The sound of silence: Power, secrecy, and international audiences in US military basing negotiations

Abstract

Why do leaders draw attention to some cooperative security negotiations but shroud others in secrecy? Previous scholarship focuses on leaders' efforts to gain better terms of agreement either by playing their cards close to the vest at the bargaining table or by leveraging/avoiding aroused public opinion at home. Yet, in many cases, it is neither dyadic nor domestic political pressures that motivate leaders' decisions to publicly acknowledge or conceal the occurrence of talks. This article suggests, instead, that third-party states often constitute the primary targets of official secrecy and that a state's international power position shapes its decision to conceal or acknowledge military cooperation by affecting the size and attentiveness of international audiences, the types of assets it brings to the relationship and the benefits it seeks from cooperation. I test five hypotheses about leaders' use of secrecy and acknowledgment through a statistical analysis of an original dataset on US overseas military basing negotiations. This analysis produces strong support for my argument.

Regions of Hierarchy and Security: US Troop Deployments, Spatial Relations, and Defense Burdens

“…While the US exerts greater control over State A's foreign policy, it lacks the ability to constrain State A's neighbors in the same way. The projection of military power into State A may actually exacerbate security dilemma dynamics between State A and its neighbors, as it necessarily alters the balance of power in the region (Brown 2013(Brown , 2014Destradi and Gundlach 2013;Frazier and Stewart-Ingersoll 2010;Lake 2009b). Accordingly, State A should only cede a medium amount of authority when neighborhood deployments are small, since the host-state might want to maintain flexibility in dealing with potentially contentious neighbors.…”

“…Schelling (1966, 47) notes that US troop deployments to West Germany and Berlin were intended to affect the decisions of the USSR. Brown (2013Brown ( , 2014 also notes that the actions of third-party states shape the negotiations over troop deployments. Furthermore, recent work by Lake (2009a, 152-153) suggests that security and economic relations between the US and subordinate states should affect the interactions of third-party dyads.…”

Media technology, covert action, and the politics of exposure

“…Democratic interveners intent on toppling fellow democracies, for example, may exploit covert action to avoid angering domestic constituencies (Downes & Lilley, 2010; Poznansky, 2015: 124). Covert action may also reduce the odds of triggering unwanted and unintended escalation (Brown, 2013; Carson, 2016). The potential benefits of plausible deniability, the main benefit of covert action, are many.…”

War and diplomacy on the world stage: Crisis bargaining before third parties

“…And institutional support, if it lowers the costs of war, can also embolden uninformed states to risk war when they otherwise would not (Chapman and Wolford, 2010). If states worry that potential supporters will draw undesirable inferences from public threats, they may also attempt reassurance through secret diplomacy (Brown, 2014; Carson, 2016; Yarhi-Milo, 2013). Some non-crisis negotiations are easy to keep secret (Crall and Martin, 2013), but international crises are often public events (see also Fearon, 1994).…”