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Coercion
 Coercion
The Power to Hurt in International
Politics

Edited by Kelly M. Greenhill

Peter Krause

1
1
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers
the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education
by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University
Press in the UK and certain other countries.

Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press

198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America.

© Oxford University Press 2018

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in

a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction
rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above.

You must not circulate this work in any other form

and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.

CIP data is on file at the Library of Congress

ISBN 978–0–19–0–84634–3 (pbk.); 978–0–19–0–84633–6 (hbk.)

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Paperback printed by WebCom, Inc., Canada
Hardback printed by Bridgeport National Bindery, Inc., United States of America
CONTENTS

Acknowledgments vii
List of Contributors ix
Introduction xi
Kelly M. Greenhill and Peter Krause

PART I | Coercion: A Primer

CHAPTER 1 Coercion: An Analytical Overview 3
Robert J. Art and Kelly M. Greenhill
CHAPTER 2 Intelligence and Coercion: A Neglected Connection 33
Austin Long

PART II | Coercion in an Asymmetric World

CHAPTER 3 A Bargaining Theory of Coercion 55
Todd S. Sechser
CHAPTER 4 Air Power, Sanctions, Coercion, and
Containment: When Foreign Policy Objectives
Collide 77
Phil M. Haun
CHAPTER 5 Step Aside or Face the Consequences: Explaining the
Success and Failure of Compellent Threats to Remove
Foreign Leaders 93
Alexander B. Downes
 PART III | Coercion and Nonstate Actors
CHAPTER 6 Underestimating Weak States and State Sponsors: The
Case for Base State Coercion 117
Keren E. Fraiman
CHAPTER 7 Coercion by Movement: How Power Drove the Success
of the Eritrean Insurgency, 1960–​1993 138
Peter Krause
CHAPTER 8 Is Technology the Answer? The Limits of Combat
Drones in Countering Insurgents 160
James Igoe Walsh

PART IV | Domains and Instruments Other than Force

CHAPTER 9 Coercion through Cyberspace: The Stability-​Instability
Paradox Revisited 179
Jon R. Lindsay and Erik Gartzke
CHAPTER 10 Migration as a Coercive Weapon: New Evidence from
the Middle East 204
Kelly M. Greenhill
CHAPTER 11 The Strategy of Coercive Isolation 228
Timothy W. Crawford
CHAPTER 12 Economic Sanctions in Theory and Practice:
How Smart Are They? 251
Daniel W. Drezner
CHAPTER 13 Prices or Power Politics? When and Why States
Coercively Compete over Resources 271
Jonathan N. Markowitz

PART V | Nuclear Coercion

CHAPTER 14 Deliberate Escalation: Nuclear Strategies to Deter or to

Stop Conventional Attacks 291
Jasen J. Castillo
CHAPTER 15 Threatening Proliferation: The Goldilocks Principle of
Bargaining with Nuclear Latency 312
Tristan Volpe

Conclusion 331
Kelly M. Greenhill and Peter Krause
Index 349

vi | Contents
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

T his book grew from a shared realization that the foundational scholar-
ship on coercion that we regularly read, taught, and utilized was no longer
adequate to explain much of the behavior we observed in the world around us.
From forced migration in the Middle East and North Africa to cyber threats
from Russia (and targeted sanctions on Russia), and from drone strikes in
South Asia to terrorist attacks across the globe, understanding contemporary
coercive dynamics clearly requires an expansion of our analytical toolbox to
include new concepts, theories, and analyses. We are enormously gratified to
be joined in this endeavor by a diverse array of experts who offer innovative
and penetrating contributions on a diverse array of coercive tools, actors, and
environments. Our editor, David McBride of Oxford University Press, offered
enthusiastic encouragement from the outset, and his and the external review-
ers’ sharp insights helped shape the final product into a more cohesive and
powerful book.
We thank the faculty and researchers of the MIT Security Studies Program,
where we first rigorously studied coercion and learned to appreciate its myriad
shades and manifestations. Kelly M. Greenhill further thanks Tufts University
and the International Security Program (ISP) at Harvard University’s Belfer
Center for their intellectual and financial support of her research and, in the
case of ISP, for its support of the Conflict, Security and Public Policy Working
Group, out of which a number of contributions to this volume grew. She also
thanks her besheryt for providing inimitable daily reminders that effective
persuasion and influence also come in noncoercive packages. Peter Krause
would like to thank all members of his research team, the Project on National
Movements and Political Violence, especially Eleanor Hildebrandt. He also
thanks his colleagues and administrators at Boston College, who provided aca-
demic and financial support for this volume. Finally, he thanks his parents and
sisters who, in addition to a great deal of love, gave him his very first lessons in
the causes, strategies, and effectiveness of coercion.
CONTRIBUTORS

Robert J. Art is Christian A. Herter Professor of International Relations at

Brandeis University.

Jasen J. Castillo is Associate Professor in the Bush School of Government and

Public Service at Texas A&M University.

Timothy W. Crawford is Associate Professor of Political Science at Boston

College.

Alexander B. Downes is Associate Professor of Political Science and

International Affairs at the George Washington University.

Daniel W. Drezner is Professor of International Politics at Tufts University’s

Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.

Keren E. Fraiman is a member of the faculty at the Spertus Institute.

Erik Gartzke is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Center for
Peace and Security Studies at the University of California, San Diego.

Kelly M. Greenhill is Associate Professor and Director of the International

Relations Program at Tufts University and Research Fellow at Harvard
University’s Kennedy School of Government.

Phil M. Haun is Professor and Dean of Academics at the US Naval War College.

Peter Krause is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Boston College and

Research Affiliate at the MIT Security Studies Program.

Jon R. Lindsay is Assistant Professor of Digital Media and Global Affairs at the
University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs.

Austin Long is Senior Political Scientist at the RAND Corporation.

Jonathan N. Markowitz is Assistant Professor in the School of International
Relations at the University of Southern California.

Todd S. Sechser is Associate Professor of Politics at the University of Virginia.

Tristan Volpe is Assistant Professor of Defense Analysis at the Naval

Postgraduate School and Nonresident Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace.

James Igoe Walsh is Professor of Political Science at the University of North

Carolina.

x | Contributors
INTRODUCTION

Kelly M. Greenhill and Peter Krause

F rom the rising significance of nonstate actors to the increasing influence

of regional powers, the nature and conduct of international politics has
arguably changed dramatically since the height of the Cold War. Yet much
of the existing literature on deterrence and compellence continues to draw,
whether implicitly or explicitly, upon assumptions and precepts formulated
in a state-​centric, bipolar world. Although contemporary coercion frequently
features multiple coercers targeting state and nonstate adversaries with non-
military instruments of persuasion, most literature on coercion focuses pri-
marily on cases wherein a single state is trying to coerce another single state
via traditional military means.
This volume moves beyond these traditional premises and examines the
critical issue of coercion in the twenty-​first century, capturing fresh theoreti-
cal and policy-​relevant developments and drawing upon data and cases from
across time and around the globe. The contributions examine intrastate, inter-
state, and transnational deterrence and compellence, as well as both military
and nonmilitary instruments of persuasion. Specifically, chapters focus on
tools (e.g., terrorism, sanctions, drones, cyber warfare, intelligence, and forced
migration), actors (e.g., insurgents, social movements, and nongovernmental
organizations), and mechanisms (e.g., triadic coercion, diplomatic and eco-
nomic isolation, foreign-​imposed regime change, coercion of nuclear prolifer-
ators, and two-​level games) that have become more prominent in recent years
but have yet to be extensively or systematically addressed in either academic
or policy literature.
At the same time, there is also significant continuity in how states wield power
and exercise influence. Strategic and crisis deterrence, threats backed with mili-
tary force, and exercises of state-​on-​state coercive diplomacy are enduring features
of international politics. Consequently, there remains a great deal of relevant wis-
dom in existing scholarship on coercion. Therefore, this volume also features
chapters that proffer novel and innovative theoretical approaches to historical
exercises in coercion and highlight the contemporary implications of historical
cases. An introductory chapter offers an overview of the state of our knowledge
about the theory and practice of coercion and analyzes the extent to which previ-
ous theories and arguments apply to current and future coercion challenges.
The chapters in this volume employ a variety of analytical tools and meth-
ods, including rational choice modeling, deductive theory building and
extension, historical case study analysis, and large-​and medium-​N statistical
analysis to shed new light on an old issue. The authors are equally diverse in
their paradigmatic viewpoints, and several of the contributions wholly defy
ready categorization in this regard. Power and its distribution, institutions,
norms, ideas, and information all play analytically important roles, and several
of the chapters combine these well-​known variables in novel ways. In a similar
vein, some commonly recognized theoretical concepts are deployed in as yet
underappreciated yet analytically quite profitable ways. In sum, while no single
volume of several hundred pages can be truly comprehensive, this book offers
readers a hearty and edifying brew of old and new, of continuity and change,
and of the theory and practice of coercion.
The volume is organized into five sections that speak to our focus on
increasingly relevant actors, tools, and mechanisms in the study of coercion.
Taken as a whole, the contributors approach the topic of coercion with three
key questions in mind: What have we long known and still know to be true
about coercion? What did we once think we knew, but now know needs to be
revised or reconsidered? What did we simply not think about before now? The
next section offers a brief description of each of the chapters within the five
sections and their initial answers, grouped by relevant themes. The final sec-
tion offers some ideas for instructors and others seeking to use this book to get
smart about the power to hurt in today’s world.

