ABSTRACT
This chapter develops the concepts of decentering and recentering in security strategy. It explains how these concepts relate to the alliance security dilemma and the impact of attention scarcity and distinguishes decentering and recentering from alliance tightness versus looseness. Decentering occurs across three distinct areas of security strategy: the diversification of security partners, the ending of “specialness” for the originally central security partner in security policy, and the carving out of policy independence from the central partner.
