ABSTRACT
Should American policymakers worry that the United States’ allies might entrap the U.S. into costly foreign conflicts? Policymakers and a growing number of academics say no; the United States can craft diplomatic deals and restrain its partners so as to avoid entrapment. As a result, they argue that alliances offer almost free – riskless – deterrence. This chapter challenges that reasoning, arguing that it follows from a superficial reading of the U.S. experience during the Cold War. In fact, allies have long entrapped the United States into costly foreign adventures by manipulating the United States’ perception of foreign threats, exacerbating tensions with other states that require more U.S. activism, and occasionally provoking crises that enmesh the United States into regional conflicts. These processes help entrap the United States by pushing the it to consider foreign interests as its own, while increasing the risk of miscalculation, escalation, and war. These behaviors were prominent during the Cold War and, though sublimated at the height of the United States’ unipolar moment, are increasingly part of today’s foreign policy landscape. Alliances may seem an unalloyed good, but they carry potentially massive costs. U.S. foreign-policymakers should recalibrate their value.