A Preview of the Chapters in This Volume

Coercion: A Primer
The volume opens with an introductory essay by Robert J. Art and Kelly M.
Greenhill that lays the groundwork for the chapters that follow by offering
an analytical overview of the state of the art in the study of coercion. Their
chapter is loosely organized around the three key questions that motivate this
volume. Art and Greenhill systematically interrogate the premises that under-
gird our assumptions about coercion and explore issues of continuity, change,
and innovation in our understanding of coercion in the twenty-​first century.
In addition to identifying foundational insights from the traditional (state-​to-​
state, Cold War–​focused) coercion literature, the authors also highlight more
recent, post–​Cold War contributions as well as particular questions and hereto-
fore underexplored topics examined by the contributors to this volume.

xii | Introduction
 In ­chapter 2, Austin Long extends Art and Greenhill’s discussion of coer-
cion by analyzing its understudied yet integral connections with intelligence.
Drawing upon evidence from Iraq to illustrate his key propositions, Long
identifies three central ways in which intelligence and coercion are inextri-
cably linked. First, intelligence provides a coercer with an understanding of
a target’s values, resolve, and capabilities, and thus the capacity to evaluate
whether coercion is feasible. Second, intelligence effectively directs the tools of
coercion—​whether military force or economic sanctions—​at specific elements
of a target’s political, economic, or military assets. Third, intelligence provides
a discrete mechanism of influence—​covert action—​that lies between the overt
use of military force and other nonviolent mechanisms of coercion. In addition
to highlighting the underappreciated role of intelligence, Long sets the stage
for subsequent contributions that focus on the importance of information in
effecting successful coercion.

Coercion in an Asymmetric World

Coercion is often not a confrontation among equals. Instead, stronger states
regularly employ threats and the limited use of force against weaker ones. As
the chapters in this section demonstrate, however, superior strength is insuffi-
cient to guarantee coercive success and, in some cases, can even be an obstacle
to success. The authors in this section reveal that the coercer’s selection of tar-
get and specific policy demands—​often made amid significant uncertainty—​
drive the initiation, dynamics, and outcomes of coercion.
In ­chapter 3, Todd S. Sechser employs rational choice theory to delve into
the dynamic, iterative processes that characterize the bargaining game that is
coercive diplomacy. Sechser develops a model of crisis bargaining to evalu-
ate the strategic choices faced by coercers. He explores how coercers weigh
their desire for gains against the risk of war that inevitably rises when they
make threats and demand concessions of targets, as well as how power and
(often imperfect) information play into these calculations. Sechser’s analy-
sis generates two counterintuitive hypotheses that challenge conventional
wisdom about coercion. First, greater military power emboldens coercers to
make riskier demands, increasing the likelihood of coercion failure. Second,
coercers are motivated to attenuate their demands when target resolve is high,
thereby making coercion success against resolved adversaries more likely. Both
insights underscore the importance of the magnitude of coercers’ demands in
analyses of coercive bargaining.
Focusing on the employment of coercion using both military and nonmil-
itary instruments of influence, in ­chapter 4, Phil M. Haun makes a broadly
generalizable argument about how powerful states can squander their multi-
dimensional coercive advantages over weaker adversaries by treating coercion
as an exercise in brute force rather than as a bargaining game. Using the case
study of the 1994 Kuwaiti border crisis between the United States and Iraq
as a illustrative example, Haun demonstrates how, by failing to modify their

Introduction | xiii
own behavior in response to target concessions, strong states provide (weaker)
targets no incentive to sustainably modify their behavior, leading to coercion
failure, even by the most powerful of states. In such cases, states may accept
coercion failure as the price for an ongoing, successful containment strategy.
In ­chapter 5, Alexander B. Downes explores the puzzle of why compel-
lent threats that demand foreign leaders concede power seem to succeed so
often. Drawing upon data from the Militarized Compellent Threat (MCT) data
set, Downes argues that demands for regime change succeed so often (about
80 percent of the time) because, historically, such threats have largely been
made against highly vulnerable targets, namely when the coercer possesses
crushing material superiority, is geographically proximate to the target, and
the target is diplomatically isolated. However, Downes cautions that before
one concludes that regime change is easy, one should keep in mind that the
conditions that made regime change successful in the past are not features
of most recent attempts to persuade foreign leaders to step down. Thus in an
era in which leaders have grown more willing to issue such demands, they
have grown correspondingly less likely to engender the desired response and
coercive success.

Coercion and Nonstate Actors

Since the end of the Cold War, ongoing civil wars have outnumbered inter-
state wars by about 10 to 1. More people died in terrorist attacks in 2014 than
ever before, and Americans regularly identify terrorism as the most critical
threat to the nation. Nonetheless, we lack critical tools to understand and
address issues associated with the violence perpetrated by nonstate and sub-
state actors because the vast majority of existing studies still focus on states
coercing other states. The chapters in this section help address this lacuna
by exploring how states can coerce terrorists and insurgents via drones
and state sponsors, as well as how insurgents themselves effectively coerce
governments.
In ­chapter 6, Keren Fraiman explores “transitive compellence,” a method
of coercion whereby states that seek to affect the behavior of violent nonstate
actors (VNSAs) do so by targeting the states that host them. The expectation is
that the real and threatened costs imposed by the coercer on the base state will
then persuade the coercee to crack down on the VNSAs, leading to their con-
tainment within, or forceful eviction from, the base state. Fraiman argues that
this trilateral brand of coercion is both more common and more effective than
is generally recognized. This is because the conventional wisdom regarding
base state capabilities and motivations—​that they are both too weak and too
reluctant to take effective action against VNSAs—​is wrong. Rather, many base
states are in fact both capable and willing to effectively coerce VNSAs residing
within their territory.
Nonstate actors are themselves often practitioners of coercion, rather than
simply its targets. In ­chapter 7, Peter Krause explores the question of what

xiv | Introduction
makes nonstate coercion by national movements and insurgencies succeed
or fail. The balance of power within a movement drives its outcome, Krause
contends, and groups’ positions within that balance of power drive their behav-
ior. Although all groups prioritize their organizational strength and survival,
hegemonic groups that dominate their movements are more likely to pursue
the shared strategic objective of regime change and statehood because victory
moves them from the head of a movement to the head of a new state. The hege-
monic group’s dominance enables its movement to successfully coerce the
enemy regime by delivering a single clear, credible message about its objective,
threats, and guarantees that is backed by a cohesive strategy. Krause demon-
strates the viability of his generalizable argument with a longitudinal analysis
of the Eritrean national movement and its decades-​long insurgency against the
Ethiopian government from 1960 to Eritrean independence in 1993.
In ­chapter 8, James Igoe Walsh evaluates the efficacy of drones as instru-
ments of deterrence and compellence, especially in the context of counter-
insurgency operations. Drawing upon evidence from a variety of theaters,
including Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iraq, Walsh argues that the use of drones
can be a double-​edged sword. On one hand, they offer noteworthy technologi-
cal, force-​protection-​related, and collateral-​damage-​limiting advantages. On
the other hand, the employment of drones often also catalyzes retaliatory and
signaling counterattacks by insurgents and other VNSAs, which can in turn
exercise deleterious effects on counterintelligence campaigns and undermine
efforts at coercion.

