Dr. Tim Sweijs is onderzoeksdirecteur bij het Haagse Centrum voor Strategische Studies (hcss). Hij doet onderzoek naar het veranderend karakter van gewapende conflicten en adviseert overheden, internationale organisaties en (militaire) besluitvormers op het gebied van defensie en veiligheid.
Meer over Tim SweijsUniversity of Southern Denmark, Denmark Ultimata feature as a core concept in the coercive diplomacy scholarship. Conventional wisdom holds that pursuing an ultimatum strategy is risky. This book shows that the conventional wisdom is wrong on the basis of a new dataset of 87 ultimata issued from 1920–2020.
It provides a historical examination of ultimata in Western strategic, political, and legal thought since antiquity until the present, and offers a four-pronged typology that explains their various purposes and effects: 1) the dictate, 2) the conditional war declaration, 3) the bluff, and 4) the brinkmanship ultimatum. The book yields a better understanding of interstate threat behaviour at a time of surging competition. Background materials can be consulted at www.coercivediplomacy.com.