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

Coercive Operations and their Influence on the Equipment Programme20 ISMOR

Ben Bolland

Mike Purvis

© Dstl 2003

28 August 2003 Dstl is part of the Ministry of Defence

Caveats

• Work in progress

• Constrained need-to-know

– Experimental design and study purposes to be kept away from experimental participants.

© Dstl 2003


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.

© Dstl 2003


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”

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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.

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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?

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Decision-making bureaucracy’sbehaviour

Individual’s behaviour

Individuals’ motives (Psychological

Motivations approach - McClelland,

Atkinson, Winter)

Affect (emotion)Individual’s beliefs (OPCODES - Leites,

George, Holsti, Walker)

Personality traits (Hermann)

Social interactions / construction

INDIVIDUAL

External influences (context)

Cultural beliefs

Cultural behaviours

(Hofstede)

CULTURE

Decision-making bureaucracy’s

influence / control (bargaining between

interest groups)

Individual’s influence / control of

decision-making bureaucracy(see Greenstein)

POLITICAL STRUCTURE

- -

Intermediate-level analysis

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Linking equipment characteristics to coercive potential Linking equipment characteristics to coercive potential (early thoughts)(early thoughts)

X

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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.

© Dstl 2003


Experimental Gaming

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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.

© Dstl 2003


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

© Dstl 2003


Key Dimensions

CO

ER

CIV

E O

PT

ION

S COERCIVE OPTION 4

COERCIVE OPTION 3

COERCIVE OPTION 2

COERCIVE OPTION 1

REGIME TYPES

PL1PL2

PL3PL4

MAA

SG ALLIES

ESCALATING L

EVELS

OF PRESSURE

SIG

NA

L

IRR

ITA

TE

INC

AP

AC

ITA

TE

DE

FE

AT

TH

RE

AT

S

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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.

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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 of each game.

• Players face sequence of decision points.

• Ethical guidelines followed.

© Dstl 2003


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.

© Dstl 2003


Tracking effects

Red Capabilityfrom Blue Perspective

Red Will to oppose Blue objectivesfrom Blue Perspective

Acquiescence

No effectivered capability

Defiance

Fully effectivered capability

A Jones-Purvis diagram

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Tracking effects - desired impact of actions



Blue Influencing

Blue useBrute Force

Red Initialposition

BlueCoercing

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Tracking effects



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

© Dstl 2003


Tracking effects

Enemy Capabilityfrom own perspective

Enemy will to oppose enemy objectivesfrom own Perspective

+

Don’t forget Red is playing the same game

- to different rules?

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

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