Reassurance after Abandonment: Alliance Politics after Alliances End

This dissertation examines how major powers respond after pursuing abandonment policies, with particular attention to whether and how they seek to reassure their clients. Drawing from the literatures on reputation, alliance politics, and international credibility, it develops the theory of Selective Reassurance, arguing that reputational concerns, especially the desire to maintain a reputation for keeping promises, shape uneven patterns of post-abandonment military support. The study employs a mixed-methods design. Quantitatively, it analyzes U.S. material support from 1950 to 1989 using Poisson pseudo-maximum likelihood models, revealing that the United States systematically increased military aid to states in regions affected by abandonment, though not necessarily to formal allies. Qualitatively, it draws on archival evidence from two case studies: the First Taiwan Strait Crisis and the Iranian Revolution. The analysis traces the motivations and internal deliberations behind reassurance efforts. The findings show that reputational considerations and subsequent reassurance measures are more conditional and geographically bounded than existing theories would imply. Rather than pursuing global reassurance, major powers tend to engage in targeted signaling aimed at proximate or strategically significant states. This study contributes to the understanding of alliance politics by demonstrating that reassurance is selective and strategic, challenging the view that decision-makers regard reputation as a universal concern and highlighting the costs of retrenchment tied to maintaining a reputation for keeping promises.