Tripwires and Alliance Reassurance: An Exchange – The Authors Reply

Abstract

cent) of US military events in Asia fall into Blankenship and Lin-Greenberg’s worst category—transient demonstrations. These operations—like FONOPS, routine operations through the Taiwan Strait, and flyovers around the North Korean Peninsula—supposedly demonstrate low resolve and low capability. It is an intriguing, and researchable, policy question about why the United States would choose to focus so much of its efforts on precisely the types of activities that Blankenship and Lin-Greenberg argue do little to reassure allies, and thus do little to deter adversaries. After all, most of the activities that fall within the authors’ reassurance typology are not primarily meant to reassure at all, but to deter. This inconsistency raises the additional question of whether the purpose of the military activity determines whether it signals high resolve and/or capability.