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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   35891 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 3, 2022

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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.

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.

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.

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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