With the Trump-Brexit and coronavirus-accelerated reshuffling of global order, recent reexaminations and reimaginings of global alliance have been rife. Questions of new sets of alliances, alignments and understandings are now common, whether it be Macron’s suggestions of a new European-Russian reset or renewed talks around whether the Quad could actually be a functional China-containment coalition. Reevaluation of memberships, present or potential, for organizations such as the EU and NATO have also occupied many capitals. This essay will attempt to introduce three perspectives from which these debates can be analysed- interests, collective security and a constructivist reframing of the former.

Interests Frame: Aligned Objectives and Common Enemies

The most simple reasoning towards forming an alliance would be, of course, shared interests. A common enemy, shared stewardship over a common resource, or even common desired outcomes, like the overturning of certain international systems or status quos (such as common desire to overthrow the Paris Peace Agreements by Germany and Hungary in the Interbellum) can serve as the necessary spark to create a coalition to achieve those shared interests.

The shared interests in question can come from a broad range. This includes the conventional common state actor, but also other actors and issues such as pirates, terrorists and drug cartels. In some broader interpretations, this logic can be extended to the liberal internationalist thought process to justify pursuing a world alliance of common humanity to fight against the common enemies such as poverty and pestilence. However, this extension usually occurs only in more idealistic strains of popular rhetoric or the lofty goals of the United Nations and hardly ever within actual foreign policy practice.

The most prominent example of this frame in action can be found in the founding of NATO. With the common threat of Soviet expansion perceived across Europe, many European states elected to join the United States to set up a bloc of countries devoted to countering communist expansion in Europe. However, shared interests do not have to be about geopolitical opponents or enemies. Shared economic interests can be as good a reason as any for alliance or cooperation. For example, OPEC, which holds a good share of global oil production within its members, is composed of countries all over the world, with wildly different security and geopolitical situations. Yet, OPEC continues to function as a highly influential organisation in controlling oil supply and prices throughout the world, to the benefit of its members.

Historically, alliances mainly devoted towards shared interests, whether momentary or long-term, have been much more common than any other type of alliance, primarily because it is the most basic form an alliance can take. The Anglo-French alliance during the Crimean War, the Coalitions against Napoleon, the numerous warring alliances in massive European wars like that of the Austrian and Spanish succession wars, and even the Allied-Soviet alliance during the Second World War were alliances devoted to shared interests. While the countries involved were in some cases mutually antagonistic and historical rivals, the shared interest in defeating a common enemy and improving both their positions in Europe made such alliances work. However, this also meant that these alliances also lapsed as soon as the common enemy was defeated and the purpose of the alliance served.

However, since the 20th century, alliances have changed. The US-Japan alliance, and NATO all represent alliances and partnerships of a fundamentally different nature from the alliances of the past. Why?

This is because of a few reasons. While all alliances may be based on shared interests, not all shared interests are equal. In this sense, these “shared interests” define how the alliance turns out. Is it long or short-term? Economic or political? Defensive or Offensive? Furthermore, is “shared interest” the only thing keeping an alliance or partnership together?

In addition, there are practical problems with forming long-lasting, deep alliances based on a pure alignment of interests. This is for three reasons; the dynamic nature of interests, the inherent distrust present within the international system and the practical difficulties of building and integrating alliances of any substantial worth.

Alliances cannot be built, used or deconstructed as quickly and cheaply as the shifting of national interest. For alliances to have a point, and the true benefits of extended economies of scale, specializations and intelligence/technology sharing to be reaped, heavy amounts of time, integration and resources must be invested.

Expensive and long-running public relations campaigns must often be undertaken on both sides to convince all the populations involved of the value of the alliance. If the alliance has to be changed, these PR efforts must change too. For example, the US spent most of WW2 convincing the American public that the USSR was a great and loyal ally that would help the US defeat Germany. However, it then had to take a dramatic turnaround and discredit the USSR and communism in the US with the start of the Cold War. Risks must be taken and vulnerabilities must necessarily be exposed to alliance partners. If not, these kinds of alliances tend to fade in and out of existence just as frequently as the Coalitions of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic periods. Today, limited common interests usually produce the most limited of understandings and semi-alliances, such as the tacit and inconsistent mutual avoidance of conflict between Russian and US troops in the fight against ISIS.

