policy in the Middle East has been neither restrained nor balanced.1 Rather, according to these observers, American policy toward the region has provided for an intensive American involvement, with a solid preference for Israel.2 Other observers, however, contend that, while some bias has been present in American foreign policy toward to Middle East, that a consistency of both motive and practice has characterized that policy.3
The consistency of American foreign policy in the Middle East may be assessed within the context of the concept of coercive diplomacy. Coercive diplomacy ". . . calls for using just enough force of an appropriate kind . . . to demonstrate resolution to protect well defined interests and . . . to demonstrate the credibility of one's determination to use more
1S. Green, Living By The Sword: America and Israel in the Middle East 1968 1987 (Brattleboro, Vermont: Amana Books, 1988), 7.
2R. B. Wingerter, "Israel's Search for Strategic Interdependence and the 1983 U.S. Israeli Strategic Cooperation Agreement," American Arab Affairs Journal, 14 (Fall 1985): 81 94.
3R. L. Rothstein, "Condemned to Cooperate: U.S. Resource Diplomacy," SAIS Review, 5 (1985): 163 177; L. P. Taylor, "International Terrorism and US Diplomacy." in Essays on Strategy (Washington: National Defense University Press, 1986), pp. 3 30.
force if necessary.4 Coercive diplomacy is said to focus upon "affecting the enemy's will rather than upon negating his capabilities."5 The force employed in the conduct of coercive diplomacy is, thus, said to be used "in an exemplary, demonstrative manner, in discrete and controlled increments, to induce the opponent to revise his calculations and agree to a mutually acceptable termination of the conflict."6 In actuality, after all of this high level rhetoric is distilled, coercive diplomacy is a limited application of military power, in an effort to attain goals without the risks typicall...