North Korean Swaggering and Robert J. Art's Four Purposes of Force

Where do the recent North Koren military strikes on South Korea fit into Robert J. Art's four purposes of force?

There is little sense in giving a full description of each of Art's purposes of force as they are set out clearly and concisely in his seminal article, To What Ends Military Power (Art, R. J., 1980). A brief overview however is useful in order to save time in consulting the original article. Defensive purposes serve to either defend against attack or reduce the amount of damage that would be sustained should an attack occur. When force is exercised with Deterrence in mind, one seeks to prevent another from carrying out an action by threatening them with punishment. Compellence is the use of force in order to change the behaviour of another; this can be either getting an adversary to stop something that they are currently doing or to do something that they currently aren't. The final purpose of power, swaggering, is defined as "the deployment of military power for purposes other than defence, deterrence or compellence and, as Art states, it is partially a residual category. Despite this, Art attaches to the swaggering category a number of characteristics that serve to shed some light on the recent North Korean military action. Swaggering has as its primary objective the acquisition of prestige (the enhancing of a nation's imagine in the eyes of others). Art supposes that this could have a positive knock-on effect of increasing a state's deterrence, defence and compellence capabilities. Swaggering is normally manifested in military exercises or the development of the most technological advanced weapons. Curiously, Art claims that "almost always involves only the peaceful use of force" (ibid, p.10), presumably leaving swaggering open to involve (in some exceptional cases) the physical use of force and yet later, when laying out the four purposes in a table, Art restricts the swaggering purpose to the use of peaceful force.

North Korean Swaggering
In order to be fully confident of knowing what purpose a state is employing force for one must have knowledge of their motives. As Art states, we can never be fully sure of a state's motives and official statements cannot be relied upon. In the case of North Korea it is especially difficult to assess motives as the sources of information are particularly limited. The North Korean artillery strike on Yeonpyeong island has been defended by the state run media outlet as an act of retaliation against South Korean military exercises near the border. These exercises have been a typical feature of North-South relations and in this case there were no shells fired in the direction of North Korean waters. While North Korea would no doubt classify their actions as either defence or compellence, the usual lack of North Korean military response to these exercises suggests an alternative motive, prestige. As a handover of power is currently underway in North Korea, there is an incentive for the leadership to display to the international community that there will be no seachange in North Korean attitudes to South Korea and showcase its military power and willing. A broadening of the concept of swaggering outlined by Art is necessary to improve the analytic comprehensiveness of his four purposes. As his definition stands, the North Korean military action cannot be seen as swaggering and must be viewed in light of one of the other three purposes. It fails to fit into either of the three categories unless North Korea has undergone a change in policy that deems that military exercises near the border warrant immediate military action, if this is the case then future exercises will likely be met with the same response. The North Korean actions are best understood as a form of "physical force swaggering" that is not accounted for in Art's framework.


It is important to note that Art himself admits that his four purposes are not "descriptively accurate but he claims that they are analytically exhaustive. My argument is that the analytical utility of 'swaggering' (one of the four purposes) is threatened by Art's view that swaggering is non-physical by nature. Art's purposes of force fail to account for the "physical force swaggering" of North Korea's recent military strikes against South Korea. The restriction of swaggering to non-physical strategies limits the term's explanatory power and undermines Art's assertion that his four categories "analytically exhaust the functions that force can serve" (ibid, p.5).