Introduction
The geopolitical landscape has undergone remarkable transformations since the end of the Cold War. This has been accompanied by a conspicuous change in the very nature of ‘alliance’. Firstly, not only is the Warsaw Pact extinct, but its NATO counterpart now bears scant resemblance to its original design. The surviving bilateral alliances of the US ‘hub and spoke’ system in the Asia-Pacific are also undergoing rapid evolution in their composition and purpose. Additionally, new variations on the alliance theme, such as the ‘quasi-’ or ‘virtual’ alliance, for example, have appeared. Secondly, these formal military alliances on the pre-WWI/Cold War paradigm have now ceased to represent the prevailing standard for allied security cooperation. Instead, Stewart Woodman identifies that since the early 1990s ‘there has been a shift away from formal alliance structures based on military force to more transient marriages of convenience on specific issues’.Footnote 1 We are thus seeing the emergence and development of other forms of ‘alignment’ that do not adhere to the traditional military alliance paradigm, such as ‘coalitions of the willing’, ‘security communities’, and ‘strategic partnerships’. As a result of this, and the ongoing transformation of the remaining traditional alliances just noted, Bruno Tertrais contends that ‘the very term “alliance” may be a growing source of strategic misunderstanding’.Footnote 2
This dual trend in alliance/alignment transformation has far-reaching implications for the discipline of International Relations (IR). The problem is twofold. First, our understanding of ‘alliances’ and other ‘alignments’ between states in IR has always been imperfect, and we still lack a credible taxonomy, let alone a general theory of allied behaviour, despite a wealth of quality scholarship on the subject.Footnote 3 The systemic changes occurring in the contemporary strategic environment in relation to alliances/alignment magnify the importance of readdressing the conceptual questions raised by the phenomena in order to dispel some of the misapprehensions regarding the employment of these terms. Second, with its proclivity for historical case studies, the conceptual scholarship has not always kept pace with the transformation of traditional alliances, and certainly not with the emergence of new alignment archetypes. The discipline is still largely wedded to alliance/alignment models and theories designed to explain the phenomena in a very specific set of historical circumstances – usually the pre-WWI or Cold War eras – circumstances that no longer obtain. This renders a significant tract of the established scholarship partially obsolescent with regard to understanding the new forms of security alignment that have emerged and proliferated since the end of the Cold War. We must therefore broaden our conceptions and understanding of the phenomenon of alignment as a whole, rather than confining our attention to the increasingly outmoded formal military alliance pact. As Parag Khanna identifies, we now live ‘in a world of alignments, not alliances’.Footnote 4
‘Alignment’, not ‘alliance’
The concept of alliance – or preferably ‘alignment’, as I shall explain below – is central to the conduct of international politics, and thus the discipline of IR. Ken Booth attests that ‘Alliances have been pervasive features in both the theory of international politics and in the practice of foreign policy.’Footnote 5 Moreover, Glenn Snyder observes, ‘any interaction between states, friendly or hostile, no matter how minor, may create expectations and feelings of alignment or opposition or both’.Footnote 6 This fundamental dynamic is evident as far back as the c. 3rd BCE, in the writings of the Indian scholar Kautilya (Chanakya), when he advised his sovereign, King Chandragupta, on the intricacies of alignment policy.Footnote 7 Alignment is thus a crucial aspect of interstate relations in the international system and is also integral to our understanding of such related areas of IR enquiry as ‘security architecture’ and ‘coalition warfare’,Footnote 8 not to mention the lynchpin of Realism/international order: the ‘Balance of power’.Footnote 9 George Liska affirms that ‘alignments have long been associated with the balancing of power in both theory and practice’.Footnote 10 Furthermore, it has been suggested that alignment may provide the ‘missing link’ between the structure of the international system and the processes of unit behaviour, that the discipline seeks to bridge.Footnote 11 It follows therefore that alignment permeates all aspects of IR, in both its empirical and theoretical dimensions and its importance cannot therefore be overstated.
First, the article re-examines the definitional problématique surrounding the alliance/alignment distinction. It argues for the substitution of the word ‘alliance’ with the preferred term ‘alignment’, in situations where appropriate. It contends that ‘alignment’ should supersede the reflexive, but strictly speaking, erroneous tendency to assign the majority of cooperative security endeavours the label of ‘alliance’ without sound justification, (see for example: Ariel Cohen, Jan Hessbruegge, andBooth).Footnote 12 Secondly, on this basis, it then delivers an attempt at a basic working taxonomy of main different alignment archetypes (including new variations on the alliance model). It argues for greater conceptual precision and distinction between the main different forms of alignment, maintaining that the value and dominance of the standard (Realist) alliance model has diminished in a contemporary security environment in which NATO and the US-‘hub and spokes’ alliances are seen as increasingly anachronistic security arrangements and are being supplanted by remodelled organisational versions, or totally new ones. This being the case, the article concludes that it is imperative for scholars to re-examine and revise outdated definitions and analytical frameworks for alliance/alignment accordingly.
Definitional problématique
Before we proceed further, a fundamental definitional and conceptual distinction must be made. As Snyder notes, ‘The protean character of alliances and alignments makes a clear definition essential.’Footnote 13 Unfortunately ‘alliance’ and ‘alignment’ are too often employed as synonyms: this is erroneous. Let us be clear: according to Robert Osgood an alliance is
a formal agreement that pledges states to co-operate in using their military resources against a specific state or states and usually obligates one or more of the signatories to use force, or to consider (unilaterally or in consultation with allies) the use of force in specified circumstances.Footnote 14
More will be said upon the definitional problems of alliance later. While, properly employed, ‘alignment’ refers to ‘a broader and more fundamental term […] defined as expectations of states about whether they will be supported or opposed by other states in future interactions’.Footnote 15 It is a state of shared agreement or accord on one or more significant issues. ‘Alignment’ theorists such as Stephen Walt and Stephen David, define ‘alignment’ as ‘a relationship between two or more states that involves mutual expectations of some degree of policy coordination on security issues under certain conditions in the future’.Footnote 16 An alliance, then, is merely one, albeit prominent, form of alignment. After all, Hans Morgenthau reminds us that ‘not every community of interests, calling for common policies and actions also calls for legal codification in an explicit alliance’.Footnote 17 An alliance merely adds formality and precision to such collaborative arrangements. Michael Ward indicates the benefits of recognising the broader umbrella concept of alignment:
Alignment is not signified by formal treaties, but is delineated by a variety of behavioural actions. It is a more extensive concept than alliance since it does not focus solely upon the military dimension of international politics. Degrees of alignments in political, economic, military, and cultural spheres present a multifaceted sculpture of national and supranational postures.Footnote 18
This makes alignment as a concept more ‘multifaceted and multidimensional’,Footnote 19 and thus capable of comprehending the new, non-military, security challenges that increasingly confront states and their allies.
