DIPLOMATIC COALITIONS AND MILITARY ALLIANCES

_ч Governments that seek to construct permanent diplomatic coalitions or military alliances assume that they cannot achieve their objectives, defend their interests, or deter perceived threats by mobilizing their own capabilities. Thus, they rely upon, and make commitments to, other states that face similar external problems or share similar objectives.

Of the five types of international systems, alliance strategies appear com-мпопіу in all but the hierarchical variety. In the Western Chou era, the feudal units were subservient to the central monarchy, and the only coalitions sanc­tioned by the leader of the system were those between itself and the subordinate units. Secret coalitions between the vassal states were deemed treasonable; but, as the superior-subordinate, contractual relations of the system decayed, owing to the growth of power among feudal units on the periphery, alliances became commonplace. In the diffuse system, alliances appear regularly but tend to be temporary in so far as state objectives derive from specific needs and interests rather than ideological aspirations. In the polar and diffuse-bloc systems, alli­ances tend to be closely knit structures in which the smaller alliance partners do not easily remove themselves from the bloc. Bloc alliances persist over a period of time, because they usually express deep ideological cleavages between bloc leaders, not just dynastic or commercial rivalries.

Alliance strategies are closely linked to domestic needs. States that share common economic problems are likely to form trading groups or diplomatic coalitions that maintain solidarity on trade issues. Thus, while on many problems today the developing countries do not constitute a bloc in the military-diplomatic

³ The conditions that help sustain a policy of nonalignment are discussed by Risto Hyvan-nen in "Neutrality in International Politics," an unpublished paper prepared for the Center for International Affairs, Harvard University (April 1964), p. 71.

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sense, they have joined together on the question of obtaining more favorable commercial relations with the industrialized countries. The most effective eco­nomic coalition has been the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), which has successfully raised the price of oil in the face of strenuous consumer objections and attempts by the United States to pit the members against each other on non-oil issues. The member states obviously have a com­mon interest in obtaining more revenue for their sole natural resource; but, acting singly, they could never achieve their objective, since consumers could just go to another supplier. By creating a cartel, or producers' monopoly, their bargaining power is enhanced far beyond the mere sum of their national strengths.

Nations that decide for various domestic or ideological reasons to under­take programs of territorial or revolutionary expansion may combine to form aggressive military alliances. Alliances have also bolstered weak regimes and served essentially domestic political purposes rather than defense against exter­nal threats. Throughout history, political units have offered their military capabil­ities to other states in order to help maintain friendly governments in power or perpetuate a particular dynasty against internal and externally supported rebellion or subversion. Although most alliances today are initially formulated for defense against a common external enemy, their effect may be to protect weak regimes against internal dissidence and revolution. Military aid given under alliance agreements may be used by the recipient to quell rebellions, while the military training assistance it receives often comes in the form of instruction in riot-control techniques and counterinsurgency warfare. In both Communist and Western alliance systems, some partners have joined basically out of the need to secure external protection against internal unrest.

Common perceptions of threat and widespread attitudes of insecurity are probably the most frequent sources of military alliances, whereas complemen­tarity or common economic gains underlie economic coalitions. As Thucydides noted over 2,000 years ago and as modern experimental and historical studies have substantiated, mutual fear is the most solid basis upon which to organize an alliance.⁴ Nevertheless, because in the face of common threats governments have also chosen neutrality (witness Belgium in 1936), we cannot say that this factor is a sufficient condition for the formation of an alliance; we cannot predict that if two states, A and B, commonly perceive С as an enemy, they will form an alliance. It is probably, however, a necessary condition: The chance that A and В would form a military alliance if they did not commonly perceive С as a threat would be low. Nor are other factors, such as internal stability in the partners, ideological affinity, and common economic values, while all significant in helping alliances cohere, sufficient in themselves to create or maintain the alliances. States, therefore, construct military alliances usually to act as deterrents

⁴ Thucydides, A History of the Peloponnesian War, trans. Benjamin Jowett (Oxford: Ashendene Press, 1930), Book III, Par. 11.

