Even more commitments are
ambiguous
because of the plain impos- sibility of defining them in exact detail.
Schelling - The Art of Commitment
One of the arguments that has been made, and taken seriously, against having all of our strategic weapons at sea or in outer space or even emplaced abroad, is that the enemy might be able to attack them without fearing the kind of response that would be triggered by an attack on our homeland.
If all missiles were on ships at sea, the argument runs, an attack on a ship would not be quite the same as an at- tack on California or Massachusetts; and an enemy might consider doing it in circumstances when he would not consider attacking weapons located on our soil.
(An extreme form of the argument, not put forward quite so seriously, was that we ought to locate our weapons in the middle of population centers, so that the enemy could never attack them without arousing the massive response that he could take for granted if he struck our
cities. )
There is something to the argument. If in an Asian war we
flew bombers from aircraft carriers or from bases in an allied country, and an enemy attacked our ships at sea or our overseas bases, we would almost certainly not consider it the same as if we had flown the bombers from bases in Hawaii or California and he had attacked the bases in those states. If the Soviets had put nuclear weapons in orbit and we shot at them with rockets the results might be serious, but not the same as if the Soviets had put missiles on home territory and we shot at those missiles on their home grounds. Missiles in Cuba, though owned and manned by Russians, were less "nationalized" as a target than missiles in the U. S. S. R. itself. (One of the arguments made against the use of surface ships in a European Multilateral Force armed with long-range missiles was that they could be picked off by an enemy, possibly during a limited war in which the Multilateral Force was not engaged, possibly without the use of nuclear weapons by an enemy, in a way that would not quite provoke reprisal, and thus would be vulnerable in a way that homeland-based missiles would not be. )
Theargumentcangoeitherway. Thiscanbeareasonforde-
THE ART OF COMMITMENT 59
liberately putting weapons outside our boundary, so that their military involvement would not tempt an attack on our home- land, or for keeping them within our boundaries so that an attack on them would appear the more risky. The point here isjust that there is a difference. Quemoy cannot be made part of California by moving it there, but weapons can.
Actually the all-or-nothing character of the homeland is not so complete. Secretary McNamara's suggestion that even a general war might be somewhat confined to military installa- tions, and that a furious attack on enemy population centers might be the proper response only to an attack on ours, implies that we do distinguish or might distinguish different parts of our territory by the degree of warfare involved. And I have heard it argued that the Soviets, if they fear for the deterrent security of their retaliatory forcesinapurely"military"warthattheAmeri- cans might initiate, may actually prefer a close proximity of their missiles to their cities to make the prospect of a "clean" strategic war, one without massive attacks on cities, less prom- ising- to demonstrate that there would remain little to lose, after an attack on their weapons, and little motive to confine their response to military targets. The policy would be a dangerous one if there were much likelihood that war would occur, but its logic has merit.
Discrediting an Adversary's Commitments
The Soviets have the same deterrence problem beyond their bordersthatwehave. InsomewaystheWesthashelpedthemto solve it. All kinds of people, responsible and irresponsible, intelligent and unenlightened, European and American, have raised questions about whether the United States really would use its full military force to protect Western Europe or to retaliate for the loss of Western Europe. Much more rarely did I hear anyone question- at least before about 1963- whether the Soviets would do likewise if we were provoked to an attack against the homeland of Communist China.
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? The Soviets seem to have accomplished- and we helped
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them- what we find difficult, namely, to persuade the world that the entire area of their alliance is part of an integral bloc. In the West we talked for a decade- until the Sino-Soviet schism became undeniable- about the Sino-Soviet bloc as though every satellite were part of the Soviet system, and as though Soviet determination to keep those areas under their control was so intense that they could not afford to lose any of it. We often acted as though every part of their sphere of influencewasa"California. "IntheWestweseemedtoconcede to the Soviets, with respect to China, what not everybody con- cedes us with respect to Europe.
If we always treat China as though it is a Soviet California, we tend to make it so. If we imply to the Soviets that we con- siderCommunistChinaorCzechoslovakiathevirtualequiva- lent of Siberia, then in the event of any military action in or against those areas we have informed the Soviets that we are going to interpret their response as though we had landed troops in Vladivostok or Archangel or launched them across the Soviet- Polish border. We thus oblige them to react in China, or in North Vietnam or wherever it may be, and in effect give them precisely the commitment that is worth so much to them in de- terring the West. If we make it clear that we believe they are obliged to react to an intrusion in Hungary as though we were in the streets of Moscow, then they are obliged.
Cubawillcontinuetobeaninterestingborderlinecase. The Soviets will find it difficult politically and psychologically to get universal acquiescence that a country can be genuinely within the Soviet bloc if it is not contiguous to them. The Soviet problem was totry togetCubainto the status of a Soviet "Califor- nia. " It is interesting to speculate on whether we could add states to the Union, like the Philippines, Greece, or Formosa, and let that settle the question of where they belong and how obligedwearetodefendthem. Hawaii,yes,andbynowPuerto Rico; but if we reached out beyond the areas that "belong" in the United States we could probablyjust not manage to confer a genuinely plausible "statehood" that would be universally recognized and taken for granted.
THE ART OF COMMITMENT 61
And Cuba does not quite "belong" in the Soviet bloc- it is topologically separate and does not enjoy the territorial integrity withtheSovietblocthatnationstraditionallyenjoy. Indiacould take Goa for what are basically esthetic reasons: a conventional belief that maps ought to have certain geometrical qualities, that an enclave is geographically abnormal, that an island in the ocean can belong to anyone but an island surrounded by the ter- ritory of a large nation somehow ought to belong to it. (Algeria would,forthesamereason,havebeenhardertodisengagefrom metropolitan France had it not been geographically separated by the Mediterranean; keeping the coastal cities in "France" while dividing off the hinterland would similarly have gone somewhat against cartographic psychology. ) There are many otherthings,ofcourse,thatmakeCubadifferentfromHungary, including the fact that the United States can surround it, harass it, or blockade it without encroaching on Soviet territory. But even without that it would be an uphill struggle for the Soviets to achieve a credible togetherness with the remote island of Cuba.
Additional "Cubas" would cost the Soviets something. That does not mean we should like them; still, we should recognize what happens to their deterrence problem. It becomes more like ours. They used to have an almost integral bloc, a geographical unit, with a single Iron Curtain separating their side from the restoftheworld. Onecouldalmostdrawaclosedcurvedline on a globe with everything inside it Soviet bloc and everything outside it not. Yugoslavia was the only ambiguity. It in turn made little Albania an anomaly- only a small one, but its political detachment in the early 1960s confirms the point. Cuba has been the same problem magnified. "Blocness" no longer means what it did. In a geographically tight bloc, satellitescanhavedegreesofaffiliationwiththeU. S. S. R. without necessarily spoiling the definition of the "bloc. " Distant satel- lites, though, not only can be more independent because of Soviet difficulty in imposing its will by violence but they further disturbthe geographicalneatness of the bloc. "Blocness" ceases to be all-or-none;it becomes a matter of degree.
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? This process can then infect the territories contiguous with the U. S. S. R. And if the Soviet Union tempers its deterrent threats, hedging on the distant countries or on countries not fully integrated, it invites examination of the credibility of its threats everywhere. Certain things like honor and outrage are not meant to be matters of degree. One can say that his homeland is inviolate only if he knows exactly what he means by"homeland"anditisnotclutteredupwithfull-fledgedstates, protectorates, territories, and gradations of citizenship that make some places more "homeland" than others. Like virgin- ity, the homeland wants an absolute definition. This character the Soviet bloc has been losing and may lose even more if it
acquires a graduated structure like the old British Empire.
