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Coercive Air Strategy: Forcing a Bureaucratic Shift

Abstract : The purpose of this work is to provide the air planner with an air strategy that may, under certain defined conditions, be more likely to yield success than current air power theories. Our current stock of strategic ideas tend to rely on a unitary, rational actor assumption to describe the decision making environments of our potential adversaries. We believe reliance on this simplistic assumption may skew the counter strategy development process. We propose an alternate decision framework that identifies the importance of consensus decision making and the central role organizations often play in this complex process. This characteristically divisive environment presents many new opportunities to apply military force selectively in a compellent situation. To take advantage of the vulnerabilities created by these internal divisions, we propose a strategy that uses air power to surprise policy advocates in an opponent's domestic coalition and force a bureaucratic shift. By targeting key organizations during windows of coercive opportunity, air power may be able to shape a new consensus and produce a policy change that furthers our interests. Central to our effort is the use of the Czechoslovakian crisis that gripped Europe in the summer and fall of 1938 for it highlights many of the same situational characteristics we see today and can expect to see in the future. Britain's failure to know their opponent resulted in a missed opportunity to take advantage of a split in the German internal consensus that left them vulnerable to a coercive effort.