AMERICAS ENTANGLING ALLIANCES
AMERICAS ENTANGLING ALLIANCES
1778 TO THE PRESENT
JASON W. DAVIDSON
2020 Georgetown University Press. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Davidson, Jason, author.
Title: Americas entangling alliances : 1778 to the present / Jason W. Davidson.
Description: Washington, DC : Georgetown University Press, [2020] |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020005500 (print) | LCCN 2020005501 (ebook) | ISBN 9781647120283 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781647120290 (paperback) | ISBN 9781647120306 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Alliances. | International relationsUnited States. | United StatesMilitary relations. | United StatesPolitics and governmentHistory.
Classification: LCC JZ1314 .D38 2020 (print) | LCC JZ1314 (ebook) | DDC 355/.0310973dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020005500
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020005501
This book is printed on acid-free paper meeting the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence in Paper for Printed Library Materials.
21 20 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 First printing
Printed in the United States of America
Cover design by Erin Kirk
Interior design by Blue Heron, Paul Hotvedt
I dedicate this book to Tom and Debby Davidson and Evy Schnee.
Your love and support made this book and so much more possible.
CONTENTS
PREFACE
This book began with a paper I wrote in Andy Bennetts United States Foreign Policy course during my doctoral work at Georgetown University in the late 1990s. My initial look at the sources suggested that Soviet threat played a much greater role in the Truman and Eisenhower administrations decisions to form the early postCold War alliances than much of the literature suggested. As my dissertation and first book focused on revisionist and status-quo states, I turned away from the topic. My 2011 book, Americas Allies and War, looked at US allies decisions to provide or refuse military support for US-led wars. Having looked at things from the allies perspective, I wanted to shift focus back to the question of the United States demand for allies.
The debate on American grand strategy provides one reason for pursuing this question. Retrenchment advocates argue that the costs of US alliance commitments outweigh the benefits they provide. If retrenchment proponents are correct, why have Republican and Democratic administrations continued to seek new allies in the postCold War era? American politicians criticisms of American alliancesfirst through the Tea Party movement and then notably with the rise of Donald Trump to the presidencyprovide another reason to explain the US demand for alliances. Are American alliances a historical aberration, as many of the political critics of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the US alliances with Japan and South Korea argue? Why does the US government pursue alliances if they only serve to undermine its security?
I begin with Patricia Weitsmans insight that alliances are agreements to further members security and thus include more than just defense pacts codified in treaty form. This book seeks to explain the US demand for defense pacts (that is, commitment to defend another against attack) but also explores security partnerships (cooperation and coordination through things like military aid and joint exercises) and military coalitions (to fight together during great power war). The books first goal is to bring to light the full array of alliances the United States has engaged in since 1778. The book documents thirty-four alliances the United States has entered into since the signing of the Declaration of Independence. While more alliances have been signed since World War II than preceding it, alliances are hardly an aberration in US history, as some would have us believe.
The books second goal is to explain the varying demand the United States has had for alliances. The core insight is very simple: while threats spur states to create alliances, a states power stage tells us about the varied purposes allies serve. Lesser powers are only able to focus on survival. They are reluctant to ally when they face anything other than dire straits because they worry about sacrificing their autonomy. As such, lesser powers end up seeking partners in military coalitions but otherwise forgo alliances. Regional powers seek defense pacts to protect their peripheries and regional interests (e.g., maritime security and commerce). When states become great powers, the number of great powers in the international system affects their alliance demand. Great powers in multipolar systems pass the buck until the threat becomes so pressing that they have no other choice but to join a military coalition. Domestic politics play a critical role because, unlike with peacetime allianceswhere there is a decent chance that alliance commitments will never come duein joining a military coalition a state knows that the costs of participation in lives lost and money spent will be certain and real. Great powers in bipolarity respond to threats by forming defense pacts to preclude any adversary from gaining control of critical capabilities or locations. In unipolarity, threats are at a lower (i.e., nonexistential) level, so unipoles pursue security partnerships to project stability and to make military operations against threats easier and less costly by providing base access and troops to unipole-led wars.
This book evaluates the power stages/threat theory of alliance demand against the alternative explanation that emphasizes collective identity. The alternative explanation expects the United States to ally with democracies of a like identity against a nondemocratic other. The book utilizes process-tracing methods to explain the thirty-four American alliances formed since 1778. It draws on published primary sources and an extensive array of secondary sources to evaluate power stages/threat theory against the collective identity alternative.
adversary action ultimately convinced the American public and Congress that the threat posed could only be resolved by joining a military coalition.
the book turns to explaining why a unipolar approach would extend security partnershipsfourteen cases since 1990in the absence of a great power threat. The United States extended security partnerships to the Persian Gulf states, for example, because they facilitate the American militarys response to the regional threats it faces there. The United States chose to pursue multiple rounds of NATO expansion to project stability, to gain military base access, and to gain partners who could reliably contribute to US-led military operations.
As I worked on the book, Donald Trump defied the odds by winning the Republican nomination and then the presidency. Trumps stated view of Americas allies seems to suggest that the US demand for allies can vary by person or party in the White House. In the conclusion I demonstrate that the US demand for allies has remained constant during the Trump administration and we can expect it to continue in the years to come, regardless of who lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
