Bombing to Win: Air Power and Coercion in War

Headnote

Pape, Robert A. Bombing to Win: Air Power and Coercion in War. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press, 1996. 336pp. $19.95

Professor Robert Pape's systematic critique of the effectiveness of strategic bombing as a decisive instrument of war will not be welcomed by air power enthusiasts, especially while the National Defense Panel prepares its recommendations on the shape, structure, and resourcing of the Department of Defense for the twenty-first century. Pape, one of the founding faculty members at the Air Force's premier School for Advanced Airpower Studies and now an assistant professor of government at Dartmouth, logically analyzes the dynamics of modern military coercion by means of air power to demonstrate the historical irrelevance of strategic bombing as a way of achieving decisive effects in war. Studying cases ranging from the Spanish Civil War through Operation DESERT STORM, Pape concludes that "strategic bombing does not work. Strategic bombing for punishment and decapitation does not coerce, and strategic bombing is...