We credited the Soviets with effective deterrence and in doing so genuinely gave them some. We came at last to treat the Sino-Soviet split as a real one; but it would have been wiser not to have acknowledged their fusion in the first place. In our efforts to dramatize and magnify the Soviet threat, we some- times present the Soviet Union with a deterrent asset of a kind that we find hard to create for ourselves. We should relieve the Soviets as much as we can of any obligation to respond to an American engagement with China as to an engagement with Soviet Russia itself. If we relieve the Soviets of the obligation, we somewhat undo their commitment. We should be trying to
make North Vietnam seem much more remote from the Soviet bloc than Puerto Rico is from the United States, to keep China out of the category of Alaska, and not to concede to bloc countries a sense of immunity. Events may oblige us- some of these very countries may oblige us- to initiate some kind of military engagement in the future;I2and we would be wise to decouple those areas, as much as we can, from Soviet military forces in advance. I3
Sometimes a country wants to get out of a commitment- to decouple itself. It is not easy. We may have regretted our commitment to Quemoy in 1958,but there was no graceful way to undo it at that time. The Berlin wall was a genuine embarrass- ment. We apparently had not enough of a commitment to feel obliged to use violence against the Berlin wall. We had undeni- ably some commitment; there was some expectation that we might take action and some belief that we ought to. We did not, and it cost us something. If nobody had ever expected us to do anything about the wall- if we had never appeared to have any obligation to prevent things like the wall, and if we had never made any claims about East Berlin that seemed inconsistent with the wall- the wall would have embarrassed us less. Some people on our side were disappointed when we let the wall go up. The United States government would undoubtedly have preferred not to incur that disappointment. Diplomatic state- ments about the character of our rights and obligations in East Berlin were an effort to dismantle any commitment we might previously have had. The statements were not fully persuasive. Had the United States government known all along that some- thing like the wall might go up, and had it planned all along not to oppose it, diplomatic preparation might have made the wall less of an embarrassment. In this case there appeared to be some
residual commitment that we had not honored, and we had to argueretroactivelythatouressentialrightshadnotbeenviolated and that nothing rightfully ours had been taken from us.
The Soviets had a similar problem over Cuba. Less than six weeks before the President's missile crisis address of October 22,1962, the Soviet government had issued a formal statement about Cuba. "We have said and do repeat that if war is unleashed, if the aggressor makes an attack on one state or another and this state asks for assistance, the Soviet Union has the possibility from its own territory to render assistance to any peace-loving state and not only to Cuba. And let no one doubt that the Soviet Union will render such assistance. " And further,
? ? ? ? ? ? ? 13. Possibly the single greatest consequence of the nuclear test bar- and I see no evidence that it was intended in the West, or that it motivated the final negotiations
-
implications into the open. What a diplomatic coup it would have been, had it been contrived that way!
was to exacerbate the Sino-Soviet dispute on security policy and bring its military
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THE ART OF COMMITMENT 65
peoples in the world to be the decisive factor in deterring the aggressive forces of imperialism from unleashing a world war of annihilation. This mission the Soviet Union will continue to discharge with all firmness and consistency. " But "if the aggressors unleash war, the Soviet Union will inflict the most powerful blow in response. " By implication, what the United States Navy was doing, or even might do, was piracy so far, and not war, and the "peace-loving states cannot but protest. " l 4
The orientation was toward an American affront to Cuba, not a Soviet-American confrontation. The key American demand for the "prompt dismantling and withdrawal of all offensive weapons in Cuba" before the quarantine could be lifted- that is, the direct relation of President Kennedy's action to the Sovietmissiles- wasnotdirectlyaddressed. TheSovietschose not to enhance their commitment to Cuba by construing the United States action as one obliging a firm Soviet response; they construed it as a Caribbean issue. Their language seemed designed to dismantle an incomplete commitment rather than to bolster it.
Butjust as one cannot incur a genuine commitment by purely verbal means, one cannot get out of it with cheap words either. Secretary Dulles in 1958 could not have said, "Quemoy? Who cares about Quemoy? It's not worth fighting over, and our defense perimeter will be neater without it. " The United States never did talk its way cleanly out of the Berlin wall business. Even if the letter of our obligations was never violated, there are bound to be some who think the spirit demanded more. We had little obligation to intervene in Hungary in 1956, and the Suez crisis confused and screened it. Nevertheless, there was a possibility that the West might do something and it did not. Maybe this was a convenience, clarifying an implicit under- standing between East and West. But the cost was not zero.
If commitments could be undone by declaration they would be worthless in the first place. The whole purpose of verbal or
14. David L. Larson, ed. , The "Cuban Crisis" of 1962, Selected Documents and Chronology (Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1963), pp. 7- 17, 4 1 4 6 , 50-54.
''The Soviet government would like to draw attention to the fact that one cannot now attack Cuba and expect that the aggressor will be free from punishment for this attack. If this attack is made, this will be the beginning of the unleashing of war. " It was a long, argumentative statement, however, and acknowledged that "only a madman can think now that a war started by him will be a calamity only for the people against which it is unleashed. " And the most threatening language was not singled out for solemn treatment but went along as part of the argument. So there was at least a degree of ambiguity.
President Kennedy's television broadcast of October 22 was directly aimed at the Soviet Union. It was so directly aimed that one can infer only a conscious decision to make this not a Caribbean affair but an East- West affair. It concerned Soviet missiles and Soviet duplicity, a Soviet challenge; and the President even went out of his way to express concern for the Cubans, his desire that they not be hurt, and his regret for the "foreign domination" that was responsible for their predica- ment. The President did not say that we had a problem with Cuba and hoped the Soviets would keep out of it; he said we had an altercation with the Soviet Union and hoped Cubans would not be hurt.
The Soviet statement the following day, circulated to the Se- curity Council of the United Nations, was evidently an effort to structure the situation a little differently. It accused the United States of piracy on the high seas and of "trying to dictate to Cuba what policy it must pursue. " It said the United States government was "assuming the right to demand that states should account to it for the way in which they organize their de- fense, and should notify it of what their ships are carrying on the high seas. The Soviet government firmly repudiates such claims. " The statement also said, "Today as never before, statesmen must show calm and prudence, and must not counte- nance the rattling of weapons. "And indeed there was no rat- ling of weapons in the Soviet statement. The most they said was, "The presence of powerful weapons, including nuclear rocket weapons, in the Soviet Union is acknowledged by all the
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ritualistic commitments, of political and diplomatic commit- ments, of efforts to attach honor and reputation to a commit- ment, is to make the commitment manifestly hard to get out of on short notice. Even the commitments not deliberately in- curred, and the commitments that embarrass one in unforeseen circumstances, cannot be undone cheaply. The cost is the discrediting of other commitments that one would stilllike to be
credited.
If a country does want to get off the hook, to get out of a commitment deliberately incurred or one that grew up unin- tended, the opponent's cooperation can make a difference. The Chinese Communists seemed not to be trying, from 1958on, to make it easy for the United States to decouple itself from Quemoy. They maintained,and occasionally intensified,enough military pressure on the island to make graceful withdrawal difficult, tomake withdrawal looklike retreat under duress. It is hard to escape the judgment that they enjoyed American dis- comfort over Quemoy, their own ability to stir things up at will but to keep crises under their control, and their opportunity to aggravate American differences with Chiang Kai-shek.
Circumventing an Adversary's Commitments
"Salami tactics," we can be sure, were invented by a child; whoever first expounded the adult version had already under- stood the principle when he was small. Tell a child not to go in the water and he'll sit on the bank and submerge his bare feet;
15. The most eloquent rebuff I have come across is the answer the Romans received from the Volciani in Spain, whom they tried to unite with other Spanish cities against Carthage shortly after Rome had declined to defend the allied Spanish town of Saguntum against Hannibal and it had been terribly destroyed. "Men of Rome," said the eldest among them, "it seems hardly decent to ask us to prefer your friendship to that of Carthage, considering the precedent of those who have been rash enough to do so. Was not your betrayal of your friends in Saguntum even more brutal than their destruction by their enemies the Carthaginians? I suggest You look for allies in some spot where what happened to Saguntum has never been heard of. The fall of that town will be a signal and melancholy warning to the peoples of Spain never to count upon Roman friendship nor to trust Rome's word. " The War With Hunnibal, Aubrey de Selincourt, transl. (Baltimore, Penguin Books, 1965), p. 43.
he is not yet "in" the water. Acquiesce, and he'll stand up; no more of him is in the water than before. Think it over, and he'll start wading, not going any deeper; take a moment to decide whether this is different and he'll go a little deeper, arguing that since he goes back and forth it all averages out. Pretty soon we are calling to him not to swim out of sight, wondering whatever happened to all our discipline.
