President John F. Kennedy famously worried that foreign policy failures early in his tenure—the Bay of Pigs fiasco and his poor performance at the summit in Vienna—displayed his lack of resolve and acumen, which Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev would seek to exploit. These concerns seemed to materialize when Kennedy learned that Khrushchev had placed nuclear…
Tag: reputation
Roundtable 11-10 on Who Fights for Reputation: The Psychology of Leaders in International Conflict
Nobel Laureate Thomas Schelling described the tens of thousands dead in the Korean War as “undoubtedly worth it” because the United States needed to defend its reputation for resolve.[1] In 2013, President Barack Obama implicitly disagreed with Schelling, when he refused to carry out military operations based on his ‘red line,’ after Syrian President Bashar…
Roundtable 9-14 on Dangerous Trade. Arms Exports, Human Rights, and International Reputation
Jennifer L. Erickson’s Dangerous Trade is a powerful reminder of the manifold ways in which arms control raises the most enduring questions in the study of international politics. The ability to regulate violence capacity on a given territory is central to the very idea of the modern state. The unfettered capacity to wield organized violence…
