Eliot Cohen wrote the foreword to the Romney campaign’s white paper. While the foreword is mostly filled with boilerplate and generalities, some of the assumptions in it are useful for explaining why Romney and his team come to the mistaken conclusions that they do on many issues. Take this line from Cohen for example:

The easiest way, for example, to become embroiled in a clash with China over Taiwan, or because of China’s ambitions in the South or East China Seas, will be to leave Beijing in doubt about the depth of our commitment to longstanding allies in the region. Conversely, a United States that is self-confident and strong will find more developments breaking its way.

That’s just not true. The easiest way to become embroiled in such a clash is to make the mistake of thinking that the U.S. must become involved in local disputes. Probably the next easiest way is to increase the U.S. military presence in the region, which is what Romney proposes. Expanding the U.S. naval presence in the western Pacific will create more occasions for incidents and accidents that might then escalate. The white paper does not specifically address the idea of intensifying U.S. surveillance of Chinese ships in the South China Sea, but it seems likely that this would be one reason to have an expanded naval presence in the region. This is just the sort of thing that is liable to provoke unnecessary clashes. What one person regards as self-confidence and strength is what another would regard as hubris. There was no lack of American confidence and strength in 2002-03, but the years since then have not exactly seen all that many developments breaking our way. It is troubling how much policy arguments coming from Romney and other Republicans exhibit this almost mystical belief in the power of resolve and confidence.

There has been some debate over how the U.S. should react to Chinese claims in the South China Sea. Lyle Goldstein cited the example of Georgia in 2008 as proof that the U.S. will not actually risk conflict with a major power over a minor client state, and he counseled non-intervention. James Holmes rejects the Georgia comparison. In fact, the example of U.S. policy towards Georgia between 2003 and 2008 is instructive for a different reason. What both of them overlook or fail to mention is that the August 2008 crisis developed in large part because of the mistaken belief in Tbilisi that the U.S. would provide Georgia with meaningful support in any confrontation with Russia.

While Goldstein focuses on the blow U.S. credibility suffered when that support was not forthcoming, the crisis was the result of creating the impression that U.S. support was guaranteed. Years of U.S. training of Georgian forces and promoting Georgia’s bid to join NATO encouraged the Georgian government to take extremely unwise action. The U.S. effectively promised more than it was really willing to deliver. That created unrealistic expectations on one side, but completely failed to deter the other. The flip side of removing doubt about the “depth of our commitment” is to give allied governments an exaggerated and false sense of that commitment, which could lead them to take provocative actions in the expectation that the U.S. will be there to bail them out if things get out of hand. That could leave the U.S. watching passively as the client suffers, or in a worse scenario it could force the U.S. into a conflict created by a reckless client.

We have just seen in the recent past how much trouble a policy of “clarity and resolve” can cause, because such a policy often creates the perception of “deep” commitments that the U.S. won’t or can’t honor. If it’s true that “others abroad take the doubts we express about ourselves here with the utmost seriousness,” our clients also take American rhetoric of strength and resolve more seriously than they should. That creates some difficulties for the U.S., but it can be truly disastrous for the client state.