Coercive Operations and their Influence on the Equipment Programme

1. Coercive Operations and their Influence on the Equipment Programme 20 ISMOR Ben Bolland Mike Purvis

2. Caveats • Work in progress • Constrained need-to-know • Experimental design and study purposes to be kept away from experimental participants.

3. Requirement (Exam Question) Coercion and deterrence are key principles underpinning the use or threat of force … but there has been very little research or analysis on them. The aim of this work is to: • Gain an improved understanding of the mechanisms through which coercive effects can be achieved. • Explore and identify causal links between military action and coercive effect in order to support balance of investment appraisals based on the coercive attributes of different equipment procurement options.

4. What is Coercion? • We need a definition that is: • analytically useful • clearly bounds the problem • is reasonably intuitive • “The threat or use of armed force as a continuation of political conflict, within political constraints, to gain a disproportionate change in the political (and hence military) behaviour of an adversary”

5. Scope • Focus on coercion delivered by military capability • Other means and ways handled in other studies • Level of effect • Concerned with coercion of adversary decision-makers at strategic or operational level, within a campaign • Timeframe of analysis • Seeking a coercion assessment capability for equipment BoI studies.

6. Possible Questions (easier to harder) • 1) What ways of employing coercive force are more effective than others? • 2) How coercible is the leadership? Is the target leadership coercible or not? • 3) What quantity of coercive force is required to have the desired coercive effect upon the target? • 4) Will we win the political conflict? Can we coerce the target before they do things ('counter-coercion') to undermine our will? • 5) Where will we have most effect? • 6) When will we win?

7. Intermediate-level analysis POLITICAL STRUCTURE Decision-making bureaucracy’s influence / control (bargaining between interest groups) - - Individual’s influence / control ofdecision-making bureaucracy(see Greenstein) External influences (context) Cultural behaviours(Hofstede) Individual’s behaviour Personality traits (Hermann) Individual’s beliefs (OPCODES - Leites, George, Holsti, Walker) Affect (emotion) Cultural beliefs Individuals’ motives (Psychological Motivations approach - McClelland, Atkinson, Winter) CULTURE Social interactions / construction INDIVIDUAL Decision-making bureaucracy’sbehaviour

8. Linking equipment characteristics to coercive potential (early thoughts) X

9. Why Gaming? • Coercion is about choices available to a human centred leadership. • Coercive effect is achieved through perceptions of damage and cost/benefit calculus. • Coercion involves humans and their decision-making. • We don’t know how to model this, yet. • Hence the use of Human-in-the-loop gaming.

10. Experimental Gaming

11. Gaming • Primary factors: • Coercibility of Red leaderships. • Relative attributes of Blue coercive options. • Red’s perception of coercive options. • Secondary factors: • Level of pressure applied by Blue; each coercive option will have different levels of pressure within them. • Other factors contributing to placing of coercive pressure upon Red.

12. Key Dimensions • 7 Regime Types • 4 Predominant Single Leaders • 3 other types • 4 Coercive Options (CO) • 5 Levels of Pressure • threats, signal, irritate, incapacitate, defeat

13. REGIME TYPES ALLIES PL1 PL2 PL3 PL4 MAA SG COERCIVE OPTION 4 INCAPACITATE DEFEAT IRRITATE COERCIVE OPTION 3 COERCIVE OPTIONS SIGNAL THREATS COERCIVE OPTION 2 ESCALATING LEVELS OF PRESSURE COERCIVE OPTION 1 Key Dimensions

14. Three End States • ‘Coerced’ • Blue achieves political goals short of escalating to the defeat level of force. Red chooses to back-down. • ‘Physically Forced’ • Blue achieves political goals using the defeat level of pressure. Red has no choice. • Red uses WMD.

15. Game Method • One sided, one-player. • Conditions controlled. • Pre-scripted decision-tree based. • Each CO played four times per scenario. • Players pre-screened and tested for suitability. • Players given extensive leadership profile before games. • Scenario brief given at start ofeach game. • Players face sequence of decision points. • Ethical guidelines followed.

16. Method Lineage • David Daniel, 1979, What Influences a Decision? • George Pickburn and Rachael Davis, 1990, Command decision-making. An investigation by analytical gaming. • Purvis and Bolland, 2002… • Strategic-political decision-making under coercive pressure.

17. Translation of Results: Feeding Coercive Effects into Modelling

18. Tracking effects Red Will to oppose Blue objectives from Blue Perspective Acquiescence Fully effective red capability No effective red capability Red Capability from Blue Perspective A Jones-Purvis diagram Defiance

19. Tracking effects - desired impact of actions Red Will to oppose Blue objectives from Blue Perspective Blue Influencing Blue Coercing Red Capability from Blue Perspective Blue use Brute Force Red Initial position

20. Tracking effects Red Will to oppose Blue objectives from Blue Perspective Red accedes to Blue objectives Blue desired end-state curve Red Capability from Blue Perspective

21. Most of our tools operate in the capability dimension. We use historically based modifiers (impact of shock and surprise, defeat levels, other factors) and scenario scripting to reflect impact on will Tracking effects Red Will to oppose Blue objectives from Blue Perspective Red Capability from Blue Perspective

22. Tracking effects Enemy will to oppose enemy objectives from own Perspective Don’t forget Red is playing the same game - to different rules? + Enemy Capability from own perspective