The second party is simultaneously the "third party" to whom one's bargaining reputation can be pledged. This situation occurs in the threat of local resistance to local aggression. The party threatening achieves its commitment, and hence the credibility of its threat, not by referring to what it would gain from carrying out the threat in this particular instance but by pointing to the long-run value of a fulfilled threat in enhancing the credibility of future threats.

DEFINE: Clarifies how a third party (the reputation audience) undergirds the credibility of threats without direct payoff.

Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, loc. 83