...

when the stakes warrant, where and when force can be effective, where no other policies are
likely to be effective, where its application can be limited in scope and time, and where the
potential benefits justify the potential costs and sacrifice.
There can be no single or simple set of fixed rules for using force .... Each and every case is
unique.
-- President George Bush, "Remarks at the United States Military Academy," January
5,1993. [2]

The proposition that force and threats of force are a necessary instrument of
diplomacy and have a role to play in foreign policy is part of the conventional wisdom
of statecraft. And it is true that history as well as recent experience supports the view
that efforts to deal with conflicts between states solely by means of peaceful
diplomacy do not always succeed and may result in substantial damage to one's
national interests. On the other hand, one finds in history many cases in which threats
of force or the actual use of force were often not only costly but also ineffective.
Given that historical experience supports the necessity of resorting to force and threats
of force at times, but also emphasizes the risks of doing so, we are left with a central
question in the theory and practice of foreign policy; that is, under what conditions
and how can military force and threats of force be used effectively to accomplish
different types of foreign policy objectives at an acceptable level of cost and risk?
Efforts to address this question have sharply divided American strategic thinkers ever
since the Korean War. After the Korean War, many military and civilian strategists
argued that the United States should never again fight a limited, inconclusive war.
Either it should stay out of such conflicts altogether, or, if it intervened, it should use
whatever military force might be required to win a decisive military victory.
Those who subscribed to this lesson of the Korean War quickly came to be known as
the Never-Again School. The strategic doctrine they advocated regarding American
military intervention was appropriately labeled all-or-nothing--that is, either the
United States should be prepared to do everything necessary to win or it should not
intervene at all.
A quite different lesson from the Korean War experience was drawn by other foreign
policy specialists. They argued that the United States might well have to fight limited
wars again. One had to expect that other regional conflicts would occur in which the

United States felt obliged to intervene because important interests were at stake. Quite
appropriately, those who drew this particular lesson from the Korean War came to be
known as adherents of the Limited War School.
The disagreement over strategy between adherents of the Never-Again and the
Limited War viewpoints has persisted ever since and has had an impact on American
policymaking in a number of subsequent crises which I do not have time to discuss.
Let me jump ahead to the period of the early and mid-1960's. By then, the NeverAgain school lacked powerful spokesmen and it was unable to prevent large-scale
U.S. military involvement in Vietnam. However, the costs and unsatisfactory outcome
of that war triggered a major revival of the Never-Again point of view. In President
Reagan's first term, his Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinbergerarticulated a powerful
and highly influential version of the old Never-Again philosophy. Weinberger and the
Secretary of State George Shultz engaged in an impassioned, at times acrimonious
debate over this issue. Shultz was not oblivious to the "lessons" of Vietnam but,
echoing elements of the earlier Limited War school, Shultz observed that situations do
arise when a "discrete assertion of power" is needed to support our limited objectives.
Shultz argued that diplomatic efforts not backed by credible threats of force and, when
necessary, with use of limited force will prove ineffectual, resulting in substantial
damage to U.S. interests.
Since the debate between Weinberger and Shultz, the use of force as an instrument of
U.S. foreign policy has continued to be a difficult, often highly controversial issue.
The problem has taken on new dimensions in the geopolitical context of the post-cold
war era. Presidents Bush and Clinton have had to confront a striking paradox. The
United States has emerged as the only superpower and it possesses overwhelmingly
superior military capabilities. And yet we have repeatedly experienced great difficulty
in employing the strategies of deterrence and coercive diplomacy to persuade
adversaries to forgo or stop actions that impose on U.S. interests.
Several aspects of the post-cold war era have added new wrinkles to the dilemma of
whether and how to use force and threats of force to back diplomacy. The domestic
consensus that undergirded American foreign policy during the cold war has been
shattered. Since the end of the cold war there has been lacking anything
approximating a national consensus on what the leadership role of the United States
should be in international affairs. Lack of agreement on the nature and importance of
our national interests in this new geopolitical setting has added new dimensions and
twists to the debate as to when and how force and threats of force should be
employed. Moreover, there is little prospect that a new national consensus can be
forged to provide an underpinning to a coherent, consistent foreign policy.

