1. Gil Loescher, ‘Introduction,’ in Gil Loescher and Laila Monahan (eds.), Refugees and International Relations (Oxford: OUP 1989) p.8. Loescher is one of the few scholars and practitioners who have recognized and written about this fact; others include Charles Keely, Michael Teitelbaum, and Myron Weiner.
2. There are a few exceptions to this general rule. See, for instance, Gil Loescher, Refugee Movements and International Security, Adelphi Paper 268 (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies 1992); and Barry R. Posen, ‘Military Responses to Refugee Disasters’, International Security 21/1 (Summer 1996) pp.72–111.
3. Such resistance is particularly surprising, given that some perpetrators of refugee-driven coercion have explicitly acknowledged their role in such manipulation. See, for instance, Frank Johnson, ‘East Germans’ refugee ploy upsets the West’, The Times, 26 July 1986, Issue 62519; Barbara Demick, ‘58 N. Korean Defectors Held; Authorities capture groups bound for South Korea and Japan at boat terminal in China’, Los Angeles Times, 20 Jan. 2003, Part 1, p.3; and Steven Greenhouse, ‘Aristide Condemns Clinton's Haiti Policy as Racist’, New York Times, 22 April 1994.
4. See, for instance, ‘Growing Global Migration and Its Implications for the United States’, National Intelligence Estimate 2001-02D (March 2001), p.3; and Kelly M. Greenhill, Constructed Calamities: Engineered Migration and the Coercive Power of Unnatural Disasters (under review).
5. Both Weiner and Teitelbaum's own typologies focused exclusively on state-level manipulation of flows – as opposed to state and non-state actor manipulation – and neither considered the strategic use of refugee flows for military ends. See, for instance, Michael S. Teitelbaum, ‘Immigration, Refugees, and Foreign Policy’, International Organization 38/3 (Summer 1984) pp.429–50; and Myron Weiner, ‘Bad Neighbors, Bad Neighborhoods’, International Security 21/1 (Summer 1996) pp.5–42.
6. See, for instance, Heather Rae, States, Identities, and the Homogenisation of Peoples (Cambridge, UK: CUP 2001).
7. Nicholas Van Hear, New Diasporas: The Mass Exodus, Dispersal and Regrouping of Migrant Communities (Seattle: Univ. of Washington Press 1998). See also Andrew Bell-Fialkoff, Ethnic Cleansing (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan 1996) and – for a recent example – see Milcho Manchevski, ‘NATO gave us this ethnic cleansing – The Macedonian war is a fight about borders, not human rights’, The Guardian, 15 Aug. 2001, p.12.
8. See again Hasan Zaheer, The Separation of East Pakistan: The Rise and Realization of Bengali Muslim Nationalism (Oxford: OUP 1994); and Nicholas J. Wheeler, Saving Strangers: Humanitarian Intervention in International Society (Oxford: OUP 2001) Chapter 2:‘ India as Rescuer? Order versus Justice in the Bangladesh War of 1971’.
9. For an examination of the efficacy of this tactic, see Kelly M. Greenhill, ‘Draining the Sea, or Feeding the Fire?: The Use of Population Relocation in Counterinsurgency Operations’ (under review).
10. While the displacements deprived the guerrillas of some sources of food, shelter, and protection, it also compounded the general condemnation of the Soviet invasion, as well as enhanced Western sympathy for the Afghan refugees. See Marek Sliwinski, ‘Afghanistan: The Decimation of a People’, Orbis 33/1 (1989) pp.39–56.
11. Digital National Security Archive, US Dept. of Defense, JCS, ‘Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), Managua, Routine Report to DIA, Washington DC, Subject: Nicaragua: Refugee Exodus’, 22 Aug. 1983.
12. See again Greenhill, ‘Draining the Sea’ (note 9).
13. Clark Neher, Southeast Asia in the New International Era (Boulder, CO: Westview Press 1994).
14. See, for instance, Van Hear, New Diasporas (note 7) pp.236–7. The Israelis were likewise unsuccessful in their attempt to crush the Lebanese guerrillas through the use of militarized migration in spring 1996. See, for instance, Human Rights Watch, ‘Operation Grapes of Wrath’, Israel/Lebanon 9/8 (Sept. 1997).
15. Robert Pape, Bombing to Win: Air Power and Coercion in War (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP 1996) p.13.
16. Robert Pape, Bombing to Win: Air Power and Coercion in War (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP 1996) p.19.
17. See, for instance, William Hayden, ‘The Kosovo Conflict and Forced Migration: The Strategic Use of Displacement and the Obstacles to International Protection’, Journal of Humanitarian Assistance; posted 14 Feb. 1999.