Domains and Instruments Other than Force

State-​to-​state coercion still dominates the headlines, but it has increasingly
taken on new forms and is transpiring in new domains. The United States is
actively sanctioning Russia and China in response to increasing cyber attacks.
The European Union (EU) and many Middle Eastern states are struggling,
even teetering, under the political and economic weight of an unprecedent-
edly large influx of migrants and of refugees forced from their homes. At the
same time, regional powers are scrambling to coercively compete over natural
resources in the Arctic and the South China Sea. The chapters in this section
provide powerful new theories and frameworks to explain how states coerce
others using often effective, but understudied, instruments other than force.
In Chapter 9, Jon R. Lindsay and Erik Gartzke analyze the relationship
between cyber means and political ends, an issue that was long neglected in
the popular focus on technological threats. The authors present typologies of
potential cyber harms in terms of costs and benefits and of political applica-
tions of these harms for deterrence and compellence. They then use the latter
to explain why the distribution of the former is highly skewed, with rampant
cyber frictions but very few attacks of any consequence. Specifically, they pro-
pose that a variant of the classic stability-​instability paradox operates to con-
strain cyber conflict: ubiquitous dependence on cyberspace and heightened

Introduction | xv
potential for deception expand opportunities to inflict minor harms, even as
the prospect of retaliation and imperatives to maintain future connectivity
limit the political attractiveness of major harms.
In ­chapter 10, Kelly M. Greenhill explains how, why, and under what con-
ditions (the threat of) unleashing large-​scale movements of people can be
used as an effective instrument of state-​level coercion. This unconventional
yet relatively common coercion-​by-​punishment strategy has been used by both
state and nonstate actors as a tool of both deterrence and compellence. After
outlining the precepts of the theory, Greenhill illustrates this unconventional
instrument in action with a longitudinal study of its serial use by the former
Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi against the EU, from 2004 until his deposi-
tion in 2011. The chapter concludes with a discussion of theoretical and policy
implications, observations about how this tool appears to be used increasingly
as an alternative to or complement of military force, and what such develop-
ments might portend both for the future and for its real victims, the displaced
themselves.
Timothy W. Crawford further expands our understanding of the dynam-
ics of coercion in ­chapter 11 with the introduction of the concept of “coercive
isolation.” Coercive isolation refers to an oft employed but undertheorized
nonmilitary instrument of coercive diplomacy that relies on manipulation and
exploitation of shifts in a target state’s alignments and alliances to influence
its cost-​benefit calculations and, by extension, the probability of coercive suc-
cess. After presenting the theory of coercive isolation and the logic that under-
girds it, Crawford offers a plausibility probe of six historical cases, from before
World War I through the end of the Cold War, that illustrate the logic of the
model and its key propositions. The chapter concludes with a discussion of
contemporary theoretical and policy implications of the role played by coercive
isolation in diplomacy in the post-​post–​Cold War world.
In ­chapter 12, Daniel W. Drezner examines the state of the literature on the
coercive power of economic sanctions, with a particular emphasis on the use
of targeted sanctions. Drezner argues that the development of smart sanctions
has solved many of the political problems that prior efforts at comprehensive
trade sanctions created. In many ways, these sanctions are, as advertised,
“smarter,” but there is no systematic evidence that smart sanctions yield bet-
ter policy results vis-​à-​vis the targeted country. When smart sanctions work,
they work because they impose significant costs on the target economy. It
would behoove policymakers and scholars to look beyond the targeted sanc-
tions framework to examine the conditions under which different kinds of
economic statecraft should be deployed.
In ­chapter 13, Jonathan N. Markowitz asks why some states coercively com-
pete militarily over the governance and distribution of natural resources, while
others favor reliance on market mechanisms. In this hypothesis-​generating
contribution, Markowitz argues that the choices states make lie in their domes-
tic political institutions and economic interests, which in turn determine their
foreign policy interests. Specifically, he posits that the more economically

xvi | Introduction
dependent on resource rents states are and the more autocratic their political
institutions, the stronger their preference to seek direct control over stocks
of resources. Conversely, the less economically dependent on resource rents
states are and the more democratic their political institutions, the weaker their
preference to directly control stocks of resources. He presents and demon-
strates the viability of his argument using a combination of deductive theoriz-
ing and historical analysis of recent jockeying over control of maritime seabed
resources in the East and South China Sea, Arctic, and Eastern Mediterranean.

Nuclear Coercion: Regional Powers and Nuclear Proliferation

The field of coercion studies was founded on the analysis of nuclear weapons
in the Cold War, and yet a number of related dynamics remain unexplained
as a consequence of the field’s traditional focus on strong states that already
possess nuclear weapons. The chapters in this section focus on two types of
significant coercive threats by relatively weaker states: the threat of nuclear
weapon use to resist demands and ensure regime survival, and the threat of
acquiring nuclear weapons to compel concessions.
In ­chapter 14, Jasen J. Castillo examines how the acquisition and threatened
use of nuclear weapons can be utilized by weaker states to resist the demands
of their more powerful counterparts. The uniquely destructive power of these
weapons allows conventionally weak states a method of guaranteeing their sur-
vival and, due to the dangers of escalation, a potentially potent countercoercive
tool. Employing an explicitly neorealist perspective, Castillo explores not only
how regional powers may use such weapons as a powerful deterrent but also
how they might theoretically employ them in war should deterrence fail.
In ­chapter 15, Tristan Volpe explores how states can use the threat of nuclear
proliferation as an instrument of coercion. He argues that while the conven-
tional wisdom suggests states reap deterrence benefits from nuclear program
hedging, many use the prospect of proliferation not to deter aggression but as
a means of compelling concessions from the United States. Some challengers
are more successful than others at this unique type of coercive diplomacy, how-
ever. When it comes to cutting a deal, Volpe argues, there is an optimal amount
of nuclear technology: with too little, the threat to proliferate is not credible,
but if a country moves too close to acquiring a bomb, a deal may be impossible
to reach since proliferators cannot credibly commit not to sneak their way to
a bomb. Volpe draws upon the cases of Libya and North Korea to demonstrate
the power of his theory in action.

Conclusion
The concluding chapter by Greenhill and Krause underscores the volume’s
key findings and their theoretical import, identifies policy implications and
prescriptions highlighted by the contributions to the volume, and points to
unanswered questions and directions for further research.

Introduction | xvii
Suggested Ways to Use This Volume

The contributions to Coercion: The Power to Hurt in International Politics were

solicited with a number of theoretical and pedagogical goals and approaches
in mind.
First, the chapters were selected to provide both historical and theoretical
perspectives on contemporary exercises of coercion from around the globe.
While many chapters unsurprisingly offer evidence from North Africa and the
Middle East, given recent history, the book also includes potent illustrations
from East Asia, Southeast Asia, sub-​Saharan Africa, Europe, and North and
South America.
Second, a number of the chapters are designed to speak to ongoing policy
debates. These include the efficacy of sanctions (Drezner and Haun) and other
nonmilitary instruments of influence (Crawford, Lindsay and Gartzke, and
Greenhill); the costs and benefits of using drones (Walsh); conflict over natu-
ral resources (Markowitz); the significance of failed and failing states in our
understanding of the twenty-​first-​century security environment (Fraiman and
Walsh); the virtues and vices of foreign-​imposed regime change (Downes and
Greenhill); the dangers of nuclear (counter)proliferation (Art and Greenhill,
Castillo, Volpe, and Sechser); and the viability of deterring and/​or quashing
terrorist and insurgent activity (Fraiman, Krause, Walsh, and Long).
Third, a number of the chapters apply classic security studies and coer-
cion-​related concepts to new domains. These include but are not limited to
Crawford’s expansion and extension of George and Simons’s “isolation of the
adversary” in his exploration of diplomatic coercion; Krause’s adaptation of bal-
ance-​of-​power theory to intragroup dynamics within insurgencies and national
movements; Lindsay and Gartzke’s application of traditional military force-​on-​
force concepts to the realm of cyberspace; Sechser’s expansion and relaxation
of some long-​accepted tenets about the nature of coercive bargaining and
the significance of coercers’ objectives, some of which are in turn profitably
illustrated in Haun’s case study; and Greenhill’s explication of how and why
cross-​border population movements can be an effective coercion by punish-
ment strategy. Markowitz draws upon traditional theories about institutions,
interests, and state behavior to make predictions about future competition and
conflicts, while Volpe integrates insights about the significance of credible
assurances in facilitating successful coercion to the realm of proliferation.
Fourth, the grouping of the chapters by theme permits instructors to teach
theoretical concepts in a fairly broad-​based way. In addition to the current
groupings of chapters by section, a number of other disparate chapters can
be effectively coupled. These include but are not limited to the study of cross-​
domain coercion (Lindsay and Gartzke, Greenhill, Markowitz, and Haun); the
critical role of information in coercion (Fraiman, Lindsay and Gartzke, Long,
and Sechser); the role of regime type in influencing coercion processes and/​
or outcomes (Downes, Drezner, Markowitz, and Greenhill); and the particular

xviii | Introduction
dynamics of multilateral and multilevel coercion (Crawford, Drezner, Fraiman,
Greenhill, and Krause). Finally, in addition to being an effective stand-​alone
overview of coercion, Art and Greenhill’s introductory essay can be usefully
assigned with any and all of the aforementioned units as a bridge from Cold
War precepts to twenty-​first-​century applications.
In sum, Coercion combines classic tenets with contemporary innovations
and applications. It is intended to connect and synergize scholarship on a
broad array of exciting and timely topics and, in the process, help reinvigorate
a crucial subfield of security studies and foreign policy. The volume has been
designed to appeal to scholars, practitioners, and instructors who engage with
coercion and foreign policy generally and with diplomacy, terrorism, sanc-
tions, protest, refugees, nongovernmental organizations, and proliferation
more specifically.

