386 Journal of the Spanish Institute for Strategic Studies N. 6 / 2015 By coercive diplomacy can be understood a diplomatic strategy that implies a degree of coercion as the name itself implies. Actions which are included go from economic sanctions to military force. Coercive diplomacy seeks to persuade an opponent to cease aggression instead of asking them stop that action. To do so, here is a need to demonstrate resolution and to communicate credibility, meaning that in case of need, greater force will be used if necessary.16 This enables to locate a deterrence strategy into a broader punishment style of diplomacy that uses coercion methods as its main guidelines. Nevertheless, when looking into the recent diplomatic agreement with Iran, some doubts appear showing that coercion with diplomacy does not necessary curb countries nuclear ambitions. Once the logics behind the theory have been presented, it should be remarked the importance of understanding the difference between the theory itself and the strategies that use deterrence tactics, which portrays the difficulty to apply deterrence as policy guideline. From a conceptual point of view and according to the theory, there are different elements that need to be given in order to create a deterrence situation: “the assumption of rationality, the presence of a severe conflict, the possibility of a retaliatory threat, the concept of unacceptable damage, the notion of credibility and the notion of deterrence stability”.17 All of them in the conceptual framework seem to be mandatory in order for a deterrence situation to work, but it does not automatically imply that they will do so within a real scenario. On one hand, the review of the philosophical and theoretical background of the theory is mandatory to understand how in reality, countries try to use defense strategies based on deterrence theory. On the other hand, is not less obligated to review deterrence theory in order to understand already its theoretical weakness and in further extent, understand why deterrence based policies cannot assure stability on an empirical level and at long term. Moreover, there are different goals behind any deterrence policy: “first, to prevent an armed attack against a state territory, which is considered to be as direct deterrence, and secondly, to prevent an attack against a second state which can also be damaging for the own state sovereignty which is known as extended deterrence”.18 This tangled dependency on extended deterrence has been seen in different historical occasions and regional contexts, but traditionally has been the case in the Middle East. A complex situation that has driven the nowadays damaged Israel-United States 16 JENTELSON, Bruce. Coercive diplomacy: Scope and Limits in the contemporary world, Policy Analysis, vrief, The Stanley Foundation, December 2006, p. 2. 17 MORGAN, Peter M. Deterrence Now, Cambridge, Cambridge Studies in International Relations, Cambridge University Press 2003, p. 8. 18 HUTH, Paul. Deterrence and International Conflict: Empirical Findings and Theoretical Debate, Annual Review of Political Science, Vol. 2: 25-48, 1999, pp. 25-45. http://revista.ieee.es/index.php/ieee
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