Matthew Moran et al., "Coercing Syria on Chemical Weapons" (Oxford UP, 2025)

Mar 14, 2026

Jeffrey Knopf, professor at the Middlebury Institute and co-author of Coercing Syria on Chemical Weapons, studies nonproliferation and security. He walks through Syria’s chemical attacks, Obama’s 2012 red line and the 2013 sarin strike, diplomacy with Russia and Syria’s CWC accession, and how deterrence and compellence played out under Obama and Trump.

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INSIGHT

Why The Red Line Failed

Obama’s 2012 red line against chemical weapons aimed to deter transfers to terrorists and regime use but did not stop low-level attacks before 2013.
Despite clear communication and military capability, deterrence failed because Assad’s survival stakes outweighed U.S. interests.

ANECDOTE

How Russia Helped Force Syria To Surrender Agents

After the 2013 sarin attack, the U.S. and Russia pressured Syria to join the Chemical Weapons Convention and declare and surrender many agents.
Thousands of tons were removed and destroyed, though later evidence showed Syria cheated.

INSIGHT

Compellence Is Harder But Sometimes Works

Compellence (forcing a state to give up weapons) is usually harder than deterrence because yielding signals clear surrender and damages reputation.
The Syria case inverted expectations: deterrence failed but compellence (chemical stockpile removal) later succeeded.

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In 2012, US President Barack Obama stated that the Syrian government’s use of chemical weapons on its population would cross a red line that would require the US government to reconsider its approach to the civil war then underway in Syria. Syria subsequently used such weapons, creating a policy dilemma for the United States about how to respond to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's violation of the red line.
In Coercing Syria on Chemical Weapons (Oxford UP, 2025), Matthew Moran, Wyn Q. Bowen, and Jeffrey W. Knopf examine efforts by the United States, sometimes acting with France and the United Kingdom, to respond to Syria's possession and use of chemical weapons over the course of its civil war. In particular, they focus on US strategy during the presidencies of Barack Obama and Donald Trump, which relied heavily on coercion, including deterrent and compellent variants. As the authors show, policies directed at the ruling Assad regime in Syria attempted to deter chemical weapons attacks and to compel Syria to give up its chemical arsenal with mixed outcomes. Drawing on the existing literature on deterrence and coercive diplomacy to identify three propositions — concerning credibility, motivations, and assurances — the book explains the mixed record of coercive success and failure and examines how effective coercive strategies were at different points and why.
Drawing on the most significant attempt in the post-Cold War era to deter the use of a weapon of mass destruction, this book offers theoretical and practical lessons for both security studies scholars and policymakers.

Our guest is Professor Jeff Knopf, a Professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey (MIIS), where he serves as chair of the M.A. program in Nonproliferation and Terrorism Studies.

Our host is Eleonora Mattiacci, an Associate Professor of Political Science at Amherst College. She is the author of "Volatile States in International Politics" (Oxford University Press, 2023).

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