Abstract
How can states most effectively reassure their allies? Despite massive investments to assure allies of Washington’s willingness and ability to defend them, the effectiveness of reassurance measures is uncertain. The limited existing research assessing reassurance effectiveness focuses on the role of resolve in making security assurances credible, sidelining important questions about the role of capability. We argue successful reassurance hinges not only on a patron’s willingness to defend an ally, but also its capability to do so. We introduce a new typology of reassurance measures based on variation in military capability and resolve, and analyze their effectiveness using an original survey fielded on European foreign policy elite and a case study of U.S. and NATO reassurance initiatives in the Baltics. We find that capabilities matter as much as resolve, with relatively limited deployments of offshore and high-tech capabilities reassuring allies just as much as tripwire forces.
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