1 "Tate to Hoko toshiteno Hujikome Seisaku no Koyo (Sword or Sheath? The Benefits of Imperfect Containment)" Japanese Journal of International Security, Vol. 39, No. 4 (March 2012), pp. 35-49. In Japonese.
Sword or Sheath: The Benefits of Imperfect Containment
George Shambaugh School of Foreign Service and Department of Government Georgetown University
[email protected]
Richard Matthew School of Social Ecology and Department of Political Science University of California, Irvine
[email protected] www.cusa.uci.edu
October 18, 2011
Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2123563
2 Abstract In a world characterized by complexity and connectedness, transnational threats – such as terrorism, cyber attack, environmental disaster, and disease – are virtually impossible to contain completely. But, how perfect does containment have to be to accomplish its core objective of limiting the reach and intensity of such threats? Using insights from a social exchange perspective on power in world politics, we argue that strategies of containment against many contemporary security threats do not need to be perfect to be effective. While critics of containment strategies are correct that containment structures often leak and typically fail to achieve some objectives fully, we argue that pursuing partial containment may be more cost effective than full containment as part of a strategy to alter threatening behavior and decrease the potency of extant or potential threats.
I.
Introduction1 From sieges of medieval castles, through the “cordon sanitaire” devised by French
Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau after World War I, to the strategic doctrine to limit Soviet expansionism promoted by George Kennan and adopted during the Cold War, containment has long been a key component of state efforts to manage threats. Containment is often pursued in combination with other strategies to reduce the risk posed by a perceived threat. When the threat is actor-generated, containment is often used as a sword of statecraft to compel policy change to deter others from engaging in undesirable behavior by demonstrating that the consequences of such actions will be intolerably high,
1
The authors thank David Tingle for his research support.
Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2123563
3 and to promote regime change. Containment is also often used as a sheath to enclose a domain of threat. In this role, rather than altering a target’s behavior, the goal is to decrease the potency and reduce the negative consequences of its behavior. Containment is also used to minimize the potentially negative consequences of non-actor driven threats, such as SARS or the H1N1 flu virus or the fall-out from a nuclear accident. How well containment works as a sword or sheath in combination with or relative to other tactics has been the subject of considerable discussion and analysis throughout the twentieth and into the twenty-first centuries.2 Vigorous debate over containment surrounded the Bush Administration’s 2003 decision to go to war against Iraq. Speaking at the Cincinnati Museum Center on October 7, 2002, President Bush argued that attempts to contain the threat posed by Saddam’s Iraq had failed. “Some have argued we should wait—and that’s an option. In my view, it’s the riskiest of all options, because the longer we wait, the stronger and bolder Saddam Hussein will become.”3 Bush’s argument justifying a preemptive military strike against Iraq drew upon claims advanced in the 2002 National Security Strategy of the United States, which had been released the previous month: “traditional concepts of deterrence will not work against a terrorist enemy”… and therefore “the United States will, if necessary, act preemptively.”4
2
Perhaps the best known debate occurred between George Kennan, “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” Foreign Affairs (1947), and John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of American National Security Policy during the Cold War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), Walter Lippmann, The Cold War: A Study in U.S. Policy since 1945 (Reading, PA: Addison-Wesley, 1973). For a recent assessment of containment in the contemporary environment, see Ian Shapiro, Containment: Rebuilding a Strategy against Global Terrorism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007). 3 George Bush (2002), “President Bush Outlines Iraqi Threat,” accessed at http: //www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/10/print/20021007-8.html. 4 United States Government (2002), The National Security Strategy of the United States, p. 15, accessed at http: //www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss.pdf.
4 A few months later, two leading American scholars issued a point by point rebuttal of these arguments, concluding: Both logic and historical evidence suggest a policy of vigilant containment would work both now and in the event Iraq acquires a nuclear arsenal. Why? Because the United States and its regional allies are far stronger than Iraq. And because it does not take a genius to figure out what would happen if Iraq tried to use WMD to blackmail its neighbors, expand its territory, or attack another state directly. It only takes a leader who wants to stay alive and who wants to remain in power. Throughout his lengthy and brutal career, Saddam Hussein has repeatedly shown that these two goals are absolutely paramount. That is why deterrence and containment would work. If the United States is, or soon will be, at war with Iraq, Americans should understand that a compelling strategic rationale is absent.5 Not all analysts agreed with the assessment of Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer.6 Indeed, from Walter Lippmann to Paul Wolfowitz, an architect of the attack on Iraq, critics of containment have highlighted the difficulty of maintaining allied support for containment strategies, the tendency for containment to leak, and the inability of this strategy to achieve particular objectives.7 The age-old problem of preventing voluntary and involuntary defections is compounded by the reality that the threats facing states today have become increasingly diffuse, transnational, and network-based. This reduces the dependence of the target on any particular good or relationship denied through a containment regime, thus reducing the likelihood that the containment regime on its own compel a change in behavior. It also decreases the effectiveness of a containment regime in creating a shield around these threats to stop their expansion, in comparison to the well-
5
John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt, “An Unnecessary War,” Foreign Policy (2003), accessed at http: //www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/bush/walt.htm. 6 Robert J. Lieber, “The Folly of Containment,” Commentary April (2003): 15-21. 7 Michael O’Hanlon, “Sadam's Bomb: How Close is Iraq to having a Nuclear Weapon?” Slate (18 September, 2002); Kenneth Pollack, The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq (New York: Random House, 2002); William Shawcross, Allies: Why the West Had to Remove Saddam (New York: Public Affairs, 2004).