Most commitments are ultimately ambiguous indetail. Some- times they are purposely so, as when President Eisenhower and Secretary Dulles announced that an attack on Quemoy might or might not trigger an American response under the "Formosa Doctrine" according to whether or not it was interpreted as part of an assault, or prelude to an assault, on Formosa itself.
Even more commitments are ambiguous because of the plain impos- sibility of defining them in exact detail. There are areas of doubt even in the most carefully drafted statutes and contracts; and even people who most jealously guard their rights and privi- leges have been known to settle out of court, to excuse an honest mistake, or to overlook a minor transgression because of the high cost of litigation. No matter how inviolate our commit- ment to some border, we are unlikely to start a war the first time a few drunken soldiers from the other side wander across the line and "invade" our territory. And there is always the possi- bility that some East German functionary on the Autobahn really did not get the word, or his vehicle really did break down in our lane of traffic. There is some threshold below which the commitment is just not operative, and even that threshold itself is usually unclear.
From this arises the low-level incident or probe, and tactics of erosion. One tests the seriousness of a commitment by probing it in a noncommittal way, pretending the trespass was inadvertent or unauthorized if one meets resistance, both to forestall the reaction and to avoid backing down. One stops a convoy or overflies a border, pretending the incident was accidental or unauthorized; but if there is no challenge, one continues or enlarges the operation, setting a precedent, estab- lishing rights of thoroughfare or squatters' rights, pushing the
l5
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THE ART OF COMMITMENT 67
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THE ART OF COMMITMENT 69
candles at night and get out voluntarily, than to start manhan- dling his family and his household goods. Blockade works slowly; it puts the decision up to the other side. To invade Berlin or Cuba is a sudden identifiable action, of an intensity that demands response; but to cut off supplies does little the first day and not much more the second; nobody dies or gets hurt from the initial effects of a blockade. A blockade is compara- tively passive; the eventual damage results as much from the obstinacy of the blockaded territory as from the persistence of the blockading power. And there is no well-defined moment before which the blockading power may quail, for fear of causing the ultimate collapse.
President Truman appreciated the value of this tactic in June 1945. French forces under de Gaulle's leadership had occupied a province in Northern Italy, contrary to Allied plans and
Americanpolicy. Theyannouncedthatanyeffortoftheirallies to dislodge them would be treated as a hostile act. The French intended to annex the area as a "minor frontier adjustment. " It would have been extraordinarily disruptive of Allied unity, of course, to expel the French by force of arms; arguments got nowhere, so President Truman notified de Gaulle that no more supplies would be issued to the French army until it had withdrawn from the Aosta Valley. The French were absolutely dependent on American supplies and the message brought results. This was "nonhostile" pressure, not quite capable of provoking a militant response, therefore safe to use (and effec- tive). A given amount of coercive pressure exercised over an extended period of time, allowed to accumulate its own mo- mentum, is a common and effective technique of bypassing somebody's commitment.
TheDistinctionBetweenDeterrenceand "Compellence"
Blockade illustrates the typical difference between a threat intended to make an adversary do something and a threat intended to keep him from starting something. The distinction is in the timing and in the initiative, in who has to make the first move, in whose initiative is put to the test. To deter an enemy's
commitment back or raising the threshold. The use of "volun- teers" by Soviet countries to intervene in trouble spots was usually an effort to sneak under the fence rather than climb over it, not quite invoking the commitment, but simultaneously making the commitment appear porous and infirm. And if there is no sharp qualitative division between a minor transgression and a major affront, but a continuous gradation of activity, one can begin his intrusion on a scale too small to provoke a reaction, and increase it by imperceptible degrees, never quite presenting a sudden, dramatic challenge that would invoke the committedresponse. Smallviolationsofatruceagreement,for example, become larger and larger, and the day never comes when the camel's back breaks under a single straw.
The Soviets played this game in Cuba for a long time, apparently unaware that the camel's back in that case could stand only a finite weight (or hoping the camel would get stronger and stronger as he got used to the weight). The Korean War may have begun as a low-level incident that was hoped to be beneath the American threshold of response, and the initial American responses (before the introduction of ground troops) may have been misjudged. Salami tactics do not always work. The uncertainty in a commitment often invites a low-level or noncommittal challenge; but uncertainty can work both ways. If the committed country has a reputation for sometimes, unpredictably, reacting where it need not, and not always collaborating to minimize embarrassment, loopholes may be less inviting. If one cannot get areputation for always honoring commitments in detail, because the details are ambiguous, it may help to get a reputation for being occasionally unreason- able. If one cannot buy clearly identifiable and fully reliable trip-wires, an occasional booby trap placed at random may serve somewhat the same purpose in the long run.
Landlords rarely evict tenants by strong-arm methods. They havelearnedthatsteadycumulativepressuresworkjustaswell, though more slowly, and avoid provoking a violent response. It is far better to turn off the water and the electricity, and let the tenant suffer the cumulative pressure of unflushed toilets and
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might, for want of a better word, call compellence. The dictionary's definition of "deter" corresponds to contemporary usage: to turn aside or discourage through fear; hence, to prevent from action by fear of consequences. A difficulty with our being an unaggressive nation, one whose announced aim has usually been to contain rather than to roll back, is that we have not settled on any conventional terminology for the more active kind of threat. We have come to use "defense" as a euphemism for "military," and have a Defense Department, a defense budget, a defense program, and a defense establish- ment; if we need the other word, though, the English language provides it easily. It is "offense. " We have no such obvious counterpart to "deterrence. " "Coercion" covers the meaning but unfortunately includes "deterrent" as well as "compellent" intentions. "Intimidation" is insufficiently focused on the particular behavior desired. "Compulsion" is all right but its adjective is ''compulsive,''and that has come to carry quite a different meaning. "Compellence" is the best I can do. l7
Deterrence and compellence differ in a number of respects, most of them corresponding to something like the difference between statics and dynamics. Deterrence involves setting the stage- by announcement, by rigging the trip-wire, by incurring the obligation- and waiting. The overt act is up to the oppo- nent. The stage-setting can often be nonintrusive, nonhostile,
17. J. David Singer has used a nice pair of nouns, "persuasion" and "dissuasion," to make the same distinction. It is the adjectives that cause trouble; "persuasive" is bound to suggest the adequacy or credibility of a threat, not the character of its objective. Furthermore, "deterrent" is here to stay, at least in the English language. Singer's breakdown goes beyond these two words and is a useful one; he distinguishes whether the subject is desired to act or abstain, whether or not he is presently acting or abstaining, and whether he is likely (in the absence of threats and offers) to go on acting or abstaining. (If he is behaving, and is likely-
to go on behaving, there can still be reason to "reinforce" his motivation to behave. ) Singer distinguishes also "rewards" and "penalties" as well as threats and offers; while the rewards and "penalties" can be the consequences of threats and offers, they can also be gratuitous, helping to communicate persuasively some new and continuing threat or offer. See his article, "Inter-Nation Influence: A Formal Model," American Political Science Review, 17 (1963), 420-30.
advance it may be enough to burn the escape bridges behind me, or to rig a trip-wire between us that automatically blows us both up when he advances. T o compel an enemy's retreat, though, by some threat of engagement, I have to be committed to move. (This requires setting fire to the grass behind me as I face the enemy, with the wind blowing toward the enemy. ) I can block your car by placing mine in the way; my deterrent threat is passive, the decision to collide is up to you. But if you find me in your way and threaten to collide unless I move, you enjoy no such advantage; the decision to collide is still yours, and I still enjoy deterrence. You have to arrange to have to collide unless I move,andthatisadegreemorecomplicated. Youhavetogetup so much speed that you cannot stop in time and that only I can avert the collision; this may not be easy. If it takes more time to start a car than to stop one, you may be unable to give me the "last clear chance" to avoid collision by vacating the street.
