Expecting to Fail

Phil Haun is Director of the Deterrence Studies Institute at the US Naval War College. A retired Air Force Colonel and A-10 pilot, he holds a Ph.D. from MIT. His previous publications include Coercion, Survival, & War (2015) and Tactical Air Power and the Vietnam War (Cambridge, 2024), shortlisted for the Duke of Wellington Medal for Military History.

• Introduction; 1. Insincere coercion; 2. Coercion in interstate militarized conflict (CIMC); 3. The Falklands war; 4. The Gulf war; 5. Interwar Iraq; 6. The Iraq War; 7. The second Lebanon war and restoring deterrence; Conclusion; Appendix A. Militarized conflict and deterrence models; Appendix B. CIMC case selection criteria; Appendix C. Summaries of CIMC cases; Index.

'Coercion often fails in international politics, but sometimes this is the point. Phil Haun overturns the conventional wisdom about coercive diplomacy by explaining why states make insincere threats to advance their interests. This book is a must-read for students of airpower and strategy.' Jon R. Lindsay, Georgia Institute of Technology, and author of 'Age of Deception'