Military Review English Edition November December 2016 | Page 27

MIGRATION AS A WEAPON

it first as an instrument of deterrence in the form of
threats against EU officials in the earliest days of the uprising, and later as an instrument of compellence against
nearby NATO member states, after the bombing campaign had commenced and the civil war had erupted.10
In other instances, coercion has entailed forcing large numbers of victims across borders, as then
Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic did in the
spring of 1999 in an attempt first to deter and then to
compel NATO to stop its bombing campaign during
the Kosovo War. Former German Foreign Minister
Joschka Fischer later admitted his regret in not taking
Milosevic seriously when he said he “could empty
Kosovo in a week.” Thus, while NATO was seeking
to compel Milosevic to cease his offensive against the
Kosovars through the use of air strikes, Milosevic was
engaged in his own intensive game of countercoercion against NATO and its allies. However, displaced
people, rather than bombs, were his political and
military weapons of choice.11 Although details remain
somewhat sketchy at this point, evidence suggests the
Syrian regime employed this tool as an instrument of
deterrence against one or more of its neighbors at the
star t of the ongoing civil war.12
On still other occasions, coercers have merely opened
(and later closed) borders that are normally sealed. One
such example is former Cuban President Fidel Castro,
who used this tool against the United States on at least
three occasions: in 1965, 1994, and, most famously,
during the Mariel boat lift of 1980.13 In still other cases,
coercion has been effected by exploiting and manipulating outflows created by others, whether intentionally
or inadvertently. This was the case in the late 1970s
when a group of Association of Southeast Asian Nations
(ASEAN) states threatened to push Indochinese boat
people out to sea, where they would likely drown, if the
group’s demands were not met. The aforementioned case
of Turkey is another clear example.

Success or Failure of Coercive
Engineered Migration
Operationally speaking, CEM is a “coercion by
punishment” strategy. Challengers aim to create domestic conflict, public dissatisfaction, or both, within
the target state in an attempt to convince its leadership to concede to the challenger’s demands rather
than incur the anticipated (domestic or international)
MILITARY REVIEW  November-December 2016

political costs of resistance.14 As is the case with terrorism and strategic bombing—also coercion by punishment strategies—the principal targets (namely, states)
tend not to be synonymous with the principal victims
(the displaced themselves).
There are two distinct but not mutually exclusive
pathways by which CEM can be effected using punishment strategies; loosely speaking, they might be thought
of as “capacity swamping” and “political agitating.” Simply
put, swamping focuses on manipulating the ability of
targets to accept, accommodate, and assimilate a given
group of migrants or refugees, while agitating focuses on
manipulating the willingness of targets to do so. In both
swamping and agitating, coercion is effectively a dynamic, two-level game in which target responses on the
international level to threats issued or actions taken by
challengers tend to be driven by simultaneous (or subsequent) actions taken by actors within the target state.15
Somewhat paradoxically, evidence suggests the objective
dangers posed to targets tend to be greater in the case of
swamping, but the
probability of coerDr. Kelly M. Greenhill is
cive success tends to
a professor of political scibe greater in the
ence at Tufts University and
case of agitating.
a research fellow at Harvard
In the deUniversity’s Kennedy School
veloping world,
of Government. She holds
coercive attempts
a PhD and an SM from the
most often focus
Massachusetts Institute of
on swamping and
Technology, a CSS from
comprise threats
Harvard University, and a BA
to severely tax
(with distinction and highest
or overwhelm a
honors) from the University of
target’s physical or
California at Berkeley. She has
economic capacity
served as a defense program
to cope with an
analyst and a consultant to
influx—thereby efthe U.S. government, the
fectively debilitatFord Foundation, the United
ing it—if it fails to
Nations High Commissioner for
concede to the coRefugees, and the World Bank.
16
ercer’s demands.
Greenhill is an award-winning
Challengers anticauthor and editor of numerous
ipate that, in locabooks and articles, including
tions where ethnic
Weapons of Mass Migration:
tensions may
Forced Displacement, Coercion
already be elevatand Foreign Policy, the basis for
ed and where the
this article.
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