Targeting National Security

Many theories have arisen to describe how best to use the military as a coercive tool. This thesis develops another of these coercive theories. This is a security-based model that ... describes the actual mechanism behind effective military coercion. This theory--Targeting National Security (TNS)--is based on the nation's need for security and how security erosion can begin a sequence of events that leads to coercion. To develop this theory, this thesis uses a case study approach involving Japan's surrender in W.W. II, the Rolling Thunder and Linebacker air campaigns in the Vietnam War, and Operation El Dorado Canyon, the 1986 US airstrike on Libya.