Emotional Choices: How the Logic of Affect Shapes Coercive Diplomacy by Robin Markwica
| Published date | 01 September 2019 |
| Date | 01 September 2019 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0020702019876375 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
Shrewd, calculating and infinitely distrustful, having killed off the closest of his
comrades and cowed the survivors, Stalin found himself ‘‘profoundly alone in the
sulfuric aquifers of his being’’ (526). To Kotkin, his deeds ‘‘cannot be made
rational any more than absolute evil can’’ (552).
One thousand closely argued and minutely documented pages mark the author
as an outstanding guide to a mountain that, I fear, far too few readers are likely to
climb. I closed the volume thinking wistfully of Maxwell Perkins, the legendary
editor whose red pencil turned the brilliant but sprawling prose of Thomas Wolfe
into a prize-winning best-seller. What if ...?
Robin Markwica
Emotional Choices: How the Logic of Affect Shapes Coercive Diplomacy
Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2018. 364 pp. $94.00 (cloth)
ISBN: 9-780-1987-9434-9
Reviewed by: Mira Sucharov (mira.sucharov@carleton.ca), Carleton University, Ottawa,
Canada
In recent years, the role of emotion in shaping global politics has captured the
imagination of a significant number of international relations scholars. At the same
time, popular thinkers have brought to the fore a more nuanced understanding of
the role of emotion in underlying everyday human reasoning. Robin Markwica’s
study builds on this ‘‘emotions turn’’ in international relations by turning his
attention to the role of affect in coercive diplomacy. Through two case
studies—Soviet premier Nikita Kruschchev’s decision-making during the Cuban
Missile Crisis, and Iraqi president Saddam Hussein’s behaviour in the lead-up to,
and during, the 1991 Gulf War—Markwica demonstrates that emotion shapes
actors’ choices in particular ways.
Markwica asks the following question: ‘‘Why and under what conditions do
political leaders reject coercive threats from stronger opponents, and when do they
yield?’’ (p.3). The book places a lens on five specific emotions: fear, anger, hope,
pride, and humiliation.
Though the focus is on the recipients of the coercive diplomacy (and the author
is careful to anticipate criticism that would point to that lens as suggesting that
non-Western leaders are somehow more inflamed by passion than reason),
Markwica lays out a keen observation about the coercer’s dilemma: those practi-
cing coercive diplomacy ‘‘must induce enough fear of a military attack in target
leaders to get them to change their behavior without giving the impression that an
attack is inevitable and without shocking the target leaders into paralysis. At the
same time,’’ he continues, ‘‘they need to avoid eliciting anger and an unjust sense of
humiliation on the part of the target leaders, because these emotions are likely to
provoke the defiant response that coercive diplomacy is supposed to avoid’’ (p.18).
The solution? Positive incentives can help (but not too many!), as can, ultimately,
empathy: the kind of empathy that enables the coercer to understand and
492 International Journal 74(3)
To continue reading
Request your trial