The Four Functions of Force by Robert J.

Art
What Are The Uses of Force?
o Four categories that themselves analytically exhaust the functions that force can serve:
defense, deterrence, compellence, and swaggering
o Usually only the great powers have the wherewithal to develop military forces that can
serve more than two functions at once. This is achieved only vis--vis smaller powers,
not vis--vis the other great ones.
o The measure of the capabilities of a states military forces must be made relative to those
of another state, not on an absolute scale.
o A state that can swagger vis--vis another may or may not be able to perform any of the
other three functions relative to it. Where feasible, defense is the goal that all states aim
for first.
o If defense is not possible, deterrence is generally the next priority. Swaggering is the
function most difficult to pin down analytically; deterrence, the one whose achievement
is the most difficult to demonstrate; compellence the easiest to demonstrate but among
the hardest to achieve.
o The defensive use of force is the deployment of military power so as to be able to do two
things to ward off an attack and to minimize damage to oneself if attack.
A state can deploy its forces in place prior to an attack, use them after an attack
has occurred to repel it, or strike first if it believes that an attack upon it is
imminent or inevitable.
If a state strikes first when it believes an attack upon it is imminent, it is
launching a preemptive blow. If it strikes first when it believes an attack is
inevitable but not momentary, it launching a preventive blow.
A state preempts in order to wrest the advantage of the first strike from an
opponent.
A state launches a preventive attack because it believes that others will attack it
when the balance of forces turns in their favor and therefore attacks while the
balance of forces is in its favor.
For preemption, it is a matter of hours, days, or even a few weeks at the most; for
preventions, months or even a few years.
o The deterrent use of force is the deployment of military power so as to be able to prevent
an adversary from doing something that one does not want him to do and the he might
otherwise be tempted to do by threatening with unacceptable punishment if he does it.
Deterrence is thus the threat of retaliation.
The effectiveness of the threat depends upon a states ability to convince a
potential adversary that it has both the will and power to punish him severely if
he undertakes the undesirable action in question.
Defense is possible without deterrence, and deterrence is possible without
defense.
o Whether a given state can defend or deter or do both vis--vis another depends upon two
factors:
1.) the quantitative balance of forces between it and its adversary
2.) the qualitative balances of forces, that is, whether the extant military
technology favors the offense or the defense.
o The compellent use of force is the deployment of military power so as to be able either to
stop an adversary from doing something that he has already undertaken or to get him to
do something that he has not yet undertaken.
Compellence can employ force either physically or peacefully.
The distinction between compellence and deterrence is one between the active
and passive use of force.
The success of a deterrent threat is measured by its not having to be used.
The success of a compellent action is measured by how closely and quickly the
adversary conforms to ones stipulated wishes.
Compellence is comparatively harder to achieve than deterrence. It lies, not in
what one asks another to do, but in how one asks.
Compellent actions more directly engage the prestige and the passions of the put-
upon state. Less prestige is lost in not doing something than in clearly altering
behavior due to pressure from another.
o Swaggering is in part a residual category, the deployment of military power for purposes
other than defense, deterrence, or compellence.
Swaggering almost always involves only the peaceful use of force and is
expressed usually in one of two ways:
Displaying ones military might at the military exercises and national
demonstrations
Buying or building the eras most prestigious weapons.
The swagger use of force is the most egoistic: It aims to enhance the national
pride of a people or to statisfy the personal ambitions of its ruler.
Swaggering is more something to be enjoyed for itself than to be employed for a
specific, consciously thought-out end. (look up realpolitik)
Discriminating among the four functions of force is analytically is easier than applying them in
practice.
o We need to know the motives behind an act in order to judge its purpose; but the problem
is that motives cannot be readily inferred from actions because several motives can be
served by the same actions.
o Motives are important in order to interpret actions, but neither actions nor words always
clearly delineate motives.
o It is difficult to distinguish from compellent actions and deterrent from swaggering one
unless we know the reasons for which they were undertaken.
o An assessment of the legitimacy of a states motives in using force is integral to the task
of determining what its motives are. One cannot specify motives without at the same time
making judgments about their legitimacy.

