Suomen Sotatieteellinen Seura - The Finnish Society of Military Science
Abstract
The title of this article is ”On Reputation Management in the U.S. Security Commitment Policy”. The focus is on the U.S. grand strategy, willingness to defend security commitments, and the logic of extended deterrence since the beginning of the Cold War. The main conclusions can be summarized as follows. The American willingness to prolong her participation in the Vietnam War in spite of the obvious lack of success was to a great extent motivated by the understanding of the interconnectedness of security commitments. Failure in Vietnam was interpreted as a risk for the credibility of American commitments elsewhere. However, this risk did not eventually materialize. The credibility of individual security commitments is case-dependent and particularistic rather than interdependent. The credibility of e.g. American security commitment within NATO is first and foremost tested by the direct challenges to that commitment itself, not by the challenges the United States face in the Third World. Reputations matter most in the context of iterated strategic encounters, when there is a strong link and connection between one round of bargaining and the next