5 studied threats posed by expansionist states.8 In response, supporters of containment acknowledge these difficulties while highlighting the ways in which containment succeeds,9 and emphasize the costs of containment versus alternatives such as war.10 Containment is also at the crux of ongoing U.S. relations with North Korea. The 1994 Agreed Framework signed by both states was meant to be a significant step towards containing and limiting the threat of a nuclear-capable North Korea. The North Koreans agreed to phase out their existing graphite-moderated reactor – capable of producing weapons-grade plutonium – in favor of two American-supported light water reactors. The high point of this containment effort, however, was the signing of the agreement. Both parties became increasingly dissatisfied with the implementation of the Framework, and it fell apart for good around 2003. North Korea then re-opened its nuclear facilities and withdrew from the Non-Proliferation Treaty, sparking a serious crisis. The next several years were characterized by intermittent efforts at finding a multilateral solution to the impasse (the Six-Party Talks). Scholars and policymakers remain divided on the best strategies for moving forward. Victor Cha argues in favor of “hawk engagement,” in which promises are offered that can later be withdrawn if North Korea fails to comply, and a complete suspension of contact if such strategies continue to fail.11 David Kang argues that containment
8
See Richard Matthew and George Shambaugh, “Sex, Drugs and Heavy Metal: Transnational Threats and National Vulnerabilities,” Security Dialogue, 29, 2 (June 1998): 163-175; “The Limits of Terrorism: A Network Perspective,” International Studies Review 7 (2005a): 617-627; and “The Pendulum Effect: Explaining Shifts in the Democratic Response to Terrorism,” Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policies 5, 1 (2005b): 223-233. 9 George Lopez and David Cortright. “Containing Iraq: Sanctions Worked,” Foreign Affairs (July/August 2004). 10 Steven David, Kevin Murphy, and Robert Topel, “War in Iraq versus Containment,” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper 12092 (2006) accessed at: http: //www.nber.org/papers/w12092. 11 Victor Cha, “The Debate over North Korea,” Political Science Quarterly 119, 2 (2004): 237-254.
6 perpetuates distrust and decreases the likelihood of resolution to the North Korean issue.12 Upon entering office in 2008 the Obama administration promised to be more assertive against North Korea’s non-compliance, but its efforts failed to stop North Korea from launching their Taepodong-2 missile, and performing an underground nuclear test, in 2009. 13 Since then, the tone of the Obama administration has been less assertive: “We just want to make sure the government of North Korea is operating within the basic rules of the international community.”14 Critics responded with dismay, arguing that the Obama Administration had squandered an opportunity to confront North Korea. Following the sinking of the South Korean ship, the Cheonan, by North Korea in March of 2010, the United States has once again adopted a more assertive strategy including staging naval exercises in the Yellow Sea. During a visit from Korean President Lee Myung-Bak to
Washington on October of 14, 2011, President Obama threatened to reinforce containment: In this regard, we discussed North Korea, which continues to pose a direct threat to the security of both our nations. On this, President Lee [and I] are entirely united. Together, we've succeeded in changing the equation with the North, by showing that its provocations will be met -- not with rewards but with even stronger sanctions and isolation. So the choice is clear for North Korea. If Pyongyang continues to ignore its international obligations, it will invite even more pressure and isolation. If the North abandons its quest for nuclear weapons and moves toward denuclearization, it will enjoy greater security and opportunity for its people. That's the choice that North Korea faces. 15 Despite this, doubts remain about whether containment will be successful. For example, Michael E. O'Hanlon of the Brookings Foundation argues:
12
David Kang, “The Debate over North Korea,” Political Science Quarterly 119, 2 (2004): 237-254. David Sanger, “Coming to Terms With Containing North Korea,” New York Times (August 8, 2009). On line: http: //www.nytimes.com/2009/08/09/weekinreview/09sanger.html. 14 Sanger, “Coming to Terms With Containing North Korea.” 15 Remarks by President Obama and President Lee of the Republic of Korea in a Joint Press Conference, East Room, White House, 12: 22PM EDT. On line: http: //www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/10/13/remarkspresident-obama-and-president-lee-republic-korea-joint-press-con. 13
7
All approaches have failed over the past decade or so. The Clinton administration did a good job with the 1994 Agreed Framework, but in its second term, it generally failed to pursue a broader agenda except to send Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright to Pyongyang on a visit. Meanwhile, it appears that during that time, Pyongyang began to develop a secret uranium-enrichment program and also sold nuclear-related technology to Syria. President George W. Bush's hard-line policies, especially during his first term, led to the breakout of North Korea from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and its decision to reprocess enough plutonium to build six to eight weapons, roughly quintupling the size of its arsenal. Mr. Bush's new approach in his second term, particularly under chief negotiator Christopher Hill, was more flexible but in the end did not fare very well, as evidenced by where we are today. Ideally, after the inevitable and necessary flurry of international activity to penalize North Korea for its latest transgressions, we will get back to a serious negotiating agenda. The basic bargain noted above should still be our goal. However, it is not the most likely outcome, unfortunately. From this point onward, much of the purpose of our negotiations regarding North Korea - done with the North or more likely without it, and done with just allies or China and Russia, too - should be to prepare the groundwork for other and even worse scenarios. Here is one such terrifying concern: a North Korea that, either because of the willful action of the government or the failure and collapse of that government, can no longer be trusted with the security of its nuclear arsenal (still estimated at perhaps six to eight bombs).16 In light of these ongoing debates, it is important to ask how perfect containment has to be in order to be effective. If containment is unlikely to alter a target’s behavior, as O'Hanlon argues, should it be abandoned or can it still be used to increase security? While recognizing that (a) perfect containment is impossible, and (b) its utility as a means of exercising power or shielding us from threats may be reduced by leaks and defections in particular cases, we argue that strategies of containment against many contemporary security threats do not need to be absolute to be effective, and may in fact be more effective if they are not absolute. 16
Michael E. O'Hanlon, “Quarantine Possibilities for North Korea Shipping North Korea, Nuclear Weapons, Trade, China, Nonproliferation,” Brookings Institution (October 14, 2011). On line: http: //www.brookings.edu/opinions/2009/0528_north_korea_ohanlon.aspx.
8 We build our argument on three foundational insights from the social power literature involving the issue-specific and context-specific nature of political power, the link between dependence and influence, and the importance of the baseline of expectations in interpreting the value of threats or promises. From these, make five propositions about the effectiveness of containment as a sword and as a sheath:
The issue-specific and context-specific nature of power political and the link between dependence and political power suggest that there is no necessary link between the relative distribution of resources among the parties involved and the effectiveness of a containment regime. Furthermore, the costs of containment will be born differently by different actors. Thus, the effectiveness of containment as a sword will vary with the ability of policy makers to isolate themselves from (or exploit) its costs.
The effectiveness of containment as a sword varies as a function of the costs it imposed on policy makers in the targeted state and their costs of adjustment. Given the specificity of these costs, success (or failure) of a given level of containment in promoting a given level of behavior change in the target, does not imply that a greater level of containment will result in a greater change in behavior. Thus, tightening containment will not necessarily increase leverage, and even total containment will be ineffective if the denied goods can be replaced internally.
