Editing Deterrence theory (section)

===Reputations for resolve===
{{Main|Credibility (international relations)}}

There are three different arguments that have been developed in relation to the role of reputations in influencing deterrence outcomes. The first argument focuses on a defending state's past behavior in international disputes and crises, which creates strong beliefs in a potential attacking state about the defending state's expected behaviour in future conflicts. The credibilities of a defending state's policies are arguably linked over time, and reputations for resolve have a powerful causal impact on an attacking state's decision whether to challenge either general or immediate deterrence. The second approach argues that reputations have a limited impact on deterrence outcomes because the credibility of deterrence is heavily determined by the specific configuration of military capabilities, interests at stake, and political constraints faced by a defending state in a given situation of attempted deterrence. The argument of that school of thought is that potential attacking states are not likely to draw strong inferences about a defending states resolve from prior conflicts because potential attacking states do not believe that a defending state's past behaviour is a reliable predictor of future behavior. The third approach is a middle ground between the first two approaches and argues that potential attacking states are likely to draw reputational inferences about resolve from the past behaviour of defending states only under certain conditions. The insight is the expectation that decisionmakers use only certain types of information when drawing inferences about reputations, and an attacking state updates and revises its beliefs when a defending state's unanticipated behavior cannot be explained by case-specific variables.

An example shows that the problem extends to the perception of the third parties as well as main adversaries and underlies the way in which attempts at deterrence can fail and even backfire if the assumptions about the others' perceptions are incorrect.<ref>{{cite journal|doi=10.2307/2538549 | volume=7 | issue=3 | title=Deterrence and Perception | journal=International Security | pages=3–30 | year=1982 | last1 = Jervis | first1 = Robert| jstor=2538549 }}</ref>