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against those that are making demands against their interests or posing immedi­ate military threats. NATO was the primary Western response to the Berlin * blockade, the Communist coup d'etat in Czechoslovakia in 1948, and the expecta­tion that similar actions, backed by the Red Army, would take place in France and Italy. The Warsaw alliance was formed in 1955 in response to the rapid recovery of West Germany during the early 1950s, its incorporation into NATO in the winter of 1954-1955, and the Communist expectation of a possible German "war of revenge" against East Europe.

Geographic characteristics are often relevant in the construction of alli­ances, although, as with other conditions, neither proximity nor topographical features are sufficient to cause alliances to be formed or to sustain them. Both Kautilya and Machiavelli advised their princes to form alliances with their ene­mies' neighbors, and certainly the possibility that the target of an alliance may have to fight a two-front war is one consideration underlying some modern alliances. The French interest in an alliance with Russia after 1871 was aroused *■ in part by recognition that the best way to deter another Prussian attack would be to confront that country with a military response from both east and west. Hitler's nonaggression treaty with the Soviet Union in 1939 was designed specifi­cally to prevent a Soviet-Western coalition, so that he could prosecute the war against France and England without having to worry about a Soviet attack in the east. In the 1950s, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles fixed the United States' defense perimeter on the very borders of the Soviet Union and China. Through NATO, SEATO, the Baghdad Pact, ANZUS, and mutual security treaties with Taiwan and Japan, Dulles hoped to create a military belt encircling the entire Communist world. Proximity to the Soviet bloc was an important factor in choosing alliance partners. Those that were farther away from China or the Soviet Union received less military and economic aid than did the "perime­ter allies," unless they hosted air or naval bases for American strategic forces. But for every case where proximity was a factor in alliance formation, we can probably cite cases where alliances were made by partners relatively distant from each other and from their common, perceived enemy. Indeed, one systematic study of 130 military alliances, nonaggression treaties, and en­tentes between 1815 and 1965 shows no relationship between the distances separating allies and the creation or duration of the alliance.⁵ Thus, no general­ization can be offered on the relationship between alliances and geography. In any case, common perception of threat would seem to be more important as a major source of an alliance orientation in foreign policy.

Types of Alliances

* Military alliances can be classified and compared according to four main criteria: (1) the nature of the casus foedens (the situation in which mutual commitments

⁵ See Ole R. Holsti, P. Terrence Hopmann, and John D. Sullivan,Unity and Disintegration in International Alliances: Comparative Studies (New York: John Wiley, 1973), Chap. 2.

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are to become operational); (2) the type of commitments undertaken by the treaty signatories; (3) the degree of military integration of the military forces of the alliance partners; and (4) the geographic scope of the treaty.

The Casus Foederis.Although partners to an alliance have some simi­lar or overlapping foreign-policy objectives, negotiators of the treaty are usually very cautious in defining the casus foederis. Some treaties, particularly those in recent years that have been used for offensive purposes, contain a very vague definition of the situation that will bring the alliance into operation. Because of universal condemnation of outright aggressive military alliances, offensive treaties seldom express their real purpose. The 1939 German-Italian "Pact of Steel," for example, provided: "If it should happen, against the wishes and hopes of the contrasting parties, that one of them should become involved in warlike complications . . . the other contracting party will come to its aid as an ally and will support it with all its military forces." The term "warlike complica­tions" is so vague that it could (and did) commit Italy to assist Hitler in almost any situation. Soviet mutual-assistance treaties with Bulgaria and Romania (1948) also had such obscure definitions of the casus foederis ("drawn into military activi­ties") that it was difficult to predict when and under what exact circumstances the Soviet, Romanian, and Bulgarian armies would begin military operations. In contrast to the vague casus foederis are those that contain a very precise defini­tion of the situation in which the alliance is to be put into effect militarily. The NATO treaty, in Article 5, states that military measures can be taken only . in response to an actual armed attack on one of the signatories.