Introduction | xix
PART I Coercion
A Primer
 chapter 1 Coercion
An Analytical Overview
Robert J. Art and Kelly M. Greenhill

Just as the Cold war spawned a great deal of scholarly study about deterrence,
so too has the unipolar era spawned a great deal of study of compellence.1 The
Cold War featured a nuclear standoff between two superpowers, one in which
the survival of both countries was thought to be at stake. It is not surprising
that deterrence of war, the avoidance of escalatory crises, and the control of
escalation were paramount in the minds of academic strategists and political-​
military practitioners during this period. The bulk of the innovative theoretical
work on deterrence, especially nuclear deterrence, was produced from the late
1940s through the mid-​1960s. Most of the creative works during the subse-
quent years were, and continue to be, refinements of and elaborations on those
foundations.2
With the advent of the unipolar era, the United States found itself freed
from the restraints on action imposed by another superpower and began more
than two decades of issuing military threats against or launching conventional
military interventions into smaller countries, or both: Iraq (1990–​91), Somalia
(1992–​93), Haiti (1994), North Korea (1994), Bosnia (1995), Kosovo and Serbia
(1998–​99), Afghanistan (2001), Iraq again (2003–​11), Libya (2011), Syria (2014–​),
and Iraq yet again (2015–​). Unsurprisingly, strategists and practitioners dur-
ing the unipolar era became focused on various forms of compellence—​
compellent threats, coercive diplomacy, and the limited and demonstrative
uses of force—​and especially on the reasons those forms of compellence, when
employed by the United States, more often than not failed and subsequently

1
We thank Victoria McGroary for invaluable research assistance.
2
For an excellent overview of the state of knowledge about deterrence through the 1970s, see Robert
Jervis, “Deterrence Theory Revisited,” World Politics 31 (1979): 289–​324. For a representative view
of the nature of deterrence today, see Patrick M. Morgan, “The State of Deterrence in International
Politics Today,” Contemporary Security Policy 33 (2012): 85–​107.
required more robust military action for the United States to prevail. As a con-
sequence of the unipolar era’s change of focus, the literature on compellence
burgeoned.3
More recently, and particularly in the aftermath of the game-​changing ter-
rorist attacks on September 11, 2001, there has also been a heightened focus on
nonstate actors (NSAs). Academic works have focused on how NSAs employ
coercion against states and against other NSAs (see, for instance, ­chapter 7);
how states can most effectively deter and compel NSAs (and how such strat-
egies may differ from coercion wielded by states; see ­chapter 6); and how
NSAs attempt to compensate for their relative weaknesses through the use of
asymmetric means (see ­chapters 8–​10). In this period, there has been a nearly
simultaneous increase in the nuance and breadth of scholarship that examines
how coercion works when using tools other than (or in addition to) traditional
military force and by actors other than the unipole. Such tools include targeted
sanctions (see ­chapter 12), cyber weapons (see ­chapter 9), migration or demo-
graphic bombing (see ­chapter 10), and drones (see ­chapter 8). There has also
been a growth in research that examines how coercive tools in one domain (for
instance, cyber) can be used to influence outcomes in another (for instance,
military capabilities), which Erik Gartzke and Jon Lindsay refer to as cross-​
domain coercion.4
While not providing a comprehensive review of all the theoretical and
empirical scholarship on deterrence and compellence to date, this chapter does
highlight the big findings about coercion, and by extension the big gaps in our
understanding of it, as well as summarizes the contributions that the essays in
this volume make to our understanding of coercion. The chapter proceeds as
follows: Part one briefly defines coercion to include both deterrence and com-
pellence, and shows why it can be hard to distinguish between the two in prac-
tice. Part two highlights salient points about deterrence, distinguishes among
four types of deterrence, and discusses why deterrence can fail. Part three out-
lines the key contributions to our understanding of compellence that the past
three decades of scholarship have revealed. Finally, Part four concludes with
two sets of propositions about coercion—​one that summarizes the state of our
current collective knowledge and one that highlights new contributions prof-
fered in this volume.

Coercion

Coercion is the ability to get an actor—​a state, the leader of a state, a terror-
ist group, a transnational or international organization, a private actor—​to do
something it does not want to do. Coercion between states, between states
and nonstate actors, or between nonstate actors is exercised through threats or

3
For a partial list of works on compellence, see note 18.
4
Erik Gartzke and Jon Lindsay, eds., Cross-​Domain Deterrence, unpublished manuscript.

4 | Coercion: A Primer
through actions, or both, and usually, but not always, involves military threats
or military actions. Threats can be implicit or explicit. Coercive action may
also utilize positive inducements. Offering such inducements may increase
chances of success, but coercion is not coercion if it consists solely of induce-
ments. Coercion always involves some cost or pain to the target or explicit
threats thereof, with the implied threat to increase the cost or pain if the target
does not concede.

The Two Faces of Coercion

Coercion comes in two basic forms: deterrence and compellence. Often the
terms coercion and compellence are used interchangeably, but that errone-
ously implies that deterrence is not a form of coercion. This chapter therefore
reserves the term coercion for the broad category of behavior that can manifest
as either deterrence or compellence.
Used this way, deterrence is a coercive strategy designed to prevent a target
from changing its behavior. “Just keep doing what you are doing; otherwise
I will hurt you” is the refrain of deterrence. It operates by threatening pain-
ful retaliation should the target change its behavior. A state issues a deterrent
threat because it believes the target is about to, or will eventually, change its
behavior in ways that will hurt the coercer’s interests. Thus getting an actor not
to change its behavior, when its preference is to change its behavior, is a form
of coercion. Compellence, on the other hand, is a coercive strategy designed
to get the target to change its behavior.5 Its refrain is “I don’t like what you are
doing, and that is why I am going to start hurting you, and I will continue to
hurt you until you change your behavior in ways that I specify.” Compellence,
either through threat or action, is a form of coercion because the target’s pref-
erence is not to change its behavior, but it is being forced to do so. So deter-
rence is a coercive strategy, based on threat of retaliation, to keep a target from
changing its behavior, whereas compellence is a coercive strategy, based on
hurting the target (or threatening to do so), to force the target to change its
behavior. In both cases, the target is being pressured to do something it does
not want to do.

Is It Deterrence or Compellence?
Defining the analytical distinction between deterrence and compellence is
easy; applying the distinction in practice can be more difficult, for two rea-
sons. First, in confrontational situations, there is the eye-​of-​the-​beholder prob-
lem; second, particularly during crises, the deterrer may resort to compellent
actions to shore up its deterrent posture.

5
Thomas Schelling coined the term compellence. See Thomas C. Schelling, Arms and Influence (New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1966), 71.

an analy tical overview | 5

 In the eye-​of-​the-​beholder problem, two actors look at the same action
and see two different things. Just as one person’s terrorist can be another
person’s freedom fighter, so too can one actor’s deterrent posture look to
the deterrent target as a form of compellence. When this occurs, the target
of deterrence reasons thus: “With your threat to retaliate against me if I
attempt to alter the status quo, you are, in effect, forcing me to accept the
status quo, which I find illegitimate, disadvantageous, and unfair. It benefits
you, but it harms me.” Too often deterrence carries the connotation that the
deterrer is justified in its actions, whereas the actor trying to change the
status quo is viewed as the aggressor. (This is akin to asserting that he who
attacks first is the aggressor, which may or may not be true.) Determining
which actor is the aggressor hinges not on which actor is trying to overturn
the status quo but instead on making a judgment about the legitimacy of
the status quo. If the status quo is viewed by an uninvolved observer as just,
then the actor trying to alter it will be viewed as the aggressor; if the status
quo is viewed by the observer as unjust, then the actor trying to preserve it
will be viewed as the aggressor. Assessing who is the aggressor is a different
exercise than determining which state is the coercer and which the target.
To be analytically useful, therefore, the concepts of deterrence and compel-
lence must be separated from the exercise of assessing the legitimacy of the
status quo.
The second reason distinguishing between deterrence and compellence can
be difficult is that compellent actions are often undertaken in a crisis by a
coercer in order to shore up its deterrent posture. Thomas C. Schelling put
it well: “Once an engagement starts . . . the difference between deterrence
and compellence, like the difference between defense and offense, may disap-
pear.”6 For example, during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, President Kennedy
instituted a blockade around Cuba to prevent the Soviet Union from putting
more missiles on the island. This was meant to demonstrate that Kennedy was
serious about getting the missiles out by showing he was prepared to esca-
late the use of force. Blocking more missiles from coming in was a form of
compellence.
Although the distinction between deterrence and compellence can some-
times blur in specific situations, and although compellence can be resorted
to in order to shore up deterrence, the two concepts nevertheless retain their
analytical distinctiveness and validity. After all, there remains a fundamental
difference between trying to prevent changes to the status quo and trying to
stop or reverse changes to the status quo. Preventing a target from changing
its behavior is different from forcing a target to change its behavior. From these
differences flow many important consequences for the use of military force
and for its role in statecraft.