Collective security

If we view alliances as a collective security unit which seeks to expand its security in a way mutually agreeable to all members in the alliance, how would such a unit view prospective new members?

Let us view this from the lens of what we shall define as “collective security”. The objective of Collective Security to emphasise the alliance as the principal unit and evaluate membership on the basis of each member state’s security making or taking. Simply put, instead of weighing various common enemies and shared objectives of constituent member states, it focuses purely on the concentration or intensity of security possessed by the alliance itself. Since the end of the Cold War and the end of the Soviet Union, this has been a frame often used in US alliance networks, and to a lesser extent, on EU expansion, where expansion was carried out with no clear enemy or common objective in mind. For instance, the expansion of NATO was by no means systematic or planned, as demonstrated in the inclusion of the Baltics into NATO and Denmark’s prominent role in their entry. (Some may also argue that the promotion of democracy and human rights played a role, but that’s quite a complex debate that we won’t cover here).

Of course, critiques could be made that collective security as an end of itself is backwards logic. After all, if an alliance exists and operates purely for its own self-perpetuation and self-strengthening as a bloc rather than any single coherent goal, what purpose does it serve for its constituent member states?

To respond to this line of attack, one must recontextualize the global context and establish that there are no definite common enemies and degrees of rivalry. For instance, to a post-Soviet NATO in the 1990s-2010s, Chinese and Russian ambitions could both be too vague in their extents and intensities to form any core rivalry priority or plan. Threats from terror and rogue states could also remain too indeterminate to truly strategize around. In this case, while vague ideas of common enemies can exist, these ideas remain unactionable in their uncertainties. Thus, the best strategy is a quasi-realist approach of increasing security to ensure maximum defence in all directions. In other words, when interests are uncertain, general security is as good a process as any.

The premise of security makers and security takers can be made quite simple. In essence, security takers are states that extend frontlines without providing enough forces to man them. Security makers are states that provide forces to man the frontlines, without disproportionately expanding those frontlines. These frontlines need not necessarily be military or geostrategic – they can occur in the economic, health, political spheres, or anywhere where sovereignty is sought and potentially contested. This mechanism can also be mathematically expressed as follows:

Force / Vulnerability = Security
If State Security < 1, State is a net security taker and hence an unattractive alliance partner.
If State Security > 1, State is a net security maker and hence an attractive alliance partner.

One case study that can highlight this would be potential NATO membership for Ukraine. As a state under Russian attack, Ukraine has a pretty good case for aligned interest with the wider NATO community if one takes the state interests frame. However, in terms of the Collective Security frame, Ukraine clearly makes less security than it takes, owing to its massive and active frontline with Russia. Ukraine battles Russian weaponry on its military frontlines, Russian influence in its politics and Russian reliance in its economy. It is unable to create substantial force to cover these vulnerabilities due to its dysfunctional politics and economy. Hence, it is a clear security taker. Phrased differently, this has been one of the more popular arguments in favour of blocking Ukrainian entry into NATO.

How to derive “force”?

Within the security frame, defence budgets are often used to determine how much force, and hence security is being made. Budgets as an indicator of the force possessed by a state make some intuitive sense as they serve as a reasonable compound measure of the quantity and quality of forces. It is for this reason that NATO notes a 2% GDP military budget obligation for all member states, an obligation that has often gone unheeded by many wealthy European states. This security skiving has been a constant irritation to US administrations past and present, as it gives the impression that these European states are net security takers instead of makers. In other words, a “free rider” or a burden.

However, a more nuanced analysis must note that “security making” cannot end with defence budgets. There are plenty of ways to make or take security beyond spending cash on troops and equipment. Germany, for all its flaws as an ally, does contribute to collective security through serving as a logistics and medical hub for NATO and US troops in a way that is not reflected in its dismal military spending. Other forms of “security making” such as ensuring intra-alliance economic resilience and self-sufficiency building or intelligence collection are likewise not reflected in pure budget calculations.

How to derive “vulnerability”?

