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Weapons of Mass Migration: Forced Displacement, Coercion, and Foreign

Policy (Book Review)

Article  in  Nationalities Papers · August 2012

DOI: 10.1080/00905992.2012.708126

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 Nationalities Papers
iFirst Article, 2012, 1–2

BOOK REVIEW

Weapons of mass migration: forced displacement, coercion, and foreign policy

(Cornell studies in security affairs), by Kelly M. Greenhill, Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univer-
sity Press, 2010, xi + 342 pp., US$35.00 (hardback), ISBN: 978-0-8014-4871-3

In defining and analyzing “coercive engineered migration” (CEM), Kelly M. Greenhill is

the first political scientist to rigorously theorize migration as a strategic option for states in
competitive interaction. Greenhill’s analysis thus provides a theoretically novel and
empirically rich synthesis of migration theory and international relations (IR). The case
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studies cover Cuba, Kosovo, Haiti and North Korea, and an appendix lists all identified
CEMs since the 1951 Geneva Refugee Convention.
Building on scholars such as Wiener and Rosenblum, Weapons specifies an IR-security
view of migration, with the expulsion and “push” of migratory flows towards target states
as “weapons” most appealing to those facing powerful foes and having few other choices.
This is particularly true when the foe/target is democratic, since liberal states are more
vulnerable to “migratory coercion” due to institutions protecting human rights and refu-
gees. For a liberal democracy, not taking the “bait” of potentially destabilizing refugee
inflows incurs “hypocrisy costs” (a promising but under-theorized element of Greenhill’s
model).
Greenhill’s model helps explain a lingering puzzle in IR: democracies’ relative ten-
dency to lose small wars. Democracies faced with destabilizing refugee flows are often
internally divided, unable to staunch the tide or keep migrants from reinforcing and inten-
sifying internal conflict.
While Weapons applies prevailing political science approaches, Nationalities Papers
readers might have two qualms, one theoretical and one methodological. First, Weapons is
a work of security studies, meaning that the realist obsession with sovereignty and state
renders migrants themselves (token caveats aside) mere objects of war, precluding any
transformative notion that migrants increasingly participate in a globalizing dynamic
weakening or transforming state sovereignty itself. Indeed, Greenhill saw CEM success
when the European Union (EU) dropped sanctions against Libya in exchange for Libya
interdicting sub-Saharan migrants transiting through its territory. While one can agree
with Greenhill’s zero-sum view of a “win” for Qaddafi here, one can also see a win for
the EU, and indeed a loss for Westphalian sovereignty itself (Libya being counted on to
police entry into the EU), undermining the underlying premise of Greenhill’s entire argu-
ment: that foreigners entering national territory pose a national security threat. The Libya-
EU agreement was negotiated by EU members collectively, thus involving unprecedented
international cooperation for a migration agreement that all sides wanted (hardly
“coercion”).
Sovereignty is increasingly decoupled from territory, so that the EU polices its joint
“frontiers” further away, off West Africa’s coast, and increasingly through private
agencies and third countries (Libya as one example). The recent deal between Australia
and Malaysia to swap refugee populations (Australia would resettle 4,000 mostly
Burmese from Malaysian camps, while Malaysia would interdict future “boat people” tar-
geting Australia) shows that seeing migration as a “weapon” is conceptually more proble-
matic than Greenhill admits.

ISSN 0090-5992 print/ISSN 1465-3923 online

http://www.tandfonline.com
 2 Book Review

Seeing CEM as a “weapon” is increasingly simplistic when assessing state incentives

regarding migration, which Greenhill concedes: “targets can externalize, outsource, or
simply buck-pass the visible (and politically costly) consequences of migration crises
onto others” (58). This is exactly what the EU has been doing, and if it proves a workable
way to manage migration while profiting from globalization, such strategies will intensify
in contrast to diminishing use of CEM.
The second (methodological) qualm is the use of game-theoretic logic to assign a
degree of “success” to all 64 historical cases of CEM. While this provides a welcome
rigor that is certainly in vogue for political scientists, experts on one or more of these
cases might wince at each assignment of “success”, “partial success”, “failure” or “inde-
terminate” (the only four possible options). Greenhill does her best to fit immensely
complex historical situations into this four-unit scale of “victory”, but often misses impor-
tant nuances (as in the Libyan case).
An even more jarring methodological problem is the bizarre numerical comparison of
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CEM’s effectiveness to other tools of interstate coercion, like deterrence, economic sanc-
tions and coercive diplomacy. Since 1951, “well over half of [CEMs] succeeded in achiev-
ing at least some of their objectives. This is an impressive rate of success given that the
U.S. rate of success when engaged in coercive diplomacy, employing conventional mili-
tary means, lies somewhere between 19 and 37.5 percent” (2). Economic sanctions are
cited as 33% successful, while deterrence is reported as 57% successful. This attempt to
estimate probability may be laudable, but calling Kim Jong Il’s “threats” to unleash refu-
gees on China a “success” (328) is not only problematic in itself – it is also inappropriate
to match this ambiguous threshold for “success” against very different criteria for U.S.
“success”, which rely on the shadow of a superpower military or the world’s mightiest
economic and financial system. The inconsistent definitions of “success”, the non-compar-
ability of various coercive strategies, and the non-comparability of the various “attacking”
parties render these comparisons meaningless. No grand theory of coercion results.
Criticisms aside, Greenhill has elegantly married migration and security studies in a
novel and refreshing synthesis that enhances our understanding of the strategic foreign
policy implications of immigration. The historical cases alone make for striking
reading. But Weapons paints a simplistic picture of migrants as objects of states, when
this model holds less true now than ever before. Diasporas, dual citizenship, decoloniza-
tion, global cities, regional trade agreements, cheaper telecommunications, easier trans-
port, and so many other forces have combined to render this “coercive engineered
migration” model increasingly obsolete.
During the Cold War and its immediate aftermath, though, Greenhill does help us illu-
minate an important and effective tool of state coercion – one which reshaped the lives of
tens of millions. Weapons of Mass Migration is important, above all, for this welcome
expansion of security studies into the powerful and dangerous world of the “forced
migrant”.

Adam Luedtke
City University of New York
adamluedtke@yahoo.com
# 2012, Adam Luedtke
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00905992.2012.708126

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