6
Ibid., 80.

6 | Coercion: A Primer
Deterrence

Deterrence can manifest in four distinct ways across space and time: homeland
and extended, general and immediate. The first pairing refers to the territory
being protected, the second to the temporal dimension in its use. Homeland
deterrence, which is sometimes referred to as “direct deterrence,” uses threats to
dissuade an adversary from attacking a state’s home territory and populace or any
territories that it may have abroad. What is being protected is the territory over
which the state exercises its sovereignty. Extended deterrence uses threats to pre-
vent an adversary from attacking an ally or another state over which the defender
is extending its security blanket. What is being protected is the territory of a third
party or parties, often called the client state. General deterrence is about the long-​
term state of the military balance between two adversaries; immediate deterrence
is about a specific crisis between them at a specific time.

Homeland and Extended Deterrence

One of the foundational propositions of deterrence theory is that homeland deter-
rence is easier to achieve than extended deterrence. The reason is that extended
deterrence has less inherent credibility than homeland deterrence to a potential
challenger. A potential challenger is more likely to believe that a deterrer will retal-
iate with force against the challenger if the challenger attacks the deterrer’s home-
land than if it attacks the client state’s homeland. This is because, in either case,
should the deterrer retaliate against the challenger’s attack, the challenger is likely
to counterretaliate against the deterrer. If this is the case, then which piece of terri-
tory is a deterrer likely to value more and, consequently, risk more: its own or that
of its client state? Put simply: dissuading an attack on one’s homeland is more
credible than dissuading an attack on a client’s homeland. Thus states that make
extended deterrent pledges struggle to make them credible to both the client state
and its potential attacker. Protectors have resorted to all sorts of mechanisms to
make their pledges credible, including stationing the protector’s troops (and in
the case of nuclear-​armed protectors, also tactical nuclear weapons) on the client’s
territory, providing reassurances through frequent policy pronouncements about
the importance of the client to the protector, bending military strategy to satisfy
political imperatives, and making shows of military force when necessary.
If homeland deterrence is inherently more credible than extended deter-
rence, then we should find fewer challenges to the former than to the latter.
Although there is a scarcity of empirical work on this foundational proposition,
a notable exception by Paul Huth, Christopher Gelpi, and D. Scott Bennett
found that, for all the deterrence encounters among Great Powers between
1816 and 1984, 69 percent were cases of extended deterrence and 31 percent of
homeland deterrence.7 This result comports with the logic of the foundational

7
See Paul Huth, Christopher Gelpi, and D. Scott Bennett, “The Escalation of Great Power Militarized
Disputes: Testing Rational Deterrence Theory,” American Political Science Review 87 (1993): Table

an analy tical overview | 7

proposition. Ideally we would also like to know how many would-​be challeng-
ers to homeland and extended deterrence decided, after assessing relative
costs and benefits, not to challenge the status quo. However, this is some-
where between difficult to impossible to determine because the incentives for
a would-​be challenger are to keep such calculations from public view.
There are two other interesting insights to be gleaned from Huth et al. First,
when the 1816–​1984 period is taken as a whole, there seems to be no essen-
tial difference between success rates in forcing a challenger to back down in
homeland deterrence cases and in extended deterrence cases. Of the 30 identi-
fied cases of homeland deterrence encounters, 17 were successful and 13 were
failures (a 56 percent success rate). For the 67 extended deterrence encounters,
36 were successful and 29 were failures (a success rate of 55.4 percent). This
success rate accords well with the pioneering work on extended deterrence
undertaken by Bruce Russett and Paul Huth, who, after examining the uni-
verse of 54 cases of extended deterrence between 1900 and 1980, found that
extended deterrence was successful 31 out of 54 times (a success rate of 57 per-
cent).8 Therefore the case for the inherently greater credibility of homeland
deterrence compared to extended deterrence rests on the greater frequency of
extended deterrence encounters, not on a difference in success rates once a
deterrence encounter or crisis is entered into, assuming Huth et al.’s data set
is valid.
The second insight is that extended deterrence was more successful from
1945 to 1984 than between 1816 and 1945. The data reveal not a trend over a long
period of time toward greater success but rather a distinct break after World
War II; extended deterrence was markedly more successful after 1945. The dif-
ference in success rates is most likely due to the impact of nuclear weapons
on Great Power politics: those weapons made the superpowers, which were
involved in the lion’s share of the extended deterrent encounters from 1945 to
1984, more cautious in challenging one another. Fearon confirmed the height-
ened success rate of extended nuclear deterrence after reanalyzing the Huth
and Russett data set. Fearon found that in the encounters where the deterrer

A-​1, 620–​21. The percentages are our calculations based upon the data in Table A-​1. There were 30
cases of homeland deterrence crises and 67 cases of extended deterrence crises, for a total of 97
of what Huth et al. refer to as “deterrence encounters among the great powers.” Danilovic found
even more striking results: in her data set of deterrence crises from 1895 to 1985, there were 44
cases of extended deterrence crises but only four cases of direct or homeland deterrence failures.
See Vesna Danilovic, When the Stakes Are High: Deterrence and Conflict among Major Powers (Ann
Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002), 60 and Tables 3.2 and 3.3.
8
See Paul Huth and Bruce Russett, “What Makes Deterrence Work? Cases from 1900–​1980,”
World Politics 36 (1984): 505, Table 1. Also see Paul Huth and Bruce Russett, “Testing Deterrence
Theory: Rigor Makes a Difference,” World Politics 42 (1990): 466–​501, in which they updated their
data but with no substantial change in their conclusions. In their 1990 article, Huth and Russett
were responding to a critique of their 1984 article by Richard Ned Lebow and Janice Gross Stein,
“Deterrence: The Elusive Dependent Variable,” World Politics 42 (1990): 336–​69.

