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A Tale of Two Presidents: Why the last two years should finally put "Credibility" to bed as an argument in foreign policy
Argument Summary: "Credibility" is the argument that sometimes great powers have to engage in actions with tangible negative expected value in order to achieve an intangible benefit of being perceived as credible by enemies and friends. The last two years has proven this completely wrong: Biden ripped a multi-decade bandaid off and bottomed out America's credibility with the image of Afghans falling off landing gear, while Putin has stuck to his guns no matter what in Ukraine rather than take the L. A year later America and NATO's credibility is at an all time high, with valuable prospects joining the US centric alliance for the first time in years. Putin, meanwhile, has cratered Russian credibility just a year later, losing control of his near-abroad and failing to project strength. This sequence of events suggests that credibility probably does not exist as a useful concept, or that if it does it is so mercurial that expending significant costs to obtain it is foolish.
Credibility arguments are nearly always someone explaining to you why you should keep doing the thing that was a bad idea to begin with: because you need to prove you are not deterred by things like rational calculations, you will follow it through to the end long after you should have given up. This will convince others not to mess with you, you're loco, you'll do things that are bad for you just to make it worse for them. Ben Friedman discusses a history of the concept here, Daniel Larison discusses further here. It can be compared to deterrence, but based on projections of behavior rather than projections of physical might. Examples abound in failed American colonial ventures of the past decades: Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan. Focusing on one example, the infamous "Red Line" on chemical weapons use by Assad. The Credibility part of the argument is that because Barack Obama said there would be consequences, it doesn't matter if it is in America's interest to attack Syria, the US has to attack Syria to prove that Barack Obama wasn't a liar. It punts on proving that the attack is a good idea in favor of the principle that nations must always back up their words with actions, for fear that showing weakness could be fatal to US interests.
Considered in the light of Credibility, the last two years have proven the argument completely wrong.
America's credibility in foreign policy was never lower (in the 21st century) than the start of 2022. America had repeatedly since 2016 renegged on commitments to putative allies the Kurds, secular afghanis, various other partners. America had elected Donald Trump, which represented a tremendous shift in foreign policy on a dime. Trump threatened to pull out of long standing treaty obligations if other members didn't pull their weight, declared trade wars on long time allies etc. (Love him or hate him, it is obvious that the shift back and forth again lowers the reliability of US foreign policy even if you agree with the shift). America then elected Joe Biden, who (whatever your opinion on his character and performance) had been described as mediocre by people as varied as his former boss/running mate and the nation's boogeyman, and his own supporters earlier in the election season. Biden then proceeded to cut and run in Afghanistan, accepting the international opprobrium of failed US foreign policy consensus as the consequences of a series of presidents being unwilling to.
A year later, American credibility in foreign policy is higher than it's been since before Iraq II. Neutral, wealthy European countries are jockeying for space under the USA's nuclear umbrella. Local allies that don't suck are sticking it to geopolitical enemies. As Hanania points out Fukuyama has been proven right: America is the indispensable nation for its would-be allies, accept no substitutes. (I'm aware that the Baltic countries have contributed more to Ukraine as a %GDP, but that proves the point: even doing their best Poland and Estonia just aren't big enough to shoulder the weight) What happened?
Arguably, what happened is that Putin tried take advantage of America's weakness. Putin himself built his credibility in the Syrian war, where he stood by his man at some cost despite no obvious benefit to Russia. I don't want to get into kremlinology motive arguments, but Putin's actions match what credibility proponents argued would happen, so it doesn't much matter whether that was really his motive or not, the results will match the scenario. The apparent weakness of the West is part of any positive Russian war plan circa February: the West is too weak and divided to support of Ukraine, while the West lacks the prestige for Ukrainians to want to be part of it badly enough to fight for it. Both those postulates have proven disastrously incorrect.
Putin has then repeatedly doubled down on the failed invasion. I've argued in theMotte that circa March/April Putin could have declared victory in a punitive Denazification fight, brought his men home, and there wouldn't have been much NATO could do about it. Would there have been any will to hold Hungary/Germany back from buying Russian gas to punish them for something that already ended? Instead Putin has repeatedly upped the ante, doing the kinds of things Credibility-mongers argue the US ought to have done in Afghanistan/Iraq/Syria: institute a draft, loosen rules of engagement (I think there's an argument to be had about whose were looser to begin with though), knock out infrastructure of neutral parties that support the enemy. Putin keeps pushing farther with each reputation-shattering defeat to get all the credibility he has lost back and more. Once again, I don't want to get into Kremlinology, but his actions resemble what a Credibility theorist would recommend enough that it doesn't matter if it is his "actual" motivation or not. He is behaving as though he is doubling down on a lost cause to prove a point to the international community.
