Coercing the Few: Analyzing Authoritarian Regimes’s Responses to Compellence and Threats of Total War.

Perhaps the most marked characteristic of the emergence of hegemony is the prospect of discrete military contests decoupled from a constraining and magnifying bipolar stand-off. The United States globally, and others regionally, are more able to use force without fear that the conflict will spill over into nuclear armageddon or draw in a balancing rival to shore up the enemy. The result is greater freedom to wage war for less-than-vital interests and to less-than-unconditional surrender. At the same time, when the interests are substantial, it raises the prospect that a state can push its war aims to unconditional surrender without fear that another state will intervene to prevent the total defeat of an enemy as would happen in a classic multipolar world. For the United States this can be seen in a number of cases from the 1990s to the present fought as coercive enterprises (Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo/Yugoslavia, and Iraq in the interim between the first and second Gulf Wars), and two fought as total wars (Afghanistan and the second Gulf War). In all of these cases, the target states/entities have often been loosely described as ?authoritarian regimes.? However, while the bulk of the targets are similar, there are vital differences between the Taliban regime and Saddam Hussein?s Iraq, for example, which may indicate entirely different dynamics under coercive pressure. Given that all of the cases involve targets in which only a few individuals rule, this paper?s core question is, ?How do ?the few? behave under coercive pressure?? Broken down, several sub-questions emerge: Do authoritarian regimes present unique coercive challenges vs. a rational unitary actor approach since they may be more concerned about personal survival than the aggregate welfare? Thus, are authoritarian regimes immune or hardened to conventional coercion in which state rather than elite interests are targeted? Conversely, are authoritarian regimes uniquely open to coercive deals which entail behavior change in exchange for their staying power? Similarly, are they relatively hardened to threats of total war which may paradoxically shore up their domestic position as the population to rallies behind the once despised leader and against an invader? What is the recent track record for coercion against authoritarian regimes? Is the high cost but relative finality of total wars a more promising approach for the hegemon than the lower cost but more constrained compellence approach? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]