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I read an interesting book a while back about air power in vietnam about the Linebacker Raids. Can't rember the title sorry but again, they thought that air power alone would "force" a solution. Massive bomb loads, improved aiming, almost total air control, fewer targets to destroy and it still didn't work.

It does seem that air power rarely achieves the "forcing" of a result - it only facilitates other military activities. The NATO bombing in Yugoslavia might be a rare result where bombing alone achieved the solution?

Found this on Amazon which looked interesting...

http://www.amazon.com/Bombing-Win-Coerc ... F8&s=books

Highlight from the page:

"1. Punishment strategies will rarely succeed....

"2. Risk strategies will fail....

"3. Denial strategies work best....

"4. Surrender of homeland territory is especially unlikely....

"5. Surrender terms that incorporate heavy ad! ditional punishment will not be accepted....

"6. Coercive success almost always takes longer than the logic of either punishment or denial alone would suggest."

It came within an inch tho - it definitely drove the Nth to the Paris peace talks.....but it wasn't backed up when they stalled, and hte Nth had a longer range vision overall......

ORIGINAL: SMK-at-work

It came within an inch tho - it definitely drove the Nth to the Paris peace talks.....but it wasn't backed up when they stalled, and hte Nth had a longer range vision overall......

Hi SMK, not sure if it did. The Nth weren't commiting to anything by participating in the talks, and it affected the US badly when they failed.

In short, the Nth may have participated just for the impact of false hopes being dashed at the failure to reach an agreement.