Re-thinking Coercion
Aug 2006, Vol. 151, No. 4
By Ben Bolland
Many military planners and strategists of the Twentieth Century regarded ‘coercion’ as a physical process whereby limited punishment would be inflicted on one’s adversary in order to try and dissuade them from propagating hostilities. Such a way of thinking about coercion is now out-dated. We are at a time in history where we must consider the adoption of coercive operations as a cognitive process that is conducted at the strategic level; a process that plays upon the psychological weaknesses of an adversary rather than punishing their perceived physical vulnerabilities in the hope that coercive effect will follow. After all, any adversary’s true ‘centre of gravity’ does not lie in the physical world, in his economy or even his military forces but lies between his own ears, in his mind, and within his own heart.
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By Ben Bolland
Many military planners and strategists of the Twentieth Century regarded ‘coercion’ as a physical process whereby limited punishment would be inflicted on one’s adversary in order to try and dissuade them from propagating hostilities. Such a way of thinking about coercion is now out-dated. We are at a time in history where we must consider the adoption of coercive operations as a cognitive process that is conducted at the strategic level; a process that plays upon the psychological weaknesses of an adversary rather than punishing their perceived physical vulnerabilities in the hope that coercive effect will follow. After all, any adversary’s true ‘centre of gravity’ does not lie in the physical world, in his economy or even his military forces but lies between his own ears, in his mind, and within his own heart.
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