I Will Follow: Smart Power and the Management of Wartime Alliances

Abstract

This paper employs the concept of smart power to construct an analytical framework for assessing wartime alliance management. It makes two arguments. First, wartime sources of soft power differ from those obtaining during peacetime. Second, the coerciveness with which an alliance leader wields hard power towards actual or prospective allies should vary inversely with the amount of soft power it possesses. The smart power framework illuminates three types of alliance management failure. The paper’s key contentions are illustrated with examples furnished from the record of US alliance leadership since World War II.     

Security,autonomy and defense burdens: The effects of alliance membership in the 19th and 20th centuries

This paper investigates the effect of alliance membership on the defense burdens of major powers in the 19th and 20th centuries. We hypothesize that the reactions of states to alliance membership will be different in the pre‐nuclear and nuclear eras. Possession of nuclear weapons by allies makes the security provided by the alliance more akin to a collective good than is the case in the pre‐nuclear era. States join alliances for two reasons: security and autonomy. The effects of each of these concerns are identified. We include in our model such alliance‐level factors as the power equivalence of the allies and the number of states in the alliance. We also look at state‐level variables such as power position within the alliance. We conclude that the nuclear period generally operates as the free‐rider principle would posit, while models based on “complementarity of effort” are more applicable in the earlier period.     

A simple and untraditional analysis of western alliance burden‐sharing

The original Olson and Zeckhauser model of alliance burden‐sharing was based on the following four assumptions: (1) alliance defence is a pure public good; (2) allied nations make their security contribution decisions without consulting the other allies; (3) alliances produce only a single public good; and (4) alliance defence is produced with equal degrees of efficiency in all alliance nations. But while the first of these assumptions has received a great deal of attention in the alliance literature, the remaining ones have received comparatively less attention, particularly in terms of empirical analyses. This paper synthesizes a varied literature developed around these four assumptions, both substantively and theoretically, and shows that when these assumptions are brought closer to real world approximations, hypotheses regarding the potential for security cooperation with less free‐riding result. This article also provides a simple test of Western alliance burden‐sharing in the areas of military spending, development resources spending, and research and development spending that supports the hypothesis positing more equitable burden‐sharing.     

Stopping Suicide Attacks: Optimal Strategies and Unintended Consequences

We study the behavior of defense spending in Switzerland over 1975–2001. Our main interest is in determining how neutrality in international affairs (non‐membership in military alliances) affects defense spending. We find that neutrality is associated with a perception of lower levels of external threat; hence it confers economic benefits in the form of a smaller defense burden. However, neutrality does not fully insulate a country from variations in the level of external threat in the global system as perceived by members of military alliances. Swiss defense spending has tracked very closely the spending trends – but at a lower average level – of the United States and other NATO countries. To the extent that post‐Cold War threats, such as international terrorism, materialize primarily in the context of existing security alliances, Swiss military spending patterns observed in 1975–2001 are likely to remain the same in the future.     

A Reversal of Fortunes? Extended Deterrence and Assurance in Europe and East Asia1

ABSTRACT

The extended deterrence relationships between the United States and its allies in Europe and East Asia have been critical to regional and global security and stability, as well as to nonproliferation efforts, since the late 1950s. These relationships developed in different regional contexts, and reflect differing cultural, political and military realities in the US allies and their relations with the United States. Although extended deterrence and assurance relations have very different histories, and have to some extent been controversial through the years, there has been a rethinking of these relations in recent years. Many Europeans face a diminished threat situation as well as economic and political pressures on the maintenance of extended deterrence, and are looking at the East Asian relationships, which do not involve forward deployed forces as more attractive than NATO’s risk-and-burden-sharing concepts involving the US nuclear forces deployed in Europe. On the other hand, the East Asian allies are looking favorably at NATO nuclear consultations, and in the case of South Korea, renewed US nuclear deployments (which were ended in 1991), to meet increased security concerns posed by a nuclear North Korea and more assertive China. This paper explores the history of current relationships and the changes that have led the allies to view those of others as more suitable for meeting their current needs.     

Rent‐seeking models of international competition: An experimental investigation*

This paper experimentally tests a number of hypotheses that follow from models of international competition that are based on Tullock style rent‐seeking models. Specifically, we designed and performed experiments to see how variations in the degree of publicness in the prize as well as changes in the values assigned to the prize affect alliances in terms of individual nation contributions, total contributions, burden sharing, and the likelihood of winning the prize. While there was substantial variation in individual behavior, the results of the experiments generally conform to the theoretical predictions of the rent‐seeking model of international competition and alliances.     

Security assurances and proliferation risks in the Trump administration

Comments that Donald Trump made while campaigning to be U.S. president have raised concerns that his administration will pull back from U.S. alliance commitments and encourage countries such as Japan and South Korea to acquire nuclear arms. The new article by Frühling and O’Neil outlines an institutional framework that can be helpful in assessing the risks that Trump administration policies will lead to nuclear proliferation. An institutional perspective shows that important elements of U.S. security assurances will continue to function, and this reduces the chances that President Trump’s actions or statements will trigger proliferation by U.S. allies. The greatest risk to global non-proliferation efforts posed by a Trump administration in fact lies elsewhere, in the possibility that President Trump will seek to abrogate the Iran nuclear deal.     

Reconsidering publicness in alliance defence expenditures: NATO expansion and burden sharing

Over the past several decades, NATO allies have debated the relative burdens and benefits of NATO membership. Recently, this concern surfaced as members debated the magnitude and distribution of NATO expansion costs. This paper presents an economic model of defence alliances to identify the benefits and burdens of alliance membership. It suggests that defence expenditures provide public benefits if alliance members share common interests and mutual commitment; defence expenditures provide private benefits if countries lack common interests and mutual commitment. The model's results are used to discuss NATO's evolving roles and missions, NATO expansion and burden sharing across NATO members.     

Analysing coalition warfare from an intra-alliance politics perspective: The Normandy Campaign 1944

This article sets forth a framework for analysis designed to enhance our understanding of the political management of coalition warfare. The framework, based upon literature appertaining to ‘intra-alliance politics’ and International Relations (IR) theories, is applied to the case study of the Normandy Campaign of 1944. Utilising this framework we are able to consider many of the thorny issues of coalition politics and determine how these can be managed successfully to maintain Allied cohesion. Throughout the analysis the merits of the ‘realist’ and ‘pluralist’ views on maintaining Allied cohesion are appraised. The article concludes that, while both afford convincing explanations for overcoming tensions within the coalition, the pluralist approach proves superior in accounting for Allied unity. Overall, the article demonstrates that the intra-alliance politics framework is a useful device for understanding the political dynamics of the Normandy Campaign in 1944 and that it is also potentially applicable to other instances of coalition warfare; past, present, and future.     

SDI,NATO, and the Social Composition Function

The strategic defense initiative (SDI) intends to renew the leadership of the USA on the western alliance. The initiative takes place in a period when a summation technology prevails for the aggregation of contributions of NATO allies. We investigate if SDI induces a shift in Hirshleifer’s social composition function. Panel data tests over the period 1970–1990 do not confirm any break toward a best-shot aggregator. SDI does not alter the core of deterrence. It is indeed a public good at the US level but not at the NATO level, where, it is one of the joint products of the alliance. We also investigate the lessons to be drawn for the current debates on ballistic defense.