Commitments Undertaken.Alliance treaties also differ according to the type of responses and responsibilities required once the situation calling for action develops. The Soviet-Bulgarian treaty of 1948 unequivocally provided that if one of the parties is "drawn into military activities," the other will "immedi­ately give . . . military and other help by all means at its disposal." This type₍ of commitment is called a "hair-trigger" clause, because it automatically commits the signatories to military action if the casus foederis occurs. A similar clause is found in the Brussels pact among Great Britain, France, Belgium, the Nether­lands, and Luxembourg. Since the clause establishes automatic commitments, it leaves little leeway for decision makers and diplomats to decide what to do once the casus foederis arises.

In contrast, some treaties only spell out vaguely the type of responses the treaty partners will make. The ANZUS treaty, which ties Australia, New Zealand, and the United States into a defensive alliance system, provides that each party will "act to meet the danger ... in accordance with its constitutional processes." This treaty contains no precise military commitments, nor does it prescribe any course of action to which the parties commit themselves if one of them is attacked. Similarly, the renewed Japanese-American security treaty of 1960 provides only for "consultations" between the parties ifjapan is attacked.

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Alliance responsibilities may be mutual or one-sided. Mutual-defense treaties theoretically require all the signatories to assume equal commitments toward each other. According to the principles in the NATO and Warsaw treaties, an attack on any one of the signatories is to be considered an attack on all, ' requiring every signatory to come to the aid of the victim of aggression or armed attack. Other alliance treaties impose unequal burdens on the signatories. After "consultations," the United States may become obligated to defend Japan against external attack, but the Japanese are not obligated under the 1960 security treaty to assist in the defense of North America if war or invasion should occur there.

A variation of the unequal-burden treaty is the guarantee treaty, whereby one or more states receive guarantees for their security from a third party or parties, while the guaranteeing power or powers receive nothing in return except perhaps the possibility of enhancing stability and peace. Guarantee treaties of this variety were popular in the 1920s; one prominent example was the Locarno treaty of 1925, in which Great Britain and Italy undertook to come to the assis­tance of France, Belgium, or Germany, depending on which was attacked or was the target of a violation of the Franco-Belgian-German frontiers. For guaran­teeing these frontiers, Italy and Great Britain received in return no tangible commitments from the beneficiaries.

Integration of Forces. Alliances may also be distinguished according to the degree of integration of military forces. Alliance treaties in historic interna­tional systems seldom provided for more than casual coordination of military planning, while national forces remained organizationally and administratively distinct. European alliances in the eighteenth century typically required signato­ries to provide a specified number of men and/or funds for the common effort, but otherwise set forth no plans for coordinated military operations or integrating forces or commands. Any coordination that did take place was the result of ad hoc decisions made after hostilities began. In one of the most enduring alliances of the nineteenth century, the Austro-German Dual Alliance of 1879, rudimentary military coordination was carried out only through the services of military attaches in Vienna and Berlin; and when the alliance was put to the test in 1914, German military and political leaders knew very little about Austria's mobilization plans.

Since World War II, the major leaders of both coalitions have sought to increase military integration to the extent that allied forces would operate, if war came, almost as one unified armed force. Integration may be accomplished by establishing a supreme commander of all allied forces (such as the Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, in NATO), standardizing weapons systems for all national forces (barely begun in NATO), integrating military personnel of differ­ent countries into one command structure (as proposed in the ill-fated European Defense Community), or permitting one of the major alliance partners to orga­nize, draft, and direct all strategic and tactical war plans for the other partners.

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Major alliances today also have permanent headquarters, continuous political and military consultations, innumerable meetings of technical experts, and a continuing avalanche of memoranda and staff studies.

Not only have some alliances become large organizations, but the manner in which they operate has changed since the eighteenth century. In that period, alliances were often concluded only after an armed attack had occurred, so that commitments were undertaken only for a very limited range of objectives. Today, however, alliances have a greater deterrence function. The purpose of the alii- • ance is to prevent crises and increase diplomatic influence, not just to fight a war. Major contemporary alliances are built on the assumption of bloc politics and on the presence of almost permanently congruent foreign-policy objectives or permanent external threats. The lengthy sequence of threat perception-crisis-mobilization-declaration of war, a sequence that in the eighteenth century often lasted several months, can no longer be assumed with the new technology of warfare. The elements of speed and surprise, vital to military success, require that alliance commitments and war plans be agreed upon and drafted before any crisis occurs. In comparison to 200 years ago, alliance systems today are less flexible, more permanent, and more highly organized.