The Diplomacy of Violence by Thomas Schelling
The usual distinction between diplomacy and force is in the relation between adversaries in the
interplay of motives and the role of communication,, understanding, compromise, and restraint.
Diplomacy is bargaining: it seeks outcomes that, though not ideal for either party, are better for
both than some of the alternatives.
In diplomacy, each p[arty somewhat controls what the other wants, and can get more by
compromise, exchange, or collaboration than by taking things in his own hands and ignoring the
others wishes.
The Contrast of Brute Force With Coercion
o The purely military or undiplomatic recourse to forcible action is concerned with enemy
strength, not enemy interests. The coercive use of the power to hurt, though, is the very
exploitation of enemy wants and fears.
o Brute force succeeds when it is used whereas the power to hurt is most successful when
held in reserve.
It is the threat of damage, or of more damage to come, that can make someone
yield or comply. It is latent violence that can influence someones choice.
To exploit a capacity for hurting and inflicting damage, one needs to know what
an adversary treasures and what scares him and one needs the adversary to
understand what behavior of his will cause the violence to be inflicted and what
will cause it to be withheld.
It is not the threat alone that is effective but the corresponding assurance,
possibly an implicit one, that he can avoid the pain or loss if he does comply.
o Coercion by threat of damage also requires that our interests and our opponents not be
absolutely opposed. Coercion requires finding a bargain, arranging for him to be better
off doing what we want and worse off not doing what we want, while we get little or no
satisfaction giving pain.
o The difference between coercion and brute force is as often in the intent as in the
instrument. Senseless violence vs. diplomatic violence
o War appears to be, or threatens to be, not so much a contest of strength as one of
endurance, nerve, obstinacy, and pain. It appears to be, and threatens to be, not so much a
contest of military strength as a bargaining process, nevertheless a bargaining process.
o The difference is not entirely obvious as sometimes the most effective direct action
inflicts enough cost or pain on the enemy to serve as a threat, sometimes not.
o Some actions serve as both a means of forcible accomplishment and a means of inflicting
pure damage some do not.
o Hostages tend to entail almost pure pain and damage, as do all forms of reprisal after the
fact.
o The power to hurt, though it can usually accomplish nothing directly, is potentially more
versatile than a straightforward capacity for forcible accomplishment.
o Brute force can only accomplish what requires no collaboration. Violence is most
purposive and most successful when it is threatened and not used.
The Strategic Role of Pain and Damage
o Pure violence, nonmilitary violence, appears most conspicuously in relations between
unequal countries, where there is no substantial military challenge and the outcome of
military engagement is not in question.
o If there is no room for doubt how a contest in strength will come out, it may be possible
to bypass the military stage altogether and to proceed at once to the coercive bargaining.
o At the end of the war is where the typical confrontation of unequal forces occurs.
Surrender negotiations are often so one sided, or the potential violence so
unmistakable, that bargaining succeeds and the violence remains in reserve.
Latent violence in the aftermath of a war
o Punitive attacks on people are not necessarily military engagements. The can be used in
an effort to subdue by the use of violence, without a futile attempt to draw the enemys
military forces into decisive battle.
o The technology and geography of warfare for equal powers keep coercive violence from
being decisive before military victory was achieved.
The Nuclear Contribution to Terror and Violence
o To compress a catastrophic war within the span of time that a man can stay awake
drastically changes the politics of war, the process of decision, the possibility of central
control and restraint, the motivations of people in charge, and the capacity to think and
reflect while war is in progress.
o WWI and WWI were limited by termination, by an ending that occurred before the
period of greatest potential violence, by negotiation that brought the threat of pain and
privation to bear but often precluded the massive exercise of civilian violence.
o With nuclear weapons available, the restraint of violence cannot awawit the outcome of a
contest of military strength; restraint, to occur at all, must occur during war itself.
o The roles of war have become reversed with nuclear weapons. Victory is no longer a
prerequisite for hurting the enemy. There can be no coercion at the end of the war if the
country is destroyed.
o Deterrence rests today on the threat of pain and extinction, not just on the threat of
military defeat.
