From Cornell University Press:

At first glance, the U.S. decision to escalate the war in Vietnam in the mid-1960s, China's position on North Korea's nuclear program in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and the EU resolution to lift what remained of the arms embargo against Libya in the mid-2000s would appear to share little in common. Yet each of these seemingly unconnected and far-reaching foreign policy decisions resulted at least in part from the exercise of a unique kind of coercion, one predicated on the intentional creation, manipulation, and exploitation of real or threatened mass population movements. In Weapons of Mass Migration, Kelly M. Greenhill offers the first systematic examination of this widely deployed but largely unrecognized instrument of state influence. She shows both how often this unorthodox brand of coercion has been attempted (more than fifty times in the last half century) and how successful it has been (well over half the time). She also tackles the questions of who employs this policy tool, to what ends, and how and why it ever works.

Introduction

This essay examines the two biggest environmental polluters, the oil and coal industries, and the possibilities of renewable energy that could replace them. I see the masters of these organisations, CEOs and top officials in the case of corporations, and state leaders in the case of command economies such as China or Saudi Arabia, as responding to nearterm demands and interests at the expense of long-term ones, thus endangering the planet. In the case of democratic nations, the firms seek to manipulate public opinion to ignore warnings about their emissions, and government representatives and officials to forestall changes that would threaten their interests. Meanwhile, because of their success in the areas of public opinion and legislation, there is insufficient funding for promising energy alternatives that are carbon-free.