This crucially important distinction between the two concepts was made at the time of Snyder's ground-breaking study Alliance Politics, but seems to have gone largely unheeded. Thus, Snyder notes that discussion on the subject ‘must not be limited to formal alliances […] What we really want to understand is the broader phenomenon of ‘alignment’ of which explicit alliance is merely a subset.’Footnote 20 Regrettably, lexical confusion continues to bedevil our existing scholarship. According to Ward ‘much written work uses the three different orientations – alliance, alignment, and coalition – as though they were identical’.Footnote 21 They are not. Alignment is a covering concept for all the others, as this article will seek to demonstrate.
Not only is this distinction fundamental to theorising the phenomenon of alignment and alliance study (sometimes known as Foederology, from the Latin ‘Foederis’: to ally), but it better reflects the empirical reality, contemporary and historical. As Walt remarks, ‘During the Cold War, the clarity of the Soviet threat and the relatively static nature of the global balance of power kept the main coalitions more or less fixed for over four decades.’Footnote 22 This is no longer the case, as Tertrais discerns that ‘there are also deeper historical forces at work that are forcing permanent alliances increasingly to give way to ad hoc coalitions and multilateral alliances to give way to bilateral ones’.Footnote 23 Indeed, the alliance literature of the Cold War, and the empirical reality in which it was embedded, have served to generate a type of ‘hegemony’ over our perceptions and our theorising; a dominant discourse that still persists to a certain degree in our approaches to alliance/alignment, despite a radically altered security landscape.Footnote 24 Perhaps we need to rethink our sweeping classification of historical alignments as ‘alliances’; a feature which can be attributed to the fact that virtually all IR scholarship on these was conducted during the time of the Cold War, and thus historical case studies were (unwittingly) filtered through this prism.
A good example of this misapplication of alliance, where alignment would have been the operative descriptor, is in quantitative analyses, such as the Alliance Treaty Obligations Project study (ATOP).Footnote 25 All manner of historical alignments – alliances, coalitions, non-aggression pacts and ententes – are aggregated under the umbrella term of ‘alliance’ in the ATOP, when clearly they would fall short on many aspects of the orthodox alliance definition provided, if subjected to greater scrutiny. The COW (Correlates of War) dataset also unhelpfully codes all forms of ‘alignment’ as subsets of ‘alliance’, rather than vice versa.Footnote 26 Unfortunately, Duffield et al. argue ‘the most complete databases have grouped together defensive alliances, offensive alliances, non-aggression pacts (NAPs), neutrality pacts and consultation agreements’.Footnote 27 A proper definition of alliance therefore
would seem to militate against the inclusion of pledges by states to refrain from engaging in aggression against one another, promises to remain neutral in the event of military conflict with a third party, and commitments to consult in the event of a crisis that threatens to lead to war.Footnote 28
That such misclassification continues to occur, and the fact that few scholars have systematically addressed this discrepancy, is a cause for concern in the discipline. Providing clear distinctions, greater conceptual clarity, and a concise taxonomy of different alignment types become all the more pressing as the familiar Cold War alliance system recedes further into the past. On this basis, Rajan Menon predicts that we are entering an era in which US foreign policy will experience an ‘end of alliances’.Footnote 29 He posits that a ‘paradigm shift’ away from formal military alliances such as NATO, and the US-ROK and US-Japan bilateral agreements, is occurring in which more flexible and less binding allied arrangements will become the preferred tools of American statecraft. He contends that ‘alignment is a supple and creative mode of statecraft; alliances, by contrast, can become rigid – and limiting as a result’.Footnote 30 We should not be surprised to witness this, since ‘alignments constantly change with changing patterns of power, interests, and issue priorities’.Footnote 31 We should not however, ignore it. Not only are new forms of alignment such as the ‘strategic partnership’ model emerging, but the very nature of ‘alliance’ itself is undergoing metamorphosis, as will be shown below.
Toward a conceptual taxonomy of alignment
A broader conception of alignment, (and even subtypes of alliance), is necessary to comprehend the empirical realities of the contemporary world and reconsider distorted notions of the past. There are many gaps in our knowledge of alignment; a dedicated effort at a conceptual taxonomy salient among them. I seek to address this shortcoming by profiling each of the key forms of alignment old and new, enumerated below. I consider their definition, core attributes, prime examples, and variations, to clearly differentiate between them. Though I am conscious of the peril of conflating description with explanation, I do see value in a brief identification of the supporting theoretical base for each archetype. Therefore, I append a brief overview of some of the relevant literature and theoretical perspectives, since my objective is to identify their position in the overall schema of IR – and in some ways challenge that position. Even so, there is not adequate space to fully elaborate on a literature that ranges so widely across Realist, Liberal-Institutionalist and formal modelling approaches.Footnote 32
As Bruce Russet noted in an attempt at alliance typology some forty years ago, ‘It would surely be neat and highly desirable, if we could identify a hierarchical set of variables with very high discriminating power, on the order of biological taxonomy […] Unfortunately, the regularities of international politics are not quite so strong or simple.’Footnote 33 I therefore aim to provide a working taxonomy which identifies the variations across the phenomenon of alignment and lend some internal consistency to each archetype identified. I recognise that while all forms of alignment share the property of being cooperative security endeavours, they display considerable differentiation across types and structural variation within types. That is, every ‘coalition’ or ‘strategic partnership’, for example, will be unique with regard to purpose, membership, formalisation, scope, cohesion, capabilities, and duration. Furthermore, this also represents part of the trend away from state-centrism in IR study, particularly the ‘state’ as the most important level of analysis.Footnote 34 These ‘new’ alignment archetypes may be said to operate at the ‘supra-state’ (security communities) or ‘trans-state’ (strategic partnerships) in addition or in contradistinction to the traditional ‘interstate’ alliance paradigm. This adds another dimension to our changing thinking about alignment.
To accomplish these objectives, the article now proceeds to examine four prominent archetypes of alignment, including first and foremost, ‘alliances’, followed by ‘coalitions’, ‘security communities’, and ‘strategic partnerships’. Before concluding it briefly considers other less prevalent types of alignment (concerts; ententes; and non-aggression pacts).
