ABSTRACT
This final chapter interprets the study’s full set of empirical results and highlights their actionable guidance for policymakers seeking to achieve foreign policy outcomes through persuasion rather than through war. Some of its lessons affirm conventional wisdom, others are decidedly counterintuitive and stand in contrast to current US policy. Although these findings access different characteristics of coercive exchanges, together they argue that mirror-imaged or otherwise erroneous assessments of adversaries, inadequate coordination of priorities and policy instruments, of muddled or contradictory communications, and of visible hesitation to bear costs undermine military coercion. The chapter therefore urges the careful selection and sequencing of use of the full panoply of foreign policy tools, rather than the expectation that the levying of force alone will suffice.
Keywords: Coercive diplomacy, international relations, U.S. foreign policy, military strategy, war, politics, competition, deterrence, conflict.
