This updated and expanded edition sets out a framework for examining the effects of what Alexander George has labelled "coercive diplomacy". The three original case studies of US efforts to employ coercive diplomacy - on Laos, the Cuban missile crises, and Vietnam - have been revised in the light of new findings, and four new studies - on Pearl Harbor, Nicaragua, Libya, and the Gulf crisis - have been added to provide breadth and weight to the analysis.
Alexander L. George is professor emeritus of international relations at Stanford University. His extensive writings have won many awards, including the Bancroft Prize for Deterrence in American Foreign Policy: Theory and Practice (1974), coauthored with Richard Smoke; a five-year MacArthur Prize Fellowship; the 1997 National Academy of Sciences Award for Behavioral Research Relevant to the Prevention of Nuclear War; and the 1998 Johan Skytte Prize in Political Science. Paul Gordon Lauren is Regents Professor at the University of Montana.