A taxonomy of alignment archetypes
a. Alliance:
I commence with the discussion of the ‘alliance’ archetype for several reasons. First, it is the most salient and significant of all the forms of alignment, empirically, and in the literature base. Second, it is the type of alignment that the reader will be most familiar with, and third, it further helps to address the definitional problématique to examine this archetype first, in order to facilitate a comparative analysis with the alignment archetypes (2–5 (i-iii)) that follow.
The basic definition put forward by Osgood in the introduction has been perfected by Snyder in his landmark study Alliance Politics. He specifies that: ‘alliances are formal associations of states for the use (or non-use) of military force, in specified circumstances, against states outside their own membership’.Footnote 35 This is the most precise and best-crafted definition we have of alliance, among myriad contenders. It is to be greatly preferred to the definition of Walt (subsequently revised): ‘a formal or informal relationship of security cooperation between two or more sovereign states’,Footnote 36 or Patricia Weitsman: ‘bilateral or multilateral agreements to provide some element of security to the signatories’.Footnote 37 These definitions are so broad and imprecise as to be capable of comprehending just about any security-related communication between states,Footnote 38 and should therefore be rejected. However, they do inadvertently stand as very serviceable definitions of ‘alignment’.
In order to give just consideration to the other lesser-studied forms of alignment I will not provide an exhaustive examination of the alliance archetype, notwithstanding a discussion of new variations of alliance that follows below. Briefly stated: alliances may be unilateral,Footnote 39 bilateral, or multilateral groupings of states designed for defensive or offensive military collaboration. It is often forgotten that some alliances, such as the Axis (Tripartite Pact 1940), were designed for the better prosecution of military aggression, not defence or deterrence. As Booth notes ‘alliances are exclusive institutions’ usually against a specified foe.Footnote 40 They are customarily enshrined in a treaty outlining the mutual expectations and casus belli (mutual assistance clause) of the parties.Footnote 41 This treaty may be succinct, leaving contingencies and commitments vague and open to multiple (and differing) interpretations (for example, ANZUS), or may be extraordinarily detailed, so as to give in-depth provisions for each and every possible contingency (for example, the Triple Alliance 1882).Footnote 42 This certainly does not mean that all treaties per se signify alliances however, as the ATOP has apparently inferred.Footnote 43 In the COW dataset, Stefan Bergsmann argues that treaties of very different natures – defence pacts, neutrality pacts, NAPs, ententes – should be disaggregated since ‘for general theoretical purposes – it does not seem to be legitimate to put them all in one data set’.Footnote 44
For the Cold War, in which this type of alignment – the formal military alliance with defence pact – dominated both the actual geopolitical landscape and the scholarship of Strategic Studies, the exemplars have been NATO and the Warsaw Pact. To conceive of these organisations is to understand how the formal military alliance is characterised and classified. As Tertrais records ‘NATO is the quintessential military alliance’,Footnote 45 simply referred to by Western strategists as ‘the alliance’. As Weitsman recognises, the Triple Entente (later: the ‘Allies’) and the Triple Alliance (later the ‘Central Powers’ or ‘Mittemaechte’) are also good examples of treaty-based military alliances, defensive in purpose, but capable of offensive action if provoked/attacked.Footnote 46
It is highly debatable if either of the opposing blocs of World War II could be categorised as an ‘alliance’, since many of the trappings, de jure or de facto, of alliance were lacking. In particular, the Western Allies (the British Empire and the US) fought quite independently of the Soviet Union. Other than the (misleadingly-named) ‘Grand Alliance’ diplomatic summitry that occurred, there was a near-absence of treaties (the limited 1942 Anglo-Soviet Treaty notwithstanding), and practically no joint operational planning or intelligence sharing was entered into.Footnote 47 It would, in the circumstances, be better perhaps to consider this an example of ‘coalition warfare’ (see below), rather than an alliance at war, given that there were no prior security arrangements of note between the powers antebellum. The Axis ‘alliance’ is even more problematic in this sense.Footnote 48
Having elucidated in sufficient depth for our purposes, the traditional formal military alliance archetype, it is now apposite to contemplate how this model is being discarded or redefined in the post Cold War world. It should be remembered that the bipolar Cold War alliance system – the empirical linchpin for Waltz's theorising of balance of powerFootnote 49 – may represent a set of never-to-be-repeated circumstances. Snyder affirms that ‘The large alliances of the post-1945 period, such as NATO […] are exceptions, associated with the brief bipolar structure of world power.’Footnote 50 Moreover, Kurt Campbell argues that ‘conclusions of a demise or indisputable irrelevance of alliances are premature […] The more relevant question then is not whether alliances are dead but rather how they are adapting to new exigencies and conditions.’Footnote 51 William Tow points to the shift from specifically ‘threat-based’ to ‘order-based’ alliances,Footnote 52 though this raises the question of whether the term ‘alliance’, in our conventional understanding, is still appropriate.
