Reliability and Alliance Interdependence

Reliability and Alliance Interdependence PDF Author: Iain D. Henry
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501763067
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 161

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Book Description
In Reliability and Alliance Interdependence, Iain D. Henry argues for a more sophisticated approach to alliance politics and ideas of interdependence. It is often assumed that if the United States failed to defend an ally, then this disloyalty would instantly and irrevocably damage US alliances across the globe. Henry proposes that such damage is by no means inevitable and that predictions of disaster are dangerously simplistic. If other allies fear the risks of military escalation more than the consequences of the United States abandoning an ally, then they will welcome, encourage, and even praise such an instance of disloyalty. It is also often assumed that alliance interdependence only constrains US policy options, but Henry shows how the United States can manipulate interdependence to set an example of what constitutes acceptable allied behavior. Using declassified documents, Henry explores five case studies involving US alliances with South Korea, Japan, the Republic of China, the Philippines, Australia, and New Zealand. Reliability and Alliance Interdependence makes a substantial contribution to our understanding of how America's alliances in Asia function as an interdependent system.

Reliability and Alliance Interdependence

Reliability and Alliance Interdependence PDF Author: Iain D. Henry
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501763067
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 161

Get Book

Book Description
In Reliability and Alliance Interdependence, Iain D. Henry argues for a more sophisticated approach to alliance politics and ideas of interdependence. It is often assumed that if the United States failed to defend an ally, then this disloyalty would instantly and irrevocably damage US alliances across the globe. Henry proposes that such damage is by no means inevitable and that predictions of disaster are dangerously simplistic. If other allies fear the risks of military escalation more than the consequences of the United States abandoning an ally, then they will welcome, encourage, and even praise such an instance of disloyalty. It is also often assumed that alliance interdependence only constrains US policy options, but Henry shows how the United States can manipulate interdependence to set an example of what constitutes acceptable allied behavior. Using declassified documents, Henry explores five case studies involving US alliances with South Korea, Japan, the Republic of China, the Philippines, Australia, and New Zealand. Reliability and Alliance Interdependence makes a substantial contribution to our understanding of how America's alliances in Asia function as an interdependent system.

The Power to Divide

The Power to Divide PDF Author: Timothy W. Crawford
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501754726
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 197

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Book Description
Timothy W. Crawford's The Power to Divide examines the use of wedge strategies, a form of divisive statecraft designed to isolate adversaries from allies and potential supporters to gain key advantages. With a multidimensional argument about the power of accommodation in competition, and a survey of alliance diplomacy around both World Wars, The Power to Divide artfully analyzes the past and future performance of wedge strategy in great power politics. Crawford argues that nations attempting to use wedge strategy do best when they credibly accommodate likely or established allies of their enemies. He also argues that a divider's own alliances can pose obstacles to success and explains the conditions that help dividers overcome them. He advances these claims in eight focused studies of alliance diplomacy surrounding the World Wars, derived from published official documents and secondary histories. Through those narratives, Crawford adeptly assesses the record of countries that tried an accommodative wedge strategy, and why ultimately, they succeeded or failed. These calculated actions often became turning points, desired or not, in a nation's established power. For policymakers today facing threats to power from great power competitors, Crawford argues that a deeper historical and theoretical grasp of the role of these wedge strategies in alliance politics and grand strategy is necessary. Crawford drives home the contemporary relevance of the analysis with a survey of China's potential to use such strategies to divide India from the US, and the United States' potential to use them to forestall a China-Russia alliance, and closes with a review of key theoretical insights for policy.

Information Technology and Military Power

Information Technology and Military Power PDF Author: Jon R. Lindsay
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501749579
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 366

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Book Description
Militaries with state-of-the-art information technology sometimes bog down in confusing conflicts. To understand why, it is important to understand the micro-foundations of military power in the information age, and this is exactly what Jon R. Lindsay's Information Technology and Military Power gives us. As Lindsay shows, digital systems now mediate almost every effort to gather, store, display, analyze, and communicate information in military organizations. He highlights how personnel now struggle with their own information systems as much as with the enemy. Throughout this foray into networked technology in military operations, we see how information practice—the ways in which practitioners use technology in actual operations—shapes the effectiveness of military performance. The quality of information practice depends on the interaction between strategic problems and organizational solutions. Information Technology and Military Power explores information practice through a series of detailed historical cases and ethnographic studies of military organizations at war. Lindsay explains why the US military, despite all its technological advantages, has struggled for so long in unconventional conflicts against weaker adversaries. This same perspective suggests that the US retains important advantages against advanced competitors like China that are less prepared to cope with the complexity of information systems in wartime. Lindsay argues convincingly that a better understanding of how personnel actually use technology can inform the design of command and control, improve the net assessment of military power, and promote reforms to improve military performance. Warfighting problems and technical solutions keep on changing, but information practice is always stuck in between.

