Is International Coercion Waning or Rising?

Abstract

During the past decade or so, a growing number of specialists in international relations have perceived changes in the international system that pointed to a decline in the utility and use of military force' and have raised the question of whether other capabilities, among them economic leverage, were not being exercised to an increasing extent. Among these was the present author in a book On the Uses of Military Power in the Nitclear Age which was written in 1965 and published in 1966. Subsequent writers have carried this sort of speculation much farther and have claimed that the traditional international system is, in this and related respects, undergoing rapid and fundamental transformation. The article by James N. Rosenau on Capabilities and Control in an Interdependent World in the fall issue of International Security is a good example of this literature. I will bypass the question of whether international behavior is experiencing what is sometimes called a systemic change. The question is not very fruitful as long as people do not specify the criterion or criteria by which we can distinguish between change of a system of behavior and change in a system. Two further caveats are in order. It is obviously hazardous to derive clear-cut trends from the ambiguous events of a short period of time. As historians know, much of human behavior is inescapably ambiguous. It is capable of alternative explanations and no inference can be compelling. To project into the future trends we believe we have identified is even more hazardous. If only because they disadvantage some people, while advantaging others, trends have a way of provoking countertrends that modify or even dominate outcomes. Conjectures about the future of the employment of force would profit from recalling that the military sovereignty of organized communities, and resort to force for settling conflicts, have so far survived many and profound changes in science and technology, political and economic regimes, religions and cultures. To posit their declinenot as a temporary but as a permanent thing-is a bold prognosis. It may prove correct, but we cannot know whether it will or not. These strictures will and should not stop thoughtful speculation which, after all, is not only inevitable but can also be variously useful. We must not pretend, however, that we are dealing in more than suppositions.