It is with this in mind that we turn to ‘new’ permutations of the orthodox alliance model. Ralph Cossa et al. note ‘as instruments of national policy, alliances are dynamic elements that are in a constant process of evolution, adjusting roles, missions, and capabilities to adapt to an ever-changing international environment’.Footnote 53 Seongho Sheen dubs such broader non-military missions (for example, piracy, environmental cooperation) ‘soft alliance’ tasks in contradistinction to ‘hard alliance/hard balancing’ tasks against military threats.Footnote 54 Let us examine the latest evolutions, particularly from a US perspective, given the ample empirical data on the world-wide network of Washington's allies. In a policy paper on the transformation of the US alliance system, Andrew Krepinevich identifies ‘the likely continuation of the shift from the rigid alliance structures that characterised the Cold War […] to perhaps the migration towards new alliance structures tomorrow’.Footnote 55
The first of these new subsets of alliance is what Victor Cha dubs the ‘quasi alliance’.Footnote 56 This takes the form of an alliance in which ‘one in which two states remains unallied but share a third party as a common ally’.Footnote 57 This concept is largely propounded upon the US-Japan-ROK case study, but it has gained reasonable traction to describe other alignments; as Campbell points out, it might apply to Washington's relations with the Gulf States, for example.Footnote 58 Secondly, Cossa coined the term ‘virtual alliance’ (or ‘tacit alliance’)Footnote 59 to describe the same trilateral relationship, but the theoretical complexion of this was left largely undeveloped.Footnote 60 Fortunately, Morgenthau steps in to the breach, having defined the essence of such a concept many years before: ‘It occurs when their interests so obviously call for concerted policies and actions that an explicit formulation of these interests, policies and actions in the form of a treaty of alliance appears to be redundant.’Footnote 61 Other good empirical examples are the US-UK ‘special relationship’; one that demonstrates properties of collaboration stronger than most formal alliances, and the US-Japan-Australia Trilateral Strategic Dialogue (TSD) arrangement, through which these powers coordinate allied policy toward the Asia-Pacific region.Footnote 62
In summary, Campbell asserts – in rebuttal to Menon's condemnation of the alliance modelFootnote 63 – that ‘Alliances will look and act differently than they used to, but they are not dead yet.’Footnote 64 Alyson Bailes et al. note that
There is a clear trend in the 21st century for regional organizations to multiply, to become more multifunctional and to devote themselves in whole or in part to security goals. Old-style alliances with a defined opponent are now rare, and most groups address themselves to the reduction of conflict (internally of externally) and to transnational challenges such as terrorism.Footnote 65
Alliance theorists have reached a general consensus that alliances are about capability aggregation and form to counter-balance powerful states (Waltz); or ones perceived as threatening adversaries (Walt); what T. V. Paul et al. dub ‘hard balancing’.Footnote 66 Booth affirms that ‘The traditional and still predominant explanation of alliances arises out of balance-of-power considerations.’Footnote 67 They are assumed to dissolve when such a threat dissipates or is eliminated. There are challenges to this long-held orthodox logic however. Weitsman adds the interesting caveat that alliances may form without a ‘clear and present danger’ (‘hedging’),Footnote 68 while Paul Schroeder contends that states may form alliances in order to restrain their putative adversaries,Footnote 69 for example the US-Japan alliance (the ‘bottle cap’ function), or NATO and the ‘German question’. Furthermore, Edwin Fedder alerts us that ‘Alliances are predicated upon the existence of an external threat and only incidentally (if at all) related to a sense of community among the allied powers.’Footnote 70 What happens when the reality defies the theory? Celeste Wallander argues that institutional momentum can prolong and preserve the life of an alliance absent the threat it was created to counter. She affirms that ‘alliances are not merely aggregation of national power and purpose: they can be security institutions as well’.Footnote 71
b. Coalition:
When examining the coalition archetype of alignment, we are once again confronted with a thorny definitional problem. Paul Nitze notes that ‘historically the words “coalition” and “alliance” have been used interchangeably’.Footnote 72 As Tow remarks, ‘Differentiating between alliances, and coalitions or “alignments“, has […] been contentious.’Footnote 73 Though often conflated by scholars and practitioners alike, the phenomena are not strictly identical, despite a number of ostensible resemblances (see below). Perhaps the most succinct definition is provided by Andrew Pierre: ‘Reduced to its essence, a coalition may be defined as a grouping of like-minded states that agree on the need for joint action on a specific problem at a particular time with no commitment to a durable relationship.’Footnote 74 An empirical example serves well to distinguish coalitions from alliances. According to Wayne Silkett ‘the 1990–91 Gulf War provides the most recent example of a substantial and successful coalition […] NATO [prior to its post Cold War transformation], on the other hand, provides the most recent, most enduring example of an alliance’.Footnote 75
Coalitions ‘are as old as warfare itself’Footnote 76 and have been immutable features of the international system from at least the time of Thucydides and the Peloponnesian Wars (c. 5th BCE) to the present day, and yet the decades following the break-up of the bipolar alliance bloc system in 1989, have reawakened the usage of the concept. Coalition-building and participation form major features of the defence strategies of the US, UK, Australia and Japan, to name but the most prominent examples. Alliances and coalitions often materially overlap, as Pierre testifies: ‘Coalitions have not replaced our traditional alliances but instead they draw heavily on the capabilities of our alliance partners, in combination with regional actors in the crisis area’.Footnote 77
As with alliances, all coalitions will evince unique characteristics. Keith Neilson and Roy Prete identify that ‘coalitions are a phenomenon easily observed but awkwardly characterised’.Footnote 78 If we can make some general observations about their attributes, many of these are best revealed in their contradistinction to alliances. Whereas alliances are relatively broad-based and permanent institutions, usually based upon formal treaties, coalitions are more informal, narrowly-focused, and short-lived. Michael Sheehan observes how ‘alliances are based around states with a certain number of common interests. Coalescence tends to be based on a single common interest, but one of sufficient importance to override their differences on other issues.’Footnote 79 Thus Anthony Rice notes that ‘unlike alliances, which have an enduring element to them, coalitions are ad hoc, short term, and established for a specific objective’.Footnote 80 In this sense, coalitions are immediate alignments rather than contingent ones. Alliances are when a future threat is clearly identified and planned for (a ‘specific threat’). Coalitions form when this threat has not been foreseen and states are caught by surprise (a ‘non-specific’ or ‘unexpected’ threat), though this would still be considered a form of ‘hard balancing’.Footnote 81 What is more, coalitions have been adapted to address new military tasks, as the continued counterinsurgency operations and ‘nation-building’ efforts in Iraq testify. Pierre discerns how ‘coalitions are also irreplaceable for dealing with post conflict political and economic reconstruction’.Footnote 82
Though they should never be conflated with alliances, since coalitions deal with multilateral military cooperation, they are susceptible to many of the same tools of analysis, though sometimes with modifications. A detailed study of coalitions was initiated by the Soviets during the Cold War. According to John Erickson, the study Koalitsionnaya Voina, involved
an investigation of what precisely constitutes a coalition – an effective coalition – not to mention the composition of coalition armies, the problem of military effectiveness, the aspect of what might be called the military ‘division of labour,’ and the coordination of decisions.Footnote 83
While this, Neilson and Prete's Coalition Warfare: An Uneasy Accord, and Richard Dinardo's Germany and the Axis Powers, serve as exemplars of coalition warfare analysis on the empirical plane,Footnote 84 much of the ‘alliance’ literature, with and without adaptation, has been usefully employed to theorise coalition behaviour.Footnote 85
One of the major caveats in applying theories and frameworks designed to explain alliance behaviour, usually in peacetime, is the fact that coalitions are primarily war-fighting alignments. Weitsman is one of the few to try to bridge this gap;Footnote 86 though dedicated studies of conducting coalition warfare do exist, the most notable being Pierre, Harvey Starr, and the author.Footnote 87
c. Security community
A relative newcomer to our repertoire of alignment archetypes is the ‘security community’. This concept was promulgated by Karl Deutsch in his study of the North Atlantic area and refers to the creation of a peaceful comity of states through gradual confidence building and integration.Footnote 88Prima facie it might seem that the concept of security community better belongs to analyses of collective security, while alliances and coalitions are clearly collective defence/offence institutions. Nevertheless, it conforms to our definition of alignment as a multilateral organisation that provides some element of security to its members andmutual expectations of support in their future interactions. When discussing why alliances endured or collapsed, Walt also felt obliged to consider the notion of security community.Footnote 89 Just like alliances and coalitions, Vincent Pouliot reminds us that ‘security communities are vehicles of international order’, and thus their participants align themselves to this common purpose.Footnote 90
One interesting facet about the security community concept is the way that it has served as a political driver for alignment in the empirical world as much as a theoretical framework for analysis of pre-existing phenomena (as in the case of alliances and coalitions). This is illustrated by the stated intention of ASEAN to develop itself in to a fully-fledged security community, discussed below. Unlike alignment archetypes 1–2 and 4, where the empirical phenomenon existed prior to the theory, in this case we are faced with a ‘chicken and egg’ situation; one makes a meaningful separation of the empirical and conceptual near impossible.
