Bombing to Win: Air Power and Coercion in War

by Robert A. Pape

Book Overview

From Iraq to Bosnia to North Korea, the first question in American foreign policy debates is increasingly: Can air power alone do the job? Robert A. Pape provides a systematic answer. Analyzing the results of over thirty air campaigns, including a detailed reconstruction of the Gulf War, he argues that the key to success is attacking the enemy's military strategy, not its economy, people, or leaders. Coercive air power can succeed, but not as cheaply...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0801483115
• ISBN13: 9780801483110
• Release Date: April 1996
• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Length: 408 Pages
• Weight: 1.29 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.9" x 8.9"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Very good

It uses a method that I like of taking previous examples and attempting to prove his theory form that. His theory is that coercion on your enemy will only work if directed against their military. I found it very good. I would have liked a clearer description of this theory at the front as I found it a bit difficult to understand exactly what he was getting at.

Serious thinking on bombing

This is an excellent study of what conventional "strategic" bombing has and hasn't accomplished in war. Pape covers the ground very thoroughly, and shows how bombing has really worked in war. He concludes that bombing enemy homelands has seldom been effective, and in this I must agree.The book has one real flaw though. The author is in love with the phrases "strategic" vs. "tactical" bombing. Because of this, he deprecates the effects of the late stage "strategic" bombing of Germany, because "tactical" bombing of some of the same targets was taking place simultaneously. But so what? The important thing is what effects bombs have on a target, not whether they fall out of a B-17 or a P-47!Aside from this caveat, I can't think of a better introduction to the whole issue of "strategic air war." Just be sure and check out Alfred C. Mierzejewski's COLLAPSE OF THE GERMAN WAR ECONOMY to understand what strategic bombing does when done right.

Best study by far of what bombing can/can't accomplish

I found this book both stimulating in itself and relevant to many current and near-future issues. I believe that anyone who is interested in defense policy is likely to find much in it which is at once novel, provocative, and convincing. In particular, Pape explicates many of the concepts involved in warlike coercion with admirable clarity, formulates hypotheses of considerable power and precision, and then proceeds to test these against historical evidence. In doing so he reinterprets many historical data in ways which I always found informed and stimulating, and usually quite convincing. Indeed, readers whose primary interest is in military history per se, rather than policy, are likely to find the historical analyses well worth the price of the book, I would judge.Fundamentally, the book is a critical examination of the proposition that it is cheaper to coerce opponents in war to concede defeat or some important element of it by indirect means rather than to compel compliance through frank conquest. For most of this century, many political and military leaders have subscribed ardently to strategic bombing as just such an indirect means, and it is the base of experience which this has generated to which Pape turns to test and refine his hypotheses. In so doing, he makes his book also a critique of strategic bombing.Pape acknowledges that the threat of total nuclear devastation of its society can be used to coerce a state whose armies are intact. Short of this, however, he concludes that coercion without conquest is extremely difficult, and that when it works it does so by convincingly depriving the enemy of the military means to resist conquest:"The evidence shows that it is the threat of military failure, which I call denial, and not threats to civilians, which we may call punishment, which provides the critical leverage in conventional coercion. Although nuclear weapons can make punishment the critical factor, in conventional conflicts even highly capable assailants often cannot th! reaten or inflict enough pain to coerce successfully, Conventional munitions have limited destructive power, and the modern nation-state is not a delicate mechanism that can easily be brought to the point of collapse."Pape considers other coercive strategies as well: "Punishment strategies attempt to raise the costs of continued resistance; risk strategies, to raise the probability of suffering costs; denial strategies, to reduce the probability that resistance will yield benefits," and, "The use of air power for decapitation--a strategy spawned by precision-guided munitions and used against Iraq--strikes against key leadership and telecommunications facilities." (He does not address embargo and blockade very directly, although his arguments are certainly relevant to assessing their probable effectiveness as methods of coercion: Pape argues that escalation and decapitation are, along with punishment, relatively ineffective, and would surely assign no higher value