What makes military reassurance work? : restraint, conciliation, and reciprocation during the cold war

Abstract

Conflict management often involves deterrent threats, reassuring promises, or a combination of both. However, while there is considerable evidence regarding the utility and constraints of deterrence, empirical results concerning the deployment of military reassurance remain scarce. Consequently, questions of when military reassurance is the most appropriate tool of influence and what makes the strategy effective remain open. I address these questions by proposing a theory of military reassurance that draws on the psychological and rational choice strands of this research agenda. After defining the theoretical expectations, I test them by conducting two case studies that compare the circumstances under which military reassurance was used and the initiatives which comprised its execution. The first case traces the process of the USSR’s successful reassurance toward the U.S. during the final years of the Cold War, and the second charts the U.S.’s ultimately unsuccessful reassurance toward the USSR during détente.

This dissertation finds that military reassurance is an appropriate strategy when states are trapped in a security dilemma and conflicts of security interests are mainly illusory. It also shows that if a reassurance strategy emphasizes perspective taking and trust building before costly military moves, it will more effectively deescalate tensions. These steps build strong personal relationships and establish a more robust foundation for a long-term process that can be susceptible to frequent setbacks. Newly accessible archival material has provided a long overdue opportunity to expand our empirical knowledge of military reassurance. This contribution has made it possible to advance a theory of military reassurance with a more specific set of prescriptions for reducing security dilemma tensions. Additionally, integrating psychological and rational choice approaches has helped to coalesce some of the existing “islands of theory” into a more coherent theoretical statement. Consequently, this theory offers policymakers a substantive alternative to deterrence and nonmilitary reassurances and a more reliable guide to preventing unnecessary conflicts.