Deutsch defines the condition of a security community as ‘the attainment, within a territory, of a sense of community and of institutions and practices strong enough and widespread enough to assure, for a “long” time, dependable expectations of peaceful change’.Footnote 91 Thus, states align together to eliminate the use of violence as a recourse of action within their designated political space, and work together to change intramural perceptions to forge an exclusive common identity (or ‘we-feeling’). Space does not permit a thorough examination of all of the attributes, permutations and debates relating to the concept. Some of the key aspects of Deutsch's original approach include the important distinction between ‘pluralistic’ and ‘amalgamated’ security communities. If the states remain separate entities this is denoted as a ‘pluralistic’ security community, like ASEAN, if they surrender a measure of their national sovereignty to the security community's supra-national institutional apparatus, it becomes an ‘amalgamated’ security community, such as the US (after the American Civil War of 1861–1865).
Any theoretical limitations and deficiencies in the model have not prevented its widespread application to a number of empirical case studies. The North Atlantic Community, the EU and ASEAN have attracted the most attention from scholars. Firstly, the North Atlantic Community, Deutsch's original case study, has generated fierce debate on the continued existence and nature of the community, as the work of Thomas Risse-Kappen and exchanges between Michael Cox and Vincent Pouliot illustrate.Footnote 92 Secondly, those involved in advancing and analysing the European project have been greatly influenced by the security community model. Ole Wæver considers Western Europe a ‘comprehensive’ security community (though he prefers the descriptor: ‘non-war community’);Footnote 93 something in-between the pluralistic and amalgamated categories. Lastly, Amitav Acharya and others have analysed ASEAN as a ‘nascent’ security community and sparked discussion over the applicability of the European model to South East Asia.Footnote 94 The influence of Track II dialogues upon regional governments can be witnessed by the official adoption by the organisation of this very concept. The ASEAN Secretariat announces its objective of creating an ASEAN Security Community by 2020, noting that ‘the ASC promotes an ASEAN-wide political and security cooperation in consonance with the ASEAN Vision 2020 rather than a defence pact, military alliance or a joint foreign policy’.Footnote 95
Though all security community scholars pay homage to Deutsch, this has not prevented fierce debate on interpreting and reinterpreting his writings. Constructivist scholars Emmanuel Adler and Michael Barnett build upon Deutsch's concept, further refining it to consider ‘shared identities, values, and meanings’, many-sided direct interactions, and reciprocal long-term interests.Footnote 96 They advance a theoretical framework to consider the evolution of security communities through their nascent, ascendant and mature stages. New permutations of the security communities approach, as well as challenges to it, are emerging, as the work of Adler, Alan Collins and Alex Bellamy demonstrates.Footnote 97 It is important to note here that the security community concept is relatively novel – still a ‘work in progress’ lacking the rich theoretical and empirical base of the preceding two alignment archetypes. For example, serious theoretical questions regarding this alignment type have yet to be answered. Wæver points to the difficulties inherent in measuring the existence of a security community (whether it is ‘illusionary’), questions of how security communities may disintegrate (‘potentially unravelling factors’),Footnote 98 and whether ‘the study of security communities should focus on those regions that constitute security complexes’.Footnote 99
d. Strategic partnership
The so-called ‘strategic partnership’ is the most recent addition to the repertoire of alignment archetypes. The term first entered the security lexicon when employed by Moscow and Washington to describe their post-Cold War rapprochement, but did not gain serious traction until applied to Russo-Chinese security accords made in 1996. Since then the term has been regularly employed by Moscow and Beijing in their official discourse and has been widely emulated to describe security alignments among such varied dyads as Japan-Australia, US-India, Israel-Turkey, and NATO-EU, to name but a small sample. Tertrais distinguishes this permutation of alignment, without security guarantee, thus: ‘In today's parlance, they are often called strategic partnerships and include the recognition of common security interests as well as provisions for strong military cooperation to various degrees.’Footnote 100 Once again, this alignment appears connected to paradigmatic shift in alignment identified above. Andrew Kuchins argues that ‘the proliferation of strategic partnerships on the part of Russia and other powers (including the US) […] reflects an international system in transition’.Footnote 101 Despite the prevalence of the term in international politics, its precise definition and meaning remains unclear.Footnote 102
Analysts have pondered whether the term ‘strategic partnership’ is really a tangible alignment form or merely a rhetorical device – just another abuse of the term ‘strategy/strategic’.Footnote 103 The first thing to make clear is that strategic partnership is not a synonym for an alliance or coalition. There is no agreed definition in IR at this present time. In previous work I have advanced the following description of ‘strategic partnership’ as: ‘structured collaboration between states (or other ‘actors’) to take joint advantage of economic opportunities, or to respond to security challenges more effectively than could be achieved in isolation’.Footnote 104 Strategic partnering is a ‘trans-state’ phenomenon that occurs both in and between the state and private sectors of the participants. Besides allowing information, skills, and resources to be pooled, a strategic partnership also permits the partners to share risk.
A strategic partnership exhibits the following properties.Footnote 105 First, it is organised around a general (security) purpose known as a ‘system principle’ (such as championship of a multipolar world), rather than a specific task, such as deterring or fighting a hostile state. Strategic partnerships are therefore based primarily on common interests and are not always underwritten by shared values in a way typical of more entrenched alliances.Footnote 106 Second, strategic partnerships are primarily ‘goal-driven’ rather than ‘threat-driven’ arrangements. Following from this, no ‘enemy’ state is identified by the partnership as a ‘threat’, though the partnership may be concerned with joint security ‘issue-areas’ – such as terrorism, separatism, or religious fundamentalism, for example. In these senses strategic partnerships perhaps conform to Paul's conception of ‘asymmetrical balancing’ institutions, with potential ‘soft-balancing’ capabilities in the background.Footnote 107 Third, strategic partnerships tend to be informal in nature and entail low commitment costs, rather than being explicitly formalised in a specific alliance treaty that binds the participants to rigid courses of action. This permits partners to retain a greater degree of autonomy and flexibility, thus mitigating the ‘entrapment’ dynamic common to orthodox alliances. This certainly does not preclude issue-specific bilateral declarations and other confidence building measures (CBMs) though. Fourthly, perhaps due to the term originating from the business world, economic exchange appears salient among ‘functional areas’ of cooperation and is one of the key drivers of the partnership, alongside more traditional security concerns. This reflects the salience of economic as well as military power in the contemporary international arena.
