Alliances

International Relations Assignment

Group Members:
Abdur Rafae Shahid 10081
Talal Hasan 9856
Muhammed Arsalan 10694
Waltz makes the realist argument that alliances are intended to balance power and that
third parties will generally align with the weaker state against the stronger state. Later
on Walt modifies Waltz’s argument, putting the emphasis on balance of threat instead
of balance of power. For Walt, third parties will generally align with the weaker state
against the stronger state only if the stronger state is perceived by the third party as a
threat.

In rare circumstances, third parties might “bandwagon” by aligning with the stronger
state in an attempt to make gains at the expense of the weaker state. Mearsheimer
argues that band wagoning is almost always a bad idea because it is tantamount to
capitulation to the stronger state by the third party. Mearsheimer argues that third
parties prefer to “buck-pass” and allow other states check the power of strong states.
Schweller argues against conflating band wagoning and capitulation and against
assuming that balancing and band wagoning are designed to achieve the same goal of
promoting security.

Schweller thus departs from the realist framework by arguing that states must balance
their own security and non-security interests; when security concerns are less intense,
band wagoning for material gains is rational, and as Schweller argues, more common
than realists realize. Reiter makes a somewhat constructivist argument that the decision
to form alliances by minor powers is a function of their experience with formative
historical events like system-wide wars.

Hopf does not address alliance formation directly but argues against realists like Waltz
who assert that bipolarity leads to system stability. Hopf argues instead that offense-
defense balance explains system stability and demonstrates this claim by looking at
system-level characteristics in the sixteenth and twentieth century’s. One could infer
from Waltz that alliances are less necessary under bipolarity because the power in the
system is already balanced and there is no need to form costly alliances. In the spirit of
Hopf, we can look at alliance formation over the past two centuries, using the COW III.
Figure 1 shows the total number of alliances in effect between 1816 and 2000. This total
includes defense alliances, pledges of neutrality or non-aggression, and ententes
(pledges to consult during crises). During this period, about 60 percent of total alliances
are defense alliances and the remaining 40 percent are divided fairly evenly between
neutrality pacts and ententes. Clearly, alliances were relatively rare in the 1800s, started
to increase around 1900, fell apart during the World Wars, increased between them,
and increased during the Cold War until the Soviet Union and its alliances fell apart.

Figure 2 shows when each type of alliance was most likely to start. Clearly, the
probability that a new alliance would commence increased in the first half of the
twentieth century and declined thereafter, although there was a surge in new neutrality
pacts during the Cold War. This general decline in alliance starts is notable given the
number of new states that were created during this period.

Does any theory of alliance formation explain these trends? The data are consistent
with Reiter’s thesis that major wars spur alliances, but it is not possible to determine
whether there is a psychological/constructivist explanation or simply a drastically
altered international system. Balance of power theory does not fare well; alliance
activity increased under multi-polarity (in The 1900s only) but peaked under bipolarity
when realist theory suggests new alliances should be unnecessary. This week’s readings
do not focus on alliance termination, but alliances seem more durable than realist
theory would suggest; alliances tend to crumble when there are major events like wars
but persist otherwise. Maybe minor states were motivated to form (and maintain)
alliances with major powers by foreign aid, prestige, or some other factor that would be
more consistent with Schweller.

The readings for this week focus exclusively on defense alliances, but the COW data
indicate that neutrality pacts are common as well. Neutrality pacts are interesting
because they are likely to be a component of a “buck-passing” strategy and unlikely to
be a component of a band wagoning strategy. Thus, modeling a dyad’s choice between
no alliance, an entente, a neutrality pact or a defense alliance would seem a promising
strategy to gain leverage on the alliance formation strategies of states. But, for the most
part, defense alliance and neutrality pact activity proceed in lock-step, suggesting the
absence of a system-level explanation for why states prefer one to the other.
The Holy Alliance was a coalition of Russia, Austria and Prussia created in 1815 at the
behest of Czar Alexander I of Russia, signed by the three powers in Paris on September
26, 1815, in the Congress of Vienna after the defeat of Napoleon. Ostensibly it was to
instill the Christian values of charity and peace in European political life, but in
practice Klemens Wenzel von Metternich made it a bastion against revolution. The
monarchs of the three countries involved used this to band together in order to prevent
revolutionary influence (especially from the French Revolution) from entering these
nations. It was against democracy, revolution, and secularism. The Alliance is usually
associated with the Quadruple and Quintuple Alliances, which included the United
Kingdom and (from 1818) France with the aim of upholding the European peace
settlement concluded at the Congress of Vienna. The Alliance was conventionally taken
to have become defunct with Alexander's death in 1825.

The term "Quadruple Alliance" refers to several historical military alliances; none of

which remain in effect.

