If war is politics by other means, then coercion might be considered war by other means. Indeed, in the contemporary international arena, nonmilitary methods of coercion have gained in importance and effectiveness. But unlike war, coercion is sometimes directed at friends and allies, with mixed results. Meanwhile, an evolution in the use of economic coercion over the past two decades has resulted in a more targeted approach to sanctions.
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Power is the ability to affect others to obtain preferred outcomes, and that can be done through coercion and payment or attraction and persuasion. Generally, people associate coercion with military power resources, but that is too reductive. After all, economic power resources can also be used for coercion. What is called coercion depends in part on the context of a power relationship. Such contexts are changing in a global information age. more
How do different-sized powers establish order among themselves? And how do larger powers compel smaller and weaker ones to do their bidding? Though abstract, these two questions have concrete applications in the real world. Differential power relationships have been around since the first polities, later called states, came into existence, and over the course of history, various systems have arisen to manage them.
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Sanctions against Iran, North Korea and, more recently, Libya are all the result of an elemental reform in the application of national and global economic statecraft to constrain and influence the actions of rogue regimes and, increasingly, nonstate actors. Though trade boycotts were once the preferred instrument of economic power, for the past two decades the international community has shown a clear predilection for a more refined subset of coercive tools, including targeted financial sanctions.
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