Thus, while there definitely are some congruities with the phenomena of alliance, coalition, and security community, none of these notions truly captures the distinctiveness of a strategic partnership. Instead, with its more informal and multidimensional nature, the strategic partnership is therefore emblematic of the new, Twenty-First Century alignment archetype. In this sense when Sheen speaks of ‘smart alliance’ or ‘strategic alliance’Footnote 108 – that is a compound of hard and soft security cooperation – he is effectively referring to the strategic partnership model.
The novelty of this form of alignment means that little in the way of conceptual or theoretical development has been undertaken to date. This author and others that have examined the phenomenon indicate that since the term's provenance was from the business world and thus Organisation Studies literature ought to be useful in understanding it. There is a strong case for employing Organisation Studies to explain security questions, as the well known works of Graham Allison and Phillip Zelikov, and Scott Sagan, and Amy Zegart testify.Footnote 109 So far the author is one of the few to make a distinctive theoretical contribution. This was founded upon the writings of Organisational Theorists William Bergquist et al., Chris Steward, Joan Roberts, and others.Footnote 110 I posit that security cooperation between states (or a ‘network’ of states) can be explained much as a business enterprise, with relations evolving upon a ‘collaboration continuum’ from formation, through implementation, to evaluation; thus getting at the core dynamics of alignment behaviour.Footnote 111
e. Other alignments
There are a range of additional forms of security alignment, such as the ‘entente’, the ‘concert’, and the ‘non-aggression pact’, among others, that are less prominent features in IR discourse. Nevertheless, they make instructive comparative or genealogical cases. Though empirical literature is abundant on individual examples of these archetypes, and some aspects of IR theory have been applied to case studies, no systematised conceptualisation of them exists at this time. This is a productive avenue for further research in order to make our understanding of alignment more complete.
(i) A Concert involves states aligning together to create and manage a common (regional) security governance mechanism. In this archetype states align themselves toward the common aim of regional security management. In Snyder's estimation a ‘concert emphasises the preservation of peace and order through the negotiated adjustment of conflicts’.Footnote 112 The concert archetype inseparably linked to its prime exemplar: the c. 19th ‘Concert of Europe’. The concert of Europe has been subject to great discord between Historians such as René Albrecht-Carrié, Edward Gulick and William Medlicott with regard to its duration, effectiveness and characteristics.Footnote 113 Carsten Holbraad considers that ‘the term has stood for the idea of a loose association of great European powers consulting and acting together occasionally’ in matters of joint interest and security.Footnote 114 It was forged from the post-war peace settlement by the victorious Sixth Coalition against Napoleonic France (1803–1815: a prime example of ‘coalition warfare’: see above) and devised at the Congress of Vienna (1814–1815).Footnote 115 There were two strands to the concert/congress era. The first was the collaboration between the conservative monarchies of Russia, Austria and Prussia, (the Holy Alliance) which sought to use the concert/congress system to restore the ancien régime and check revolutionary movements at home and abroad.Footnote 116 The second strand, which is what concerns us here, is the ‘concert system’ of security governance. Dan Lindley characterises this as ‘the first peacetime multilateral crisis management forum’,Footnote 117 in which the great powers of the (European) system: Britain, France, Austria (-Hungary), Prussia (later: Germany) and Russia, acted collectively to prevent or manage conflicts and reduce the inherent security dilemma between them. Charles Kegley and Gregory Raymond note that above all ‘the Concert of Europe was motivated by the intense desire to avoid another system-wide war’.Footnote 118
This ‘rule by coalition’Footnote 119 has been characterised by Robert Jervis as a typical form of ‘security regime’, that is ‘those principles, rules, and norms that permit nations to be restrained in their behaviour in the belief that others will reciprocate’.Footnote 120 For Branislav Slantchev, ‘the concert worked without an overarching principle, a formal organisation to resolve disputes or a system of collective security to enforce its rules’.Footnote 121 The concert system functioned relatively effectively until its complete dissolution in WWI, though it did not prevent (limited) war between the great powers on several occasions, notably the Crimean (1853–1856), Austro-German (1866) and Franco-Prussian (1870–1871) wars. It did however prevent these wars from becoming a system-wide general conflagration until its eclipse by the late c. 19th formal alliance systems (open and secret). Though a concert system was attempted in the aftermath of WWI without success (the ill-fated League of Nations), some indications of the concert system were evident in period of superpower détente in the 1960s-1970s.Footnote 122 The ‘concert’ archetype once again resurfaced at the close of the Cold War with John Mueller, Richard Rosecrance and Philip Zelikow commentating on a post-Cold War security architecture founded upon a concert system.Footnote 123 Without explicit invocation of the ‘concert’ archetype, debates on the role to be played by the G7 or G20 mechanisms, or the G2 (US-China) or ‘Trilateralism’ (US-China-Japan), in the Asia-Pacific region, relate to the basic concert system notion, as did briefly-lived notions of a post-1991 ‘New World Order’.Footnote 124
IR scholars have not undertaken any systematic conceptual enquiry into concerts per se. There have however been debates regarding the extent to which concerts constitute ‘collective security’ organisations, and as to whether they represent or run contrary to Balance of Power theory.Footnote 125
(ii)Entente translates literally as an ‘understanding’ or ‘agreement’.Footnote 126 Robert Kann identifies it as ‘a far less conspicuous form of association than an alliance’.Footnote 127 But with regard to its employment in international politics, it has often meant much more than a basic understanding. Though the term ‘entente cordiale’ entered the modern diplomatic lexicon in 1843, to describe improved Franco-British relations, the Triple Entente powers (1907–1917) – France, Russia and the UK – prior to WWI had more than an ‘understanding’; they engaged a commitment to mutual military assistance extending to joint operational planning. In this instance, entente may perhaps be akin to something like a ‘quasi’, or ‘virtual alliance’,Footnote 128 devoid of a formal treaty, but with high expectations of mutual support. It is distinguished from an alliance in that ‘an entente preserves more flexibility than an alliance because it does not entail a decisive choice of partners [and is] […] less provocative to the opponent than an explicit alliance’.Footnote 129 Kann sees ententes as inherently more stable and more peaceable than alliances.Footnote 130
Empirically though, ententes have often been far from secure. Consider the ‘Little Entente’ between Czechoslovakia, Romania, and the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (1920–1938), with France as its external guarantor. Though it took steps toward institutionalisation, with a treaty stipulating economic integration and coordinated foreign policy, it was compromised by geopolitical developments beyond its control, and by Paris' failure to support the Entente in its hour of need. The ‘Baltic Entente’ (1934–1939) between Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia was a doomed attempt to mutually buttress their short-lived political independence between the World Wars. With vague notions of creating a proto-security community, and despite the promulgation of a treaty, it fell foul of both internal weakness and disunity, and the predation of external powers. This discrediting of the entente label in the interwar period probably accounts for its disappearance as an alignment descriptor.