The threat that compels rather than deters often requires that the punishment be administered until the other acts, rather than if he acts. This is because often the only way to become committed to an action is to initiate it. This means, though, that the action initiated has to be tolerable to the initiator, and tolerable over whatever period of time is required for the pressure to work on the other side. For deterrence, the trip-wire can threaten to blow things up out of all proportion to what is being protected, because if the threat works the thing never goes off. But to hold a large bomb and threaten to throw it unless somebody moves cannot work so well; the threat is not believ- able until the bomb is actually thrown and by then the damage is done. 16
There is, then, a difference between deterrence and what we
16. A nice illustration occurs in the movie version of A High Wind in Jamaica. The pirate captain, Chavez, wants his captive to tell where the money is hidden and puts his knife to the man's throat to make him talk. After a moment or two, during which the victim keeps his mouth shut, the mate laughs. "If you cut his throat he can't tell you. He knows it. And he knows you know it. " Chavez puts his knife away and tries something else.
-
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? but not certain
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nonprovocative. The act that is intrusive, hostile, or provoca- tive is usually the one to be deterred; the deterrent threat only changes the consequences ifthe act in question- the one to be deterred- is then taken. Compellence, in contrast, usually involves initiating an action (or an irrevocable commitment to action) that can cease, or become harmless, only if the opponent responds. The overt act, the first step, is up to the side that makes thecompellentthreat. Todeter,onedigsin,orlaysaminefield, and waits- in the interest of inaction. To compel, one gets up enough momentum (figuratively, but sometimes literally) to maketheotheracttoavoidcollision.
Deterrence tends to be indefinite in its timing. "If you cross the line we shoot in self-defense, or the mines explode. " When? Whenever you cross the line- preferably never, but the timing is up to you. If you cross it, then is when the threat is fulfilled, eitherautomatically,ifwe'veriggeditso,orbyobligationthat immediately becomes due. But we can wait- preferably for- ever; that's our purpose.
Compellence has to be definite: We move, and you must get out of the way. By when? There has to be a deadline, otherwise tomorrow never comes. If the action carries no deadline it is only a posture, or a ceremony with no consequences. If the compellent advance is like Zeno's tortoise that takes infinitely longtoreachtheborderbytraversing,withinfinitepatience,the infinitely small remaining distances that separate him from collision, it creates no inducement to vacate the border. Compellence, to be effective, can't wait forever. Still, it has to wait a little; collision can't be instantaneous. The compellent threat has to be put in motion to be credible, and then the victim must yield. Too little time, and compliance becomes impos- sible; too much time, and compliance becomes unnecessary. Thus compellence involves timing in a way that deterrence typically does not.
In addition to the question of "when," compellence usually involves questions of where, what, and how much. "Do noth- ing" is simple, "Do something" ambiguous. "Stop where you are" is simple; "Go back" leads to "How far? " "Leave me
THE ART OF COMMITMENT 73
alone" is simple; "Cooperate" is inexact and open-ended. A deterrent position- a status quo, in territory or in more figura- tive terms- can often be surveyed and noted; a compellent advance has to be projected as to destination, and the destina- tion can be unclear in intent as well as in momentum and braking power. In a deterrent threat, the objective is often communicated by the very preparations that make the threat credible;thetrip-wireoftendemarcatestheforbiddenterritory. There is usually an inherent connection between what is threat- ened and what it is threatenedabout. Compellent threats tend to communicateonlythegeneraldirectionofcompliance,andare less likely to be self-limiting, less likely to communicate in the very design of the threat just what, or how much, is demanded. ThegarrisoninWestBerlincanhardlybemisunderstoodabout what it is committed to resist; if it ever intruded into East Berlin, though, to induce Soviet or German Democratic Republic forces to give way, there would be no such obvious interpreta- tion of where and how much to give way unless the adventure could be invested with some unmistakable goal or limitation-
a possibility not easily realized.
The Quemoy escapade is again a good example: Chiang's
troops, once on the island, especially if evacuation under fire appeared infeasible, had the static clarity that goes with com- mitmenttoanindefinitestatusquo,whilethecommitmentjust to send troops to defend it (or air and naval support) according to whether a Communist attack there was or was not prelude to anattackonFormosalackedthatpersuasivequality,reminding us that though deterrent threats tend to have the advantages mentioned above they do not always achieve them. (The ambiguous case of Quemoy actually displays the compellent ambiguity, seen in reverse: a "compellent" Communist move against Quemoy was to be accommodated, as long as its extent couldbereliablyprojectedtoaterminusshortofFormosa;ifthe Communiststhought we meant it, it was up to them to design an action that visibly embodied that limitation. ) An American or NATO action to relieve Budapest in 1956- without major engagement but in the hope the Soviets would give way rather
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than fight- would have had the dynamic quality of "compellence" in contrast to Berlin: the stopping point would have been a variable, not a constant. Even "Budapest" would have needed a definition, and might have become all of Hun- gary- and after Hungary, what? - if the Soviets initially gave way. The enterprise might have been designed to embody its specificintent,butitwouldhavetakenalotofdesigningbacked up by verbal assurances.
Actually, any coercive threat requires corresponding assur- ances; the object of a threat is to give somebody a choice. To say, "One more step and I shoot," can be a deterrent threat only if accompanied by the implicit assurance, "And if you stop I won't. '' Giving notice of unconditional intent to shoot gives him no choice (unless by behaving as we wish him to behave the opponent puts himself out of range, in which case the effective threat is, "Come closer and my fire will kill you, stay back and it won't''). What was said above about deterrent threats being typically less ambiguous in intent can be restated: the corre- sponding assurances- the ones that, together with the threat- ened response, define the opponent's choice- are clearer than those that can usually be embodied in a compellent action. (Ordinary blackmailers, not just nuclear, find the "assurances" troublesome when their threats are compellent. ) l 8
They are, furthermore, confirmed and demonstrated over time; as long as he stays back, and we don't shoot, we fulfill the assurances and confirm them. The assurances that accompany a compellent action- move back a mile and I won't shoot (other- wise I shall) and I won't then try again for a second mile- are
18. The critical role of "assurances" in completing the structure of a threat, in making the threatened consequences persuasively conditional on behavior so that the victim is offered a choice, shows up in the offers of amnesty, safe passage, or forgiveness that must often be made credible in inducing the surrender of rebels or the capitulation of strikers or protesters. Even libraries and internal revenue agencies depend on parallel offers of forgiveness when they embark on campaigns to coerce the return of books or payment of back taxes. In personal life I have sometimes relied, like King Lea, on the vague threat that my wrath will be aroused (with who knows what awful consequences) if good behavior is not forthcoming, making a tentative impression on one child, only to have the threat utterly nullified by another's pointing out that "Daddy's mad already. "
THE ART OF COMMITMENT 7s
harder to demonstrate in advance, unless it be through a long past record of abiding by one's own verbal assurances.
Because in the West we deal mainly in deterrence, not com- pellence, and deterrent threats tend to convey their assurances implicitly, we often forget that both sides of the choice, the threatened penalty and the proffered avoidance or reward, need to be credible. The need for assurances- not just verbal but fully credible- emerges clearly as part of "deterrence" in discussions of surprise attack and "preemptive war. " An enemy belief that we are about to attack anyway, not after he does but possibly before, merely raises his incentive to do what we wanted to deter and to do it even more quickly. When we do engage in compellence, as in the Cuban crisis or in punitive at- tacks on North Vietnam that are intended to make the North Vietnamese government act affirmatively, the assurances are a critical part of the definition of the compellent threat.
One may deliberately choose to be unclear and to keep the enemy guessing either to keep his defenses less prepared or to enhance his anxiety. But if one wants not to leave him in doubt about what will satisfy us, we have to find credible ways of com- municating, and communicating both what we want and what we do not want. There is a tendency to emphasize the commu- nication of what we shall do if he misbehaves and to give too little emphasis to communicating what behavior will satisfy us. Again, this is natural when deterrence is our business, because the prohibited misbehavior is often approximately defined in the threatened response; but when we must start something that then has to be stopped, as in compellent actions, it is both harder and more important to know our aims and to communi- cate. It is particularly hard because the mere initiation of an en- ergetic coercive campaign, designed for compellence, disturbs the situation, leads to surprises, and provides opportunity and temptation to reexamine our aims and change them in mid course. Deterrence,if wholly successful, can often afford to con- centrate on the initiating events- what happens next if he mis- behaves. Compellence, to be successful, involves an action that must be brought to successful closure. The payoff comes at the end, as does the disaster if the project fails.
