Credible and Reassuring: The Importance of Predictability in International Affairs

Charles W. King

One of the major concepts in modern Political Science is that of credibility. For a threat to be credible the leaders and policy-makers of foreign powers must believe that the actor making the threat will follow through on it. Credible threats are what make policies of nuclear deterrence and collective defense effective. After World War Two the United States initially threatened a policy of nuclear retaliation for any Soviet aggression, but this was quickly undermined by American unwillingness to use nuclear weapons over the 1948 Soviet coup d’état in Czechoslovakia. The formation of NATO and establishment of Article 5 made American and European threats of retaliation for Soviet aggression more credible. The articulation that, “an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all,” clarified how the US and its allies would respond to what kind of actions. Where previously it has been difficult for rivals and allies alike to predict the American response to Soviet actions, this clarification made US policy more predictable.

Predictability has a range of advantages in international affairs. In the 1980s the Soviet Union developed a system known as the “Dead Hand” or “Hand from the Grave” that would automatically launch a retaliatory strike against the United States if a nuclear weapon detonated in the Soviet Union, a doomsday device in every sense of the word. Contrary to Dr. Strangelove’s exclamation that, “the whole point of a doomsday device is lost if you keep it a secret!” The purpose of the “Dead Hand” system was not to deter American policy-makers, but Soviet ones. Knowing that the “Dead Hand” would automate a nuclear second strike if the Soviet Union was attacked, Soviet leaders would no longer be tempted launch a nuclear strike in response to a false alarm. The predictability of their own system made Soviet policy-makers confident in the credibility of their own threats of retaliation and enabled them to act more predictably towards American policies.

International diplomacy is underpinned by its predictability. Nations know that their diplomats and embassies are protected from molestation, and they know how and where to contact each other publically and privately. In the midst of war nations are able to contact each other directly or through intermediaries, which is essential to the successful resolution of conflicts. The United States does not have diplomatic relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran, however there is a longstanding policy of contact between the US and Iran through the Swiss Embassy in Iran. The United States’ “One China Policy” and the Shanghai Communiqué allow both the US and the People’s Republic of China to know what is and is not over the line, so that the can avoid crossing it or cross it if they so choose. Without knowing where that line is relations between the US and the PRC would be much more fraught.

Even Richard Nixon’s “Madman Theory” was an exercise not in unpredictability but in predictability. Nixon established that he was willing to respond to Soviet actions more aggressively; this would not have been effective if it was not predictable. Nixon was not unpredictable; rather he leveraged Soviet expectations from previous administrations to create new expectations that his administration believed to be advantageous.

Predictability makes cooperation with friendly nations and deterring rival nations easier. It is the foundation of credible deterrence and effective international trade agreements. The establishment of policies and patterns of behavior on the international state are something that policy-makers must engage with actively, knowing that predictability is advantageous and descalatory, and can be leveraged.