Though the archetype of entente has not been subjected to any conceptual investigation, studies of empirical examples, particularly the Triple Entente, have been made, using collective good approachesFootnote 131 or ‘tethering’Footnote 132 for example. There is a substantive body of empirical literature on various ententes however, from which some analytical or conceptual strands could be extrapolated.Footnote 133
(iii) A ‘non-aggression pact’ (NAP) is basically a mutual security or ‘non-war’ (neutrality) treaty between two or more powers, though it is (unhelpfully) recorded as an ‘alliance’ by the ATOP. It is an accord between two states not to launch aggressive action against one another for a specified period of time. In effect, it is a covenant to forswear the military option as a mechanism for resolving conflicts. Like the term entente, NAP appears have fallen from use in international politics, though it remains historically significant. There are antecedents to the NAP in modern history such as the ‘Peace of Callias’ (450 BCE) and Treaty of London (1518). Notwithstanding the failed Briand-Kellogg Pact of 1928, that aimed at nothing less than the total renunciation of war between the powers – with Paris and Washington leading the way – the most recognised example of this archetype is the infamous Nazi-Soviet NAP, or ‘Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact’ (1939–1941).
This NAP emerged when Moscow was unable to secure a watertight tripartite military alliance with Britain and France (to upgrade the Franco-Soviet NAP of 1935). A treaty enshrined the principle of bilateral non-aggression and neutrality in the case of an attack on one of the signatories by a third party (Article II).Footnote 134 Most notoriously it contained a number of secret protocols dividing Eastern Europe and the Baltic States in ‘spheres of influence’ (secret Articles I and II). Not only did it provide cover for Soviet aggression against Finland (in breach of the 1932 Soviet-Finnish NAP) and the Baltics (violating the German NAPs with these states) and German aggression in Central Europe, but a joint invasion and repartition of Poland (in violation of the Polish-Soviet and Polish-German NAPs). It serves as a classic example of alignment ‘tethering’ or pacta de contrahendo, providing both the partners a free hand in their respective ‘spheres’ while neutralising the other. Interestingly, the Nazi-Soviet NAP displayed many of the characteristics of ‘strategic partnership’ in that it expounded joint diplomatic positions, border security and CBMs, and a significant trade element. As a result of improved German-Soviet relations through the NAP, Moscow also signed a neutrality pact, effectively another NAP, with Japan in 1941. This occurred just before the German invasion of the Soviet Union, which terminated the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. The USSR later unilaterally abrogated its own NAP with Tokyo in 1945, launching its armies against Japan in Manchuria. It is instructive that the principle of rebus sic stantibus (‘a fundamental change of circumstance’), overruled the principle of pacta sunt servanda (‘treaties must be observed’), in practically every instance cited.
Perhaps discredited by this invidious Realpolitik abuse of NAPs, the term fell largely into disuse in the Cold War, a notable exception being a beleaguered Pretoria's attempt to achieve security with its ‘frontline state’ neighbours. After a decade without success, only in the 1980s was Prime Minister PW Botha able to sign NAPs with Swaziland (1982) and Mozambique (The Nkomati Accord, 1984). The term may however be about to enjoy a renaissance, as the US signs the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation (TAC) with the ASEAN powers, the term ‘non-aggression pact’ has appeared again in the press coverage.Footnote 135 Pyongyang's adhesion to the TAC was also earlier dubbed an NAP by media sources.Footnote 136
There has been no direct conceptual or theoretical work, or even definitional work, on the ‘NAP’ phenomenon per se, though questions of alliance aggression/non-aggression appear in the literature.Footnote 137 Once again, there exists an abundant empirical literature on the subject, particularly on the Nazi-Soviet NAP.Footnote 138
Problématique revisited
Before concluding it is worth taking stock of some of our findings and recognising some unavoidable limitations of the study. The article has eschewed burdening the main analysis with an intrusive range of caveats and qualifications, or other related problématiques. Unfortunately, when considering the phenomenon of alignment these are manifold.
One of the most significant is the issue of empirical and theoretical ‘overlap’. Not only are there overlaps in definition and usage of the alignment archetypes enumerated here, but the theoretical tools of analysis also evince some close congruities, if not outright replications. Sometimes it is difficult to distinguish ‘alignments’ from the organisations they inhabit (for example, the Warsaw Pact). Some elude classification, for example: how should one categorise the allied relations between Washington and Israel? Moreover, not all empirical referents, NATO for example, neatly fit the pattern of alignment illustrated above; rather they exhibit properties from two or more archetypes. Consider how NATO was born from the residue of the coalition that fought Germany in the Western theatre of World War II; this later became a formal military alliance during the Cold War opposed to the Warsaw Pact, while since the demise of its erstwhile rival, it has been deployed in offensive operations in the Balkans and Afghanistan. Moreover, many have described NATO's process of adaptation or even reinvention in the post-Cold War period as a shift to a ‘security community’.Footnote 139 Furthermore, NATO has undertaken to build a ‘strategic partnership’ with its former adversary, the Russian Federation.Footnote 140 Thus, one might ponder whether if a military alliance has ceased to be primarily ‘threat-based’, is it still strictly an ‘alliance’ any longer?
