Making Foreign Policy Decisions: Presidential Briefings by Christopher J Fettweis

Author:Christopher J Fettweis [Fettweis, Christopher J]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: International Relations, Political Science, General
ISBN: 9781351507677
Google: AS0rDwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 35635183
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2017-07-05T00:00:00+00:00

HONOR: Credibility is a Vitally Important National Asset

Modern presidents do not spend much time talking about the national honor. Woodrow Wilson could openly talk about insults and affronts to our honor that demanded a response in 1917, but today’s leaders rarely seem to bring it up. But make no mistake: honor persists, if under slightly different guises. While few presidents worry about the status of their honor, they do worry, at times obsessively, about their credibility. “Whatever course you follow,” warned Vice President Cheney, “the essential thing is to keep commitments, and to leave no doubts about the credibility of your county’s word.” The “credibility imperative,” in historian Robert McMahon’s words, has occupied a central position in every major US foreign policy debate in the last sixty years, affecting discourse and decisions in predictable—and deeply pathological—ways. While all states remain concerned to some degree with their reputations, none takes the imperative to remain credible as seriously as does the United States.

“Credibility is a nation’s greatest asset in international affairs,” Senator John McCain believes. “It is the hardest to earn and the most difficult to maintain, but once possessed it makes it possible to compel changes in behavior.” To Henry Kissinger, it is “the coin with which we conduct our foreign policy,” an intangible asset without which a state cannot influence the actions of others. In periods of high credibility, a state can deter and compel behavior and accomplish goals short of war, or so the argument goes. When credibility is low, skeptical adversaries and allies may be tempted to ignore a state’s threats and promises. To policymakers, therefore, unimpeachable credibility is worth many divisions at the negotiating table.

During the Cold War the United States worried that the Soviet Union would be encouraged, and our allies would disheartened, by signs of US irresolution. Those countries in the middle, in the “third world,” may well have tilted toward communism. This thinking led many presidents to fight minor wars in otherwise irrelevant parts of the world. Most of the major actions during the Cold War make little sense absent an understanding of the importance US policymakers placed on their credibility. South Korea had little bearing on the balance of power, for example, but it was perceived as vital to the United States’ reputation. “We lost thirty thousand dead in Korea to save face for the United States and the United Nations,” wrote the economist (and intellectual father of the credibility imperative) Thomas Schelling, adding that “it was undoubtedly worth it.” Assistant Secretary of Defense John McNaughton summarized US aims in Vietnam as motivated 10 percent to help the South Vietnamese, 20 percent to prevent falling dominoes in Eurasia, and 70 percent to avoid the reputational costs of a defeat.

Does credibility help leaders achieve their goals? Or, perhaps more importantly, does its possession make a country safe, or at least safer? Given how widely accepted the belief in the importance of credibility is, one would think there would have to be a mountain of evidence supporting it.

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