ABSTRACT
Between 1991 and 2018, the United States was by far the world’s most dominant power. Yet despite the scale and scope of the global US military presence and the extent of its military advantage, challenges to US interests did still arise. Policymakers often responded to these challenges by using the armed forces to achieve US national security goals through shows of force and operations that occasionally included violence but still stayed short of war. These were efforts to coerce other actors, military actions used to shape others’ choice of behavior by communicating US preferences and suggesting the consequences of noncompliance. In this introduction to the book, the editors provide historical and theoretical context to such short-of-war, coercive uses of the armed forces in US foreign policy and provide a brief description of each subsequent chapter’s contents.
Keywords: Coercion, U.S. foreign policy, national interests, war, competition, deterrence, conflict.