8 | Coercion: A Primer
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
interrupt them, to ask whether they would prefer walking to the hotel
or taking a stage.
“Oh, a stage, please—that is, if you don’t mind,” pleaded Molly. “We
just love riding in the stages. We hardly ever get a ride now, since
Papa and Lizzie went away, because Grandma won’t let us go by
ourselves.”
“Who is Lizzie?” Mr. Maitland asked, as they paused on the corner,
to await an approaching stage.
“She was our nurse,” Dulcie explained, “but she went away last
summer. We really don’t need a nurse any more, we’re getting so
big.”
Mr. Maitland glanced down at the four little figures, as if he did not
consider them “so very big,” after all, but just then the stage came
within hailing distance, and he made no remarks on the subject.
It was only a short distance to the hotel, but the children thoroughly
enjoyed the little ride, especially Maud, who, somewhat to Dulcie’s
disapproval, requested to be permitted to pay the fares. Because, as
she explained, “it made one feel so grand to spend money.” Uncle
Stephen laughed so much, and was so kind and genial, that even
Dulcie forgot to be dignified, and by the time they reached their
destination, they were all the best of friends.
“I am going to leave you in the reception-room for a few moments,”
Mr. Maitland said, leading the way across the marble hall of the big
hotel, “while I look up two ladies who are to lunch with us. They are
friends of mine from San Francisco, who have met your father, and
are anxious to see you all.”
Nobody said anything, but all were conscious of a sensation of
disappointment, which Molly was the first to put into words, the
moment they found themselves alone in the reception-room.
“If there are going to be ladies,” she said, ruefully, “Uncle Stephen
will talk to them all the time, and we won’t have half so much fun.”
“Perhaps they are very nice ladies,” suggested Daisy. “He said they
knew Papa, and wanted to know us. Anyhow, we’re going to a real
theatre, and nothing can spoil that.”
“I’m afraid ladies notice other people’s clothes more than gentlemen
do,” said Dulcie, with a sigh, and a glance in the long mirror. “Do you
think those spots show very much, Daisy?”
“No, not so very much,” answered Daisy, divided between her desire
to speak the truth, and fear of making her sister still more
uncomfortable. “Perhaps the ladies won’t notice the spots at all, if the
light isn’t too bright.”
Dulcie sighed again, but was forced to make the best of the situation,
and in another moment Uncle Stephen returned, accompanied by
such a very pretty young lady that, in their surprise and admiration,
the children quite forgot to worry about their own shortcomings.
“This is Miss Florence Leslie, children,” said Mr. Maitland. “Her
mother, Mrs. Leslie, will be down in a few moments.”
“You see, I couldn’t wait for Mother,” the young lady explained,
smiling, and showing such fascinating dimples, that Daisy and Molly
both longed to kiss her. “I was so anxious to see you all. Now let me
see if I can guess which is which, from your father’s description. This
tall one must be Dulcie, I am sure, and the little curly-haired one is
Maud. These others are Daisy and Molly.”
“Why, you know all our names,” exclaimed Molly, in astonishment.
“Did you ever see us before?”
“No, but I have heard a great deal about you from your father. We
saw a good deal of him in San Francisco, before he sailed for Hong
Kong, and he and my brother are in business together now. I wonder
if you would each be willing to give me a kiss.”
“Of course we would,” said Dulcie, heartily, and four little faces were
eagerly raised. Miss Leslie kissed them all, “not just duty kisses,”
Molly said afterwards, but as if she really liked doing it, and in less
than five minutes they were chattering away to this new
acquaintance as if they had known her all their lives.
Then Mrs. Leslie appeared, and they all went into the dining-room.
Mrs. Leslie was not as pretty as her daughter, but she had a very
sweet face, and was so kind and motherly that the little girls soon felt
almost as much at home with her as with Miss Florence.
“And now who is going to order the luncheon?” Uncle Stephen
asked, when they had taken their places at one of the round tables in
the big, crowded dining-room. “Will you do it, Mrs. Leslie?”
“Suppose we let Dulcie order,” suggested Miss Florence. “When I
was a little girl, and we went to a hotel, I remember half the fun was
in ordering things to eat.”
Dulcie gasped, as the waiter handed her the long bill of fare.
“I—I don’t think I could,” she faltered; “there are so many things, I
shouldn’t know where to begin. What’s the matter, Maud?”
“It’s about the ice-cream,” whispered Maud. “It doesn’t matter what
else we have.” Maud’s whisper was sufficiently audible to be heard
by the whole party, and all the grown-ups laughed, somewhat to the
little girl’s embarrassment. Then Miss Leslie said, kindly:
“I will help you, if you would like to have me,” and on Dulcie’s grateful
request, she gave the waiter an order, which seemed to the children
almost appallingly large.
What a delicious meal it was, and how they all enjoyed it! Even
Dulcie forgot her intention of taking a light lunch, for fear Uncle
Stephen might think she was hungry, which would reflect unfavorably
on Grandma’s providing. Miss Leslie certainly did not forget to order
ice-cream, and, better still, she took two helpings of it herself, and
advised them all to do likewise. Mr. Maitland and Mrs. Leslie seemed
to have a good deal to say to each other, but Miss Florence devoted
herself almost exclusively to the children, and before luncheon was
over, had succeeded in winning all their hearts.
“I wish you were going to the theatre with us,” Molly remarked,
regretfully, as they were leaving the dining-room, and she gave her
new friend’s hand an affectionate squeeze.
“I am going,” said Miss Leslie, smiling; “your uncle invited me. He
asked Mother, too, but she declined on account of a headache.”
Molly gave vent to her satisfaction by a little squeal of delight, and
Maud—who was nothing if not truthful—remarked in a sudden burst
of confidence:
“We didn’t think we were going to like it when Uncle Stephen said
ladies were coming to lunch, but you’re not a bit like an ordinary
lady.”
“Maud!” cried Dulcie, reprovingly, but Miss Leslie laughed merrily,
and did not seem in the least offended.
That was a wonderful, never-to-be-forgotten afternoon. Long after
their elders had ceased to think of it, the four little girls loved to recall
its delights. The bright little opera, with its charming music, and
amusing dialogue. The funny pirate chief, who frightened Maud at
first, and then fascinated her for the rest of the afternoon. The
pompous major-general, with his numerous family of daughters. And,
last but not least, the gallant policemen, who were as much afraid of
the pirate band as the pirates were afraid of them. It was all one
continuous delight. But even better than the play was the pleasant
companionship. Long before the afternoon was over, they had all
come to the conclusion that, with the exception of Papa, and
possibly the faithful Lizzie, Uncle Stephen and Miss Leslie were “the
two nicest grown-ups” they had ever met.
But everything, even “The Pirates of Penzance,” must come to an
end at last, and all too soon the curtain had fallen on the last
rollicking chorus, and they were making their way out through the
crowd, into the dusk of the winter afternoon.
“Wouldn’t it be lovely if nice things never came to an end?” remarked
Dulcie, as they stood on the cold corner, while Uncle Stephen went
in quest of a cab.
Miss Leslie smiled.
“There wouldn’t be any next time to look forward to, then,” she said.
“But we don’t have any next times,” began Molly, and checked
herself, warned by a reproving glance from Dulcie.
Miss Leslie looked rather surprised, but before she could ask any
questions, Uncle Stephen returned, and they were all packed into a
cab, Mr. Maitland explaining that he and Miss Florence were in a
hurry, and must get home as soon as possible.
“It’s been the loveliest afternoon we ever had in our lives,” declared
Daisy, as the cab drew up before their own door. “Oh, Uncle
Stephen, won’t we see you again—have you really got to go back to
California to-night?”
“I am afraid so,” Uncle Stephen answered, with a kind glance at the
row of sober little faces, “but perhaps I shall come back again before
such a very long time.”
“Don’t forget there’s always a next time to look forward to,” said Miss
Leslie, with her bright smile. “We’ve all had a delightful afternoon to
look back upon. I hope you won’t forget me.”
“Indeed we won’t!” cried Dulcie and Daisy both together, and Molly
added, plaintively:
“Oh, have you got to go back to California, too?”
“Yes, dear, Mother and I are leaving to-night, on the same train with
Mr. Maitland. But I want you to remember me, for I have an idea that
we shall meet again some day, and in the meantime I wonder if you
would write to me occasionally. I love to get letters from little girls.”
“We’d love to,” said Daisy, blushing with pleasure. “We none of us
write very well except Dulcie, but if you wouldn’t mind a few mistakes
in spelling——”
Miss Leslie said she wouldn’t mind in the least, and by that time
Mary had opened the front door, in answer to Uncle Stephen’s ring,
and the good-byes had to be said.
“I feel just the way I’m sure Cinderella must have felt when she got
back from the ball,” remarked Dulcie, throwing herself wearily on the
nursery sofa. “That’s the only trouble about having good times;
everything seems so dull when they’re over.”
“I don’t mind,” said cheerful Daisy. “Just think what fun we’re going to
have talking it all over. I don’t think we shall ever feel quite so lonely
again, now that we know Uncle Stephen and Miss Leslie.”
“I don’t see what good they can be to us away off in California,”
objected Molly, who was sharing some of Dulcie’s depression.
“But we’ve promised to write to them both,” argued Daisy, “and that
will be very interesting. I wonder how soon it will do to write our first
letter.”
“I think we might write just a short one to Uncle Stephen to-morrow,”
said Molly. “It would be polite to tell him again what a beautiful time
we had, don’t you think so?”
Nobody answered, and there was a short silence, which Maud
broke.
“I don’t think I want any dinner,” she remarked, with a long sigh.
“There’s going to be corned beef, there always is on Saturday, and I
hate corned beef. I’d like some more ice-cream, but I don’t want
anything else to eat. My head aches, and I think I’m going to have
another sore throat.”
 CHAPTER IV
THE SINGING LADY