The social-power expectation that each party will assess new threats or promises relative to its baseline of expectations suggests that allowing contingent variation in an ongoing containment regime – by offering basic humanitarian goods as well as other items valued by and otherwise unavailable to policymakers in the target country – could create a future source of leverage.
Containment may also sheath threats, increasing security for all. However, the cost of an increment of additional security gained per added increment of containment may change as the level of containment increases. Consequently, the direct costs of pursuing full containment may be prohibitive and the opportunity costs of attempting to do so could undermine national security.
Given that containment regimes generally leak and may eventually fail, pursuing full containment may strengthen the lethality of the threat, while partial containment may dilute it. Pursing full containment does so by allowing diseases to mutate, by increasing incentives for the target to develop embargoed goods internally, by motivating the target to engage in provocative behavior, and by increasing dependence on the containment regime as a principle source of security.
9 II.
Imperfect Containment as a Sword
Under what conditions is the strategy of containment likely to alter the behavior of others? How does the degree of containment affect its effectiveness as a tool of political power? Containment, like economic sanctions more generally, is often noted for its failure. Indeed, empirical work by scholars like Robert Pape and Elliott, Hufbauer and Schott suggest that sanctions rarely work.17 These empirical findings, however, do not tell us whether the failure is a function of the instrument itself or its use by politicians with unrealistic expectations under circumstances or for purposes for which containment or sanctions generally are not likely to success. 18 Social power theory helps resolve this uncertainty by identifying the conditions under which containment, sanctions, threats and incentives are likely to be translated into political power. Two insights from this literature are particularly relevant. First, the issue-specific and context-specific nature of power suggests that there is no necessary link between the relative distribution of resources among the parties involved and the effectiveness of containment. Furthermore, the costs of containment will be born differently by different actors, and tenuousness in the link between those who bear those costs and those who make policy will undermine effectiveness. Second, the expectation that each party will assess new threats or promises relative to its baseline of expectations suggests that tightening a containment regime will have little effect on behavior when expectations are low, while loosening a containment regime may create a source of future leverage.
17
Gerry Hufbauer and Jeffry Schott, Economic Sanctions Reconsidered (Washington, DC: Institute for International Economics, 1985); Robert Pape, “Why Sanctions Still Don’t work,” International Security 22 (1997): 90-136. 18 George Shambaugh. States, Firms and Power: Successful Sanctions in United States Foreign Policy. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999): 3-6.
10
A. Issue-Specific and Context-Specific Nature of Power Social power theorists emphasize that political power is issue-specific and contextspecific.19 At a minimum, political power must be assessed in terms of a prior specification of domain and scope of the influence attempt, that is, in terms of the target(s) of the influence attempt (who) and the scope of the actions desired by the initiator (what is intended). The exercise of power presumes a conflict of interest. The magnitude of power exercised reflects the difference between what the target(s) did as a consequence of the action taken relative to what they would have done its absence. This same level of specificity is necessary when considering the conditions under which the denial of goods through containment can be translated into political power. Just as the price of a good in the market is determined by what consumers are willing pay rather than by the value of the amount of labor or materials that were used to create it, the target’s assessment of the costs imposed through containment versus the adjustment and opportunity costs of altering its behavior to conform to the demands of the initiator(s) are contextually-specific.20 This implies that strategic resources (including military capacity and aggregate national wealth, 21 as well as
19
David Baldwin, “Power Analysis in World Politics: New Trends versus Old Tendencies,” World Politics, Vol. 31, No. 2 (January 1979): 161-194, and Economic Statecraft (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992); Robert Dahl, “The Concept of Power,” Behavior Science, 11 (July 1975): 201-215, Modern Political Analysis 2nd ed. (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1970), and “Power,” International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences XII (New York: Free Press, 1968): 405-415. This approach, also referred to as the first face of power and compulsory form of power, provides a useful framework for assessing the effectiveness of containment as a strategy for altering behavior. For a discussion of the faces of power, see: Steven Lukes, Power: A Radical View, 2nd edition. (New York: Macmillan Press, 2005). For a discussion of compulsory forms of power, see: Michael Barnett and Raymond Duvall, “Power in International Politics,” International Organization 59 (2005): 39-75. 20 In the words of Harold and Margaret Sprout, the value of particular threats or promises as a source of political power vary with the “policy contingency framework” faced by the initiator and target of the influence attempt. Harold Lasswell and Abraham Kaplan, Power and Society (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1950), Harold and Margaret Sprout, Toward a Politics of the Planet Earth (New York: Van Nostrand, 1975). 21 William C. Wohlforth, “The Stability of a Unipolar World,” International Security 24, 1 (1999): 5-41.
11 the attraction created by “soft-power”22 assets like culture) that are useful for getting some actors to change some of their behavior in some circumstances, may not elicit the same behavior in other circumstances or by other actors. This suggests that the greater the specificity with which costs or rewards are aligned with a specific target, its needs and values, and the objectives of the influence attempt, the more likely that so-called “smart sanctions” are likely to work.23 Indeed, attempts to use the same tools to achieve multiple ends may be counterproductive. For example, while the presence of the South Korean and U.S. armies on the DMZ and the extension of U.S. nuclear umbrella may deter North Korea from conducting a fullfledged military invasion of the South or the strategic use of nuclear weapons, the low likelihood that they would be used in anything but a full-fledged military attack makes them relatively ineffective at deterring North Korea from conducting other provocative actions such as building tunnels under the DMZ, sinking of South Korean ships, test firing missiles or engaging in nuclear tests. Thus, it is a mistake to assume that military, political or economic resources are necessarily fungible or that more resources will translate into greater power – nuclear weapons may well deter the use nuclear weapons, but are unlikely to be used against, and relatively ineffective for deterring, lesser offenses. The issue-specific nature of power also highlights the importance of selecting one’s target as specifically as possible. Containment is a blunt instrument for promoting a change in behavior. While it may impose large costs on the country’s population, perhaps with the intent of inspiring the local population to lobby for a change in policy or revolt, the impact on the
22
Joseph S. Nye Jr. “The Changing Nature of World Power,” Political Science Quarterly 105, 2 (1990): 177-192; “Soft Power,” Foreign Policy 80 (1990): 153-171; and “Soft Power and American Foreign Policy,” Political Science Quarterly 119, 2 (1990): 255-270. 23 David Cortright and George Lopez, Smart Sanctions: Targeting Economic Statecraft (Lanham, MD: Roman and Littlefield, 2002). See also: George Shambaugh. States, Firms and Power: Successful Sanctions in United States Foreign Policy. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999): 18-24.