The results speak for themselves. America is riding higher than ever. Finland and Sweden joining NATO is a plum, Germany increasing military spending is a gift, and allies around the world are happy to align with America. There's been no shortage of allies screaming for American aid, despite what happened to the Kurds, because A) America is the only nation that can provide that kind of aid in that volume and B) the kind of native allies America wants are the psychotic idealists who would light themselves on fire just to blow smoke in Russia's eyes not the kind of people who make cautious reasonable decisions.
Meanwhile, Russia's efforts to gain credibility appear to be losing it credibility. We've walked it back from "Russia could maybe beat NATO in a straight up fight" to "Russia can't handle NATO supplied farmers without mobilizing the whole country;" from "Russia will roll Ukraine in days" to "Russian forces can't stand against Ukrainian forces face to face." From "Russian Wunderwaffen demonstrations" to "Russian Rust." Lyman has fallen, Kherson and Severodonetsk could be next soon. Russian brokered and guaranteed peace deals between Armenia-Azerbaijan and Tajikstan-Kyrgyzstan are falling apart with no sign of Russian intervention, and the Russian sponsored collective security and trade agreements seem to be either failing or leaving Russia behind. Countries are not impressed by Russian power, because Russian power is being drained by a failing and flailing war in Ukraine, the costs lead them to think they can get away with messing around on Russia's borders right now.
The lessons:
Credibility is a silly, temporary concept; more apt to Twitter discourse than to serious decision making. Ideological actors that want US/EU/RF/PRC support are still going to want the same things whether they think their partners trustworthy or not; their convictions come first the means are whatever they can get a hold of. Credibility is so temporary that it isn't worth taking significant risks or incurring significant costs to obtain, it might evaporate before it gives you anything of value. This of course goes both ways: the USA might piss away the Western good will it has garnered before anything of value is gained, and Russia has a very good chance of turning the war around if it is still in the game when 300,000+ fresh troops are trained and equipped.
Inasmuch as credibility is worth pursuing, the way to pursue it is by maximizing power and the ability to project it. Getting tied down in increasingly costly quagmires drains power and the ability to project it. Cut loose losing positions, and take that capital to invest opportunistically. Don't get tied to the Sunk Cost Fallacy and keep pushing further, showing more and more weakness. If it isn't working, don't waste more lives on it.
Because credibility is temporary and unreliable, you can't make decisions based on an opponent's perceived credibility either. Thinking he looks weak so pounce is likely to end poorly for you.
I don't like the guy but how do you actually characterize "we're going to enforce the terms of our agreements" as credibility destroying?
That's exactly the definition of "Credibility Destroying" in foreign policy. Credibility is generally portrayed as avoiding calculations of precise advantage in favor of broadly "having your friends' backs" and sticking to the first idea you had regardless of how it is going. Think of it as the difference between a friend that will always jump in if you get into a fight out at the bar, versus a friend who will ask whether you started it.
I tend to agree, the whole "Trump wants to destroy NATO" memes were ridiculous, Trump's statements were that if EU allies weren't meeting treaty obligations then the treaty wasn't in force. Which is the only way to get allies to meet their commitments, really. Nonetheless, Trump represented a break from the prior Blob position on the topic, and the Obama-Trump-Biden sequence of elections makes the USA broadly unreliable in foreign policy compared to the relative continuity of the Bush-Clinton-Bush-Obama Washington Consensus years, when elections didn't seem to have any impact on American foreign policy.
If this is true I think your post should probably use a word that doesn't mean the opposite of its plain english meaning to avoid confusion.
It's been the term used, confusingly, for decades by Neocons in the foreign policy discourse. Though your post really shows that maybe everyone else isn't as plugged into that discourse of Omni-Belligerent hawks vs restraints on American commitments, which might explain why the post seems to have confused some people.
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I mean, the whole lying to our allies about WMDs was probably a much bigger credibility blow.
Even now Putin uses Iraq rhetorically as precedent for aggressive invasions.
Oh, it seems pretty clear by now that the Bush Administration actually believed that there were WMDs there, though of course there was plenty of motivated reasoning and they certainly did not publicly disclose the uncertainly in the intelligence estimates (not that anyone ever does). See eg here (Though that is re public statements. What they told allies might have differed).