Thus, alignments may alter or evolve across archetypes or may display the characteristics, and thus be susceptible to analysis with the appropriate tools, of multiple archetypes (hybrids). Likewise, the theoretical perspectives fabricated to explain each archetype are far from discrete. Many of the tools employed to analyse coalitions are based upon alliance study, while security communities are not impervious to Realist concepts such as ‘balance of power/threat’ to account for their formation, contrary to the internal focus of the constructivist literature.Footnote 141 Alignments may contain elements of both ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ (plus ‘asymmetrical’) balancing.Footnote 142
There are a few permutations of alignment that must be noted, according to Liska. ‘De-alignment’ is defection from an alignment, and if the deserting power seeks no replacement ally, this is the ‘terminal point’.Footnote 143 Consider for example France's temporary withdrawal from NATO's military command in the 1960s (though no-one would seriously question that Paris remained de facto within the ‘Western bloc’), or Madrid's abandonment of the US-led ‘coalition of the willing’ in 2004. ‘Realignment’ he posits ‘is due to such things as coercion, conflict of interest and strategies, and changes in domestic authority and in power relationships’.Footnote 144 A good example of this is Italy's switching of sides in accord with changing circumstances in both World Wars. Liska also refers to ‘sub-alignment’;Footnote 145 that is a mini-alignment within a larger one. The Anglo-Portuguese alliance (1386-present) is in this sense a sub-alignment within NATO and the EU.
Finally, it is necessary to consider the antonym of ‘non-alignment’. Better seen as a policy than an actual condition, let alone a theory, non-alignment refers to a movement in the Third World to assert some independence from the competing Cold War power blocs, spearheaded by India, Indonesia and Egypt (and based upon the principle of ‘peaceful coexistence’ promulgated at the 1955 Bandung Conference), though London's c. 19th policy of ‘splendid isolation’ should also qualify.Footnote 146 Non-alignment policy itself is somewhat problematic since, clearly the members of the Non-Aligned Movement (established in Belgrade, 1961), were ‘aligned’ in some sense in joint opposition to the superpower blocs. Furthermore, it lost whatever currency it had in international politics as a result of the end of the Cold War, when any remaining rationale it had dissolved. These difficulties have not precluded study of the principle of non-alignment however, where an extensive literature is to be found. Many studies look at the decisions of small powers, and buffer states not to align with major powers or join their alliances (sometimes known as ‘neutrality’).Footnote 147
Much of the literature gives the impression that ‘alignment’ needs no definition and that such ‘small powers’ are the subject of ‘alignment’ with the ‘alliances’ headed by the great powers.Footnote 148Robert Rothstein records that ‘the viability of non-alignment is, therefore, directly related to the power balance between the Great Powers’.Footnote 149 He also points out ‘non-alignment’ was employed as a more acceptable term than ‘neutrality’, ‘at the very least because it lacks the historical connotations of “neutrality” or any of its derivatives’.Footnote 150It is essentially the principle ‘alliance avoidance’ among small (or at least not ‘great’) powers.Footnote 151 Interestingly, the ASEAN security community also list ‘non-alignment’ in its principles.Footnote 152 Lastly, Ligia Noronha raises the question of whether ‘un-alignment’ (a unilateral, independent, course) might be a preferred term, that is, especially to describe Indian foreign policy at the present time.Footnote 153 This might also be used to describe stolidly ‘neutral’ states such as Ireland, Austria, Finland, Sweden or Switzerland during the Cold War, and beyond. One wonders whom they might now be ‘neutral’ against.
Conclusions
This article contends that the remnants of the Cold War alliance paradigm, both in Europe and the Asia-Pacific, represent an ancien régime under duress, as traditional allies struggle to adapt to unfamiliar circumstances, and totally new alignments materialise. With a paradigm shift away from the Cold War alliance system to a new more elastic and versatile constellation of security alignments, such as the TSD and SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organisation), underway, this is an opportune moment to take stock of our conceptual definitions and adapt or revise them correspondingly. To this purpose the article has proffered a basic working taxonomy of the major archetypes of alignment, including ‘alliances’, in all their variations.
The article has explored some of the multiple problématiques that face our conceptualisation and application of alignment terminologies, and draws the following conclusions. First, more accuracy is needed in defining and conceptualising alignment archetypes, and greater care in the usage of the various labels, to avoid conflation, is required. In particular, the continued employment of ‘alliance’ and ‘alignment’, (and ‘alliance’ and ‘coalition’), as synonyms, needs rectification. Failure to do so could lead to faulty analysis, and perhaps erroneous policy calculations on the part of allies.
Second, by broadening the area of enquiry for alignment theorists away from the seemingly resilient fixation on the Cold War alliance paradigm, we can potentially unlock a more multidimensional perspective on the phenomenon. This could usefully incorporate different levels of analysis and recognition of non-traditional security challenges, not just military threats, as drivers of security alignment. Likewise, it is entirely possible that non-state actors (for example, terrorist groups such as Al-Qaeda) may be considered as some form of coalition/alignment. Again the traditional Realist state-centrism has problems accommodating this aspect. Thus much theorising remains to be done. Having attempted to apply some internal coherence to our archetypes of alignment, the next theoretical task is to contemplate their external orientations, that is, their conceptual relationship with regard to one another in the taxonomy.Footnote 154 This article has, in Snyder's words, sought to ‘identify variations in the object of study’, the next crucial task then is to ‘classify these variations in some logical order’.Footnote 155
Third, if we extend our conception of alignment beyond the core industrialised allies and consider the security behaviour of the ‘global south’ we are faced with the recognition that the alliance paradigm (and the traditional alliance theories) have marginal utility or application for regions such as Africa and South America. This points to a Western conceit, or ethnocentric bias, in our analyses. Brazilians or South Africans, for example, have had little history of formal military alliances; they would however certainly recognise policies of alignment through security cooperation, quite readily.
On these bases, the article has made the case that it is alignment (not alliance) that should be our paramount theoretical concern in IR. ‘If [an alignment] theory is to cover informal as well as formal varieties of alignment, as it realistically must, then any relationship other than outright indifference falls within its purview’, according to Snyder.Footnote 156 The essential point is to recalibrate and reorder our understanding of the phenomenon of alignment, particularly with regard to its troublesome relationship with ‘alliance’. Let it be reiterated one final time: ‘Formal alliances are simply one of the behavioural means to create or strengthen alignments’.Footnote 157 Moreover, the increased priority in establishing alignment as the paramount concept is driven by the changing nature of international security cooperation in the contemporary world. We must reconsider the conceptual definitions and analytical tools we currently have and their continued applicability to a fast changing empirical environment. As Tertrais points out ‘permanent multinational alliances appear increasingly to belong to the past’.Footnote 158 Can traditional Realist threat-based alliance theory adequately explain, for example, the SCO, PSI (Proliferation Security Initiative) the G20 or G2 (US-China), CSTO (Collective Security Treaty Organisation), or GUUAM (Georgia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, and Moldova) equations? If not, our next task is to revise our analytical and theoretical frameworks accordingly.