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cities. )
There is something to the argument. If in an Asian war we
flew bombers from aircraft carriers or from bases in an allied country, and an enemy attacked our ships at sea or our overseas bases, we would almost certainly not consider it the same as if we had flown the bombers from bases in Hawaii or California and he had attacked the bases in those states. If the Soviets had put nuclear weapons in orbit and we shot at them with rockets the results might be serious, but not the same as if the Soviets had put missiles on home territory and we shot at those missiles on their home grounds. Missiles in Cuba, though owned and manned by Russians, were less "nationalized" as a target than missiles in the U. S. S. R. itself. (One of the arguments made against the use of surface ships in a European Multilateral Force armed with long-range missiles was that they could be picked off by an enemy, possibly during a limited war in which the Multilateral Force was not engaged, possibly without the use of nuclear weapons by an enemy, in a way that would not quite provoke reprisal, and thus would be vulnerable in a way that homeland-based missiles would not be. )
Theargumentcangoeitherway. Thiscanbeareasonforde-
THE ART OF COMMITMENT 59
liberately putting weapons outside our boundary, so that their military involvement would not tempt an attack on our home- land, or for keeping them within our boundaries so that an attack on them would appear the more risky. The point here isjust that there is a difference. Quemoy cannot be made part of California by moving it there, but weapons can.
Actually the all-or-nothing character of the homeland is not so complete. Secretary McNamara's suggestion that even a general war might be somewhat confined to military installa- tions, and that a furious attack on enemy population centers might be the proper response only to an attack on ours, implies that we do distinguish or might distinguish different parts of our territory by the degree of warfare involved. And I have heard it argued that the Soviets, if they fear for the deterrent security of their retaliatory forcesinapurely"military"warthattheAmeri- cans might initiate, may actually prefer a close proximity of their missiles to their cities to make the prospect of a "clean" strategic war, one without massive attacks on cities, less prom- ising- to demonstrate that there would remain little to lose, after an attack on their weapons, and little motive to confine their response to military targets. The policy would be a dangerous one if there were much likelihood that war would occur, but its logic has merit.
Discrediting an Adversary's Commitments
The Soviets have the same deterrence problem beyond their bordersthatwehave. InsomewaystheWesthashelpedthemto solve it. All kinds of people, responsible and irresponsible, intelligent and unenlightened, European and American, have raised questions about whether the United States really would use its full military force to protect Western Europe or to retaliate for the loss of Western Europe. Much more rarely did I hear anyone question- at least before about 1963- whether the Soviets would do likewise if we were provoked to an attack against the homeland of Communist China.
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? The Soviets seem to have accomplished- and we helped
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them- what we find difficult, namely, to persuade the world that the entire area of their alliance is part of an integral bloc. In the West we talked for a decade- until the Sino-Soviet schism became undeniable- about the Sino-Soviet bloc as though every satellite were part of the Soviet system, and as though Soviet determination to keep those areas under their control was so intense that they could not afford to lose any of it. We often acted as though every part of their sphere of influencewasa"California. "IntheWestweseemedtoconcede to the Soviets, with respect to China, what not everybody con- cedes us with respect to Europe.
If we always treat China as though it is a Soviet California, we tend to make it so. If we imply to the Soviets that we con- siderCommunistChinaorCzechoslovakiathevirtualequiva- lent of Siberia, then in the event of any military action in or against those areas we have informed the Soviets that we are going to interpret their response as though we had landed troops in Vladivostok or Archangel or launched them across the Soviet- Polish border. We thus oblige them to react in China, or in North Vietnam or wherever it may be, and in effect give them precisely the commitment that is worth so much to them in de- terring the West. If we make it clear that we believe they are obliged to react to an intrusion in Hungary as though we were in the streets of Moscow, then they are obliged.
Cubawillcontinuetobeaninterestingborderlinecase. The Soviets will find it difficult politically and psychologically to get universal acquiescence that a country can be genuinely within the Soviet bloc if it is not contiguous to them. The Soviet problem was totry togetCubainto the status of a Soviet "Califor- nia. " It is interesting to speculate on whether we could add states to the Union, like the Philippines, Greece, or Formosa, and let that settle the question of where they belong and how obligedwearetodefendthem. Hawaii,yes,andbynowPuerto Rico; but if we reached out beyond the areas that "belong" in the United States we could probablyjust not manage to confer a genuinely plausible "statehood" that would be universally recognized and taken for granted.
THE ART OF COMMITMENT 61
And Cuba does not quite "belong" in the Soviet bloc- it is topologically separate and does not enjoy the territorial integrity withtheSovietblocthatnationstraditionallyenjoy. Indiacould take Goa for what are basically esthetic reasons: a conventional belief that maps ought to have certain geometrical qualities, that an enclave is geographically abnormal, that an island in the ocean can belong to anyone but an island surrounded by the ter- ritory of a large nation somehow ought to belong to it. (Algeria would,forthesamereason,havebeenhardertodisengagefrom metropolitan France had it not been geographically separated by the Mediterranean; keeping the coastal cities in "France" while dividing off the hinterland would similarly have gone somewhat against cartographic psychology. ) There are many otherthings,ofcourse,thatmakeCubadifferentfromHungary, including the fact that the United States can surround it, harass it, or blockade it without encroaching on Soviet territory. But even without that it would be an uphill struggle for the Soviets to achieve a credible togetherness with the remote island of Cuba.
Additional "Cubas" would cost the Soviets something. That does not mean we should like them; still, we should recognize what happens to their deterrence problem. It becomes more like ours. They used to have an almost integral bloc, a geographical unit, with a single Iron Curtain separating their side from the restoftheworld. Onecouldalmostdrawaclosedcurvedline on a globe with everything inside it Soviet bloc and everything outside it not. Yugoslavia was the only ambiguity. It in turn made little Albania an anomaly- only a small one, but its political detachment in the early 1960s confirms the point. Cuba has been the same problem magnified. "Blocness" no longer means what it did. In a geographically tight bloc, satellitescanhavedegreesofaffiliationwiththeU. S. S. R. without necessarily spoiling the definition of the "bloc. " Distant satel- lites, though, not only can be more independent because of Soviet difficulty in imposing its will by violence but they further disturbthe geographicalneatness of the bloc. "Blocness" ceases to be all-or-none;it becomes a matter of degree.
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? This process can then infect the territories contiguous with the U. S. S. R. And if the Soviet Union tempers its deterrent threats, hedging on the distant countries or on countries not fully integrated, it invites examination of the credibility of its threats everywhere. Certain things like honor and outrage are not meant to be matters of degree. One can say that his homeland is inviolate only if he knows exactly what he means by"homeland"anditisnotclutteredupwithfull-fledgedstates, protectorates, territories, and gradations of citizenship that make some places more "homeland" than others. Like virgin- ity, the homeland wants an absolute definition. This character the Soviet bloc has been losing and may lose even more if it
acquires a graduated structure like the old British Empire.