Geographical Scope. Finally, alliances differ with respect to the scope of their coverage. Soviet mutual-aid treaties are designed to cover only the territory of the state that is attacked or "drawn into military activities," but one of the major problems in drafting and interpreting the NATO treaty con­cerned whether the signatories could be committed to defend the overseas colo­nies or territories of France or Great Britain. The French and British govern­ments insisted that NATO obligations extend to at least some of their overseas territories; so Article 5 of the treaty was drafted to read: ". . . an armed attack on one or more of the Parties is deemed to include an attack on the territory of any of the Parties . . . , on the Algerian department of France, on the occupa­tion forces of any Party in Europe, on the islands under jurisdiction of any Party in the North Atlantic area north of the Tropic of Cancer, or on the vessels or aircraft in this area of any of the Parties." In 1965, coverage of the treaty was extended to Malta, which had received protection under Article 5 by virtue of being "an island under the jurisdiction of" Great Britain, but which received . its independence in 1964.

Although these distinctions relating to the forms and types of alliances may seem quite technical, they are important because precise definitions of scope, casus foederis, and obligations lend predictability to the responses alliance partners will make in crisis situations. Predictability is an important element in international stability and may become crucial in crisis situations. One of the main objections against secret treaties and alliances is that decision makers cannot plan actions and predict responses of both friends and potential enemies if they are not familiar with treaty commitments and obligations. However, it must be acknowledged that treaties do not provide complete predictability, and

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that the circumstances of the moment will largely determine the responses alli­ance partners make in critical times. The NATO treaty, for example, stipulates that the parties will decide how to commit themselves only at the time an "armed attack" takes place against one of the signatories. Yet, if the Soviets launched a massive invasion of Western Europe, there is little doubt that previously drafted retaliatory plans of the NATO bureaucracy would come into effect almost instan­taneously, with slight latitude for negotiations and discussions among the treaty partners. In such a situation, even when alliance commitments are common knowledge, do alliance strategies succeed?

No generalizations can be offered as to whether defensive alliances suc­cessfully deter aggression or provide stability for the international system. Pre­sumably, a potential aggressor faced with an overwhelming coalition against it will not risk destruction of its society when it possesses foreknowledge of certain defeat. Yet decision makers do not always behave rationally in crisis situations, and there are enough examples (discussed in more detail in Chapter 11) of their going to war knowing that the probability of success was low to disprove this presumption. All we can say is that alliances probably inject a factor of caution among decision makers with aggressive designs; defensive alliances in­crease greatly the risks and costs to the aggressor, but do not necessarily prevent organized violence. We can only speculate on the wars that did not begin because alliances effectively performed the deterrence function; but both past and present reveal occasions when defensive alliances failed to deter, lower tensions, or promote stability in the system.

Strains in Alliances

Aside from poor military coordination or planning, one reason that alliances may fail to deter potential aggressors is that they lack political cohesiveness or are riven by quarrels and political disagreements. Presumably, any military coalition will be more effective to the extent that its members agree on the major objectives to be achieved, help each other diplomatically, and trust that once the casus foederis arises, the partners will in fact meet their commitments. In any international system comprised of independent and sovereign states, however, there is no automatic guarantee that even the most solemn undertakings will be fulfilled if those commitments are in conflict with the prevailing interests of different governments. Several situations can cause strains in alliances, impair­ing their effectiveness both as deterrents and as fighting organizations.

