Compellence and the strategic culture of Imperial Japan.

摘要

Compellence is a central element of diplomacy in both peace and war. It is the process of persuading an adversary to do something he or she would not otherwise choose to do, either by threatening pain in return for non-compliance or by convincing the adversary that one can deny him or her any alternative course of action. This study seeks to determine whether culture affects the way decision makers respond to compellent threat and, if so, the mechanisms by which those effects are manifested.; It begins with a theory of how culture might affect compellence outcomes, then proceeds with a culture-based comparative analysis of three cases in which coercers attempted to compel Imperial Japan to change its behavior. The three cases are: the 1895 triple intervention in which Russia, Germany, and France forced Japanese leaders to return the Liaotung Peninsula to China following the first Sino-Japanese War; the oil embargo in which the United States, in 1941, attempted to compel Japanese leaders to withdraw their military forces from China and stop aggressing on the Asian continent; and the surrender of Japan in which American leaders compelled Tokyo to end the Second World War.; This study finds that strategic culture clearly affected the ways that Imperial Japanese decision makers responded to compellent threat. It did so by conditioning their perceptions, strategic preferences, and governmental processes, causing them to act in ways that cannot be fully explained by rational-actor based reasoning. These findings are relevant today, and they will be increasingly important as we advance into the twenty-first century. Compellence will remain a cornerstone of diplomacy and a key tool of international security policy. Strategic culture analyses can guide the development of more effective compellent strategies, strategies that will be vitally important in an increasingly volatile world.