The Theory of Coercion Coercion Theory and United States Foreign Policy

Much of U.S. foreign policy, and most of U.S. security policy, is built either directly or indirectly around coercion. Coercion is causing someone to choose one course of action over another by making the choice preferred by the coercer appear more attractive than the alternative, which the coercer wishes to avoid. In the international arena, coercion seeks to change the behavior of states (or occasionally significant nonstate actors),1 for example by deterring aggression or by compelling an enemy to surrender, although it may involve far less serious stakes. Regardless of the nature of the enemy and the objective of the policy, however, coercion takes the form of an explicit or implicit message that the target actor should do A rather than B because the consequences of B will be less favorable to him than the consequences of A.