"Credibility" has long been a preoccupation of American geopoliticians. Though never clearlydefined, its primary meaning for Washington has been the need to demonstrate our persistent will to defendAmerican policies throughout the world. From the first days of America's emergence as a superpower, ourleaders have normally acted as if U.S. credibility depended less on truthfulness than on an image of or theexercise of raw military strength. Beginning early in the Cold War, presidents, national security advisers,and nuclear strategists insisted that credible threats to use force were essential to protect vital U.S.interests whenever and wherever they were challenged. In Vietnam, American leaders prolonged the fighting notso much out of confidence that their objectives in that small, distant country could be achieved, but out of afear of losing and thus sapping our "global credibility."
The phrase "credibility gap" first entered American political vernacular in 1965, in the middle ofan era of "gaps" (from the "missile gap" to "the generation gap"). JournalistDavid Wise used it to highlight the gulf between President Lyndon Johnson's claim that American militaryescalation in Vietnam was limited and defensive and an emerging public perception that it was, in fact,massive and aggressive. In light of the current situation, it is important to recall that the Vietnam-eracredibility gap took years to form and did not become a Grand Canyon until the Nixon years, late in the war,after some 35,000 Americans and at least a million Vietnamese had already died.