Selling Schelling Short: Reputations and American Coercive Diplomacy after Syria

Abstract

The notion that credibility is important in international politics, and maintaining it requires following through on threats and commitments to establish a reputation for resolve, has been standard diplomatic savoir-faire for decades, with its most influential articulation in the work of Thomas Schelling. According to a new consensus it also is wrong; credibility is linked exclusively to the relative capabilities and interests a state can bring to bear. The new consensus was invoked to criticize the Obama administration's coercive strategy against Syrian chemical weapons use in 2013. This article revisits Schelling to determine whether critics have an accurate depiction of coercive diplomacy theory. The analysis show that many of Schelling's specific arguments related to American–Soviet Cold War rivalry were mistakenly offered as general statements about reputation in all coercive bargaining encounters. A more nuanced interpretation stresses commitment of reputation operating within the complexity of the particular bargaining situation. Reputations are relevant but do not determine credibility in international politics; they matter more, relative to other factors, in iterated encounters (and the expectation of future crises) between the same two actors, a situation that approximates Schelling's ‘continuous negotiation’, as well as across fundamentally similar crises between an adversary and a third party. This qualified position was missing in the debate over Syrian chemical weapons in 2013, and should be embraced to better manage tense diplomatic relationships and periodic crises with other potentially hostile world powers. Schelling's work shows that reputation can be an ingredient for peace, and not merely a pretense for war.