和訳・要約

Compellence A sub-field of deterrence theory developed by Schelling (1966) largely on the basis of the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. Schelling argues that ‘deterring’ an actor from a behavior pattern that it might wish to follow is sufficiently different from ‘compelling’ it to do something different (including undoing what it has already done) to justify an analytical distinction. In the Cuban case, Schelling argues that the Kennedy administration’s handling of the crisis enabled the leadership in the United States to manipulate the risks of escalation to nuclear war to ‘compel’ the Soviet leaders to agree to withdraw the offending realistic missiles from the island. Paradoxically this risk manipulation makes compellence a dangerous strategy to pursue. Its elegant — if somewhat complex —logic depends upon adherence to views ofxrationality amongst decision-makers which might break down when they are most needed. Recent work by Lebow and Stein (1994) suggests that the compellence>paradigm only partly fits the decision calculus in Cuba. Both leaders seem to have overestimated the other’s propensity for risk taking and in this sense Cuba might be better seen as an instance of mutual compellence. There is some evidence to suggest that in approaching the >Persian Gulf War of 1991 the Bush administration sought to ‘compel’ the Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait via the Desert Shield build-up. In any event, compellence remains a highly contingent and very dangerous >crisis management behaviour repertoire.