12 country’s leadership will be muted to the extent that they can isolate themselves from societal affects, blame the containment regime for society’s ills, and redirect societal resources to their advantage. Thus, the experiences of the Soviet Union, North Korea, Iraq, Iran, and Cuba suggest that even when their citizens are poor, effective leaders may be able to continue extracting sufficient resources from society to develop and maintain large standing armies and threatening weapons systems for at a least several decades. Consequently, predictions about the effectiveness of containment based on the relative distribution of aggregate political, economic or military resources of the countries involved are prone to overestimate the general utility of particular resources to achieve a wide variety of ends.24 This bias creates misperceptions of the “paradox of unrealized power” in which “weaker” states like North Korea are able to thwart “stronger” countries like China, Japan, South Korea and the United States repeatedly.25 From a social power perspective, this paradox is generally based on unrealized expectations that the possession of superior economic or military resources necessarily translates into political power. As represented by David Baldwin and Albert Hirschman, the effectiveness of containment or sanctions more generally will be a function of the level of the targets’ dependence on the relationships denied as a result of the containment regime relative to the costs of adjustment to the target of conforming to the demands made.26 Dependence may be defined in terms of the value of items lost as result of containment, and the ability and cost of producing substitutes internally or the ability to find comparable alternatives externally. The greater the availability of cost-effective alternate sources of the items denied via containment, the
24
Wohlforth, “The Stability of a Unipolar World.” Baldwin, “Power Analysis in World Politics: New Trends versus Old Tendencies”: 164. 26 Ibid., 164; Albert Hirschman, National Power and the Structure of Foreign Trade (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1945), George Shambaugh, “Dominance, Dependence and Political Power: Tethering Technology in the 1990s and Today,” International Studies Quarterly 40, 4 (1996): 559-588. See also: Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye Jr. “Power and Interdependence Revisited,” International Organization 41, 4 (1987): 725-753. 25
13 lower the level of dependence and magnitude of political leverage.27 The implication of this is that tightening a leaky containment regime – perhaps by imposing secondary sanctions against those who would run the blockade – should result in increased leverage. This presumption is complicated, however, by the context-specific nature of power and target’s baseline of expectations.
B. Baseline of Expectations Social power theorists emphasize that value of a threat or promise is often interpreted by the parties involved in terms of their baseline of expectations rather than its absolute value.28 This has two implications for containment. First, it is fruitful to treat additional influence attempts on their own terms, assessing the issue-specific and context-specific issues, relative to the baseline established by extant expectations. Thus, the likely success of tightening a containment regime is best assessed in terms of the incremental additional costs that this change imposes on the target relative to its added adjustment costs. Considered in these terms, the success of a given level of containment in eliciting some behavior change does not necessarily imply that tightening containment will elicit new or additional changes in behavior. Second, each party’s baseline of expectations determines the value of a threat or promise and whether a given action will be interpreted as a punishment or reward. Consequently, if little or no exchange is taking place between the parties (perhaps because of an effective containment regime), then expectations are already low and denying additional goods by imposing or tightening a containment regime will have little effect. Under such circumstances, however, social power theorists emphasize more power may ultimately be gained by offering the target so 27
George Shambaugh, States, Firms and Power: Successful Sanctions in United States Foreign Policy (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999): 14-24. 28 David Baldwin, “The Power of Positive Sanctions.” World Politics 24 (1971).
14 goods it values. In addition to providing an incentive for cooperation, building expectations of an ongoing valuable exchange may create dependence which an ultimately be exploited as a source of power.29 This matches Cha’s recommendation for “Hawk Engagement,” in which concessions are offered on a contingent basis that could later be removed. Offering humanitarian aid has the added benefit of building better relations with the local population, even if the proceeds are exploited or misdirected by local leaders. The baseline of expectations of each party may be lowered as well as raised. For example, David Kang argues that delays in the implementation of the 1994 Agreed Framework combined with publicly stated skepticism of the Framework by President Bush and the inclusion of North Korea in the “axis of evil” speech lowered expectations on both sides, leading to a breakdown in relations and undermining the credibility of a U.S. proposed resumption of dialogue with the DPRK.30 In contrast, given already low expectations, if the Obama Administration tightened its containment strategies against North Korea somewhat less than the North Korean regime expected following its firing of a Taepodong-2 missile and the 2009 nuclear test, the slighter tightening of containment policies may be interpreted as a carrot or permissive action rather than as a stick.31 In summary, containment is a blunt sword for promoting policy change. Its effectiveness is contingent on the costs borne by those the issuers seek to influence relative to their costs of adjustment. While leaky containment undermines leverage, tightening containment will not necessarily increase leverage. Finally, allowing contingent variation in an ongoing containment 29
David Baldwin, “Power Analysis in World Politics: New Trends versus Old Tendencies,” World Politics 31, 2 (January 1979), p. 175-180; Albert Hirschman, National Power and the Structure of Foreign Trade (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1945); George Shambaugh, States, Firms and Power: Successful Sanctions in United States Foreign Policy (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999): 14-24. 30 David Kang, “The Debate over North Korea,” Political Science Quarterly 199, 2 (2004). 31 Jamie Fly, “What Happened to Containment of North Korea?” Foreign Policy (November 20, 2009). On line: http: //shadow.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/11/20/what_happened_to_containment_of_north_korea_0.
15 regime – by offering basic humanitarian goods as well as other items valued by policymakers in the target country – could create a future source of leverage.
III.
Containment as a Sheath Under what conditions is the strategy of containment likely to reduce the risk of a
security threat? How does the degree of containment affect containment as a defensive sheath against a threat? In this section, we argue that the direct costs of pursuing full containment may be prohibitive and that the opportunity costs of attempting to do so could undermine national security. In addition, given that containment almost leaks or fails eventually, pursuing full containment may strengthen the lethality of the threat, thus increasing the ultimate security risk it poses.
