Military Review English Edition November December 2016 | Page 35

MIGRATION AS A WEAPON

Conclusions
Coercion is generally understood to refer to the
practice of inducing or preventing changes in political
behavior using threats, intimidation, or some other
form of pressure—most commonly, military force.
Coercion-driven migrations, or coercive engineered
migrations, by extension, are those real or threatened
cross-border population movements that are deliberately created or manipulated as instruments of deterrence or compellence in order to prevent or induce
changes in political behavior, or to extract political,
military, and economic concessions from a target
state or states. As the above discussion should make
clear, CEMs are generally used as a means to achieve
objectives in other policy arenas and to counter
threats by adversaries to inflict costs and punishment
using means other than migration.
Conventional wisdom suggests this kind of coercion
is rare at best; indeed, some observers erroneously appear to believe Turkey in 2016 was the first time we have
seen it in action. Yet, not only is this kind of coercion attempted far more frequently than the accepted wisdom
would suggest, but it also tends to succeed far more often
than capabilities-based theories would predict, especially
in the realm of compellence, its most common manifestation. Thus, a greater appreciation for the frequency of
its employment, the actors who resort to it and why, and
what potential targets can do to protect themselves and
the true victims of this kind of coercion—the displaced
themselves—is imperative, from both policy and field
operational standpoints. Such an imperative is particularly acute at a time when more people than ever have
been forcibly displaced—65.3 million around the world
as of this writing, a figure that enterprising, capable, and
opportunistic coercers are likely to push higher.52
If there is a silver lining in this account, it is that
while many observers have underappreciated the
significance of this kind of coercion, thankfully the
same cannot necessarily be said for target states, particularly those that have been targeted multiple times.
For example, U.S. national intelligence estimates
have long included warnings of U.S. vulnerability to
this kind of coercion and have recommended taking
steps to guard against future predation. Similarly,
Australia shut down its so-called “Pacific Solution,”
at least for a time, in no small part to guard itself
against future coercive attempts by the tiny island of
MILITARY REVIEW  November-December 2016

Nauru.53 Likewise, in 2003 alone, the EU committed
to spending €400 million to increase border security, at least in part to deter future migration-driven
coercion, and some have argued that Gaddhafi was
deposed in no small part to prevent further recidivism by the North African nation. (However, it has
since become clear that getting rid of Gaddhafi did
not destroy Libyan incentives to target the EU, and
indeed the Europeans have been targeted by both
competing government entities in Libya subsequent
to Gaddhafi’s ouster.)54
As far as China and its sometimes volatile nextdoor neighbor go, in 2006, the Chinese constructed a
fence along part of its border with North Korea to impede cross-border movements. In 2014, the Chinese
produced a (now-leaked) military plan for dealing
with potential migration-related fallout in the event
of a threatened or actual collapse.55 Additionally,
some states, including China, the United States, and
Italy, regularly conduct military exercises designed
to leave them better prepared to respond to potential
massive influxes across their borders.56
In the case of the United States and Cuba, the
normalization of relations may materially reduce
the probability of future coercive attempts, but the
situation at present remains very much in flux. How
things will develop in the months and years to come
is an open question, and some argue low-intensity
nods towards coercion are underway even as this
piece goes to press.57
Further, the political and national security implications of strategically engineered migrations extend
far beyond the politically charged realms of immigration, asylum, and border security policy—and not
simply because coercers’ objectives extend to domains
far beyond migration. Indeed, it has been suggested
that the unspontaneous “flood of refugees from East
to West Germany in 1989 … helped to bring down
the Berlin Wall, expedited the unification of the two
German states, and generated the most significant
transformation in international relations since World
War II.”58 In the here and now, some have suggested,
the ongoing European migration crisis may presage or
even catalyze the collapse of the EU.59
Migration and refugee flows have likewise been
identified as one of the most significant causes of
armed conflict in the post-Cold War period. In the
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