o Less deadly weapons, permitting an injured on to shoot back before he died, might have
been more conducive to a restraining balance of terror, or of caution. The very efficiency
of nuclear weapons could make them ideal for starting war, if they can suddenly
eliminate the enemys capability to shoot back.
o To concentrate on the enemys military installations while deliberately holding in reserve
a massive capacity for destroying his cities, for exterminating, his people and eliminating
his society, on condition that the enemy observe similar restraint with respect to ones
own society is not the conventional approach.
o There are three stages in the involvement of noncombatants in the fury of war
The first stage is that in which the people may get hurt by inconsiderate
combatants.
The second stage is when people get involved in the war because its their war.
They are a part of war-making processes, regardless of whether they fight.
The third stage is when victory inadequately expresses what a nation wants from
its military forces. It usually wants the influence that resides in latent force. Sheer
damage and pain are primary instruments of coercive warfare and may actually
be applied, to intimidate or to deter. Pain and destruction in war are expected to
serve little or no purpose but prior threats are coupled to military force.
What is Terrorism? By Bruce Hoffman
Virtually any especially abhorrent act of violence perceived as directed against society whether
it involves the activities of antigovernment dissidents or governments themselves, organized
crime syndicates, common criminals, rioting mobs, people engaged in militant protests,
individual psychotics, or lone extortionists is often labeled terrorism.
Why is Terrorism So Difficult To Define?
o The trend toward convoluted definitions of terrorism using semantics to sidestep the
negative connotations have the words has become very popular.
o Terrorist organizations almost without exception now regularly select names for
themselves that consciously eschew the word terrorism in any of its forms. Groups
actively seek to evoke images of:
Freedom and liberation
Armies or other military organizational structures
Actual self-defense movements
Righteous vengeance
o Sometimes, they also choose neutral names that lack any indication of what they are.
o Terrorists perceive themselves as reluctant warriors, driven by desperation, and lacking
any viable alternative, to violence against a repressive state, a predatory rival ethnic or
nationalist group, or an unresponsive international order.
This perceived characteristic of self-denial also distinguishes the terrorist from
other types of political extremists.
The terrorist will never acknowledge that he is a terrorist and moreover will go to
great lengths to evade and obscure an such inference or connection.
Other factors, like the government or an oppressive economy are the real
terrorists
o Use of the term terrorist implies moral judgment, and if one part can succeed in attaching
the label to its opponent, then it has indirectly persuaded others to adopt its moral
viewpoint.
o A group of NATO defined terrorist as murder, kidnapping, arson and other felonious
acts constitute criminal behavior, but many non Western nations have proved reluctant to
condemn as terrorist acts what they consider to be struggles of national liberation. In this
reasoning, the defining characteristic of terrorism is violence, and not the motivations
behind it.
o This rationale thus equates the random violence inflicted on enemy population centers by
military forces with the violence committed by substate entities labeled terrorists, since
both involve the infliction of death and injury on noncombatants.
o Terrorist often argues that, because of their numerical inferiority, far more limited
firepower, and paucity of resources compared with an established nation-states massive
defense and national security apparatus, they have no choice but to operate clandestinely,
carrying out acts of hit and run violence.
o There are rules of warfare, such as:
Prohibiting taking civilians as hostages
Impose regulations governing the treatment of POWs
Outlaw reprisals against either civilians or POWs
Recognize neutral territory and the rights of citizens of neutral states
Uphold the inviolability of diplomats and other accredited representatives
o Terrorists in the past century have violated all of these rules.
o One of the fundamental reasons to be of international terrorism is a refusal to be bound
by such rules of warfare and codes of conduct.
Distinctions as a Path to Definition
o Terrorism is often confused or equated with, or treated as synonymous with, guerrilla
warfare and insurgency.
Guerilla in its most widely accepted usage is taken to refer to a numerically
larger group of armed individuals who operate as a military unit, attack enemy
military forces, and seize and hold territory, while also exercising some form of
sovereignty or control over a defined geographical area and its populations.
