ALLIANCE
An agreement between two or more states to work together on mutual
security issues. States enter into such cooperative security arrangements
in order to protect themselves against a common (or perceived)
threat. By pooling their resources and acting in concert, the alliance
partners believe that they can improve their overall power position
within the international system and their security relative to states
outside the alliance.
Alliances can be either formal or informal arrangements. A formal
alliance is publicly recognised through the signing of a treaty in which
the signatories promise to consider an attack on any one of them as
equivalent to an attack on all of them. The North Atlantic Treaty
Organisation (NATO) is a good example of a formal security
alliance. Informal alliances are much looser and less stable and rely, to
a large extent, on the word of the parties involved and ongoing
cooperation between them. The latter may entail, among other things,
joint military exercises, the sharing of strategic information, or
promises of assistance during a military crisis. Informal alliances can
also take the form of secret agreements between leaders.
There are a number of benefits in forming alliances. First, they can
offset the cost of defence. It is much cheaper for a state to ally itself
with a stronger state that possesses a nuclear capability than it is for that
state to build and maintain its own infrastructure, technological expertise,
and weapons delivery systems. This makes alliances especially
attractive to small, vulnerable states. Second, alliances can provide
increased economic benefits through increased trade, aid, and loans
between alliance partners. The deployment of foreign military
personnel can also be beneficial to a local economy.
From the point of view of the great powers, alliances can provide
them with a strategic advantage with respect to their actual or potential
enemies. The United States, for example, entered into a number of
bilateral alliances after 1945 in order to gain landing rights, access to
ports, and the use of military facilities in strategically important locations
around the periphery of the former Soviet Union. Alliances can
thereby help to contain an enemy and control a region of strategic
interest. In addition, alliances can be useful in maintaining hegemonic
control over one’s allies, encouraging them to ‘bandwagon’ with the
great power as opposed to ‘balancing’ against it!
The lifespan of alliances varies. Some last for many years. This may
have to do with a long-lasting perception of threat, similarity of political
systems between member states, or the existence of a powerful.....................
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