A. The Costs of Pursuing Full Containment Containment has often been pursued with the intent of making it absolute, and it is often considered a failure when this ideal is not reached.32 Coupled with a general bias towards seeking and evaluating containment in ideal terms is a general presumption that increasing levels of containment will increase the ability to defend against, quarantine, or weaken the target and, thereby, enhance security. These assumptions may be valid under certain circumstances, but it is a mistake to presume a general relationship between increased expenditure or augmentation of containment strategies and an increase in the effectiveness of containment and the level of security it provides. As noted above, the success of a given level of threats or promises in
32
This attitude is clearly reflected in the public speeches made about the threat posed by Iraq by President Bush in 2002.
16 eliciting some behavioral change does not necessarily imply that new or greater threats or promises will elicit new or additional changes in behavior. Furthermore, the costs to the initiator of additional increments of security gained by augmenting containment strategies may vary and could increase significantly for a minor rise in the level of security. As a consequence, seeking 100% containment of a threat may be prohibitively expensive. The cost of providing additional increments of security through containment may reflect at least three general patterns. The first and most simple is a linear relationship in which each additional increase in the impermeability of containment is matched by a proportional increase in security, theoretically increasing until the risk or threat is eliminated and security reaches 100%. Examples include building a dike in which each additional unit of expenditure used to enhance the dike makes it proportionally stronger and better able to withstand storm surges until it has reached a level of strength sufficient to withstand the most violent of storms. Another example would be building a standing army – through sufficient training, arms, personnel, and so on – to defend against a similarly armed adversary. More is better and a theoretical level of funding exists at which, within a margin of error, preservation of security against a specific type of threat is practically guaranteed. A second possible pattern is that costs of additional increments of security decline once the level of security has reached a certain point. In such circumstances, startup costs may be high, but once a base level of security has been achieved, additional increments of security become less expensive. For example, in response to the attacks from snipers who were shooting from Bethlehem at cars on the Hebron highway and houses in the Jerusalem suburb of Gilo on the steep hill beyond the highway, the Israeli government built cement walls next to the highway and on the hill in front of houses of Gilo facing Bethlehem. The walls were dangerous to build
17 and very expensive in terms of both political and financial capital. However, once the cement walls were built, it became less risky and less costly to add additional security enhancements – such as adding monitoring television cameras to the wall and bullet proof glass to the windows in the houses of Gilo overlooking Bethlehem — than would otherwise have been the case. A third possible pattern is that the cost to security enhancement increases as the level of security increases. In such circumstances, the cost for each additional increment of security beyond a certain point becomes increasingly expensive. Indeed, the costs may become prohibitively expensive such that it is not only impossible to ever reach 100% containment, but that seeking to enhance containment above a threshold level of somewhere less than 100% becomes counterproductive. Analyses of the cost-effectiveness of cancer screening provide good examples of this in practice. Though it is clear that screening reduces mortality, attempts to screen entire populations are prohibitively expensive. In particular, while a large percentage of the population can be reached through individual counseling, and hospital and community outreach activities, reaching the people in the remaining small percentage of the population without ready access to these services is substantially more difficult and costly. Studies by M. Robyn Anderson et al., evaluating the cost per additional mammogram and cost per year of life saved, found that community activities intervention was the most cost-effective, at about $2,000 for each additional regular mammography user in the community, while the cost per year of life saved associated with mammography promotion to those who were not part of the regular programs was substantially higher -- approximately $56,000 per year of life saved.33 Additional studies suggest that the benefits and costs of screening for breast cancer depend on a variety of factors including prevalence and penetration, the mortality associated with the disease, age at 33
M. Robyn Andersen, Michelle Hager, Celine Su and Nicole Urban, “Analysis of Cost-Effectiveness of Mammography Promotion by Volunteers in Rural Communities,” Health Education and Behavior 29, 6 (2002): 755-770.
18 testing, and the tracking effects of preventive measures on the risk of developing the disease.34 Parallels to international security include the prevalence and penetration of the threat in society (i.e. the amount of threat remaining when containment is operational), and the risk and potential costs of the threat, tracking efforts of preventative measures on the risk of a future attack, the quality of life, and costs including military resources, casualties, and expenditures for humanitarian assistance and post-event reconstruction.35 If the costs of containment stay the same or increase for each increment of additional security, then it is important to weigh the relative value of enhancing security by augmenting containment relative to other means. The opportunity costs will be important if the net increase in security through containment, of say 75% to 80%, actually decreases the state’s overall security by reducing the amount spent in other areas. Current critics of the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq argue persuasively that the war may be reducing the capacity of the U.S. army and marines to engage in other missions. The logic of cost-effectiveness analysis suggests that the cost per additional unit of expenditure in Iraq should be evaluated against the probability that doing so will enhance the overall security of the United States more than hording those expenses or using them in other arenas against other threats. Another way of stating this is to argue that the war in Iraq is imposing financial and opportunity costs on the U.S. military which inhibit its ability to provide security to the country as a whole. Once excess capacity has been absorbed, providing additional increments of security in one arena may diminish the ability of a state to provide it in another. Thus, focusing ever increasing amounts of military, political and financial resources on a specific war, like the one in
34
Victor R. Grann and Judith S. Jacobson, “Benefits and Costs of Generic Screening for Breast Cancer,” Community Genetics 3, no. 4 (2000). 35 David, Murphy and Topel, “War in Iraq versus Containment.”
19 Iraq, reduces the ability of the U.S. military to prepare and counter other threats, like the threat of terrorism, that are not specifically associated with the war. In addition, as in a classic case of market failure, maximizing each individual’s security or the society’s security against one threat may lead to a socially suboptimal outcome for society as a whole. Efforts to eradicate breast cancer provide a good public health example of this phenomenon. Increased funding for screening and other therapies have increased the number of potential cancers caught and decreased the number of cancer deaths. This is extremely positive. It does not, however, suggest that increased expenditure will make it possible to eliminate the threat of breast cancer. Instead, though a high percentage of cancers may be preventable at a given level of health expenditure, the prevention of cancer in the remaining smaller percentage of the population at risk will likely be substantially greater. Furthermore, if those costs are substantial enough to lead to a reduction in the health care expenditure for other diseases – or, in the extreme, if they are substantial enough to undercut the viability of the health care system as a whole –then adding those expenditures will likely increase rather than decrease the general threat to society at large. In a similar way, though some constraints on civil liberties help promote social order and stability, complete containment of even offensive behavior may be socially suboptimal. Varying levels of containment pursued differently by the United States and France in their efforts to find a balance between free speech and the protection of individuals provide a case in point. France, for example, attempts a strategy of near total containment through its Pleven Law (1972) and Gaysott Law (1990) prohibiting racist speech or offensive behavior.36 In contrast, the United States has pursued a more permeable response which generally concedes the First Amendment
36
Karen Bird, “Racist Speech or Free Speech? A Comparison of Law in France and the United States,” Comparative Politics 34, 4 (2000): 399-418.
