http://revista.ieee.es/index.php/ieee 306 Journal of the Spanish Institute for Strategic Studies Núm. 8 / 2016 nuclear conflict, provided the adversary has sufficient arsenal to cause this unaccepta-ble damage. CREDIBILITY AND DETERRENCE The main requirement for deterrence is credibility: deterrence depends more on credibility than the existence of sufficient military capability55. Tang defines credibility as56: «Perception of capability, the perception of interest, and a reputation for resolve. In any given situation, an actor’s credibility is other actors’combined assessment of these three factors». The quality and quantity of the military resources available will usually be enough proof of a state’s capability. The influence of reputation in the behaviour of states often results in states accep-ting higher costs or risks than are warranted by the actual interests at stake in order to avoid the value of their commitments in future crises being called into question57. Tang believes that reputation is58 others states’perception of that state’s willingness to risk war in certain circumstances. Consequently, reputation is a factor that predicts future behaviour59. In Boulding’s opinion60: «If threats are not carried out their credibility gradually declines. Credibility, as it were, is a commodity which depreciates with the mere passage of time». Reputation seeks to avoid this depreciation of credibility by creating in the mind of potential adversaries the feeling that a particular state always carries out its threats. Reputation is therefore costly to build (it has to be maintained over a considerable pe-riod of time and in very varied circumstances) and very easy to destroy (one situation when it does not carry out its threats will suffice to raise doubts). 55 KAHN, Herman. Thinking About the Unthinkable, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962, p. 89. 56 TANG, Shiping. Reputation, Cult of Reputation and International Conflict, Security Studies journal, vol. 14, no. 1, January-March 2005, pp. 34-62, p. 38. 57 JERVIS, Robert. Deterrence and Perception, International Security journal, vol. 7, no. 3 winter 1982, pp. 8-13. 58 TANG. Op. cit., p. 38. 59 MERCER, Jonathan. Op. cit., p. 6. 60 BOULDING, Kenneth. The Meaning of the Twentieth Century, New York: Harper and Row, 1964, p. 81.
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