The Credibility Trap

Does a reputation for weakness invite aggression? Many analysts have suggested that Russian President Vladimir Putin decided to invade Ukraine in 2022 after inferring that the United States and the rest of NATO lacked resolve. The West had imposed only weak sanctions on the Kremlin in response to its 2014 annexation of Crimea and its 2018 poisoning of a former Russian spy in the United Kingdom. Then came the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, a chaotic evacuation that seemed to demonstrate Washington’s lack of commitment.

On the day Russia invaded, U.S. President Joe Biden declared that Putin launched his attack to “test the resolve of the West.” Now, many believe that the United States must incur significant costs—sending billions of dollars in military aid to Ukraine and risking nuclear escalation—in part to prove to Putin that it is resolute. But the audience Washington is performing for goes well beyond Putin. Across the world, it can seem as if American credibility is constantly being questioned, with the United States’ adversaries challenging U.S. hegemony, and its allies worrying whether Washington will come to their aid. The potential for another Trump presidency and a more isolationist approach to foreign policy only adds to these allies’ concerns. In the Middle East, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly scorned Washington’s requests for restraint in his assault on the Palestinian militant group Hamas after its terror attack on his country last year, while Iran’s proxies are brazenly attacking U.S. targets. In the global South, the United States is struggling to convince countries to take its side in the emerging struggle between democracies and autocracies. “Nobody seems to be afraid of us,” former Defense Secretary Robert Gates lamented in a February interview with Foreign Affairs.

Many analysts suggest that these developments are the United States’ fault—that it has lost its once unquestioned reputation for strength and resolve. Regaining that reputation depends on the extent to which the United States is willing to support friends such as Israel and Ukraine. The rest of the world is watching closely, and if Washington goes soft, the argument runs, adversaries will feel emboldened and allies abandoned. China, for instance, might infer that it can invade Taiwan without serious consequences.

Leaders have long obsessed over credibility, the perceived likelihood that a nation will follow through on its word, especially a threat to use military force. Washington has even gone to war—in Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq—to protect its credibility. Behind this consensus that credibility is important, however, lies a great deal of uncertainty about how it is established, how much it drives relations between states, and how it can be maintained or regained without instigating escalation or unwanted wars.

Over the past decade, a new wave of research has produced fresh insights into credibility, particularly about what creates a reputation for resolve. The latest thinking shows that all else being equal, maintaining a reputation for resolve is important to deter adversaries and reassure allies. But it also suggests that leaders have far less influence over their country’s credibility than they might wish. Credibility is in the eye of the beholder, after all. It depends on the complex psychological calculations of one’s adversaries. Reputations are beliefs about beliefs, which makes them almost impossible to control. The implication for the United States should give policymakers pause: its efforts to rebuild credibility are costly, easily misread, and can even backfire.

FACE OFF

The word “credibility” entered the international relations lexicon after the 1938 Munich agreement between fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, France, and the United Kingdom, referring to what the leaders who appeased Hitler lacked. Resolve—a state’s willingness to stand firm in a crisis—is only one component of credibility; material capabilities and perceived interests are also essential. But maintaining a reputation for resolve became much more central to American statecraft with the advent of the Cold War. Considering the United States’ new commitments at that time to defend distant allies, the global struggle between competing power blocs, and the existential risk of nuclear conflict, theorists such as Thomas Schelling contended that credibility was one of the key factors in deterring and prevailing against the Soviet Union. “Face is one of the few things worth fighting over,” he wrote in 1966.

Schelling, whose pioneering work shaped the rationalist thinking of many Cold War–era U.S. presidents, emphasized that a state’s response to any given crisis would prove relevant in future crises, even very different kinds of crises, because adversaries would presume that the state would behave similarly. This hypothesis suggested that deterrence depended on sending clear messages to adversaries and sticking to prior commitments. And it helped motivate the United States’ containment policies during the Cold War, leading to a focus on peripheral regions such as Indochina. Although the United States had few direct interests in Vietnam, Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson felt that the United States’ reputation for resolve was being tested, and so they were steadily drawn into a war to defend South Vietnam from the communist north.

After the Cold War, a second wave of scholars questioned whether a state’s reputation for resolve mattered at all. Because most international relations dilemmas incorporate new considerations and unique sets of stakes, Daryl Press has argued that, when predicting a state’s future actions, analyzing its “current calculus” of interests and capabilities is far more useful than scrutinizing its past behavior. Jonathan Mercer has argued that reputations for resolve are hard to build. Moreover, they are subjective: leaders are more likely to believe their adversaries are resolute and their allies are weak-willed.

