Reputation and War.
详细信息
文摘
My dissertation examines why wars persist even when continuing a war is costly and unlikely to change the outcome. I argue that decision-makers wage war as a way to influence their nation's reputation, advancing a new explanation for why/how states select their war aims, or minimum settlement terms. My research makes novel and important contributions to two bodies of literatures in IR---on war termination and on reputation in international politics---by making two arguments: First, that variation in actors' beliefs about reputation drives variation in war aims (ceteris paribus), and second, that variation in actors' beliefs about reputation occurs at the individual level, where different decision-makers have different beliefs about who is the relevant audience and how to project resolve. I improve upon the current thinking on reputation in international relations by separating analytically a leader's beliefs about his/her own nation's reputation (termed Reputation Concern) from the nation's actual reputation, which depends upon the perceptions of others. 1 also show how Reputation Concern manifests in distinct ways amongst individual leaders, with important implications for war continuation/termination. In each of the three case studies of the dissertation---Truman and Eisenhower in the Korean War, Johnson and Nixon in the Vietnam War, and Salisbury and Chamberlain in the South African War (Boer War)---I track the variation in war aims and demonstrate that individual-level variation in actors' beliefs about how to project resolve is critical to the selection and maintenance of war aims.