Dr. Whitman Cobb and Col Hollon welcome the teaching team for SAASS 633: Coercion and Deterrence in Theory and Practice. Dr. Paige Reid and Lt Col Rachel Reynolds discuss the origins and evolution of the course along with its central question: “how do you get someone to do what you want them to do?” The team breaks down why the class drops students straight into the nuclear age, how thinkers like Brodie, Schelling, and Pape square off, and why debates over airpower, punishment, and denial still matter today. They also dig into the emotional side of coercion, sparring with Markwica’s challenge to the rational-actor model. The episode closes with an inside look at the course’s culminating tabletop exercise, which pushes students to apply theories of coercion to contemporary great-power competition in the Indo-Pacific.

Books mentioned in this episode

Bernard Brodie, Strategy in the Missile Age (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016).

Thomas C. Schelling, Arms and Influence (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020).

Daniel Byman and Matthew C. Waxman The Dynamics of Coercion: American Foreign Policy and the Limits of Military Might (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).

Brad Roberts, The Case for US Nuclear Weapons in the 21st Century (Stanford: Stanford Security Studies, an imprint of Stanford University Press, 2016).

Robert A. Pape, Bombing to Win: Air Power and Coercion in War (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996).

Robin Markwica, Emotional Choices: How the Logic of Affect Shapes Coercive Diplomacy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018).