Alliances

Alliances have been an important element of security policy since long before the rise of the modern nation-state. Tribes, princedoms and later nation-states have always sought out allies with whom they could pool their resources in the pursuit of common goals. Therefore, the history of alliances is as long as the history of relations between cohesive units of human coexistence. In this chapter, an alliance is regarded – in accordance with the definition of Stephen

Walt (1987: 1) – as a ‘formal or informal relationship of security cooperation between at least two sovereign states’. Therefore, alliances can take the shape of either formal or informal international institutions (Duffield 2007). Furthermore, their structure can correspond to one of two ideal types (Weber 1997: 33) – hierarchical or egalitarian.2 The former type is characterized by significant imbalances of capabilities between alliance members, whilst in the latter type, power is distributed more or less evenly among most members. Hierarchically structured alliances can be further differentiated into hegemonic and

imperial alliances. This distinction refers to the way the strongest power in the alliance exerts its leadership. If the strong state leads with the consent of the smaller powers, their relationship is considered a hegemonic one (cf. Triepel 1938). Arrangements under which the relationship between the strongest state and the other alliance members is based on coercion (as was the case, e.g. in the Warsaw Pact) are considered imperial alliances. Although alliances are a core element in the history of International Relations and the

concept itself is a ‘key term’ (Modelski 1962: 773) in academic discourse, alliances are at the same time ‘understudied’ (Snyder 1997: 1). There are plenty of studies on alliance management, but research is lacking on why alliances are formed and when they dissolve, which is astonishing given the fact that ‘alliances are apparently a universal component of relations between political units, irrespective of time and place’ (Holsti et al. 1973: 2). One of the reasons for this puzzle is that the specific issue of alliances is difficult to separate

from other fields in the discipline of International Relations. It is impossible to discuss alliances without referring to more general theories of International Relations, e.g. realism (Morgenthau 1948), neorealism (Waltz 1979), neoliberal institutionalism (Keohane 1984)

or constructivism (Wendt 1999), or touching upon so-called ‘substantive issues’ (Carlsnaes et al. 2002: iv), e.g. conflict theory (Zartman 1985) or deterrence (Freedman 2004). Because the topic of alliances is inextricably intertwined with other fields of the discipline, theorists have either focused on a particular alliance (mostly on NATO) or developed partial theories focusing on particular aspects of alliances. So far, there have been only three attempts to create anything close to a comprehen-

sive theory of alliances. The first attempt was George Liska’s (1962) ‘Nations in Alliance’, followed 25 years later by the seminal work of Stephen Walt (1987) on ‘The Origins of Alliances’ and, another decade later, Glenn Snyder’s (1997) work on ‘Alliance Politics’. All three studies have their limitations. Liska’s attempt to elaborate a theory of alliances, although it gives some useful insights on the creation of alliances and patterns of cooperation among its members, clearly suffers from its anecdotal character. Walt’s work is limited, as the title indicates, to the origins of alliances, and Snyder’s book on alliances in multipolar systems focuses on the management of member relations. The lack of a discrete body of knowledge about alliances became very much apparent

during the 1990s, when the question of NATO’s survival after the end of the Cold War led to an academic battle between various schools of thought 3 without any tangible results in terms of cumulative knowledge (Lakatos and Musgrave 1970) or paradigm shift (Kuhn 1962). Much of the debate seemed to be self-referential and focused on the affirmation of the different research programmes, rather than striving for the enhancement of our knowledge about alliances. This chapter tries to cut through the current confusion about alliances by providing an

overview of different, occasionally competing, explanations. The following addresses three issues that are fundamental for our understanding of alliance politics. Firstly, why do alliances exist? Secondly, how do they function? And thirdly, when do alliances dissolve, and under which conditions do they survive?