Cheap Threats: Why the United States Struggles to Coerce Weak States

Pfundstein Chamberlain draws on an original dataset on US compellence from 1945 to 2007 and case studies of Cuba (1962), Iraq (1991), Iraq (2003), and Libya (2011) to explain the conundrum. She argues that the United States’ model of inexpensive warmaking allows it to casually threaten force and carry out frequent short-term military campaigns.