Foreign perceptions of American casualty sensitivity : is your reputation worth fighting for?

I examine America's reputation for sustaining casualties (i.e., foreign perceptions of American casualty sensitivity) in order to test and shed light on the larger "reputation" hypothesis. For the purposes of this paper, the reputation hypothesis posits that foreign perceptions of American casualty tolerance are based on past American actions. The central question of this paper asks how countries come to hold their perceptions of American casualty sensitivity. I conduct six case studies to test four (not mutually exclusive) hypotheses - reputation, interests, democracy, and culture - concerning foreign perceptions of American casualty sensitivity. The case studies document foreign leaders - including adversaries, allies, and neutrals - giving the United States reputations for lacking resolve and being unable to sustain casualties based upon America's previous retreats and defeats. I conclude that, in disagreement with the central conclusions of the reputation literature to date, it is indeed right for a state to fight for its reputation. In addition, the evidence suggests that the reputation hypothesis, democracy hypothesis, and culture hypothesis explain different aspects of the phenomenon. However, when viewed in combination, these three hypotheses provide a nearly complete explanation of how countries come to hold their perceptions of American casualty sensitivity. Surprisingly, the historical record provides the least amount of support for the interests hypothesis.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Political Science.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2004

Author dc:creator

• Horst, Adam Marshall, 1978-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Harvey Sapolsky.

• Political Science.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/29437

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/29437