MAUD’S sore throats were one of the greatest trials to her sisters.
Not only were they of frequent occurrence, but they were always
regarded by Grandma in the light of an especial grievance to herself,
for which somebody must be held responsible. If Maud had lived in
the present day, some doctor would probably have decided that her
tonsils needed to be removed, but in 1880 people did not think so
much about operations, and the family physician contented himself
with prescribing simple remedies, and the advice that the child
should be kept out of draughts, and not allowed to get her feet wet.
Maud’s prediction on the present occasion proved only too true. In
the middle of the night Daisy was aroused by a feverish demand
from her little sister, for a drink of water, and by morning Maud could
not swallow without considerable difficulty, and the too familiar white
spots had appeared on her throat. Of course Grandma had to be
told, and the consequence was a severe lecture to the other three,
which lasted all through breakfast.
“I might have known what would happen when I let you all go off
yesterday,” grumbled Mrs. Winslow, as she prepared Maud’s gargle
in the nursery after breakfast. “I don’t suppose it ever occurred to
one of you to see that the child did not sit in her warm coat all the
afternoon.”
“Miss Leslie made her take off her coat,” protested Daisy, “and I don’t
really think she got over-heated or anything.”
“Well, she evidently caught cold in some way. At any rate, this has
taught me a lesson. Now remember, Maud, you are to gargle your
throat regularly every two hours, and take one of these powders
every hour. If I hear of your getting out of bed I shall punish you
severely.”
“Who is going to stay with Maud this morning, Grandma?” Daisy
asked, following Mrs. Winslow out into the hall. “I suppose one of us
will have to stay home from church.”
Grandma reflected for a moment. She was very particular about
church-going, but under the present circumstances it was evident
that Maud could not be left alone.
“I think you and Daisy had better come to church with me,” she said.
“Maud doesn’t need anything except her gargle and the powders,
and Molly can attend to them.”
So it was settled, much to Molly’s satisfaction, and at half-past ten
Dulcie and Daisy departed for church, with Grandma and Aunt Kate,
and the two younger children were left to themselves. Maud, who
was feverish and rather cross, was inclined to resent this
arrangement, which deprived her of the society of her two older
sisters.
“I want Dulcie to stay and tell me stories,” she pleaded. “Nobody can
tell stories but Dulcie.”
“I’ll tell you stories this afternoon,” said Dulcie. “I don’t believe
Grandma will make me go to church twice to-day, on account of your
being sick.”
“But I want stories this morning,” fretted Maud; “I want to hear about
Mamma. Ask Grandma to let you stay at home instead of Molly.”
“It wouldn’t be any use; it would only make her crosser than she is
already. Molly will read to you. There’s a very nice book I got from
the library. It’s called ‘Ministering Children,’ and it’s a regular Sunday
story.”
“I don’t like the way Molly reads,” complained the invalid. “She can’t
pronounce the long words, and she keeps stopping to spell things. I
can read ’most as well as she can myself.”
But whether Maud liked it or not, there was nothing to be done, as
they all knew well. Grandma never changed her mind about things,
and when she had once given an order she expected implicit
obedience.
“I’ll do anything you want me to,” said Molly, good-naturedly, as the
retreating footsteps of the church-goers died away in the distance.
“We can’t play lotto, because it’s Sunday, but perhaps it wouldn’t be
wicked to cut out some paper dolls.”
Maud brightened a little at this suggestion, and for the next half-hour
all went well. Then it was time for Maud’s medicine, and she began
to rebel.
“I don’t like those nasty powders, and I’m not going to take any more
till Grandma comes home.”
“Then we shall both get an awful scolding,” said Molly, desperately.
“Grandma knows just how many powders there are, and she’ll count
to see if you’ve taken them all right. Do swallow this one, like a good
girl, and I’ll give you a drink of water to take away the taste.”
Perhaps Maud realized the force of her sister’s argument. At any
rate, she made no further objection to swallowing the medicine, over
which she made a wry face.
“When I grow up, I’m never going to take medicine,” she announced,
decidedly. “I’m not going to do a single thing I don’t want to.”
“Maybe you’ll have to,” said Molly. “Grown-up people can’t always do
just as they like. Papa didn’t want to go to China and leave us all, but
he had to, and Lizzie didn’t want to go away. Listen, the lady next
door is beginning to sing.”
Maud’s face brightened.
“I’m glad,” she said. “She always sings hymns on Sunday. I wonder
why she doesn’t go to church. Maybe she’s sick, too.”
For ten minutes the room was very still, while the two children
listened to the music, which reached them distinctly through the
party wall. Then Maud began to show signs of restlessness again.
“I wish she’d sing ‘Only an Armor-Bearer,’” she complained, fretfully.
“‘Only an Armor-Bearer’ is my favorite hymn; it’s got such a nice,
lively tune. She ’most always sings it on Sunday.”
“Perhaps she will in a little while,” said Molly, and again there was
silence. But, contrary to their expectations, the lady next door did not
sing “Only an Armor-Bearer,” and after a few minutes the music
ceased.
“O dear!” cried Maud, “now she’s stopped, and I did want ‘Only an
Armor-Bearer’ so much. Can’t we ask her to sing some more?”
“Why, Maud, how could we? We don’t know her. Oh, Maud, don’t
begin to cry. You’ll be worse if you do.”
“I am worse now,” declared Maud, seizing eagerly upon this new
idea. “I’m much worse. Maybe I’m going to die and go to heaven, like
Mamma. If I do you’ll be sorry you wouldn’t ask the lady to sing ‘Only
an Armor-Bearer.’”
“But how can I ask her, Maudie? It would be dreadfully rude to call
through the wall, and I don’t believe she’d understand, anyway. If I
went in next door I should have to ring the bell to get back, and then
Mary would see me, and she’d be sure to tell Grandma. Besides, I
wouldn’t know whom to ask for. We don’t even know the lady’s
name.”
Maud stopped crying, and raised herself on one elbow.
“If you’ll promise never to tell Grandma,” she said, “I’ll tell you
something. It’s my secret; I’ve had it for ever so many days.”
“A secret! What kind of a secret?” Molly was beginning to be
interested.
“It’s a very lovely secret,” said Maud, proudly. “You big ones are
always having secrets, so I got one, too. I won’t tell it, though, unless
you promise not to tell Grandma.”
“Of course I’ll promise. You know I never tell Grandma things, or
Aunt Kate either.”
“I don’t know that we ought to tell Dulcie and Daisy,” said Maud,
doubtfully; “they might think Grandma ought to know. That’s why I
didn’t talk about it. It was so exciting. I peeked in, but I was scared to
go any farther.”
“Peeked in?” repeated Molly; “where did you peek in?”
“Next door. Through the door in the trunk-room, you know.”
“Do you mean the door Grandpa had cut between the houses when
Uncle George lived next door? I thought it was locked up after Uncle
George died, and the boarding-house people came there.”
“It isn’t locked up,” said Maud, triumphantly. “I found out, and that’s
my secret.”
“Maud!” gasped Molly, her eyes round with astonishment. “You mean
you knew such an exciting thing, and never told any one.”
Maud nodded.
“I wanted to have a secret,” she said, “and I was afraid Dulcie or
Daisy would tell Grandma. It was the last time I had a cold, and
Grandma wouldn’t let me go out. I was up here playing all by myself.
I was looking for my littlest china doll. I couldn’t find her, and I
thought perhaps I’d left her in the trunk-room the day we played
Libby Prison in there, so I went to look. I did find her behind one of
the biggest trunks, and then I saw the door. I thought it was locked,
of course, but I shook the handle just for fun, and all of a sudden it
came open, and I looked right in next door.”
“What did you see?” demanded Molly, in a tone of breathless
interest.
“I didn’t see very much,” confessed Maud, reluctantly. “It was just a
big closet, and there were brooms and dust-pans in it, but it really
was next door. First I was going to tell, but then I was afraid if
Grandma knew she’d have the door locked up right away, and then
we could never go to see the singing lady.”
“I’m sure Grandma would have it locked right up,” said Molly, “and
perhaps the lady who keeps the boarding-house would, too, but it’s
very interesting to know it isn’t locked now. Why, it must have been
unlocked all the time since Uncle George died, and nobody ever
found it out before. I don’t believe the people next door know it any
more than we did.”
“Of course they don’t,” said Maud, “that’s what makes it so
interesting. Now you see you can go to see the singing lady just as
easy as anything, and ask her to sing ‘Only an Armor-Bearer.’”
“Oh, Maud, I couldn’t,” protested Molly; “it would be such a very
queer thing to do. The lady might not like it a bit, and Grandma
would make such a fuss. She never lets us talk to people she
doesn’t know.”
“You promised you wouldn’t tell Grandma, and I know the singing
lady wouldn’t be angry. You’ve got to do it, Molly, or else maybe I’ll
die and go to heaven.”
Molly hesitated. It would certainly be a thrilling experience to go
uninvited, and without even ringing the door-bell, into the house next
door, that mysterious boarding-house, upon whose occupants
Grandma and Aunt Kate looked down from their height of social
superiority. Molly loved adventure, and yet—what would Grandma
say? Would even Dulcie and Daisy altogether approve? Maud
noticed the hesitation in her sister’s manner, and was quick to take
advantage of it.
“If you won’t go,” she announced, sitting up in bed, “I’ll get right
straight up and go myself.”
Molly rose irresolutely.
“If I go, will you promise faithfully not to get out of bed for a single
minute till I come back?”
Maud nodded emphatically.
“I’ll promise, cross my heart, and that’s the solemnest promise
anybody can make, and if you break it something awful will happen
to you. Mary told me it would. I’ll lie just as still, as still, and when you
come back you can tell me all about the singing lady.”
“And will you gargle and take your powders all day without making
any more fuss?”
“Yes, and I’ll give you my best paper doll, and all her dresses. Don’t
you think I’m kind?”
Molly moved slowly towards the door.