We credited the Soviets with effective deterrence and in doing so genuinely gave them some. We came at last to treat the Sino-Soviet split as a real one; but it would have been wiser not to have acknowledged their fusion in the first place. In our efforts to dramatize and magnify the Soviet threat, we some- times present the Soviet Union with a deterrent asset of a kind that we find hard to create for ourselves. We should relieve the Soviets as much as we can of any obligation to respond to an American engagement with China as to an engagement with Soviet Russia itself. If we relieve the Soviets of the obligation, we somewhat undo their commitment. We should be trying to
make North Vietnam seem much more remote from the Soviet bloc than Puerto Rico is from the United States, to keep China out of the category of Alaska, and not to concede to bloc countries a sense of immunity. Events may oblige us- some of these very countries may oblige us- to initiate some kind of military engagement in the future;I2and we would be wise to decouple those areas, as much as we can, from Soviet military forces in advance. I3
Sometimes a country wants to get out of a commitment- to decouple itself. It is not easy. We may have regretted our commitment to Quemoy in 1958,but there was no graceful way to undo it at that time. The Berlin wall was a genuine embarrass- ment. We apparently had not enough of a commitment to feel obliged to use violence against the Berlin wall. We had undeni- ably some commitment; there was some expectation that we might take action and some belief that we ought to. We did not, and it cost us something. If nobody had ever expected us to do anything about the wall- if we had never appeared to have any obligation to prevent things like the wall, and if we had never made any claims about East Berlin that seemed inconsistent with the wall- the wall would have embarrassed us less. Some people on our side were disappointed when we let the wall go up. The United States government would undoubtedly have preferred not to incur that disappointment. Diplomatic state- ments about the character of our rights and obligations in East Berlin were an effort to dismantle any commitment we might previously have had. The statements were not fully persuasive. Had the United States government known all along that some- thing like the wall might go up, and had it planned all along not to oppose it, diplomatic preparation might have made the wall less of an embarrassment. In this case there appeared to be some
residual commitment that we had not honored, and we had to argueretroactivelythatouressentialrightshadnotbeenviolated and that nothing rightfully ours had been taken from us.
The Soviets had a similar problem over Cuba. Less than six weeks before the President's missile crisis address of October 22,1962, the Soviet government had issued a formal statement about Cuba. "We have said and do repeat that if war is unleashed, if the aggressor makes an attack on one state or another and this state asks for assistance, the Soviet Union has the possibility from its own territory to render assistance to any peace-loving state and not only to Cuba. And let no one doubt that the Soviet Union will render such assistance. " And further,
? ? ? ? ? ? ? 13. Possibly the single greatest consequence of the nuclear test bar- and I see no evidence that it was intended in the West, or that it motivated the final negotiations
-
implications into the open. What a diplomatic coup it would have been, had it been contrived that way!
was to exacerbate the Sino-Soviet dispute on security policy and bring its military
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peoples in the world to be the decisive factor in deterring the aggressive forces of imperialism from unleashing a world war of annihilation. This mission the Soviet Union will continue to discharge with all firmness and consistency. " But "if the aggressors unleash war, the Soviet Union will inflict the most powerful blow in response. " By implication, what the United States Navy was doing, or even might do, was piracy so far, and not war, and the "peace-loving states cannot but protest. " l 4
The orientation was toward an American affront to Cuba, not a Soviet-American confrontation. The key American demand for the "prompt dismantling and withdrawal of all offensive weapons in Cuba" before the quarantine could be lifted- that is, the direct relation of President Kennedy's action to the Sovietmissiles- wasnotdirectlyaddressed. TheSovietschose not to enhance their commitment to Cuba by construing the United States action as one obliging a firm Soviet response; they construed it as a Caribbean issue. Their language seemed designed to dismantle an incomplete commitment rather than to bolster it.
Butjust as one cannot incur a genuine commitment by purely verbal means, one cannot get out of it with cheap words either. Secretary Dulles in 1958 could not have said, "Quemoy? Who cares about Quemoy? It's not worth fighting over, and our defense perimeter will be neater without it. " The United States never did talk its way cleanly out of the Berlin wall business. Even if the letter of our obligations was never violated, there are bound to be some who think the spirit demanded more. We had little obligation to intervene in Hungary in 1956, and the Suez crisis confused and screened it. Nevertheless, there was a possibility that the West might do something and it did not. Maybe this was a convenience, clarifying an implicit under- standing between East and West. But the cost was not zero.
If commitments could be undone by declaration they would be worthless in the first place. The whole purpose of verbal or
14. David L. Larson, ed. , The "Cuban Crisis" of 1962, Selected Documents and Chronology (Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1963), pp. 7- 17, 4 1 4 6 , 50-54.
''The Soviet government would like to draw attention to the fact that one cannot now attack Cuba and expect that the aggressor will be free from punishment for this attack. If this attack is made, this will be the beginning of the unleashing of war. " It was a long, argumentative statement, however, and acknowledged that "only a madman can think now that a war started by him will be a calamity only for the people against which it is unleashed. " And the most threatening language was not singled out for solemn treatment but went along as part of the argument. So there was at least a degree of ambiguity.
President Kennedy's television broadcast of October 22 was directly aimed at the Soviet Union. It was so directly aimed that one can infer only a conscious decision to make this not a Caribbean affair but an East- West affair. It concerned Soviet missiles and Soviet duplicity, a Soviet challenge; and the President even went out of his way to express concern for the Cubans, his desire that they not be hurt, and his regret for the "foreign domination" that was responsible for their predica- ment. The President did not say that we had a problem with Cuba and hoped the Soviets would keep out of it; he said we had an altercation with the Soviet Union and hoped Cubans would not be hurt.
The Soviet statement the following day, circulated to the Se- curity Council of the United Nations, was evidently an effort to structure the situation a little differently. It accused the United States of piracy on the high seas and of "trying to dictate to Cuba what policy it must pursue. " It said the United States government was "assuming the right to demand that states should account to it for the way in which they organize their de- fense, and should notify it of what their ships are carrying on the high seas. The Soviet government firmly repudiates such claims. " The statement also said, "Today as never before, statesmen must show calm and prudence, and must not counte- nance the rattling of weapons. "And indeed there was no rat- ling of weapons in the Soviet statement. The most they said was, "The presence of powerful weapons, including nuclear rocket weapons, in the Soviet Union is acknowledged by all the
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ritualistic commitments, of political and diplomatic commit- ments, of efforts to attach honor and reputation to a commit- ment, is to make the commitment manifestly hard to get out of on short notice. Even the commitments not deliberately in- curred, and the commitments that embarrass one in unforeseen circumstances, cannot be undone cheaply. The cost is the discrediting of other commitments that one would stilllike to be
credited.
If a country does want to get off the hook, to get out of a commitment deliberately incurred or one that grew up unin- tended, the opponent's cooperation can make a difference. The Chinese Communists seemed not to be trying, from 1958on, to make it easy for the United States to decouple itself from Quemoy. They maintained,and occasionally intensified,enough military pressure on the island to make graceful withdrawal difficult, tomake withdrawal looklike retreat under duress. It is hard to escape the judgment that they enjoyed American dis- comfort over Quemoy, their own ability to stir things up at will but to keep crises under their control, and their opportunity to aggravate American differences with Chiang Kai-shek.
Circumventing an Adversary's Commitments
"Salami tactics," we can be sure, were invented by a child; whoever first expounded the adult version had already under- stood the principle when he was small. Tell a child not to go in the water and he'll sit on the bank and submerge his bare feet;
15. The most eloquent rebuff I have come across is the answer the Romans received from the Volciani in Spain, whom they tried to unite with other Spanish cities against Carthage shortly after Rome had declined to defend the allied Spanish town of Saguntum against Hannibal and it had been terribly destroyed. "Men of Rome," said the eldest among them, "it seems hardly decent to ask us to prefer your friendship to that of Carthage, considering the precedent of those who have been rash enough to do so. Was not your betrayal of your friends in Saguntum even more brutal than their destruction by their enemies the Carthaginians? I suggest You look for allies in some spot where what happened to Saguntum has never been heard of. The fall of that town will be a signal and melancholy warning to the peoples of Spain never to count upon Roman friendship nor to trust Rome's word. " The War With Hunnibal, Aubrey de Selincourt, transl. (Baltimore, Penguin Books, 1965), p. 43.
he is not yet "in" the water. Acquiesce, and he'll stand up; no more of him is in the water than before. Think it over, and he'll start wading, not going any deeper; take a moment to decide whether this is different and he'll go a little deeper, arguing that since he goes back and forth it all averages out. Pretty soon we are calling to him not to swim out of sight, wondering whatever happened to all our discipline.
