Читать книгу Military Alliances in the Twenty-First Century - Alexander Lanoszka - Страница 14

Proponents of one school of thought – realism – contend that a military alliance exists, or at least should exist, in proportion to the strategic need that gave rise to it. To consider again the first standard claim described earlier, if states no longer have to balance against a particular threat or to have influence over another state for whatever reason, then the military alliance founded for advancing such interests should cease to exist.

Military alliances can end for different reasons, though. In discussing how alliance treaties have historically defined the terms of their expiry, Chapter 6 outlines how alliances have historically come to an end: fulfillment of their original functions, military defeat, downgrading, unilateral abrogation, and transformation. A key observation made in Chapter 6 is that the factors that push states to establish alliances are seldom the factors that explain why those alliances meet their demise. Sometimes the strategic need that spurs the creation of the alliance outlasts that alliance. The view that alliances should only exist as a function of specific needs and strategic circumstances is rather a normative one. It is not descriptive of what happens empirically.

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Put together, in scrutinizing these standard claims and making these critical arguments, this book seeks to impress upon the reader one main point about military alliances: that these organizations defy easy explanations and are often so puzzling that it should be small wonder that US military alliances – or any alliance for that matter – can at times seem very dysfunctional. States write down their political and military commitments in treaties so as both to clarify their intentions and to create ambiguity over the circumstances in which they would act. Leaders fear that their country will be dragged into disputes they do not wish to have due to the reckless behavior of allied states, but precisely because they have such apprehensions, those fears rarely – if ever – become reality. Worrying about abandonment by an ally is natural and rational, but seldom do these concerns intensify to a level that dramatically reshapes a state’s foreign and defense policy. This may just as well be due to skillful alliance management. Though burden-sharing controversies have dominated many intra-alliance debates since the beginning of the Cold War, they are partly the result of those alliances lasting much longer than ever before, thanks, arguably, to nuclear deterrence, which can create disincentives for states to spend on their militaries. Of course, states do ultimately, though unevenly, build up their military capabilities in order to deter in peacetime and to prevail in wartime, but many, if not most, multinational military campaigns do not involve the full membership of an alliance. They oftentimes include non-allies, which may lead some to ask why it is worth even bothering to have a formal alliance at all. The factor that illuminates why states agree to form a military alliance in the first place often sheds little, if any, light on why that alliance comes to an end. Contradictions are pervasive.