“It seems an awful thing to do,” she said, “but I’ll only stay a minute,
and I can’t let you get out of bed.”
 The door swung open so quietly and easily that she
nearly fell over backward.—Page 63.
Molly’s heart was beating very fast as she crossed the hall to the
dark room, which Grandma used for storing trunks and boxes. There
was no one to see her, for both the servants were in the kitchen, and
she and Maud had the upper part of the house quite to themselves.
The trunk-room was not locked, and she made her way amid various
impediments, to the heavy door, which she had always known
communicated with the adjoining house. Old Dr. Winslow had had it
made in days gone by, when the house next door had belonged to
his only brother, of whom he was very fond. This brother had died
before the children came to New York, and although the house still
belonged to the Winslow family, it had been rented to a lady, who
took boarders, much to the disgust of Grandma and Aunt Kate, who
looked upon a boarding-house as a blot on the neighborhood. Molly
was telling herself that her little sister must have made a mistake. It
did not seem possible that the communicating door could have been
left unfastened all these years, without the fact having been
discovered. With a trembling hand she turned the knob. The door
stuck a little, and she was just about to turn away, convinced that
Maud had dreamed the whole thing, when suddenly the door swung
open, so quietly and easily, that, in her astonishment, she nearly fell
over backward.
There, sure enough, was the closet, just as Maud had described it.
Molly fairly gasped, and in that one moment everything else was
forgotten in the excitement of the wonderful discovery she had
made. She did not shrink back, as Maud had done, but pushing her
way through brooms and brushes, and stumbling over various
articles on the floor, reached another door, which she opened, and
the next moment she had stepped out into a hall, which was exactly
like the hall of their own top floor.
It was very quiet, and there was no one to be seen. Molly closed the
closet door softly, and stood looking about her. There were four
rooms on the floor, and all the doors were closed. The singing lady’s
room was in the front, she knew, and after one moment’s hesitation,
she stepped boldly forward, and knocked.
“Come in,” called a pleasant voice, and there was a sound as of
some piece of furniture being moved rapidly along the floor. Before
Molly could quite make up her mind to turn the handle, the door was
opened from the inside, and a little lady in a wheel-chair suddenly
confronted her.
She was such a tiny lady that for the first moment Molly thought she
must be a child, but when the pleasant voice spoke again, it sounded
oddly familiar.
“Won’t you come in?” she said, and the face that looked at Molly
from the wheel-chair was so very sweet and winning, that half her
embarrassment melted away at once.
“I hope you’ll excuse me for coming,” she faltered, “but—but, you
see, we live next door, and my little sister is sick. We can hear you
sing through the wall, and we all love it. My sister wants me to ask if
you won’t please sing ‘Only an Armor-Bearer,’ because it’s her
favorite hymn.”
“Come right in,” said the lady, hospitably, “and would you mind
closing the door? The halls are rather chilly.”
Molly complied, and found herself in a room exactly like their own
nursery on the other side of the wall. Indeed, the two houses had
been built at the same time, and were alike in every particular. It was
evidently used as both bed and sitting-room, for a piano stood
between the windows, and by the empty fireplace stood a small
mahogany bookcase well filled with rather shabby-looking books.
The room might have been more tidy, for the bed was still unmade,
and on the table was a tray containing the remains of a breakfast,
but the lady herself was as neat as possible, although her blue
wrapper was somewhat faded, and the slippers on the little feet that
hung helplessly over the edge of the wheel-chair had long ago lost
their first freshness.
“You must excuse things being a little upset,” the lady said,
apologetically. “It’s Sunday morning, you know, and the
chambermaid has gone to church. She’s a nice girl, and very kind
and obliging, but I am afraid I give her a good deal of trouble. Take
those bedclothes off that comfortable chair, and sit down. It’s a great
pleasure to have a little girl come to see me. And so your sister likes
my singing. I am very glad. I had no idea any one cared about it.”
“We all like it,” said Molly, who had obeyed her hostess’ instructions,
and seated herself. “You see, our room is just on the other side of
the wall, and we can hear very well indeed. Maud is in bed to-day,
with a sore throat, and she loved the music.”
“Bless her heart!” cried the little lady, fairly beaming with pleasure,
“she shall have all the music I can give her. I love to sing, though I
know I haven’t much of a voice. Would you mind telling me your
name?”
“My name is Molly Winslow,” said Molly, “and my sisters’ names are
Dulcie, Daisy and Maud. It’s Maud who is sick. She’s only seven. I’m
nine, and Dulcie and Daisy are eleven and ten. Our mamma is dead,
and our papa has gone to China. We live next door with Grandma
Winslow.”
“I know who you are now,” said the lady, smiling; “you are old Dr.
Winslow’s grandchildren. I have always admired your grandfather’s
writing so much. I have read a number of his books, and I was so
much interested when I heard his house was next door.”
“Were you?” said Molly. “I’m glad you like Grandpa’s books. I didn’t
know anybody did. Dulcie began one once, but she said it wasn’t
very interesting. I suppose people ought to like their relations’
books.”
The lady laughed such a merry laugh that Molly found herself
laughing, too, though she did not know why.
“I think Dr. Winslow’s books might seem rather dull to a little girl,” she
said. “Perhaps I might have found them dull myself, if I were able to
get about like other people, but when one has to live in a wheel-chair
one is glad of almost anything to read.”
“Do you always have to stay in the chair?” asked Molly,
sympathetically. “I thought perhaps you had just sprained your ankle
or something like that. Papa sprained his ankle once and he had to
keep his foot up for three whole weeks.”
“I haven’t walked a step for nearly three years,” said the lady, quietly.
“Can’t you even go up and down stairs?”
The lady shook her head.
“I was carried up here the day I left the hospital,” she said, sadly,
“and I have lived in this room ever since. I shall never walk again, the
doctors tell me. But I manage to get on very well,” she added,
brightening at sight of Molly’s distressed face. “You would really be
surprised to know all the things I can do without getting out of my
chair. Then people are very kind to me. Miss Collins, the lady who
keeps this house, was an old friend of my mother’s, and she often
comes to sit with me in the evening. The chambermaid helps me in
many little ways, and with my books, and my dear piano, I really get
on very comfortably indeed.”
Molly was deeply impressed.
“Could you walk when you were a little girl?” she inquired, anxiously.
A shadow crossed the lady’s sweet face.
“Oh yes, indeed,” she said. “I walked just like any one else till three
years ago, when I met with my accident.”
“What sort of an accident was it?” Molly was so much interested that
she quite forgot that some people might have considered her
questions rather impertinent.
“I was run over, crossing Broadway one very slippery day. The
ground was covered with ice, and I fell in the middle of the street.
Before I could get on my feet again, a horse-car came around the
corner, and the driver could not stop his horses in time. It really
wasn’t anybody’s fault.”
Molly rose. She was beginning to feel embarrassed again. There
was something in the sight of the helpless little figure in the wheel-
chair that made her feel all at once as if she wanted to cry.
“I’m afraid I must go,” she said a trifle unsteadily. “I can’t leave Maud
any longer. I’m awfully glad I know you, and the others will be so
interested when I tell them about you.”
“And I am delighted to know you, too,” her new acquaintance said,
heartily. “I have been more interested in my little neighbors than you
might suppose. You see, I can hear your voices through the wall, just
as you hear my singing, and when one spends a good deal of time
alone, one gets interested in all sorts of little things. I hope you will
come to see me again, and bring all your little sisters.”
“We’d love to come,” declared Molly. “Will you please tell me your
name in case we should want to ask for you at the front door?”
“My name is Oliver, Mary Oliver, but everybody calls me Miss Polly,
and I like it much better. My brother Tom always called me Polly. I
am sorry you must go so soon, for it is a great treat to have a visitor,
but I suppose you mustn’t leave your little sister any longer. I hope
you will find things in better order the next time you come. Maggie is
really very good about keeping the room neat, but Sunday morning
——” And Miss Polly glanced regretfully at the unmade bed and the
tray of breakfast dishes.
“Good-bye,” said Molly, holding out her hand.
Miss Polly shook the little hand—her own hand was not much bigger
—and then she looked at her visitor rather anxiously.
“Aren’t you afraid of taking cold without any wrap?” she questioned.
“To be sure it is only next door.”
“Oh, I don’t have to go out in the street at all,” said Molly,
unthinkingly. “I came through the door in the wall.”
“The door in the wall?” repeated Miss Polly, looking puzzled. “What
door do you mean, dear?”
Molly blushed.
“I didn’t mean to tell,” she said, “because it’s a secret. It’s a door that
was cut between the two houses when Grandpa’s brother lived here.
Everybody thinks it’s locked, but it isn’t. It’s such fun coming that way
—like doing a thing in a book, you know.”
Miss Polly laughed merrily.
“What a delightful way to come,” she said. “I won’t mention your
secret to a soul, and you must often come to see me through the
wall.” She looked so young and pretty, with her face all dancing with
merriment, that Molly felt suddenly as if she were sharing a secret
with a little girl of her own age.
“I’ll tell Dulcie and Daisy as soon as they come home from church,”
she promised, “and I know they’ll want to come and see you right
away.” And then she hurried off.
As she entered the nursery, a few minutes later, the strains of “Only
an Armor-Bearer” could be distinctly heard through the wall, and
Miss Polly’s piano was playing a lively accompaniment to the familiar
tune.
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