The coercive power of shared values

ABSTRACT

While values often evoke noble aims, groups of countries sometimes use statements about the values they share to coerce others. Allies coordinate around their shared values talk to apply reputational pressure on adversaries. Examples include attempts by the United States and its liberal democratic allies in Asia to coerce China and by EU and NATO members to coerce Russia. Shared values talk can also be used to discipline wayward allies who are supposed to be committed to the political principles in question. EU leaders and some of Washington’s NATO allies have sought to place such pressure on the Trump Administration. Participating in shared values talk may also be self-coercive. But if values talk is to be an effective form of coercion, it must impose costs that the target deems important.

KEYWORDS:

• Values
• coercion
• power
• allies
• adversaries
• propaganda

Acknowledgments

For comments on earlier versions of this article the author wishes to thank David Capie, Lawrence Freedman, Ian Hall, Jacinta O’Hagan, Manjeet S. Pardesi, and Brendan Taylor. He also wishes to thank Toby Estall and Sarah Pinto for research assistance and two anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Elsewhere, and even more pessimistically, Hoffmann (1963) argued that ‘common values have not in the past always prevented the slaughter of peoples that were divided into separate political units’.

2. Gerald Hensley (2013, 207) records that in during a visit to Washington DC at the height of the ANZUS crisis in September 1985 which led to a breakdown in US-NZ security relations, New Zealand’s Deputy Prime Minister Geoffrey Palmer told the Reagan Administration that its ‘measures were harsh and unreasonable and did not take account of the values and democratic institutions which the two countries shared’.

3. Mercer (1996) counsels that governments should not waste time burnishing their reputations because their adversaries or allies will see them through their own predispositions. But he admits that governments believe their reputations are important.

4. The minimal values Bok (1995, 15) has in mind include ‘injunctions against violence, deceit and betrayal’.

Additional information

Funding

Some of the work for this article was undertaken while the author was on Research and Study Leave provided by Victoria University of Wellington.

Notes on contributors

Robert Ayson

Robert Ayson is Professor of Strategic Studies at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. He has also held academic positions with the Australian National University, Massey University and the University of Waikato, and official positions with the New Zealand government. Ayson completed his MA as a Freyberg Scholar to the ANU and his PhD at King’s College London as a Commonwealth Scholar to the UK. Ayson is author of Thomas Schelling and the Nuclear Age (Frank Cass, 2004), Hedley Bull and the Accommodation of Power (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), and Asia’s Security (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). His work has also appeared in Asian Security, Journal of Strategic Studies, Survival and numerous other journals.