The rhetoric of unconditional surrender: Locating the necessary moment for coercion

Abstract

This essay reworks the classical notions of kairos and to prepon to suggest that coercion can only be defended when the degree of human urgency exceeds the opportunity for further meaningful discourse. Unconditional demands are cast as thinly veiled elements underwriting a rhetoric advocating coercion. To illustrate the theoretical claims, the proposed criteria are used to critique U. S. involvement in the 1991 Gulf War, one of the most dramatic examples of American military power widely accepted by the American public as an instance of justified coercion.