U.S. Credibility

Abstract

Paradoxically, while a culturally self-centered American people has historically paid little attention to the rest of the world, its foreign-policy elite spent much of the Cold War worrying about what foreigners thought of the United States. More specifically, Cold War U.S. foreign policymakers expended considerable energy in working to persuade foreign leaders that the United States’ international power was “credible.” Unlike economic and strategic interests, the concept of U.S. international credibility exists only in the eye of the beholder, making it difficult to define or quantify. “A blend of resolve, reliability, believability, and decisiveness,” credibility means that foreign governments believes that the United States will act with “firmness, determination, and dependability.”1