The first is when the objectives of two or more parties begin to diverge. If all partners of a defensive military coalition perceive a common enemy or threat, the alliance is likely to withstand strains caused by ideological incompati­bilities or distrust arising from personality differences between political leaders. But if the objectives become incongruent, or the potential enemy of one alliance partner is not the enemy of the other, serious problems of cooperation and coordination arise and make the alliance more formal than real. The Franco-

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Prussian alliance of 1741, for instance, lasted only several years before the diverg­ing objectives of the signatories led to bitter quarrels over the prosecution of military campaigns. Frederick the Great was interested above all in destroying Austria and detaching Bohemia from Maria Theresa's realm; whereas French policy makers, less interested in dealing a blow to Austria, wanted to drive the English from the continent, in general, and from Flanders, in particular. The Prussians were hardly interested in these French objectives, with the result that there was no coordination of military operations, no trust in each other's diplomatic maneuvers, and, ultimately, no alliance.

More recently, the American-Pakistan alliance has been more a means through which Pakistan has received arms than a coalition leading to meaningful diplomatic cooperation. When the United States induced Pakistan to join SEATO in 1954, it regarded the Moslem country as a bulwark against communism. The purpose of the alliance, as seen from Washington, was to prevent Russia or Communist China from moving into South Asia. Pakistan, however, concluded the alliance primarily to obtain American arms and diplomatic support against India, its traditional enemy. Diplomatic relations between the United States and Pakistan reached a low point in the 1960s when Pakistan criticized the United States for failure to lend it support on the Kashmir issue and, as the Pakistan government saw it, for giving comfort to the Indians. Left virtually isolated on the Kashmir problem, Pakistan turned increasingly to Communist China, which was also embroiled in a border conflict with India. The American response to Pakistan's flirtation with China was manifested in reduction of economic and military aid. American diplomats desperately tried to induce the government of Pakistan to reiterate that the "common enemy" was China, a view the Paki­stanis could not easily accept as long as their only diplomatic support against India came from Peking.⁶

Alliance cohesion is also apt to be strained if a threat arises against only one or a few of the alliance partners, so that other members do not perceive the same threat.⁷ The Cyprus issue has long divided Greece and Turkey and created strains between each of them and other NATO members. Planning to fight an unlikely war against the Soviet Union seems less important to them than the emotion-laden ethnic issues surrounding the Cyprus conflict. Indeed, in this case, the alliance has functioned more as an arena for prosecuting an intraalliance conflict than as an organization for collective security.

A third factor that may lead to strains in military alliances is incompatibil­ity of the major social and political values of allying states. By themselves, ideo­logical incompatibilities seldom prevent formation of military coalitions as long as the parties face a common enemy. The study by Ole R. Holsti and his col­leagues of 130 alliances, nonaggression pacts, and ententes reveals that ideology is not an important factor in creating alliances, although ideologically homoge-

⁶ See Mohammed Ayub Khan, "The Pakistan-American Alliance: Stresses and Strains," Foreign Affairs, 42 (1964), 195-209.

⁷ Holsti et al., Unity and Disintegration in International Alliances, p. 98.

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neous partners are more likely to create alliances of high commitment (such as military undertakings rather than mere ententes).⁸ We would hypothesize that in a condition of high threat, alliances of ideologically heterogeneous part­ners might cohere; but, given lack of a common enemy, or even a low level of threat perception, ideological factors would operate to reduce alliance cohesion. Certainly there are recent illustrations that would lend some support to the hypothesis. Ideologically mixed alliances may be confronted with misunderstand­ings and suspicion, usually expressed in unwillingness to share military secrets or coordinate military programs and campaigns, and a decided feeling that the other alliance partner is failing to live up to its commitments. During World War II, the Soviet Union, which for two decades had urged and worked for the overthrow of "decadent" bourgeois regimes in Western Europe, eagerly formed an alliance with these regimes once it was attacked by Germany. The threat posed by Nazi Germany to the rest of the world was so apparent that even Western liberal democrats and conservatives supported the alliance with the Communists. On the other hand, the wartime alliance operated with many irritations because of deep-seated attitudes of distrust and ideological differ­ences. Stalin feared that the Western Allies would make a separate peace with Germany, leaving the Nazis free to crush his regime; alternately, he interpreted the failure of the Allies to invade France before 1944 as evidence of their inten­tion to let the Nazis and Communists bleed each other to death so that the capitalists could come in later to pick up the pieces. Even at the administrative level, distrust was reflected in Stalin's refusal to allow British and American military officials to observe Russian operations in the field, let the Western Allies establish air bases on Russian territory, or permit Lend-Lease officers to investigate Russian military and materiel requirements. The allied wartime coalition was only a temporary marriage of convenience. On the other hand, the Anglo-American alliance is strong and withstands frequent disagreements between the two partners, not just because the overall interests of the two coun­tries coincide, but also because the two countries represent similar cultural, political, and social traditions.