This problem has been further complicated by the proliferation of intra-state conflicts
in the post-cold war era, which in recent years vastly outnumber conflicts between
states. The international community has been overburdened by crisis situations that
call for peace-making, peace-keeping, nation-building, and humanitarian assistance.
Let me turn briefly now to the question whether any useful "decision rules" or specific
guidelines can be formulated and agreed upon for using force or threats of force to
deter or deal with these many challenging crises. Perhaps the best general answer to
this question was given by President Bush in his "farewell address" at West Point in
January 1993. President Bush stated that "there can be no single or simple set of fixed
rules for using force.... Each and every case is unique."
Nonetheless, if not decision rules at least some guidelines of a rather general character
are possible. President Bush himself proposed several, and I think it is significant that
his guidelines implicitly but clearly rejected or qualified those that had been proposed
by Caspar Weinberger. And indeed, the practice of the Bush administration on
important occasions deviated from Weinberger's rules. First, as Bush'sintervention in
Somalia indicated, U.S. military forces were committed not only, as Weinberger had
urged, when "vital interests" were at stake. Second, as Bush's policy in dealing with
Saddam Hussein in the Persian Gulf crisis indicated, it is not the case that U.S. forces
will be committed only when there is a minimal risk of casualties. Third, again as the
Gulf War indicated, it is not the case that U.S. forces will be committed only when
there is strong public support for doing so. (However, it is also true that the American
public must understand and support the objective being pursued and be persuaded that
the stakes warrant putting American lives on the line.)
Let me summarize now the general guidelines that can be extracted from President
Bush's West Point address and by the practice of his administration. The first
guideline is: do not commit U.S. forces unless you believe it will make a critical
difference. Second, do not commit U.S. military forces unless there is a high
probability of success. Third, define the military mission carefully, and tailor and
circumscribe the mission to enhance the likelihood that it will succeed. Be it noted
that this third guideline implies that "winning" is not simply a matter of making sure
that overwhelming force is used; rather "winning" is in the first instance a matter of
choosing the objective of the intervention wisely and limiting it if necessary.
Let me turn in the time remaining to the problems we have experienced in making
effective use of deterrence andcoercive diplomacy--two strategies that have received
or will receive attention in some of your panels. Both of these strategies require the
ability to make threats of force that will be sufficiently credible and sufficiently potent
in the eyes of the adversary to persuade him not to act against our interests or to stop
or undo what he has done.

As I noted earlier, in the post-cold war era the United States has repeatedly
experienced great difficulty in making threats that were credible and potent enough to
deter or coerce adversaries. Two particularly striking examples will suffice to
illustrate the inability of a superpower that is in possession of overwhelmingly
superior military capabilities to make sufficiently credible and sufficiently potent
threats, the paradox I alluded to earlier. In the Persian Gulf crisis,despite an amazing
demonstration of U.S. military capabilities deployed to the Gulf and a declared
willingness to use force if necessary, Saddam Hussein refused to comply with the
demand to remove his troops from Kuwait and had to be expelled by force.
The second example concerns the efforts of the Reagan and Bush administrations to
persuade the Panamanian dictator, Manuel Noriega, to leave office by threatening to
use force, if necessary. After ineffectual efforts at coercive diplomacy to gain this
objective, President Bush was finally forced to send combat forces into Panama to
capture Noriega.
How can the failure of coercive diplomacy in these cases be understood? While it is
difficult to understand Saddam Hussein's mind-set or his calculations, it would appear
that he was insufficiently impressed with the credibility or the potency of U.S. threats
of force. He may have been influenced more by an image he had formed of U.S.
irresolution, one which attributed to the United States a peculiar reluctance and
inability to sustain casualties that stemmed from its catastrophic experience in
Vietnam.
As for Noriega, it is clear that only a stronger variant of the strategy of coercive
diplomacy coupled perhaps with "carrots" and efforts to provide him with face-saving
would have been necessary to overcome his unwillingness to give up power. (This
was perhaps a "lesson" learned and finally applied by the Clinton administration in its
efforts to remove the Haitian dictators.) Analysis of the Bush administration's efforts
to pressure Noriega reveals that it employed a weak variant of coercive diplomacy,
resembling a "try-and-see" approach rather than an ultimatum.[3]
This interpretation of the Noriega case gains strong support from General Colin
Powell who stated in an interview that the limited military actions taken by the U.S. in
1988 and 1989 probably reinforced Noriega's pre-existing perception that the U.S.
was irresolute, and that he could possibly persevere.
The authors of a recent study of these and other cases have offered the trenchant
observation that "there is a generation of political leaders throughout the world whose
basic perception of U.S. military power and political will is one of weakness, [leaders]
who enter any situation with a fundamental belief that the United States can be
defeated, can be driven away." In support of this observation, these authors cite the

