITIONAL READING: 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 theKorean Peninsula, in Asia, and in the Cold War. The United States made several