Development of nuclear weapons may, finally, have divisive effects on modern alliances.⁹ In the post-World War II period, most states of Western Europe were eager to receive the protection of the American "nuclear umbrella." Militarily weak, they had no capacity to deter a possible Soviet invasion carried out by the massive Red Army in Eastern Europe and had to allocate their scarce I resources for rebuilding their war-torn economies. By the 1960s, the situation I had changed. Europe was recovered economically and entering a period of un-

⁸ See Ibid., pp. 66-68.

⁹ For experimental evidence on the divisive effects of the spread of nuclear weapons tech­nology, see Richard A. Brody, "Some Systemic Effects of the Spread of Nuclear Weapons Technology: A Study Through Simulation of a Multi-Nuclear Future," Journal of Conflict Resolution, 7 (1963), 663-753.

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precedented prosperity. The Russians no longer possessed a military manpower advantage as compared to NATO. Most important, the nuclear monopoly held by the United States in the late 1940s and early 1950s had come to an end. Washington, New York, and Houston were as vulnerable to Russian nuclear attack as Leningrad, Moscow, and Baku were to an American nuclear salvo. In a system of Soviet-American mutual deterrence, some observers—particularly French military officials—questioned whether the United States would be willing to destroy itself in order to protect Western Europe from the Soviet Union.

These officials underlined their doubts by publicizing simple hypothetical situations. Suppose the Soviet government decided to take over West Berlin, an action the Russian army in East Germany could carry out with a minimum of immediate Western military resistance. Would the United States retaliate with nuclear weapons against the Russians, knowing that the Russians would respond immediately against American cities? In citing such situations, these observers have raised a fundamental question of military planning in the nuclear age. Is a deterrent really credible if the guaranteeing power—in this case the United States—knows beforehand that it must destroy itself to save others? During the 1960s, the French government argued that even though it found no fault with American intentions to defend Europe, it was not convinced that in all possible crisis situations, the Americans could be expected to live up to their commitments. This is not a uniquely American weakness, they emphasized. It is a fact of international life that no state is apt to invite its own destruction in order to defend others. In this kind of nuclear stalemate situation, the "others" must be armed with nuclear weapons so that if the "nuclear umbrella" fails to operate, smaller allies would still have independent means of deterring possible moves against their vital interests. It is to cover the 5 percent of hypothetical cases when the United States might not retaliate, the French argued, that Europe­ans must have their own nuclear weapons.

By itself, this type of reasoning would not create serious strains in an alliance—unless the holder of the "nuclear umbrella" does not want its allies to possess such weapons. This, indeed, has been the case in NATO, for, just as the French have been concerned that the United States deterrent may not be totally reliable, so American planners have expressed a fear that if the French develop an independent nuclear capacity—as they have—they might use the weapons in a manner contrary to American interests. It is assumed in Washington that if the French ever used their nuclear weapons, the situation would automati­cally drag the United States into the war. American strategists also point out that if the French have independent nuclear weapons, why shouldn't the Ger­mans, Dutch, Belgians, and Italians have them as well? An alliance in which each nation is independently drafting plans to fight its kind of war for its political objectives is an alliance bound to lack coordination and common purpose. It is one of the paradoxes of nuclear weapons that although they are supposed to provide increased security for alliances, they may create political dissension

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instead. Because the consequences of nuclear war are potentially so terrible, a doubt must be raised about any alliance commitments in the atomic age: In the crisis, will any state risk its own destruction to save others?

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