18. Thomas C. Schelling, Arms and Influence (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP 1960) p.89.
19. As one Yugoslav journalist put it regarding the 1999 offensive in Kosovo: ‘there were differences between the police and the army. The police were in favour of expulsions because they could steal money from people. The intelligence guys were against it because they said it was bad for us.’ Quoted in Tim Judah, Kosovo: War and Revenge (New Haven, CT: Yale UP 2000) pp.241–2. See also John Mueller, ‘The Banality of Ethnic War’, International Security 25/1 (Summer 2000) pp.42–70.
20. Pape, Bombing to Win (note 15) p.28.
21. Pape, Bombing to Win (note 15) pp.6–7. This makes sense in that perpetrators are often fighting for their very political survival, whereas for targets the issues at hand tend to be of more limited importance.
22. Also, for reasons associated with the credibility of the perpetrators ex ante, contrary to traditional coercion, coercive threats tend to be more, not less, credible than deterrent threats. See Pape, Bombing to Win (note 15) pp.6–7.
23. Though weak vis-à-vis their targets, perpetrators are generally strong relative to their victims.
24. See Susan L. Woodward, Balkan Tragedy: Chaos and Dissolution after the Cold War (Washington DC: Brookings Institution 1995); Nik Gowing, ‘Real-time TV Coverage from War: Does it Make or Break Government Policy?’ in Bosnia by Television (London: British Film Institute 1996); and James Gow and James Tilsley, ‘The Strategic Imperative for Media Management,’ in Bosnia by Television, p.103.
25. On the use of militarized migration by the US, see, for instance, LBJ Library, NSF Vietnam CO File, Folder: Vietnam NODIS, Vol.3(B), 10/56–6/66, ‘Department of State Telegram to the President’, 15 Sept. 1965. On encouraging the flight of North Vietnamese, see, for instance, George Herring, America's Longest War: The United States and Vietnam 1950–1975, 3rd edition (New York: McGraw-Hill 1996); and LBJ Library, NSF Vietnam CO File, Folder: Vietnam NODIS, Vol. 3(B), 10/56–6/66, ‘Department of State Airgram, CINCPAC for POLAD, From US Embassy, Saigon on the Joint GVN Security Council-US Mission Council Meeting’, 25 March 1965, p.4.
26. At the same time, it must be noted that such overlaps can make disentangling primary and secondary motivations profoundly difficult.
27. See, for instance, T.V. Paul, Asymmetric Conflicts: War Initiation By Weaker Powers (Cambridge UP 1994) p. 150.
28. See again Neher, Southeast Asia in the New International Era (note 13); and Fiona Terry, Condemned to Repeat: The Paradox of Humanitarian Intervention (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP 2001).
29. For details, see Greenhill, Constructed Calamities (note 4) Chapter 2.
30. See also Ivan Arreguin-Toft, ‘How the Weak Win Wars’, International Security 26/1 (Summer 2001) p.105; and Andrew Mack, ‘Why Big Nations Lose Small Wars: The Politics of Asymmetric Conflict’, World Politics 27/2 (Jan. 1975) pp.175–200.
31. Exceptions to this general rule tend to occur in the context of civil wars – e.g., Turkey's use of dispossessive, exportive, and militarized migration against its Kurdish population – and counterinsurgency campaigns – e.g., the militarized use of refugees by the French in the French–Algerian War and by the US in the Vietnam War. Between 1990 and 1999, the Turkish Army burned, leveled or forcibly evacuated more than 3,000 Kurdish villages. There are large swaths of territory in southeastern Turkey depopulated at the village level. By forcing the Kurds out of the rural areas, the government effectively cut off all logistical support to the Kurdish guerrillas which has been an effective military strategy. Frelick interview in ‘Refugees as Weapons of War’, a program produced by America's Defense Monitor, 17 Oct. 1999.
32. See Scott Snyder, Negotiating on the Edge: North Korean Negotiating Behavior (Washington DC: US Institute of Peace 1999). See also Hans Binnendijk, How Nations Negotiate (Washington DC: National Defense Univ. 1987); and Paul, Asymmetric Conflicts (note 27).
33. Paul, Asymmetric Conflicts (note 27) p.17.
34. Paul, Asymmetric Conflicts (note 27) p.17
35. Mark Habeeb, Power and Tactics in International Negotiation: How Weak Nations Bargain with Strong Nations (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins UP 1988).
36. Snyder, Negotiating on the Edge (note 32) p.69.
37. Snyder, Negotiating on the Edge (note 32) p.43.
38. Alexander George, cited in Lawrence Freedman (ed.), Strategic Coercion: Concepts and Cases (Oxford UP 1998) p.17.
39. For instance, launching a war to counter outflows may be an option in certain circumstances, but often the expected costs associated with escalation to that level far exceed the expected costs of conceding to perpetrators’ demands in whole or in part. Likewise, if the perpetrator is already internationally isolated, the methods short of war that powerful states may employ in response may be slow-acting (e.g., sanctions) and thus inappropriate as a method of counter-coercion during a crisis. See Daniel Byman and Matthew Waxman, The Dynamics of Coercion (Oxford: OUP 2002).