20 rights of expression to divergent groups, allowing the neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan to express their views as long as such views do not include “fighting words.” Despite this general contrast, the United States strategy towards racist speech has been shifting towards a higher degree of containment. In the mid-1980s, there was a resurgent interest on college campuses across the United States in restricting offensive expression, part of a wider tension between free speech and speech rights. The American political right criticized this move in the culture, giving it the derogatory label “political correctness.” Later, however, these same critics became the most outspoken enforcers of a social norm in the post-9/11 environment that criticisms of U.S. foreign policy and of Islam should be strongly discouraged.37 The social desire for uniformity and intolerance of offensive views reflects a dominant set of arguments which posit that political extremes often lead to instability and that ideological convergence, as seen in the West over the past several decades, leads to stability. In contrast, dissenting research suggests that the existence of extreme political parties often creates stability by channeling otherwise radical dissenters into more structured arenas. 38 Raymond Duch et al, lend credence to this view by demonstrating the people are more likely to learn tolerance in societies in which they are forced to face diversity than in more homogeneous, less conflictual environments.39 Furthermore, tolerance is not simply a function of generosity to those who restrain themselves (through political correctness) from punishing those who diverge from societal norms. It is also a function of the ability of people to reconcile themselves to societal change and assuage their fears.40 Changes in norms not only affect what people tolerate, but how they feel about the things they 37
Erin Dow and Mark Lender, “Civil Liberties and the Moderate Thought Police,” PS: Political Science and Politics 35, 3 (2002): 549. 38 G. Bingham Powell, “Extremist Parties and Political Turmoil: Two Puzzles,” American Journal of Political Science 30 (1986): 357-378. 39 Raymond Duch and James Gibson, “’Putting up’ with Fascists in Western Europe: A Comparative, Cross-Level Analysis of Tolerance,” The Western Political Quarterly 45, 1 (1992): 241. 40 Dennis Chong, “Tolerance and Social Adjustment to New Norms and Practices,” Political Behavior 16, 1 (1994).
21 tolerate. Consequently, limiting dissent or free speech may actually reduce both the level of tolerance within society and the ability of society to adapt to become more tolerant.
B. Containment and the Lethality of a Threat In general, future threats are discounted relative to current threats; however, if perfect containment into perpetuity is not feasible, then one’s vulnerability to a given threat should be considered both in the current time period and also at the projected point when the containment is ultimately breached along with the recognition that the virulence of the threat itself may not remain constant, but may become greater during the period of containment. Imperfect containment may enable the dilution of a threat in those cases where a period of perfect containment might increase its lethality. The increasing lethality of a threat may be driven by mutations of a virus, the added incentives that containment creates for developing restricted goods internally, the supplemental value gained by small breaches in the containment regime for the targeted state due to the “paradox of unrealized power,” and the tendency of those protected by containment to become over-reliant on that protection.
Mutations and Motivations Through executive order in April of 2005, President Bush “added pandemic influenza to the government's list of communicable diseases for which quarantine is authorized. It gives the government authority to detain or isolate a passenger arriving in the United States to prevent an infection from spreading.” 41 While government officials claim that this measure was “intended to prepare for all options,” and not to serve as the sole or first course of action, the pros and cons 41
Associated Press, “Bush Authorizes Use of Quarantine Powers in Cases of Bird Flu,” New York Times (2005), accessed at: http: //www.nytimes.com/2005/04/02/politics/02birdflu.html?ex=1172034000&en=1ae79202ca93c8d6&ei=5070
22 of this approach deserve consideration, as it is the most common first step taken in the early stages of an epidemic. Laurie Garrett has argued that, “Although there is little evidence that isolation measures have ever slowed the spread of influenza—it is just too contagious—most governments would likely resort to quarantines in a pandemic crisis.” 42 A quarantine would have enormous economic consequences—the quarantines designed to slow or halt the spread of SARS in 2003 reduced travel throughout Asia for three months and imposed costs of between $30 billion to 50 billion. As Garrett and others make clear, this is a stop gap measure that at best would slow the take-off of a pandemic, and might not even do that. One must immediately ask whether the expected pay-off in extra time to prepare warrants the resources this would require, or whether they could be used more effectively elsewhere—e.g. producing and distributing a vaccine. But there are other dimensions to quarantine that require careful consideration. There is clearly among public health leaders agreement that efforts to contain a pandemic flu—or any highly infectious lethal disease—are virtually inevitable, very likely valuable even if short-lived, and will require a combination of isolation practices (of infected people) and quarantine practices (of exposed people not yet diagnosed as infected). Even though it is generally acknowledged that the disease will ultimately spread beyond any barriers erected, containment is valued because it buys time and protects some people. But a poorly designed disease containment policy could be utterly disastrous for at least two reasons. First, there is evidence that quarantine can lead to the infection of large numbers who otherwise might escape the disease. If the disease first breaks out in military base, for example, the impact on soldiers might be much higher than on the general population, effectively diminishing an important part of the country’s security apparatus. Second, because of the speed with which flu evolves, 42
Laurie Garrett, “The Next Pandemic?” Foreign Affairs (July/August 2005).
23 adapting to new hosts, it is conceivable that provided with easy access to people in a quarantine environment a more virulent strain could evolve than would otherwise be the case. Wendy Orent argues that “If you let people walk around freely, only those strains mild enough to allow people to stay on their feet would spread easily.” 43 In other words, a containment strategy that did not leak the mild cases from the outset might cultivate a more devastating pandemic than one which was less perfect. The use of economic sanctions in U.S. foreign policy provides a useful example of some of the economic and political consequences of containment that parallel the virulence of disease. The United States government has used a containment strategy in the form of a threat to cut off wayward foreign countries and foreign companies from access to American companies and technology. Though often effective in the short term, these efforts often motivate foreign companies and foreign governments to seek out alternative sources of the contained goods and/or to develop domestically produced alternatives. This has proved costly to both the U.S companies that have lost business and to the U.S. government that ultimately has lost influence over strategic goods and technology it formerly monopolized.
