Military Review English Edition November December 2016

MIGRATION AS A WEAPON successes, coercers have gotten more or less everything they reportedly sought 57 percent of the time.41 While rather more modest, this more restrictive rate is comparable to some of the best-case estimates of deterrence success (ca. 57 percent), and substantially greater than best estimates of the success of economic sanctions (ca. 33 percent) or U.S. coercive diplomacy efforts (between 19 and 37.5 percent).42 Disaggregating CEM into exercises of compellence and deterrence reveals that the vast majority of the seventy-five to eighty-six heretofore-documented cases of CEM have been exercises in compellence; the remaining cases have comprised exercises combining crisis deterrence and compellence and crisis deterrence alone.43 While deterrence attempts are in the aggregate successful at rates akin to U.S. coercive diplomacy (40 percent partial plus complete success; 20 percent complete success), compellence-only attempts have on average yielded rates significantly higher than CEM as a whole (78 percent partial plus complete success; 63 percent complete success). Target Defenses and Evasive Actions The previous discussion notwithstanding, however, migration-driven coercion is no superweapon. The political and military risks associated with its employment can be enormously high, even fatal, as, for instance, Gaddhafi discovered when he fatally overplayed his hand in 2011 after a series of successful uses of CEM throughout the 2000s.44 The reputational costs of weaponizing innocent people to effect state-level coercion can also be great, as can be the international opprobrium incurred following such uses. Thus, it is hardly surprising that the vast majority of documented coercers have been highly committed but relatively weak (relative to their targets) illiberal actors. Even so, it is rarely a weapon of first resort for several distinct reasons. First, challengers may ultimately catalyze larger crises than they anticipate or desire, and massive outflows can destabilize both states of origin and destination.45 Fears of just such a collapse, for instance, led to the construction of the Berlin Wall in the early 1960s.46 Second, once a crisis has been initiated, challengers often lose (some degree of) control over it, in no small part because engineered migration-related “cleansing” operations may be carried out by irregulars, or even bands of thugs, who lack discipline and whose MILITARY REVIEW November-December 2016 objectives may not be synonymous with those who instigated an outflow. Likewise, migrants and refugees of course have agency, and once they find themselves outside the sending state, they are frequently capable of autonomous actions. For example, they might move in different directions and do so in smaller or larger numbers than the challenger desires. When this happens, an outflow can become more like an unguided missile than a smart bomb, thus making coercing a particular target more difficult. Third, as Schelling has argued, “the ideal compellent action would be one that, once initiated, causes minimal harm if compliance is forthcoming and great harm if compliance is not forthcoming.”47 However, while migration and refugee movements, once initiated, can be stopped, under certain conditions, they can be difficult to undo. As such, threats of further escalation can be quite persuasive, but promises of minimal harm in the face of compliance can be difficult to keep, potentially reducing the value of concession for targets. Fourth, the potential for blowback can be great, and the intended consequences thereof quite costly. For instance, not only did the U.S.-instigated mass migration of North Vietnamese southward following the First Indochina War fail to achieve its stated objective of deterring Ho Chi Minh from pushing for reunification elections, but it also inadvertently further weakened the sitting regime in South Vietnam while simultaneously increasing U.S. commitment to propping it up.48 Moreover, coercion is not a one-sided game, and targets are not without recourse. Although, due to their generally liberal democratic nature, the majority of targets are constrained from responding in kind by launching flows of their own. However, many do find ways to fight back and to resist, sometimes successfully. Three responses in particular warrant mention. First, under certain conditions, targets can “externalize,” outsource, or simply pass on the visible (and politically costly) consequences of migration crises to others, thereby skirting successful coercion by persuading third parties to warehouse, host, or even assimilate the unwanted group.49 Transferring responsibility is not always an option, however, particularly if the displaced are already inside the target state or if other potential host or asylum states themselves fear the destabilizing consequences of an influx. Second, some target governments manage 31

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