Internationally, reputation is, essentially, your country's track record projected forward in other nations' thinking. It's their expectation value for how you

Internationally, reputation is, essentially, your country's track record projected forward in other nations' thinking. It's their expectation value for how you will behave in the future. People prioritize reputation because that's pretty much all there is to go on. Treaties? Sure, but how likely is the country to keep the terms of it? Agreements? Same question. Place for investments? How good is the rule of law there, and how likely is that to continue? Those are reputation questions; that is, they are questions about future behavior as predicted by past behavior.