Most commitments are ultimately ambiguous indetail. Some- times they are purposely so, as when President Eisenhower and Secretary Dulles announced that an attack on Quemoy might or might not trigger an American response under the "Formosa Doctrine" according to whether or not it was interpreted as part of an assault, or prelude to an assault, on Formosa itself.
Even more commitments are ambiguous because of the plain impos- sibility of defining them in exact detail. There are areas of doubt even in the most carefully drafted statutes and contracts; and even people who most jealously guard their rights and privi- leges have been known to settle out of court, to excuse an honest mistake, or to overlook a minor transgression because of the high cost of litigation. No matter how inviolate our commit- ment to some border, we are unlikely to start a war the first time a few drunken soldiers from the other side wander across the line and "invade" our territory. And there is always the possi- bility that some East German functionary on the Autobahn really did not get the word, or his vehicle really did break down in our lane of traffic. There is some threshold below which the commitment is just not operative, and even that threshold itself is usually unclear.
From this arises the low-level incident or probe, and tactics of erosion. One tests the seriousness of a commitment by probing it in a noncommittal way, pretending the trespass was inadvertent or unauthorized if one meets resistance, both to forestall the reaction and to avoid backing down. One stops a convoy or overflies a border, pretending the incident was accidental or unauthorized; but if there is no challenge, one continues or enlarges the operation, setting a precedent, estab- lishing rights of thoroughfare or squatters' rights, pushing the
l5
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candles at night and get out voluntarily, than to start manhan- dling his family and his household goods. Blockade works slowly; it puts the decision up to the other side. To invade Berlin or Cuba is a sudden identifiable action, of an intensity that demands response; but to cut off supplies does little the first day and not much more the second; nobody dies or gets hurt from the initial effects of a blockade. A blockade is compara- tively passive; the eventual damage results as much from the obstinacy of the blockaded territory as from the persistence of the blockading power. And there is no well-defined moment before which the blockading power may quail, for fear of causing the ultimate collapse.
President Truman appreciated the value of this tactic in June 1945. French forces under de Gaulle's leadership had occupied a province in Northern Italy, contrary to Allied plans and
Americanpolicy. Theyannouncedthatanyeffortoftheirallies to dislodge them would be treated as a hostile act. The French intended to annex the area as a "minor frontier adjustment. " It would have been extraordinarily disruptive of Allied unity, of course, to expel the French by force of arms; arguments got nowhere, so President Truman notified de Gaulle that no more supplies would be issued to the French army until it had withdrawn from the Aosta Valley. The French were absolutely dependent on American supplies and the message brought results. This was "nonhostile" pressure, not quite capable of provoking a militant response, therefore safe to use (and effec- tive). A given amount of coercive pressure exercised over an extended period of time, allowed to accumulate its own mo- mentum, is a common and effective technique of bypassing somebody's commitment.
TheDistinctionBetweenDeterrenceand "Compellence"
Blockade illustrates the typical difference between a threat intended to make an adversary do something and a threat intended to keep him from starting something. The distinction is in the timing and in the initiative, in who has to make the first move, in whose initiative is put to the test. To deter an enemy's
commitment back or raising the threshold. The use of "volun- teers" by Soviet countries to intervene in trouble spots was usually an effort to sneak under the fence rather than climb over it, not quite invoking the commitment, but simultaneously making the commitment appear porous and infirm. And if there is no sharp qualitative division between a minor transgression and a major affront, but a continuous gradation of activity, one can begin his intrusion on a scale too small to provoke a reaction, and increase it by imperceptible degrees, never quite presenting a sudden, dramatic challenge that would invoke the committedresponse. Smallviolationsofatruceagreement,for example, become larger and larger, and the day never comes when the camel's back breaks under a single straw.
The Soviets played this game in Cuba for a long time, apparently unaware that the camel's back in that case could stand only a finite weight (or hoping the camel would get stronger and stronger as he got used to the weight). The Korean War may have begun as a low-level incident that was hoped to be beneath the American threshold of response, and the initial American responses (before the introduction of ground troops) may have been misjudged. Salami tactics do not always work. The uncertainty in a commitment often invites a low-level or noncommittal challenge; but uncertainty can work both ways. If the committed country has a reputation for sometimes, unpredictably, reacting where it need not, and not always collaborating to minimize embarrassment, loopholes may be less inviting. If one cannot get areputation for always honoring commitments in detail, because the details are ambiguous, it may help to get a reputation for being occasionally unreason- able. If one cannot buy clearly identifiable and fully reliable trip-wires, an occasional booby trap placed at random may serve somewhat the same purpose in the long run.
Landlords rarely evict tenants by strong-arm methods. They havelearnedthatsteadycumulativepressuresworkjustaswell, though more slowly, and avoid provoking a violent response. It is far better to turn off the water and the electricity, and let the tenant suffer the cumulative pressure of unflushed toilets and
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might, for want of a better word, call compellence. The dictionary's definition of "deter" corresponds to contemporary usage: to turn aside or discourage through fear; hence, to prevent from action by fear of consequences. A difficulty with our being an unaggressive nation, one whose announced aim has usually been to contain rather than to roll back, is that we have not settled on any conventional terminology for the more active kind of threat. We have come to use "defense" as a euphemism for "military," and have a Defense Department, a defense budget, a defense program, and a defense establish- ment; if we need the other word, though, the English language provides it easily. It is "offense. " We have no such obvious counterpart to "deterrence. " "Coercion" covers the meaning but unfortunately includes "deterrent" as well as "compellent" intentions. "Intimidation" is insufficiently focused on the particular behavior desired. "Compulsion" is all right but its adjective is ''compulsive,''and that has come to carry quite a different meaning. "Compellence" is the best I can do. l7
Deterrence and compellence differ in a number of respects, most of them corresponding to something like the difference between statics and dynamics. Deterrence involves setting the stage- by announcement, by rigging the trip-wire, by incurring the obligation- and waiting. The overt act is up to the oppo- nent. The stage-setting can often be nonintrusive, nonhostile,
17. J. David Singer has used a nice pair of nouns, "persuasion" and "dissuasion," to make the same distinction. It is the adjectives that cause trouble; "persuasive" is bound to suggest the adequacy or credibility of a threat, not the character of its objective. Furthermore, "deterrent" is here to stay, at least in the English language. Singer's breakdown goes beyond these two words and is a useful one; he distinguishes whether the subject is desired to act or abstain, whether or not he is presently acting or abstaining, and whether he is likely (in the absence of threats and offers) to go on acting or abstaining. (If he is behaving, and is likely-
to go on behaving, there can still be reason to "reinforce" his motivation to behave. ) Singer distinguishes also "rewards" and "penalties" as well as threats and offers; while the rewards and "penalties" can be the consequences of threats and offers, they can also be gratuitous, helping to communicate persuasively some new and continuing threat or offer. See his article, "Inter-Nation Influence: A Formal Model," American Political Science Review, 17 (1963), 420-30.
advance it may be enough to burn the escape bridges behind me, or to rig a trip-wire between us that automatically blows us both up when he advances. T o compel an enemy's retreat, though, by some threat of engagement, I have to be committed to move. (This requires setting fire to the grass behind me as I face the enemy, with the wind blowing toward the enemy. ) I can block your car by placing mine in the way; my deterrent threat is passive, the decision to collide is up to you. But if you find me in your way and threaten to collide unless I move, you enjoy no such advantage; the decision to collide is still yours, and I still enjoy deterrence. You have to arrange to have to collide unless I move,andthatisadegreemorecomplicated. Youhavetogetup so much speed that you cannot stop in time and that only I can avert the collision; this may not be easy. If it takes more time to start a car than to stop one, you may be unable to give me the "last clear chance" to avoid collision by vacating the street.