40. Lara Marlowe, ‘War and peace revisited’, Irish Times, 25 March 2000, p.68.
41. Michael W. Doyle, ‘Liberalism and World Politics’, American Political Science Review 80/4 (Dec. 1986) pp. 1151–69.
42. Bruce Russett, ‘Why Democratic Peace?’ in Michael E. Brown et al. (eds.), Debating the Democratic Peace (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press 1996) p.93.
43. Bruce Russett, ‘Why Democratic Peace?’ in Michael E. Brown et al. (eds.), Debating the Democratic Peace (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press 1996) p.93
44. Fiona Terry, Condemned to Repeat: The Paradox of Humanitarian Intervention (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP 2001), p.34.
45. Woodward, Balkan Tragedy (note 24) p.322.
46. As Bill Frelick, then of the US Committee on Refugees argued, ‘the KLA [Kosovo Liberation Army] which was not in a position to fight a straight out battle between standing armies, used their civilian population as part of its tactic to win international support and to really bring the international community as an ally in their struggle against the Serbs’. From Bill Frelick interview in ‘Refugees as Weapons of War’; Kelly M. Greenhill, ‘The Use of Refugees as Political and Military Weapons in the Kosovo Conflict,’ in Raju G. C. Thomas (ed.), Yugoslavia Unraveled: Sovereignty, Self-Determination, and Intervention (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield 2003) pp. 205–42; Alan J. Kuperman, ‘Tragic challenges and the moral hazard of humanitarian intervention: how and why ethnic groups provoke genocidal retaliation’, PhD dissertation (MIT 2002); and Clifford Bob, ‘Beyond Transparency: Visibility and Fit in the Internationalization of Internal Conflict,’ in Bernard Finel and Kristen Lord (eds.), Power and Transparency in the Age of Transparency (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave MacMillan 2002).
47. Rony Braumann, ‘When Suffering Makes a Good Story’, in Edward R. Girardet (ed.), Somalia, Rwanda and Beyond: The Role of the International Media in Wars and Humanitarian Crises (Dublin: Crosslines Global 1995) pp.135–48.
48. As one Kosovar Albanian demonstrator said in March 1998, a year before the start of the NATO bombing campaign, ‘We are going to have to spill a lot more of our own blood before we can expect the outside world to risk getting heavily involved here… But I can't see any other way that we can hope to give better lives to our people. I don’t believe Milosevic is ever going to do anything for us or give us any freedom to do it for ourselves’. Geoff Kitney, ‘The Killing Fields Of Blackbirds,’ Sydney Morning Herald, 21 March 1998, p.41.
49. See, for instance, Oliver Ramsbotham and Tom Woodhouse, Humanitarian Intervention in Contemporary Conflict: A Reconceptualization (Cambridge, UK: Polity 1996) p.186.
50. Jean-Christophe Rufin, Le piege humanitaire, suivi de Humanitaire et politique depuis la chute du Mur, revised edition (Paris: Jean-Claude Lattes 1993) pp.119–20. As Asprey put it in his seminal work on guerrilla warfare: ‘In choosing force, however, the rebels also displayed an arrogance of ignorance… They underestimated both the umbilical cord linking Algeria to France in the minds of the great majority of public opinion in metropolitan France … and naively failed to realize that France's allies, however disapproving, would neither interfere nor proffer advice until French public opinion had reconciled itself to the eventuality of Algerian independence. Robert Asprey, War in the Shadows: The Guerrilla in History (London: Macdonald and Jane's 1975) pp.982–3.
51. Nevertheless, the Algerians did in the end achieve their goal of independence, and it was largely because of the political costs the war inflicted on the French. So perhaps it was not such a failure after all, just a far more costly success.
52. See, for instance, Mueller, ‘The Banality of Ethnic War’ (note 19).
53. See, for instance, James Gow, ‘Coercive Cadences: Yugoslav War’, Chapter 11 in Freedman Strategic Coercion (note 38).
54. There is also the danger that expelled populations will return with a vengeance, as, for instance, did the Ugandan-based and Tutsi-dominated, Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), which wrested power from Hutu-dominated Rwandan regime in 1994. See, for instance, Gerard Prunier, The Rwanda Crisis: History of a Genocide (New York: Columbia UP 1995).
55. Guy Sacerdoti, ‘How Hanoi Cashes In: Boat Organizers Tell of Taxes on Refugee Trade’, Far East Economic Review, 15 June 1979, pp.23–6. See also Bernard Gwertzman, ‘US Assails Vietnam for Refugee Policy’, New York Times, 13 June 1979, p.A6.
56. See, for instance, ‘Sunk’, The Economist, ; Volker ter Haseborg, ‘Offering Asylum in Chernobyl's No Man's Land’, Der Spiegel, 14 October 2005 (online edition); and ‘Kim Jong-Il Goes Ballistic’, The Economist, 6 July 2006.