This post–Cold War school of thought contended that because states judge other states’ reputations subjectively and reputation does not appear to predict current behavior, reputation may not be worth fighting for. This view became more influential among U.S. policymakers over the course of the United States’ long wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as some began to question whether Washington was mainly staying the course for reputation’s sake—and if it was really gaining anything by the effort to sustain its reputation for resolve. President Barack Obama defended his decision not to attack Syria after Bashar al-Assad’s regime used chemical weapons in 2013, crossing a redline he himself had set, by saying in 2016, “Dropping bombs on someone to prove that you’re willing to drop bombs on someone is just about the worst reason to use force.”

THE SCIENCE OF RESOLVE

Over the last decade, a new generation of scholars has employed fresh statistical methods, textual analyses of newly declassified government records, and survey-based experiments to bring an even more nuanced examination to how reputation shapes international relations, charting a middle path between those who think credibility is the be-all and end-all in foreign affairs and those who think it does not matter. All else being equal, it is becoming clearer that if a state has a reputation for resolve, that does change its adversaries’ behavior. For example, Alex Weisiger and I found in a 2015 study that countries that had backed down in a crisis were more than twice as likely to face challenges the following year than countries that had stood firm.

Yet signaling resolve can be harder than it seems. Repeated demonstrations of resolve can become rote over time and lose their force—or even be counterproductive. The United States prosecuted the Vietnam War in part to show its resolve to contain communism. But by making subsequent presidents wary of entangling Washington in far-flung conflicts, the war may have dampened that resolve and made future interventions much less likely—an aversion that came to be known as “Vietnam syndrome.”

Van Jackson’s research has also demonstrated that because a state’s commitments are multifaceted, an effort to prove one form of determination may weaken a reputation for other kinds. For instance, North Korea’s frequent threats over the course of its crises with the United States helped it establish a reputation for resolve. But when it failed to follow through, the same threats gave it a reputation for inconsistency and dishonesty. In seeking to show toughness, North Korea proved its fickleness.

Signaling resolve can be harder than it seems.

The greatest paradox the new wave of research identified, however, is that a state’s reputation is not in its own hands. Reputations depend on who is assessing them. My own research has found that leaders display selective attention, giving information that stands out to them—such as their personal impressions of their counterparts—greater weight than other indicators that may be equally or more relevant. In a similar 2022 study, Don Casler also found that policymakers adjudicate credibility differently depending on their experiences and roles. Intelligence and military officials, for instance, tend to focus on a state’s current capabilities, whereas diplomats focus more on the consistency (or lack thereof) of its leaders’ behavior.

Beliefs matter, too. The recent scholarship on credibility suggests that one actor’s assessment of another is profoundly shaped by irrational forces such as confirmation bias, motivated reasoning, and ideological predisposition. For instance, a 2018 study by Joshua Kertzer, Jonathan Renshon, and I found that hawkish policymakers perceive public threats as less credible than their dovish counterparts do and are more inclined to view actions such as military mobilizations as credible signals of resolve. A similar study by Kertzer, Brian Rathbun, and Nina Srinivasan Rathbun found that hawks are more likely than doves to view their adversaries’ promises to comply with agreements as lacking credibility, suggesting that existing beliefs color assessments. As former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said of the Iranians as Trump prepared to withdraw from Obama’s nuclear deal, “We know they’re cheating. . . . We’re just not seeing it.”

Or consider the United States’ pullout from Afghanistan in 2021. Those who cared about the overall reputation of the United States might have concluded that the withdrawal and its chaotic execution showed adversaries that the country lacks resolve. But those more concerned about the consistency of its promises and its actions—maintaining what is known as a strong “signaling reputation”—would say the withdrawal revealed high credibility. Biden, after all, followed through on a campaign promise to pull U.S. forces out of Afghanistan, signaling that he keeps his word.

Adding to the complexity, observers do not judge resolve based only on what a leader does; they also judge it based on what they think the leader thinks about what he does. In 1969, after North Korea shot down a U.S. reconnaissance aircraft, killing 31 Americans, the United States chose not to retaliate. U.S. Secretary of State William Rogers attempted to frame this nonresponse as a sign of American strength: “The weak can be rash. The powerful must be more restrained.” If observers thought Rogers truly meant what he said, then the decision not to retaliate could have bolstered the United States’ reputation for resolve. But if observers believed Rogers was trying to dress up weakness with powerful rhetoric, or that the United States had chosen not to retaliate purely to send a signal about its reputation, they may have discounted the statement entirely. This is what the scholar Robert Jervis called “the reputation paradox.” Ultimately, how people calculate someone’s intentions reflects their own biases.

SIGNAL OR NOISE?

Debates about credibility, or more specifically reputations for resolve, are now playing a major role in the latest outbreak of violence in the Middle East. One reading of that conflict suggests that the decline of American credibility in the region—thanks to the bungled Iraq war, the failure to follow through on the redline with Syria, and the rushed withdrawal from Afghanistan—directly contributed to a credibility deficit that may have emboldened Iran and its proxies, including Hamas. A converse theory suggests that Iran and its proxies rated U.S. credibility highly and hoped that if they attacked a U.S. ally, Washington would be forced to respond and get dragged into a costly war.