1. The Quadruple Alliance of August 1673 was an alliance between the Holy Roman
Empire, the Kingdom of Spain, Charles IV, Duke of Lorraine, and the United
Provinces of the Netherlands, in the context of the Franco-Dutch War. It is often
incorrectly assumed the fourth partner was not the Duke of Lorraine but the
Electorate of Brandenburg, which indeed joined the alliance, but only in July
1674.
2. The Quadruple Alliance of 1718 was an alliance between Austria, France,
the Dutch Republic and Great Britain - aimed at revising (principally at Spain's
expense) the treaties which ended the War of the Spanish Succession. See: War
of the Quadruple Alliance.
3. The Quadruple Alliance of 1745 was formed between the United Kingdom,
the Dutch Republic, Saxony and Austria in the later stages of the War of the
Austrian Succession.
4. The Quadruple Alliance of March 1813 (renewed on November 20, 1815);
between the United Kingdom, Austria, Prussia, and Russia, aimed at upholding
the settlement following the Napoleonic Wars: with France's admission in 1818,
it became the Quintuple Alliance, though British government distaste for the
other allies' reactionary policies meant that it lapsed into ineffectiveness after
the mid-1820s.
 5. The Quadruple Alliance of April 1834 was formed by the United
Kingdom, France, Spain, and Portugal to support queen Isabella II of
Spain against her uncle Don Carlos, Count of Molina, who claimed the Spanish
throne under the succession law of 1714-1830, and queen Maria II of
Portugal (represented by her father Pedro, 18th Duke of Braganza, former
Emperor of Brazil and King of Portugal) against her uncle Miguel of Portugal, who
proclaimed himself absolute king before the Portuguese Liberal War.
6. "Quadruple Alliance" was also used as an alternative term for the Central
Powers of World War I, it consisting of Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman
Empire and Bulgaria.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization or NATO, also called the (North) Atlantic

Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance based on the North Atlantic
Treaty which was signed on 4 April 1949. The NATO headquarters are
in Brussels, Belgium, and the organization constitutes a system of collective
defence whereby its member states agree to mutual defense in response to an attack by
any external party.
For its first few years, NATO was not much more than a political association. However,
the Korean War galvanized the member states, and an integrated military structure was
built up under the direction of two U.S. supreme commanders. The first NATO Secretary
General, Lord Ismay, famously stated the organization's goal was "to keep
the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down". Doubts over the strength
of the relationship between the European states and the United States ebbed and
flowed, along with doubts over the credibility of the NATO defence against a
prospective Soviet invasion—doubts that led to the development of the independent
French nuclear deterrent and the withdrawal of the French from NATO's military
structure from 1966.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the organization became drawn into the Balkans
while building better links with former potential enemies to the east, which culminated
with several former Warsaw Pact states joining the alliance in 1999 and 2004. On 1 April
2009, membership was enlarged to 28 with the entrance of Albania and Croatia. Since
the 11 September attacks, NATO has attempted to refocus itself to new challenges and
has deployed troops to Afghanistan as well as trainers to Iraq.
The Berlin Plus agreement is a comprehensive package of agreements made between
NATO and the European Union on 16 December 2002. With this agreement the EU was
given the possibility to use NATO assets in case it wanted to act independently in an
international crisis, on the condition that NATO itself did not want to act—the so-called
"right of first refusal". Only if NATO refused to act would the EU have the option to act.
The combined military spending of all NATO members constitutes over 70% of the
world's defence spending. The United States alone accounts for 43% of the total military
spending of the world and the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Italy account for
a further 15%.

British–American relations encompass many complex relations over the span of four

centuries, beginning in 1607 with England's first permanent colony in North America
called Jamestown, to the present day, between the United Kingdom of Great Britain and
Northern Ireland and the United States of America.
The United States is bound to Britain by shared history, a common language and legal
system, culture, and kindred, ancestral lines in British Americans which can be traced
back hundreds of years.
Through times of war and rebellion, peace and estrangement, as well as becoming
friends and allies, Britain and the United States cemented these deeply rooted links
during World War II into what is known as the "Special Relationship", still described by
a leading commentator as "the key trans-Atlantic alliance", which the U.S. Senate Chair
on European Affairs acknowledged in 2010 as "one of the cornerstones of stability
around the world."
Today, the relationship with the United States represents the "most important bilateral
partnership" in current British foreign policy  while United States foreign policy affirms
its relationship with the United Kingdom as one of its most important enduring bilateral
relationships, as evidenced in aligned political affairs, mutual cooperation in the areas of
trade, commerce, finance, technology, academics, as well as the arts and sciences; the
sharing of government and military intelligence, and joint combat operations
and peacekeeping missions carried out between the United States armed forces and
the British Armed Forces. Britain has always been the biggest foreign investor in the USA
and vice versa.