The Origins of Alliances STEPHEN M. WALT Cornell University Press ITHACA AND LONDONCORNELL STUDIES IN SECURITY AFFAIRS edited by Robert J. Art and Robert Jervis Strategic Nuclear Targeting, edited by Desmond Ball and Jeffrey Richelson Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941, by Michael A. Barnhart The German Nuclear Dilemma, by Jeffrey Boutwell Citizens and Soldiers: The Dilemmas of Military Service, by Eliot A. Cohen Great Power Politics and the Struggle over Austria, 1945-1955, by Audrey Kurth Cronin Nuclear Arguments: Understanding the Strategic Nuclear Arms and Arms Control Debate, edited by Lynn Eden and Steven E. Miller Innovation and the Arms Race: How the United States and the Soviet Union Develop New Mili- tary Technologies, by Matthew Evangelista Men, Money, and Diplomacy: The Evolution of British Strategic Foreign Policy, 1919-1926, by John Robert Ferris, The Wrong War: American Policy and the Dimensions of the Korean Conflict, 1950-1953, by Rosemary Foot The Soviet Union and the Failure of Collective Security, 1934-1938, by Jiri Hochman The Warsaw Pact: Alliance in Transition? edited by David Holloway and Jane M. O. Sharp The logic of American Nuclear Strategy, by Robert Jervis The Meaning of the Nuclear Revolution, by Robert Jervis Nuclear Crisis Management: A Dangerous Illusion, by Richard Ned Lebow The Nuclear Future, by Michael Mandelbaum Conventional Deterrence, by John J. Mearsheimer Liddell Hart and the Weight of History, by John J. Mearsheimer The Sources of Military Doctrine: France, Britain, and Germany between the World Wars, by Barry R. Posen Israel and Conventional Deterrence: Border Warfare from 1953 to 1970, by Jonathan Shimshoni Fighting to a Finish: The Politics of War Termination in the United States and Japan, 1945, by Leon V. Sigal The Heology of the Offensive: Miltary Decision Making and the Disasters of 024, by Jack nyder The Militarization of Space: U.S. Policy, 1945-1984, by Paul B. Stares ‘Making the Alliance Work: The United States and Western Europe, by Gregory F. Treverton The Origins of Alliances, by Stephen M. Walt The Ultimate Enemy: British Intelligence and Nazi Germany, 1933-1939, by Wesley K. Wark[1] Introduction: Exploring Alliance Formation This book is about the origins of alliances.! I seek answers to questions such as these: What causes states to support one another's foreign policy or territorial integrity? How do statesmen choose among potential threats when seeking external support? How do the great powers choose which states to protect, and how do weaker states decide whose protection to accept? In short, how do states choose their friends? The importance of this subject is manifest.2 The forces that bring states together and drive them apart will affect the security of individual states by determining both how large a threat they face and how much help they can expect. At the same time, thi determine how / states choose alliance part) the evolution of the i a- tional system as a whole. The ability to establish durable empires, for 1. I define alliance as a formal or informal relationship of security cooperation between two or more sovereign states. This definition assumes some level of commitment and an. exchange of benefits for both parties; severing the relationship or failing to honor the agreement would presumably cost something, even if it were compensated in other ways. For a good discussion of the various definitions that scholars and diplomats have em- ployed, see Roger V. Dingman, “Theories of, and Approaches to, Alliance Politics,” in Diplomacy: New Approaches in Theory, History, and Policy, ed. Paul Gordon Lauren (New York, 1979), pp. 245-50. 2. George Modelski has called alliance “one of the dozen or so key terms of Interna- tional Relations.” See his “The Study of Alliances: A Review,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, 7, no. 4 (1963): 773. According to Julian R. Friedman, “alliances are the central feature of international political life.” See his “Alliance in International Politics,’ in Alliance in Inter- national Politics, ed. Julian R. Friedman, Christopher Bladen, and Steven Rosen (Boston, 1970). To Hans J. Morgenthau, alliances “are a necessary function of the balance of power operating in a multiple state system.” See his ““Alliances in Theory and Practice,” Alliance Policy in the Cold War, ed. Arnold Wolfers (Baltimore, Md., 1959), p. 175. According to Ole Holsti, “alliances are apparently a universal component of relations between politi- cal units, irrespective of time and place.” See Ole Holsti, P. Terrence Hopmann, and John D. Sullivan, Unity and Disintegration in International Alliances (New York, 1973), p. 2. {1