Coercive Air Power in the Vietnam War

World War 11, social scientists have devoted considerable attention to the problem of military coercion.’ This interest is due in part to nuclear weapons, which are seen as better suited to inflicting punishment on civilian societies than to attacking battlefield targets directly. However, coercion is also important in purely conventional conflicts, because states may still conduct strategic air offensives against their adversaries. The American bombing of Vietnam is a classic example of conventional coercion. Throughout the war, the United States used its powerful air forces to strike at the North Vietnamese homeland, for the purpose of altering Hanoi’s behavior on the battlefield and position at the negotiating table. Although the desirability of bombing the North generated heated debate at the time, the task here is to use this case to identify when coercion will succeed or fail.2

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