For evaluating vulnerability, on the other hand, usually far more qualitative, case-by-case measures are taken. However, there are a few general criteria. Regime stability, competence, and reputation can serve as valuable additions or serious liabilities to an alliance. Furthermore, whether the state has hostile relations with other states that may not otherwise be opposed to the alliance adds to vulnerability, as it expands the alliance’s scope and obligations. (For example, Ukraine and Russia, although this is debatable considering Russia’s history with NATO) This can be seen in recent re-evaluations of the Turkish role in NATO. Through invading sections of Syria in attempts to quell Kurdish presence, Turkey reignited previously inactive borders and thus appear to possess more gaping vulnerabilities than before. Through purchasing the Russian S400 Missile system, Turkey also added more intelligence vulnerabilities due to accepting accompanying Russian officers there for supposed training purposes. Similar lines of logic can be drawn towards states accepting Chinese 5G equipment, which increase their vulnerabilities towards potential adversary infiltration and subversion.

A constructivist take: What makes shared interests? Do alliances take on a life of their own?

Lastly, it is worth considering a constructivist reframing of the idea of national or alliance interests. Under a constructivist lens, all interests, no matter how seemingly inherent or materially, economically or geographically grounded, are necessarily largely socially constructed. States do not necessarily need to seek greater economic growth, technological advancement or power reinforcement if they are sufficiently socialized to no longer care for such things. Rather, the fact that they often do so in practice, is merely due to these objectives having become socialized by cultural, social or ideological waves. Even a state’s drive for national interest and basic self-preservation must necessarily be constructed from some form of national identity and can be dismantled by destroying that sense of identity.

A case study can be observed in the European Union and the wider European project, which has slowly ground on national interests and national identities through creating a genuine supranational European identity and politics. For European integrationists, an optimal European Union would be one where the Belgian has been socialized to care about Polish security concerns as his own, and where the Pole has been socialized to care about Belgian economic interests as his own. To some extent, this has happened with some sectors of the populace in the European Union. During debates and coverage on events like Brexit or proposed French exit or Italian exit from the European Union, a common refrain of the “European Project” is prominent. This concept demonstrates how alliances and collaboration between nations, like the EU originally started as, can take on a life of its own, where the very existence of the project then is sufficient justification to perpetuate its existence. In this respect, the criteria of whether to ally with another country may not rest on frames of collective security or even shared interest, but other concepts like “European Integration” or “European Values”.

In the same vein, the existence of “shared values” is similar. In discourse over America’s alliances with other countries, the existence of “shared values” is prominent. However, the perception of the existence of common values between the states, and the importance of such values in deciding alliances are social constructions as well. A democratic, liberal country may or may not share certain values with the US, and the existence of these shared values, if they exist, do not necessitate, from a security basis, alliance with the country. They may even necessitate alliances against such a nation and with powers without such shared values. For example, Germany before WWI was viewed as a constitutional monarchy worthy of emulation for the US, but public opinion turned sufficiently on Germany by 1916 such that alliance with the Entente, great imperial powers, and Tsarist Russia, an autocratic regime, was considered the cost of bringing down Germany. This shows how “interest”, and “values” are extremely fluid concepts in real application. Along these lines, one of the “national interest” critiques of alliance expansion has not actually been the prospect of explicit entanglement, but rather an insidious creeping socialization wherein foreign interests are made national simply by prolonged exposure and interaction.

Conclusion

Alliance politics is a massive field of study within the field of International Relations, wherein entire books have been written and academic careers have been dedicated to push mere points within wider arguments within enormous sprawling debates. This essay has only just begun to scratch the surface of how alliance dynamics and perspectives can work. However, within these humble scratchings, this essay hopes that it has provided sufficient frameworks from which more in-depth exploration can be done.

Further reading

Sukhankin, S. (2019, April 22). Ukraine’s Thorny Path to NATO Membership: Mission (im)possible? Retrieved July 12, 2020, from https://icds.ee/ukraines-stony-path-to-nato-membership-mission-impossible/
Young, D. (2008, December 01). Analyzing Ukraine’s prospects for NATO membership. Retrieved July 12, 2020, from https://calhoun.nps.edu/handle/10945/3726
Kunertova, D. (2020, April 24). Can the New ‘Magi’ Save NATO? Retrieved July 12, 2020, from https://warontherocks.com/2020/04/can-the-new-magi-save-nato/
Papadogiannis, N. (2019, May 22). Is there such thing as a ‘European identity’? Retrieved July 12, 2020, from https://theconversation.com/is-there-such-thing-as-a-european-identity-117052
Buchan, G. (2012, February). National Interests and the European Union. Retrieved July 12, 2020, from https://www.brugesgroup.com/media-centre/papers/8-papers/719-national-interests-and-the-european-union