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This argument makes no sense whatsoever. A meaningful story is trivial to tell here and it's a bit baffling that you think this sequence of events supports your case:
The US Government abandoned a long term project in a disastrous way that seemed to be driven by an isolationist urge in the American public and political class. This damaged the 'credibility' of the US government in its foreign commitments, leading a foreign leader to believe the US government would not seriously interfere in any near-abroad interventions the foreign leader made. An estimation of American WILL tanked American credibility, which led to a foreign crisis.
Then, this same foreign leader wildly overestimated his own material capability to execute on the intervention he planned. The failure of the initial plan tanks this foreign leader's credibility (other actors have to believe you not only that you have the WILL to intervene but the CAPABILITY). This leads to the American government and its allies happily doubling down on opposition to the intervention.
This is a pretty simple expectations story and makes perfect sense within the scope of these events. Since questions of international politics aren't exactly subject to RCT experiments, that's about as good as you're going to get. Go ahead and nitpick, but the point I'm making isn't that the credibility theory is correct, it's that your refutation is no such thing.
So, Obama's step back from his red line was in 2013. Tell me, what major geopolitical event happened in 2014 where the initiating actor must have been operating under the assumption that the US would not intervene under Obama? I'll give you a hint: It's the same damned foreign leader as above.
Also, it's worth noting that Assad did indeed keep using chemical weapons over the next several years, almost like the US' threats to prevent him from doing so had no credibility as a result of Obama's stand down from his red line.
You present a narrow definition of credibility here (which I think is wrong -- credibility is reputation), knockdown your strawman, and declare victory (really, you declare victory first). I don't think your argument is particularly convincing. A reasonable theory of credibility can explain events over the last year just fine.
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It sucks to be proven right, but yes, saw it coming.
I'll propose an alternative and much simpler explanation.
«Credibility» is a measure of some quality that may be state capacity or its close relative. No party is willing to just throw a fight when challenged; some parties are unable to muster the energy and so get forced into concessions, having degenerated politically even without equivalent declines in other respects. Leaving aside blatantly irrational commitments, it is useful to wave that capacity around and remind people that not only are you rich and armed but you can deliver the payload. Americans have done that with Afghanistan, and then they've done it again by noping out of the polygon rendered useless before their empire crumbled.
You have to start with those fundamentals of «rich» and «armed» though.
The size of the fight in the dog matters, but weight classes exist for a reason. Russia is (was) what, 1.5% of global GDP? Russia can commit 100% of itself (or can it?). Fine, everyone else can commit too, and they see no reason to let go. As a result, the fight is depended by the [economic and political] size of the dog, nnd «credibility» ends up on the side of /r/CredibleDefense regulars.
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Wait, when the mongers, whoever they are, argued for the draft in relation to Afghanistan/Iraq/Syria? I thought the argument was we should support local allies on the ground and given them weapons, etc. instead of dumping everything and running like we're competing in 400m sprint? What this has to do with the draft?
Not sure what this means in regards to Putin - what rules have been changed lately and how?
What are you talking about? I've never heard of Putin knocking out any third-party infrastructure, and as most of the aid to Ukraine comes through Poland, I'm sure Poland would be screaming Article 5 very loudly if Putin tried to knock out anything there.
I'm not sure what "credibility" you are talking about - Putin and his surrogates repeatedly claimed there's no war, there's just a little special military operation which would end very soon with total victory, and no draft is going to be necessary, not now, not ever. And there's no need for draft anyway because there are almost no losses. Now there's a draft (and it's called "limited" but on the ground it's "grab everybody who remotely looks like capable of holding a rifle"), and with numbers from 300 thousands to potentially a million - which is a humongous number. This is completely contrary to every claim that has been made about the war by Putin and his surrogates for months. What "credibility"?
In Russia, there's not even much of such thing as "credibility" - everybody knows the government lies all the time. I mean: All. The. Time. They're actually ok with it - as long as there's at least some benefit from it - e.g. if the lie served the cause of the Greatness of Russia, then they live in the Great Russia of which everybody is afraid, and thus they're ok with the government lying.