During the trans-Siberian pipeline
crisis in the early 1980s, for example, the U.S. government terminated Caterpillar Tractor Company’s exports of pipe-laying equipment. In the short term, the costs to Caterpillar were roughly equal to the value of the terminated contracts.44 The long term costs, were, however, much larger. Once the U.S. lifted the embargo, Caterpillar was unable to regain the contracts it had lost. A rival Japanese firm, Komatsu, won the contract on the grounds that it could guarantee its ability to fulfill future contract obligations without the fear that the Japanese
43
Wendy Orent, “The Fear Contagion” Washington Post (October 16, 2005), accessed at http: //www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/15/AR2005101500102.html 44 George Shambaugh. States, Firms and Power: Successful Sanctions in United States Foreign Policy. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999), 71-103.
24 government would intervene and terminate them at some point in the future. As a spokesperson for Caterpillar later complained, there was no doubt that during the restrictions the Soviets came to regard them as an unreliable supplier. Furthermore, if containment is effective, actors who are denied access to their traditional trading partners or sources of technology may try to develop substitutes internally. This option is often difficult and may require a large financial and technological capability, but designing out foreign products or developing domestic capabilities are effective ways of responding to an embargo. In 1987, for example, following the grounding of the U.S. space shuttle fleet, General Motors and General Electric requested and were initially refused export licenses that would allow them to launch their communications satellites on Soviet rockets. Similarly, British Aerospace sent letters notifying U.S. suppliers that it was designing out U.S.-origin components because of the extension of U.S. export controls. These restrictions applied to all equipment that possessed American components, whether they were possessed by American or non-American firms. To avoid similar constraints, foreign producers of satellite equipment began designing their equipment to avoid using American components. For North Korea, a country with few other economic or military resources, the building of the nuclear reactors and creation of nuclear weapons and delivery systems provides the country with a narrow but scarce and highly valued set of resources. With the technology in hand, the political capacity to divert the country’s limited resources towards their construction, and with few alternative sources of economic or political capacity, the North Korean regime has a strong incentive to produce its weapons systems internally.
25 Complications of the Paradox of Unrealized Power The “paradox of unrealized power” suggests that when containment is exercised in situations between actors with asymmetric distributions of aggregated measures of economic, military or political resources, higher levels of containment may increase the motivations of perceptibly “weaker” to breach the containment field, even if such breaches are minimal. The higher the political bar is set for containment, the smaller the amount of damage that a would-be terrorist or other adversary must impose to claim success. For example, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia acted aggressively to contain separatism. It worried that the examples of Eastern Europe and Central Asia would give hope to ethnic groups in the Caucasus. Dianne Sumner argues that Russia used massive military force to intimidate Chechnya. Instead of having the desired effect, Chechen separatists adopted terrorism with such ferocity that they turned public opinion against the war.45 Terrorism is intended to have small acts of random violence against unarmed and vulnerable populations generate large acts of political submission and concession. We hypothesize that there are cases in which the more a government claims to be containing a threat such as terrorism, the less violence will be required by the adversary to cause fear and affect public opinion. This pattern is suggested by the history of aviation terrorism.46 For decades, terrorists hijacked and planted bombs on planes, causing airports and airlines to adopt a variety of screening practices. As Gunnar Kuepper writes, the first hijacking took place in Peru in 1931, but the practice multiplied dramatically as civilian air traffic increased. Between 1970 and 2001, over 800 hijackings took place globally. During the same period, more than 30 bombs were
45
Dianne Sumner, “Success of Terrorism in War: The Case of Chechnya.” (1998) Accessed at http: //stinet.dtic.mil/oai/oai?&verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=ADA354487 46 Brian Jenkins and Paul Wilkinson, eds. Aviation Terrorism and Security (New York: Routledge, 1999).
26 placed on airplanes. Airports have also been the sites of numerous shootings, bombings, fires, crashes and other hostile acts.47 Against this history, the 9/11 attacks were of unprecedented brutality, and they prompted the U.S. government to implement far ranging measures in an effort to ensure that such attacks would not happen again. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) was created as part of the Aviation and Transportation Security Act passed by Congress and signed into law in late 2001. Its purpose is to ensure the security of all of the country’s transportation systems. In the case of airports and airplanes, it oversees or replaces the private firms which provided aviation security prior to September 11, 2001. Similar measures have been adopted throughout the world, leading analysts such as Kuepper and John Mueller48 to conclude that the likelihood of a 9/11 style attack is much diminished. The closest case appears to be that of two Russian aircraft that left Moscow on August 24, 2004 and exploded simultaneously killing a total of 89 people. As Sandler and Enders have demonstrated, new airport security measures do not reduce the incidence of terrorism, but they contain it to areas outside of airports.49 We argue that they may also lower the bar for terrorists, allowing smaller terrorist acts to have larger social impacts. For example, both the failed shoe bomb and the foiled plan to sneak liquid explosives onto a British plane would have been regarded as minor incidents prior to 9/11, and classified alongside the hundreds of others that took place in the three decades that preceded the al-Qaeda 47
Gunnar Kuepper, “Aviation Terrorism-Learning from History,” (2005) accessed at http: //www.emergencymanagement.net/pdf/2005/1finalp44.pdf 48 John Mueller, Overblown: How Politicians and the Terrorism Industry Inflate National Security Threats, and Why We Believe Them (New York: Free Press, 2006). 49 Todd Sandler and Walter Enders (1992). See also Bruno Frey and Simon Luechinger, “Terrorism: Deterrence May Backfire,” (2002) accessed at http: //www.diw.de/deutsch/produkte/veranstaltungen/ws_consequences/docs/diw_ws_consequences200206_frey_luechi nger.pdf
27 attacks. But in the post-9/11 world they were regarded as dangerous breaches of an expensive security system and triggered very costly responses in both the U.S. and the U.K. At almost no cost to themselves, terrorists succeeded in imposing enormous economic costs on the first and fourth richest countries in the world.