The threat that compels rather than deters often requires that the punishment be administered until the other acts, rather than if he acts. This is because often the only way to become committed to an action is to initiate it. This means, though, that the action initiated has to be tolerable to the initiator, and tolerable over whatever period of time is required for the pressure to work on the other side. For deterrence, the trip-wire can threaten to blow things up out of all proportion to what is being protected, because if the threat works the thing never goes off. But to hold a large bomb and threaten to throw it unless somebody moves cannot work so well; the threat is not believ- able until the bomb is actually thrown and by then the damage is done. 16
There is, then, a difference between deterrence and what we
16. A nice illustration occurs in the movie version of A High Wind in Jamaica. The pirate captain, Chavez, wants his captive to tell where the money is hidden and puts his knife to the man's throat to make him talk. After a moment or two, during which the victim keeps his mouth shut, the mate laughs. "If you cut his throat he can't tell you. He knows it. And he knows you know it. " Chavez puts his knife away and tries something else.
-
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? but not certain
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nonprovocative. The act that is intrusive, hostile, or provoca- tive is usually the one to be deterred; the deterrent threat only changes the consequences ifthe act in question- the one to be deterred- is then taken. Compellence, in contrast, usually involves initiating an action (or an irrevocable commitment to action) that can cease, or become harmless, only if the opponent responds. The overt act, the first step, is up to the side that makes thecompellentthreat. Todeter,onedigsin,orlaysaminefield, and waits- in the interest of inaction. To compel, one gets up enough momentum (figuratively, but sometimes literally) to maketheotheracttoavoidcollision.
Deterrence tends to be indefinite in its timing. "If you cross the line we shoot in self-defense, or the mines explode. " When? Whenever you cross the line- preferably never, but the timing is up to you. If you cross it, then is when the threat is fulfilled, eitherautomatically,ifwe'veriggeditso,orbyobligationthat immediately becomes due. But we can wait- preferably for- ever; that's our purpose.
Compellence has to be definite: We move, and you must get out of the way. By when? There has to be a deadline, otherwise tomorrow never comes. If the action carries no deadline it is only a posture, or a ceremony with no consequences. If the compellent advance is like Zeno's tortoise that takes infinitely longtoreachtheborderbytraversing,withinfinitepatience,the infinitely small remaining distances that separate him from collision, it creates no inducement to vacate the border. Compellence, to be effective, can't wait forever. Still, it has to wait a little; collision can't be instantaneous. The compellent threat has to be put in motion to be credible, and then the victim must yield. Too little time, and compliance becomes impos- sible; too much time, and compliance becomes unnecessary. Thus compellence involves timing in a way that deterrence typically does not.
In addition to the question of "when," compellence usually involves questions of where, what, and how much. "Do noth- ing" is simple, "Do something" ambiguous. "Stop where you are" is simple; "Go back" leads to "How far? " "Leave me
THE ART OF COMMITMENT 73
alone" is simple; "Cooperate" is inexact and open-ended. A deterrent position- a status quo, in territory or in more figura- tive terms- can often be surveyed and noted; a compellent advance has to be projected as to destination, and the destina- tion can be unclear in intent as well as in momentum and braking power. In a deterrent threat, the objective is often communicated by the very preparations that make the threat credible;thetrip-wireoftendemarcatestheforbiddenterritory. There is usually an inherent connection between what is threat- ened and what it is threatenedabout. Compellent threats tend to communicateonlythegeneraldirectionofcompliance,andare less likely to be self-limiting, less likely to communicate in the very design of the threat just what, or how much, is demanded. ThegarrisoninWestBerlincanhardlybemisunderstoodabout what it is committed to resist; if it ever intruded into East Berlin, though, to induce Soviet or German Democratic Republic forces to give way, there would be no such obvious interpreta- tion of where and how much to give way unless the adventure could be invested with some unmistakable goal or limitation-
a possibility not easily realized.
The Quemoy escapade is again a good example: Chiang's
troops, once on the island, especially if evacuation under fire appeared infeasible, had the static clarity that goes with com- mitmenttoanindefinitestatusquo,whilethecommitmentjust to send troops to defend it (or air and naval support) according to whether a Communist attack there was or was not prelude to anattackonFormosalackedthatpersuasivequality,reminding us that though deterrent threats tend to have the advantages mentioned above they do not always achieve them. (The ambiguous case of Quemoy actually displays the compellent ambiguity, seen in reverse: a "compellent" Communist move against Quemoy was to be accommodated, as long as its extent couldbereliablyprojectedtoaterminusshortofFormosa;ifthe Communiststhought we meant it, it was up to them to design an action that visibly embodied that limitation. ) An American or NATO action to relieve Budapest in 1956- without major engagement but in the hope the Soviets would give way rather
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than fight- would have had the dynamic quality of "compellence" in contrast to Berlin: the stopping point would have been a variable, not a constant. Even "Budapest" would have needed a definition, and might have become all of Hun- gary- and after Hungary, what? - if the Soviets initially gave way. The enterprise might have been designed to embody its specificintent,butitwouldhavetakenalotofdesigningbacked up by verbal assurances.
Actually, any coercive threat requires corresponding assur- ances; the object of a threat is to give somebody a choice. To say, "One more step and I shoot," can be a deterrent threat only if accompanied by the implicit assurance, "And if you stop I won't. '' Giving notice of unconditional intent to shoot gives him no choice (unless by behaving as we wish him to behave the opponent puts himself out of range, in which case the effective threat is, "Come closer and my fire will kill you, stay back and it won't''). What was said above about deterrent threats being typically less ambiguous in intent can be restated: the corre- sponding assurances- the ones that, together with the threat- ened response, define the opponent's choice- are clearer than those that can usually be embodied in a compellent action. (Ordinary blackmailers, not just nuclear, find the "assurances" troublesome when their threats are compellent. ) l 8
They are, furthermore, confirmed and demonstrated over time; as long as he stays back, and we don't shoot, we fulfill the assurances and confirm them. The assurances that accompany a compellent action- move back a mile and I won't shoot (other- wise I shall) and I won't then try again for a second mile- are
18. The critical role of "assurances" in completing the structure of a threat, in making the threatened consequences persuasively conditional on behavior so that the victim is offered a choice, shows up in the offers of amnesty, safe passage, or forgiveness that must often be made credible in inducing the surrender of rebels or the capitulation of strikers or protesters. Even libraries and internal revenue agencies depend on parallel offers of forgiveness when they embark on campaigns to coerce the return of books or payment of back taxes. In personal life I have sometimes relied, like King Lea, on the vague threat that my wrath will be aroused (with who knows what awful consequences) if good behavior is not forthcoming, making a tentative impression on one child, only to have the threat utterly nullified by another's pointing out that "Daddy's mad already. "
THE ART OF COMMITMENT 7s
harder to demonstrate in advance, unless it be through a long past record of abiding by one's own verbal assurances.
Because in the West we deal mainly in deterrence, not com- pellence, and deterrent threats tend to convey their assurances implicitly, we often forget that both sides of the choice, the threatened penalty and the proffered avoidance or reward, need to be credible. The need for assurances- not just verbal but fully credible- emerges clearly as part of "deterrence" in discussions of surprise attack and "preemptive war. " An enemy belief that we are about to attack anyway, not after he does but possibly before, merely raises his incentive to do what we wanted to deter and to do it even more quickly. When we do engage in compellence, as in the Cuban crisis or in punitive at- tacks on North Vietnam that are intended to make the North Vietnamese government act affirmatively, the assurances are a critical part of the definition of the compellent threat.
One may deliberately choose to be unclear and to keep the enemy guessing either to keep his defenses less prepared or to enhance his anxiety. But if one wants not to leave him in doubt about what will satisfy us, we have to find credible ways of com- municating, and communicating both what we want and what we do not want. There is a tendency to emphasize the commu- nication of what we shall do if he misbehaves and to give too little emphasis to communicating what behavior will satisfy us. Again, this is natural when deterrence is our business, because the prohibited misbehavior is often approximately defined in the threatened response; but when we must start something that then has to be stopped, as in compellent actions, it is both harder and more important to know our aims and to communi- cate. It is particularly hard because the mere initiation of an en- ergetic coercive campaign, designed for compellence, disturbs the situation, leads to surprises, and provides opportunity and temptation to reexamine our aims and change them in mid course. Deterrence,if wholly successful, can often afford to con- centrate on the initiating events- what happens next if he mis- behaves. Compellence, to be successful, involves an action that must be brought to successful closure. The payoff comes at the end, as does the disaster if the project fails.
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