These narratives may have elements of truth. But they assume qualities about the United States’ adversaries that are almost impossible to know, such as which dots Iranian or Hamas leaders connected to form their assessments of U.S. resolve. After Israel scored a decisive win in its 2006 war with Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, acknowledged that had he known Israel would respond with so much force, he would never have kidnapped the two Israeli soldiers whose capture triggered the war. It is unlikely the leaders of Hamas or Iran will make a similar declaration—and if they did, it might not accurately reflect whether the United States’ credibility deficit factored into their calculus. Even if these leaders plainly and publicly declared how their perception of U.S. resolve influenced their decision-making, such statements may be merely performative. Policymakers must apply great caution when concluding, first, that they understand how adversaries perceive their country and, second, that this perception clearly motivated a certain action.

In fact, Hamas’s October 7 attack may have had nothing to do with Washington’s reputation. It could simply be explained by the failure of Israeli deterrence attributable to local factors such as the prospect of an Israeli-Saudi normalization deal and turmoil in Israel’s domestic politics. Likewise, Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine may have had everything to do with his psychology—his megalomania, his aspiration to restore Russia’s lost grandeur. By blaming so much global disorder on a U.S. credibility gap, analysts can easily overstate Washington’s ability to shape world events.

The American credibility deficit is also frequently invoked to account for China’s growing belligerence. A common argument is that a U.S. failure to support Ukraine will signal to Chinese leader Xi Jinping that the United States’ commitment to supporting smaller allies is fundamentally softening, thus making China’s invasion of Taiwan more likely. But only Xi fully knows how much the war in Ukraine factors into his calculations. Actions don’t always speak for themselves, as Jervis has noted.

REPUTATIONAL RISKS

It is essential for U.S. leaders to avoid being trapped by their anxieties about credibility. In the end, it matters little how the United States assesses its own reputation for resolve. What matters far more is how observers—its adversaries and allies—judge it, which is hard for the United States to control. The current obsession with fixing the United States’ credibility deficit may not only be fruitless; it also carries substantial risk. If Americans come to the consensus that a credibility crisis is to blame for the world’s disorder, they are likely to conclude that their opponents will be more willing to challenge U.S. interests, which invites more hawkish U.S. policy and costlier signaling. This signaling, in turn, could provoke unnecessary crises, arms races, and even wars.

Of course, Washington must make its threats as credible as possible, reassure its allies, and demonstrate that contested areas—such as Israel, Taiwan, and Ukraine—are of vital concern. But states and leaders have a wider menu of options to build credibility than some policymakers recognize: public methods, private methods, and a combination of the two. Sending military aid or moving aircraft carriers can signal resolve. So can taking steps to avoid undermining American credibility, such as not publicly broadcasting the United States’ intent to “pivot” away from a region or publicly delineating redlines it will be unwilling to enforce. In general, those who suggest the United States faces a credibility deficit tend to put far too much emphasis on the country’s past actions. The past matters, but what matters more is the credibility of the signals Washington is sending right now.

It is essential for U.S. leaders to avoid becoming trapped by their anxieties about credibility.

U.S. policymakers also sometimes excessively globalize credibility by presuming that every country around the world perceives the United States’ actions in the same way and takes a single message from U.S. foreign policy, even policies the United States has applied in a completely different region. In truth, the vantage points from which other countries form their perceptions of the United States vary widely, depending on those countries’ local situations and their leaders’ psychologies. Policymakers must carefully analyze the psychologies of the United States’ diverse adversaries—otherwise, even costly signaling may not have the desired effect. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to signaling resolve or maintaining deterrence.

Adversaries may not even pay the most attention to what the United States does overseas. They may more closely follow its domestic politics. More than any action the United States did or did not undertake abroad, it may well have been American political polarization that most encouraged Putin to test Washington’s resolve to defend Kyiv. Recent research suggests that when presidents show resolve in domestic crises, they can build their reputations internationally. Soviet leaders’ opinion of President Ronald Reagan’s resolve was bolstered by a domestic act—his firing of air traffic controllers for going on strike in 1981. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev wrote in his memoirs that he was impressed by Kennedy’s resolve to seek a negotiated settlement to the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. But what impressed him was not how the president behaved toward Moscow but his willingness to overrule the advice of his own military leaders to avert a catastrophe.

A reputation for resolve is one of the hardest things for leaders or states to control. Any assessment of U.S. adversaries that does not carefully examine their psychology—the different ways they come to conclusions about the United States—is doomed to be inadequate. And ultimately, to regain credibility abroad, the United States may first need to tackle an even more complicated task: restoring unity at home.