After 4 years of Donald Trump, the US must "reassure" its allies.

That's what I'm reading/hearing lately, such as in this @nytimes piece. What do international relations scholars know about reassuring allies? Can it be done? Is it even

This passage from the article captures well the call for "reassurance": the US must convince its allies in Asia and Europe that the US would indeed use its nukes to protect them.
That's a tall order!

Indeed, such a tall order that it's been a major question explored by international relations scholars for a long time. A LONG TIME.
The topic was of keen debate in the 1950s, with Henry Kissinger writing a series of pieces on the topic, such as this 1956 @ForeignAffairs article

https://t.co/97fUw7sIj5
The academic discussion picked up in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

This included Robert Schelling's paper in the first issue of the Journal of Conflict Resolution...

https://t.co/rdd1N24HhZ
....followed by his 1960 classic book...

https://t.co/igRLc3dDzx
....Glenn Snyder's 1961 book...

https://t.co/bNIM7QQOOV
...and Schelling again in his 1966 book

https://t.co/Pv49qc7Hmc
That last book offered a famous passage on US credibility to allies that first appeared three years earlier in the Virginia Quarterly Review.

https://t.co/R9KgFmwOVB
Here is the passage:
In other words, "tripwire forces" who die at the beginning of an enemy attack are critical to "reassuring" allies that America will indeed respond, perhaps even with nukes.
So key to "assurance" is stationing US forces on allied territory.

Does it work?
On the one hand, it's really hard to say.

The core difficulty with evaluating deterrence is "selection bias" and an inability to see the "counterfactual" (i.e. we only observe deterrence failures).

https://t.co/2uyzeGHQ15
On the other hand, much research has looked directly at "tripwire" forces to determine if they do indeed enhance deterrence.

What the research finds is not supportive.
@profmusgrave & @Steven_m_ward report in this @monkeycageblog piece that American's are actually not so keen on responding to the deaths of US troops with force: it depended much more on factors such as "likelihood of success"

https://t.co/7jblEd27n8
@mcfuhrmann & Todd Sechser in @AJPS_Editor show that placing US nukes on allied territory doesn't do much either to enhance deterrence.

https://t.co/EdweUhWHd0
Another problem with forward deployed tripwires is that they can reduce the willingness of local populations to fight for themselves...

https://t.co/2hBOdsNT3F
...though @carlammm, @flynnpolsci, @michaelallen, & Andrew Stravers report in @apsrjournal that forward deployed forces can create positive views of the US in host countries.

https://t.co/aHiQlpDWYj
So tripwires & forward deployment of forces might well be overrated as a means of "reassuring" an ally.

What else can be done?
For some states that don't yet have alliances, creating formal military cooperation agreements can have value. So also does flat out giving "aid" (read $$). See @ALanoszka, @YarhiMilo & Zack Cooper in @Journal_IS.

https://t.co/SGvUwGm8K4
The US might also consider renegotiating some of its alliance agreements to include more precise conditions for support. See @mattes_michaela in @IntOrgJournal

https://t.co/ECh84QJ0Rv
The US can continue to issue public "statements of support" to skittish allies, which @BrianDBlank explored recently in @ISQ_Jrnl

https://t.co/abYBpwkuBp
Even private statements of support have some merit too, as @YarhiMilo & Roseanne McManus explore in this @IntOrgJournal piece.

https://t.co/KRA2wgHN4P
The US can engage in military exercises (as Ralph Clem discussed in @TXNatSecReview)
https://t.co/od5Aczh4GT
But here's the thing: you can never give ENOUGH of such statements. Reassurance doesn't end: You have to be constantly visiting, stating publicly your commitment, & taking actions.
Reassurance is a process, not an objective. There is no one policy, like tripwires, that will achieve it.

[END]

More from Paul Poast

Is it true that democracies don't go to war with each other?

Sort of. But I wouldn't base public policy on the finding.

Why? Let's turn to the data.

[THREAD]


The idea of a "Democratic Peace" is a widely held view that's been around for a long time.

By 1988, there already existed enough studies on the topic for Jack Levy to famously label Democratic Peace "an empirical law"


The earliest empirical work on the topic was the 1964 report by Dean Babst published in the "Wisconsin Sociologist"


Using the war participation data from Quincy Wright's "A Study of War", Babst produced the following two tables


The tables show that democracies were NOT on both sides (of course, Finland is awkward given that it fought WITH Nazi Germany against the Soviet Union).

Babst expanded his study beyond the World Wars in a 1972 paper in Industrial Research. He confirmed his finding.

More from Biden

I got overnight via email a query from @briansflood at Fox News, the principal part of which I reproduce below. I answered by email too. I'll append that reply in the next threaded tweet:


My reply:


Hunter Biden's dubious business activities have been reported for years. Here for example is @TheAtlantic in September 2019, year *before* @nypost
https://t.co/qZBTpyuysM


That emails attributed to Hunter Biden were circulating was also known well before the NYPost story in October. Here's TIME magazine https://t.co/JvpEKdG0U4


What @NYPost added to the work earlier done by others was a new *origin* story for the materials that circulated in Ukraine in 2019. When other media organizations attempted to corroborate that story, hijinx ensued. https://t.co/ZJGZWq7etU @thedailybeast account

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