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Following the Paris terrorist attacks of November 2015, Germany's Angela Merkel promised “to give France every support” in its war against jihadi terrorist groups, affirming that the “the Islamic State must be fought militarily.” After considerable debate, the Bundestag approved the deployment of German forces to the Middle East, Mali, and elsewhere, leading some to claim that Germany has set aside its reservations regarding the utility of force. A closer look at German contributions to UN and NATO missions from the 1990s through 2016 reveals, however, that Germany continues to draw a red line in terms of coercive airpower and direct combat operations. This reluctance stems from its interpretation of the past, demonstrating that constructivist approaches to strategic culture remain valid.

One of the contemporary arguments made in support of fielding revolutionary military technologies is that technological dominance not only decides the outcome of major wars, but enhances a nation's coercive power in dealing with low-end threats. Currently, a new generation of technophiles claims that unmanned and robotic systems are revolutionizing warfare, increasing the ability of advanced states to coerce states and societies that lag behind. Yet historically, technological dominance at the tactical level has a mixed record when projected into the diplomatic realm. The article analyzes the effectiveness of low-risk, over the horizon coercion from an historical viewpoint, assessing the effectiveness of gunboat diplomacy, air policing, and the ‘Tomahawk diplomacy’ of the 1990s. The author claims that the historical record indicates that gunboat diplomacy, air policing, and over the horizon coercion is more problematic than commonly portrayed, with the boundaries between coercive diplomacy and sa...