He's not "proving a point". And "international community" is not his main target audience, either. He started a war, with the promise of easy win. There's no win. Now he can either admit he lost - and in Russian culture, there's no way of honorably losing a fight, there's no such concept. Or throw more and more resources into it to hope maybe somewhere there would be some situation that somehow may be presented as a win. Except it's kinda hard when Ukrainians are kicking their asses day to day. The only thing he needs from the "international community" is to falter in their support for Ukraine, so that such "win" situation may present itself - e.g. pressure Zelensky to negotiate without conclusive military victory and surrender the occupied territories. It's not a question of "credibility" as in some gentleman's debate - it's a question of survival for his power structure (and his own person, of course, but it's not only about him personally). If he's not getting a win - he's a loser, and a loser can't be a Tzar. It's not a question of any "credibility", it's a question of claiming the power but not actually having the power - that's something you can't do in Russia.
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America hasn't flexed its military might since 2004 beyond nation building and drone strikes. It's hard to know what it's still capable of. One could have made a similar argument that America pulling out of Vietnam was a low in terms of credibility, yet America still completely dominated in Iraq twice.
I doubt it. The targeted airstrike on Soleimani shows that the US is still playing for keeps
America's credibility was at its lowest point in the 21st century doesn't mean it was zero, any more than the massive reassessment of Russia's military capabilities means the NAFO jackoffs who think Estonia could take Russia straight up are right.
...which is exactly the point I made. People did make that exact argument, but those who bet on it being true were quickly proven wrong.
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Well said - whether it's spun as 'face' or 'prestige' or 'credibility', ultimately what matters is power and money. China is constantly embarrassing themselves with ludicrous overblown rhetoric and saber-rattling - their envoys still get received gratefully in the courts of the world, because they have money.
The thing is that a talented wordcel can always spin any course of action as being somehow conducive to 'credibility'. The Iraq War was originally intended not as nation building, but as a muscular demonstration of American military power and willingness to use it unilaterally against their enemies. Such a demonstration was hardly necessary - the destruction of two skyscrapers, though tragic, was not read by anyone as proof of imminent collapse of American hegemony. Once the war was concluded, the Credibility Fans simply shifted their reasoning. Now, rebuilding Iraq was necessary to restore American cred in the wake of disaster.
Would allowing Ukraine to join NATO without a peep have restored credibility? No, I think not. Rather, Russia is being exposed as weaker and more fragile than anyone supposed.
Why do you think they are "embarrassing themselves"? I mean, it's not what is considered respectable in the West, but would it be embarrassing for a Chinese person to behave this way?
Internationally, yes. I understand that this kind of bombast does well domestically, though.
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Russian reputation would be in a better place, IMHO, if they'd withdrawn to roughly Feb 24th lines in April when it was apparent Kiev would not fall, Putin had given a speech about how they'd "Taught the Nazis a lesson they won't soon forget" and declared victory. Doubling down with summer offensives and fall debacles and sham annexations has been the loss here. Ukraine is nowhere near NATO membership today, last year, next year, or any time in two decades.
That's not what NATO has said in the past (I believe the United States said that Ukraine would be allowed to join a few years ago) and it's not what Ukraine is saying now.
But you know, commentators like you would have told us that of course Poland or the Baltics or Finland would never be allowed to join NATO in the mid-90s. A commitment, like others, that the United States reneged upon. Funny how doing stuff like that isn't damaging to 'credibility' - almost like the only thing that matters in international relations is power and money. Russia's mistake was being weak and poor, and now all that's left is to decide whether they want to lose now or later.
A commitment the United States never made.
They could have simply not picked the fight, and kept selling Germans oil and gas.
I think we both agree that Russia should not have gone to war in the first place. But again, that would just be choosing a slow death rather than a quicker one. Ukraine would have been integrated into NATO, and then Russia could have been destroyed at Washington's leisure.
The United States did not really make a commitment, because I don't believe that commitments or agreements between enemies are binding. Commitments that cannot be enforced don't exist, and Russia is demonstrating right now their inability to enforce anything even on their own doorstep. But they certainly let the Russians think they made such a commitment!
Certainly agreements between enemies can be binding. One example would be a peace treaty. Penalty for breaking a peace treaty, ultimately, is resumption of hostilities. There was no treaty of any sort promising Russia that Poland or the Baltics or Finland would never be allowed to join NATO, and such a treaty is the only way the United States has to make such a commitment. So it's not some weird technicality; the United States plainly never made such a commitment.
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Fairness Russia didn’t have the option to just keep selling oil and gas to Germany. Population collapse was slowly occurring and they had to do something or Russia disappears in a generation. Probably get internally conquored by high birth rate chechens.
Killing off the young men who could be having babies by having them kill your fellow east slavic young men is the single best way to see your population decline more.