statement by Mohammed Farah Aidid, the leader of a key Somali faction, in a

conversation with Ambassador Robert Oakley, U.N. Special Envoy to Somalia during
the U.S. involvement there in 1993-1995: Aidid said, "I've studied Vietnam and
Beirut. I know that all I need to do to send you home is to kill some Americans."[4]
Aidid was proven to be correct! The withdrawal of U.S. forces from Somalia by the
Clinton administration after U.S. soldiers died in a clash with Aidid's forces was not
only a humiliating experience, it also confirmed perceptions that America lacked
resolve, and it severely complicated and undermined U.S. efforts thereafter to make
effective use of threats of force.
It is clear that domestic public and congressional support for threats or use of force is
a critical variable. Such support does not guarantee success, but without it, presidents
have great difficulty making threats of sufficient credibility and of sufficient potency
to back their demands on adversaries. The American public's strong aversion to the
risk of suffering casualties, a legacy of Vietnam, is all the more constraining when the
U.S. is confronted by intra-state conflicts that have become so prominent in the postcold war era. Ever mindful of the public aversion to casualties, presidents have been
reluctant to make threats as clear, potent, and credible as required by the situation.
They have reacted cautiously or not at all to some challenges to American interests.
One can acknowledge that the United States has been correct not to intervene in every
one of many crises around the globe. American interests do not always clearly require
us to do so, and the international community itself is overwhelmed with such crises
and cannot respond to all of them. But often U.S. interests do merit some response and
the response, if any, has tended to be a minimal one taken in the hope of limiting the
extent of involvement and costs.
As a result, the United States has often acted in ways that inadvertently support the
image of American irresolution. Even in cases when firm U.S. military action was
finally taken--Panama, Haiti, and Bosnia--it came only after considerable delay. Such
belated responses could not be counted upon to erase the image of U.S. hesitation and
irresolution held by foreign leaders who thought they could benefit from the
pronounced reluctance of the American public, Congress, and the administration
leaders to accept the risk of casualties. For the simple fact is that the inconclusive
threats and delayed military action taken by the U.S. in many situations are likely to
be perceived as others "more as signs of weakness than as potent expressions of
America's true military power." As a result, foreign leaders are likely to be willing to
withstand American threats--necessitating the U.S. either to resort to force to achieve
American goals, or to engage in embarrassing retreats.[5]

There is much merit in General Colin Powell's observation that "threats of military
force will work only when U.S. leaders have decided that they are prepared to use
force." The logical and practical implication of this observation is that when
presidents are not prepared to use force, threats to do so should not be
made.[6] General Powell also pointedly observes that when resorting to force, "The
president must begin the action prepared to see the course through to its end.... He can
only persuade an opponent of his seriousness when, indeed, he is serious...."
The dilemmas regarding use of force and threats of force in American diplomacy will
not yield to the imperatives of the Weinberger Doctrine. It is noteworthy that not only
the Bush administration but also President Clinton's has found it necessary to
introduce some flexibility in applying the Weinberger Doctrine. Force has not always
been used, as Weinberger argued, only when truly vital U.S. interests are at stake.
Force was used by President Clinton in Haiti and again in Bosnia--as, indeed, earlier
by President Bush against Saddam Hussein--with only marginal domestic political
support at best, and not with the "reasonable assurance" of assured domestic support
Weinberger held to be a prerequisite. And Weinberger's injunction that U.S. combat
forces should be employed only "as a last resort after exhausting other means" for
safeguarding U.S. interests has been subjected to considerable questioning.
So, in conclusion, I note that rightly or wrongly, the press of world events has driven
American policymakers inevitably toward Secretary Shultz's prescriptions for use of
force in support of diplomacy.[7]
These important emendations of the Weinberger Doctrine in the direction of Shultz's
position have been taken uneasily and have occasioned considerable criticism. By no
means do we have a synthesis or a clear resolution of the two competing points of
view. The tensions and dilemmas surrounding the use of force and threats of force
remain and they can be expected to challenge American presidents, Congress, and the
public into the foreseeable future.

[1]Talk at CSIS Security Strategy Symposium, Renaissance Washington DC Hotel,

June 25, 1998. This paper draws from a paper of the same title prepared for the
Dedication Conference of the George Bush School of Government and Public Service,
Texas A&M University, September 9-10, 1997, which will appear in a forthcoming
publication.

[2]Reprinted in Richard N. Haass, Intervention: The Use of American Military Force

in the Post-cold war World(Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment, 1994),
Appendix F, pp. 199-204.
[3]A recent study of the case finds that the Bush administration "...never stated clearly
and definitively that the U S. would he willing to invade the country and throw
Noriega out if he did not comply with the demand to relinquish office...a [sufficiently]
potent threat was never made.... Nor was any deadline set for his compliance with the
demand.... U.S. verbal demands were not directly supported by tangible military
actions. Although reinforcements were sent to the Canal Zone and some exercises
were held there, they were all downplayed U.S. officials and explained by a general
concern for the security of the zone in light of deteriorating U.S.-Panamanian
relations." Barry Blechman and Tamara Corman Wittes, "Defining Moment: The
Threat and Use of Force in American Foreign Policy Since 1989," National Research
Council, Committee on International Conflict Resolution. Occasional Paper No. 1
(Washington, D.C. 1998).
[4]Interview with Robert Oakley by Blechman and Wittes.
[5]Blechman and Wittes.
[6]Colin L. Powell, "U.S. Forces: Challenges Ahead,"Foreign Affairs, vol. 72:5
(Winter 1992-1993), pp. 32-45. Powell, "Why Generals Get Nervous," New York
Times, 8 October 1992, p. A35. (Quoted by Blechman and Wittes.)
[7]Blechman and Wittes. At the same time, however, other criteria associated with the
Weinberger Doctrine continue to characterize the approach of the Clinton
administration, in particular the requirement for clearly defined political and military
objectives, and its adherence until recently to the requirement that a specific exit time
be set for removal of U.S. forces when they are committed to a crisis area