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The Reputational Costs and Ethical Implications of Coercive Limited Air Strikes: The Fallacy of the Middle-Ground Approach

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 July 2020

Danielle L. Lupton
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Abstract

Limited air strikes present an attractive “middle-ground approach” for policymakers, as they are less costly to coercers than deploying troops on the ground. Policymakers believe that threatening and employing limited air strikes signal their resolve to targets. In this essay, as part of the roundtable on “The Ethics of Limited Strikes,” I debunk this fallacy and explain how the same factors that make limited air strikes attractive to coercers are also those that undermine their efficacy as a coercive tool of foreign policy. The limited nature of these air strikes undermines the ability of coercers to effectively signal their resolve. In turn, coercive threats of limited air strikes are less likely to be credible, creating a vicious cycle: policymakers threaten to employ air strikes because they are less costly but then often need to follow through on those threats as target states fail to acquiesce to their demands, precisely because limited air strikes are less costly for the coercer. Limited air strikes, therefore, can actually be a source of conflict escalation and lead policymakers to engage in military action that they would prefer to avoid. I further explain why failing to follow through on such coercive threats can undermine a leader's reputation for resolve and lead to future crisis escalation. Finally, I discuss what this quagmire means for the ethics of the threat and the use of air strikes, particularly for the principles of right intention, likelihood of success, and probability of escalation.

Keywords

reputationcoercionair strikesuse of forcejus ad vimjust warleadership
Type
Roundtable: The Ethics of Limited Strikes
Information
Ethics & International Affairs , Volume 34 , Issue 2 , Summer 2020 , pp. 217 - 228
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs

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References

NOTES

1 Danielle Lupton, “Trump Thought Escalating the Iran Crisis Would Solve It. That's Not How Escalation Works,” Washington Post, January 8, 2020, www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/01/08/trump-thinks-that-escalating-iran-crisis-will-solve-it-sadly-thats-not-how-it-works/.

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7 Ibid., p. 234.

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22 Assessing the Case for Striking Syria, 113th Cong., 1st sess., Committee on Homeland Security, U.S. House of Representatives (September 10, 2013) (prepared statement by Stephen Biddle, professor of science and international affairs, George Washington University), p. 2.

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26 Vilmer, “France and the American Drone Precedent.”

27 Lupton, Reputation for Resolve, p. 20. Such was the case with the Obama administration, who argued that Congress prevented it from following through on the violation of the red line.

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32 Lupton, “Reexamining Reputation for Resolve.”

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34 Brunstetter and Braun, “From Jus Ad Bellum to Jus Ad Vim,” p. 100.

35 Valerie Morkevičius and Danielle Lupton, “Was the Killing of Qassem Soleimani Justified?,” Political Violence at a Glance, January 6, 2020, politicalviolenceataglance.org/2020/01/06/was-the-killing-of-qassem-soleimani-justified/.

36 Ibid.

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38 Vilmer, “France and the American Drone Precedent.”

39 Michael Wolgelenter, “7 Takeaways from the Airstrikes on Syria,” New York Times, April 14, 2018.

40 Zenko, Between Threats and War.

41 Brunstetter and Braun, “From Jus Ad Bellum to Jus Ad Vim,” p. 88.

42 Lupton, Danielle L. and Morkevičius, Valerie, “The Fog of War: Violence, Coercion, and Jus ad Vim,” in Galliott, Jai, ed., Force Short of War in Modern Conflict: Just Ad Vim (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2019), p. 50Google Scholar.

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44 Reichberg and Syse, “Threats and Coercive Diplomacy,” p. 194.