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While those are important, I think in this case actions towards or against credibility count a lot more than words. American credibility is riding high because the answer to "Would NATO (in particular US) forces risk their own lives or the risk of nuclear war in the event [enemy] invades my beloved homeland?" is much clearer than 12 months ago. Sure, Trump made comments skeptical of the alliance (IMO largely from a place that Western Europe was ignoring the costs of continued vigilance), but if the US is willing to spend billions and provide valuable resources like training and intelligence to help out a mere friend, it seems there's less doubt that they'd roll tanks and launch airstrikes to defend or retake small Baltic allies like they did for Kuwait in '91.
Fairweather allies are useless.
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It seems that credibility is a set of expectations, and sets of expectations can be wrong when someone calls the bluff.
If a prediction market gives a low value to an event, and that event happens, that does not mean the prediction market is mercurial or stupid.
You talk about the changes in the past year as if they just happened by random, butPutin opened the box and looked for the cat that he was 90% sure was dead, and it was not. Had he simply continued a slow burn against Afghanistan people would still be fretting about Biden being too weak to follow through if Russia attacked.More options
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Counterpoint: No, credibility is an exceedingly important concept, but there are often other important factors in a given situation.
In international relations, credibility is a major factor that leads to predictability, which is similarly a major factor in stability. In the case of the US, different claims have different levels of credibility--a President might make one statement that tracks a longer-term bipartisan consensus, or another statement that reflects current administration policy, but a President of the other party would reverse course. These cases are and should be evaluated differently--while the US as an institution has a certain degree and context of credibility, so do each of the Presidential administrations. While credibility is fragile, it can also be damaged but not destroyed; it's not an on/off switch.
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False.
Afghanistan was NOT a hit to American credibility. We spent 20 years there. We proved we can come in and fuck them up at will if they start hosting Al-Queda. We spent 20 years and trillions trying to be a good partner. All Afghanistan proved is that Afghanistan can’t build a state even with tremendous aid. They are just an area that is permemently stuck in a pre-renaissance society or earlier.
Putin isn’t losing credibility because he tried to be credible. He lost because he’s been shown to NOT have military capability.
There’s no credibility question here.
Depends on what you mean by "Afghanistan". You describe the whole 20 years - and true, the 20 years weren't the hit. The panic run from it was. Even if we recognized we've reached the end of what we could do there, it should have been an ordered dignified exit, not a disorganized run. And the worst thing is, it was completely unforced - there was no reason it had to be that bad, it's just were executed very badly. And that's what hurts credibility - any army can have an unlucky battle and suffer losses, but if it is not able to perform in the conditions where everything is on their side - then it's rotten.
On the Putin side, I do agree.
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South China Morning Post: https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3145120/much-vaunted-us-credibility-lost-graveyard-empires
Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/afghanistan-chaos-blame-us/2021/08/14/0d4e5ab2-fd3e-11eb-911c-524bc8b68f17_story.html
Deutsche Welle: https://www.dw.com/en/opinion-the-us-has-failed-in-afghanistan/a-58872360
WarOnTheRocks summarizing both sides of the discourse: https://warontherocks.com/2021/09/credibility-controversies-the-implications-of-afghanistan-for-the-indo-pacific/
I don't think it's as simple as you're making it out to be. Or, alternately: maybe credibility is real but mysterious, in which case it's useless because the person arguing for it might mean something different.
A few opinion letters do not prove anything. There’s always some guy editorializing any idea. Especially enemies wanting to convince others the world has changed.
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Strictly speaking, though, America wasn't fighting "Afghanistan". America was fighting the Taliban, a movement that US didn't formally recognize as the legal government of Afghanistan, on behalf of forces that it recognized de jure even before the war and which then sort of took a de facto control of the most of the country after the US invasion, after a fashion. US proved it couldn't keep these forces in power. Taliban proved it could take it on the chin from a superior American army and its warlord allies for 20 years and still bounce back with ease, being now in a stronger position than ever - indeed, one could argue that for the first time they truly are Afghanistan, considering how firmly they control the country.
I can agree. I just disagree with the original OP that America lost credibility in Afghanistan. Because of Afganistán has lost some support in America. Afghans got aid first and then had 20 years to prove they could build something. Ukranians have to prove their credit (winning on battlefield) before they get aid. But every time they win on battlefield and show competency they get more toys. They seem to trust American credibility.
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The US did a pretty good job keeping the Kabul government in power. It was only after the US withdrew direct military support that it collapsed.
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