American foreign policy and the fungibility of force

Outside the box: Explaining sanctions in pursuit of foreign economic goals*

“…This result nevertheless reinforces the argument that military power rarely translates into power in other issue areas (Keohane and Nye, 1978;Baldwin, 1985;Rosecrance, 1986). Realist claims about the fungibility of military power (Art, 1996;Waltz, 1979) must be looked at with a skeptical eye. Military capabilities appear to be unable to influence bargaining in other issue areas.…”

“…Note that this does not imply the outright use of force. As historians (Kunz, 1997) and political scientists (Art, 1996) have observed, sender governments can link economic disputes to military power without actually employing force. Second, the more the balance of military power favors the sender, the more likely it will be able to extract concessions.…”

“…Again, neorealists reject this 388 D. W. DREZNER argument as inconsistent with the fungibility of power (Waltz, 1979). Realists argue that the effects of a predominance of military power should be felt in other policy arenas (Art, 1996). Whether this is true or not is a matter of empirical observation, but the argument cannot be dismissed a priori.…”

Success and Failure in Foreign Policy

“…Unfortunately, the success of economic and military statecraft is often estimated solely on the basis of goal achievement without reference to the costs incurred (e.g. Blechman & Kaplan 1978;Leyton-Brown 1987;Tsebelis 1990;Art 1996;Pape 1996Pape , 1997Morgan & Schwebach 1997). The following passage provides a typical view of "successful" sanctions:…”

“…Despite Clausewitz and despite Schelling's (1984:269) contention that war itself is "a dramatically nonzero-sum activity," the tendency to treat war as a zero-sum conflict persists in the literature on military statecraft. War outcomes are usually coded in terms of "win," "lose," or "draw," which are consistent with zero-sum games, rather than in terms of the degree to which each participant was able to achieve its multiple goals (see Art 1996:9, Bueno de Mesquita 1981, Small & Singer 1982, Wang & Ray 1994, Stam 1996. Indeed, in nonzero-sum games, it is conceivable that all participants may be winners or all may be losers.…”