Insurgencies typically involve coordinated informational and psychological
warfare efforts designed to mobilize popular support in a struggle against an
established national government, imperialist power, or foreign occupying force.
o Criminals vs. Terrorists
Criminals act primarily for selfish, personal motivations, usually material gain.
The ordinary criminal violent act is not designed or intended to have
consequence or create psychological repercussions beyond the act itself. The
violence is neither conceived nor intended to convey any message to anyone. The
criminal is not concerned with influencing or affecting public opinions.
The fundamental aim of the terrorists violence is ultimately to change the
system
o Terrorist vs. Assassins
The terrorists goal is again political, the assassins goal is more often intrinsically
idiosyncratic, completely egocentric and deeply personal.
o The terrorist is fundamentally an altruist: he believes that he is serving a good cause
designed to achieve a greater good for a wider constituency whether real or imagined
that the terrorist and his organization purport to represent.
o In recent years, many terrorist movements have increasingly adopted a strategy of
leaderless networks in order to thwart law enforcement and intelligence agency efforts to
penetrate them.
Ending Terrorism by Audrey Kurth Cronin
Examining how Terrorist Campaigns Have ended
o There are generally six pathways that are followed in the end of terrorist groups. They are
usually characterized by watershed events that lead to a diminution in the rate or lethality
of attacks.
o Catching or Killing the Leaders
First among the range of actions a government may take in pushing a group
towards its end is to capture or kill its leader.
Terrorist groups often feature an individual who exploits a sense of hope and a
feeling of grievance or frustration thereby streamlining the frustrating
complexities of life and presenting terrorist attacks as a way of nudging history
forwards.
There is considerable evidence to indicate that capturing leaders has been more
effective than killing them in ending a group.
Even in the short term, state targeting of a leader has sometimes backfired,
especially in nonhierarchical groups where a ready successor is found or where
the leader is killed in the operation and becomes a martyr.
Killing or capturing leaders often results in a struggle for succession. This
reduces a groups short term operational effectiveness, but it may also push it to
adapt into a more effective, flatter, less hierarchically organized organization that
is harder to destroy.
The important strategic question for government policy is not whether attacks are
foiled, vengeance is exacted or a group is damaged, but also whether or not a
policy of decapitation is helping to bring about the termination of a group in the
longer term.
o Crushing Terrorism with Force
This approach may involve aggressive military campaigns abroad or domestic
crackdowns at home, or some combination of the two.
Most governments faced by major terrorist campaigns have been compelled to
institute some type of emergency measures to answer the threat.
If the only goal is to end violence against noncombatants for a time within a
given territory, then the use of force can be said to have achieved this repeatedly
throughout history.
Repression seems particularly prominent in time sof state transition: states that
are insecure about their domestic or international standing seem especially
include to use brute force.
The use of forces exacts a high cost. Repressions also regularly proves to be only
a temporary solution, resulting in the export of the problem to another country or
region.
It is especially difficult for democracies to engage successfully in repression over
time, since such measures require distinguishing targets form the rest of the
population, often undermine civil liberties, and change the very nature of the
states. Massive state repression often kills many more people than the initial
terrorist attacks.
o Achieving the Strategic Objective
A few terrorist groups have triumphed, achieving their long term goals, and then
disbanded or adopted a more legitimate political form and stopped engaging in
attacks against noncombatants.
In killing noncombatants, terrorism can attract peoples attention, provoke
tactical responses, lead a sate to undermine itself and create a cuase of
celebrations, but it almost never installs new rulers, inspires ideological change,
takes over territory or construct new institutions of governance.
Groups are best able to succeed when they can convince major powers of the
legitimacy of their cause and gain their backing, morally or materially or both.
o Moving Toward a Legitimate Political Process
The fourth means by which terrorism can be said to have ended revolves around
the concept of a negotiated settlement.
Negotiations can facilitate a process of decline, but they have rarely been the
single factor driving an outcome.
The longer a group exists, the more likely the possibility of peace talks.
It is essential that both sides perceive that more violence is counterproductive.
o Implosions and Loss of Popular Support
o Moving to other Malignant Forms