Over-Reliance on Containment Dependence on containment as a guarantor of security can increase the ultimate lethality of the threat it is intended to contain. Policies that seek the perfect containment of threats, especially diffuse threats, may diminish a state’s security by over centralizing the responsibility for providing security and thereby generating artificially high expectations that security can be preserved in this way. As a consequence, individuals and groups within society may be less likely to be attentive to acting to augment their security on a local level. This may decrease individual and local levels of preparedness, self-help, and adaptation. At the same time, it diminishes a society’s willingness to accept anything short of complete effectiveness in national containment policies. As a consequence, politicians are likely to expend money beyond optimal levels in efforts to minimize the risk of a breach in containment. Perhaps one of the most popular pieces of legislation in the history of the United States is the 1935 Social Security Act, which provides retirement and other benefits, and is funded through payroll taxes paid by both employee and employer. In 2005, a “Fidelity survey found that the typical American household has saved $18,750 for retirement and expects to cover the majority of retirement costs through Social Security and pension benefits.”50 Its authors argue that Americans are not saving enough and claim that a combination of longer lives and high
50
CNN/Money.com, “Are You Retirement Ready?” (2005) Accessed at http: //money.cnn.com/2005/06/07/retirement/fidelity_retirement/index.htm
28 medical expenses will drain the savings of many American retirees, Social Security will not meet their needs, and many will find themselves destitute. In other words the Social Security Act has probably given many people a false sense of retirement security. Writing in Computerworld, Jerrold Grochow argues that: The Internet front door to almost every bank and financial services company in the world is guarded by two sets of firewalls defining a DMZ. Nearly every e-commerce site sits in a similar DMZ in what has become the de facto standard in Web security architecture. According to Sun Microsystems, "In today's tumultuous times, having a sound firewall/DMZ environment is your first line of defense against external threats." But I would argue that guarding the perimeter is lulling organizations into a false sense of security that results in ignoring the implementation of other security mechanisms in their applications and databases.51
A set of guidelines for homeowners prepared by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers following Hurricane Katrina notes that “levees can and do provide a ‘false sense of security’ that they will provide protection from every flood event no matter how large the event is. Because of this ‘false sense of security’ and the reduced extent of projected flooding in the areas protected by the levee/floodwall system on the FIRMs, you may not have known that your home was in an area that could be flooded.”52 Similar behavior takes place in international security relations. For example, Cha argues that the level of security cooperation between Japan and Korea is a function of U.S. participation
51
Jerrold Grochow, “Firewalls’ False Sense of Security,” Computerworld (February 28: 2005), accessed at http: //www.computerworld.com/securitytopics/security/story/0,10801,100021,00.html 52 U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, “Hurricane Katrina Recovery Advisory for Homeowners,” accessed at https: //www.nwo.usace.army.mil/nfpc/docs/HurricaneKatrinaRecoveryAdvisory.doc
29 in Asian security.53 In particular, despite sharing common security concerns, the level of cooperation between Japan and Korea tended to decline and historical animosities rise when the U.S. role in Asian security affairs is high. In contrast, when the security umbrella provided by the United States diminishes, the level of cooperation in security affairs between them increases. These and many other examples suggest a pattern of unwarranted expectations that a threat has been adequately addressed at a higher level of organization leading to lower levels of self-reliance and preparedness. The false sense of security alluded to above diminishes the stock of ingenuity because governments and their people do not experiment with, test, fine-tune, and improve detection, mitigation, adaptation, response and recovery measures. Further, security partners and citizens place pressure on their leaders to promise more than they can deliver because they have unreasonably high expectations.
IV.
Conclusion: Dilution and the Optimal Level of Containment How perfect does containment really have to be to be effective? Is containment
undermined by the mere fact that some defections and leaks occur, if not initially then certainly eventually? We argue that strategies of containment against many contemporary security threats do not need to be absolute to be effective, and may in fact be more effective if they are not absolute. While leak-proof containment may appear ideal, we argue that partial containment may be more cost effective than full containment as part of a strategy for exercising power over others or as a means to diminish the probability and costs of a threat one’s self. This is not simply because imperfect containment is better than no containment, but rather it is because variation in containment shifts the costs and baseline of expectations, potentially realigning their
53
Victor D. Cha, “Abandonment, Entrapment, and Neoclassical Realism in Asia: The United States, Japan, and Korea,” International Studies Quarterly 44, 2 (June 2000): 261-291.
30 motivations in ways that increase the bargaining capacity of the initiator while increasing the security. Building on insights from the social power literature, we highlight conclusions about optimal level of containment as a sword and sheath against threats:
The effectiveness of containment as a sword varies as a function of the costs it imposed on policy makers in the targeted state and their costs of adjustment. Given the specificity of these costs, success (or failure) of a given level of containment in promoting a given level of behavior change in the target, does not imply that a greater level of containment will result in a greater change in behavior. Thus, tightening containment will not necessarily increase leverage, and even total containment will be ineffective if the denied goods can be replaced internally.
The social-power expectation that each party will assess new threats or promises relative to its baseline of expectations suggests that allowing contingent variation in an ongoing containment regime – by offering basic humanitarian goods as well as other items valued by and otherwise unavailable to policymakers in the target country – could create a future source of leverage.
Containment may also sheath threats, increasing security for all. However, the cost of an increment of additional security gained per added increment of containment may change as the level of containment increases. Consequently, the direct costs of pursuing full containment may be prohibitive and the opportunity costs of attempting to do so could undermine national security.
Given that containment regimes generally leak and may eventually fail, pursuing full containment may strengthen the lethality of the threat, while partial containment may dilute it. Pursing full containment does so by allowing diseases to mutate, by increasing incentives for the target to develop embargoed goods internally, by motivating the target to engage in provocative behavior, and by increasing dependence on the containment regime as a principle source of security.
Consequently, strategies of containment against many contemporary security threats do not need to be absolute to be effective, and may in fact be more effective if they are not absolute.
31 Authors Biographies
George E. Shambaugh, Ph.D., is chairman of the Department of Government and associate professor of international politics in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University (http://government.georgetown.edu).
Richard A. Matthew, Ph.D., is professor of international and environmental politics in the Schools of Social Ecology and Social Science at the University of California at Irvine, and founding director of the Center for Unconventional Security Affairs (www.cusa.uci.edu).
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