Reputation for Resolve

Reputation for Resolve PDF Author: Danielle L. Lupton
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501747738
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
How do reputations form in international politics? What influence do these reputations have on the conduct of international affairs? In Reputation for Resolve, Danielle L. Lupton takes a new approach to answering these enduring and hotly debated questions by shifting the focus away from the reputations of countries and instead examining the reputations of individual leaders. Lupton argues that new leaders establish personal reputations for resolve that are separate from the reputations of their predecessors and from the reputations of their states. Using innovative survey experiments and in-depth archival research, she finds that leaders acquire personal reputations for resolve based on their foreign policy statements and behavior. Reputation for Resolve shows that statements create expectations of how leaders will react to foreign policy crises in the future and that leaders who fail to meet expectations of resolute action face harsh reputational consequences. Reputation for Resolve challenges the view that reputations do not matter in international politics. In sharp contrast, Lupton shows that the reputations for resolve of individual leaders influence the strategies statesmen pursue during diplomatic interactions and crises, and she delineates specific steps policymakers can take to avoid developing reputations for irresolute action. Lupton demonstrates that reputations for resolve do exist and can influence the conduct of international security. Thus, Reputation for Resolve reframes our understanding of the influence of leaders and their rhetoric on crisis bargaining and the role reputations play in international politics.

The Weaker Voice and the Evolution of Asymmetric Alliances

The Weaker Voice and the Evolution of Asymmetric Alliances PDF Author: Andrea Leva
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031354486
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 183

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Book Description
Military alliances are a constant feature in international politics, and a better understanding of them can directly impact world affairs. This book examines why alliances endure or collapse. As a distinctive feature, it analyses asymmetric alliances focusing on the junior allies’ decision to continue or terminate a military agreement. It deepens our knowledge of alliance cohesion and erosion, investigating the relevance of the weaker side’s preferences and behavior in alliance politics. The author examines the literature on alliance persistence and termination and puts forward a theoretical model that helps interpret historical and contemporary cases in a way that is useful for expert researchers and non-expert readers alike.

How to Prevent Coups d'État

How to Prevent Coups d'État PDF Author: Erica De Bruin
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501751921
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 147

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Book Description
In this lively and provocative book, Erica De Bruin looks at the threats that rulers face from their own armed forces. Can they make their regimes impervious to coups? How to Prevent Coups d'État shows that how leaders organize their coercive institutions has a profound effect on the survival of their regimes. When rulers use presidential guards, militarized police, and militia to counterbalance the regular military, efforts to oust them from power via coups d'état are less likely to succeed. Even as counterbalancing helps to prevent successful interventions, however, the resentment that it generates within the regular military can provoke new coup attempts. And because counterbalancing changes how soldiers and police perceive the costs and benefits of a successful overthrow, it can create incentives for protracted fighting that result in the escalation of a coup into full-blown civil war. Drawing on an original dataset of state security forces in 110 countries over a span of fifty years, as well as case studies of coup attempts in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East, De Bruin sheds light on how counterbalancing affects regime survival. Understanding the dynamics of counterbalancing, she shows, can help analysts predict when coups will occur, whether they will succeed, and how violent they are likely to be. The arguments and evidence in this book suggest that while counterbalancing may prevent successful coups, it is a risky strategy to pursue—and one that may weaken regimes in the long term.

The Oxford Handbook of Space Security

The Oxford Handbook of Space Security PDF Author: Saadia M. Pekkanen
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197582672
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 905

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Book Description
The Oxford Handbook of Space Security focuses on the interaction between space technology and international and national security processes. Saadia M. Pekkanen and P.J. Blount have gathered a group of key scholars who bring a range of analytical and theoretical perspectives to take an analytically-eclectic approach to assessing space security from an international relations (IR) theory perspective. Bringing together scholarship from a group of leading experts, this volume explains how these contemporary changes will affect future security in, from, and through space.

Constructing International Security

Constructing International Security PDF Author: Brett V. Benson
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107027241
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 223

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Book Description
Constructing International Security identifies effective third-party strategies for balancing deterrence and restraint in security relationships.

The Power to Divide

The Power to Divide PDF Author: Timothy W. Crawford
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501754734
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 307

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Book Description
Timothy W. Crawford's The Power to Divide examines the use of wedge strategies, a form of divisive statecraft designed to isolate adversaries from allies and potential supporters to gain key advantages. With a multidimensional argument about the power of accommodation in competition, and a survey of alliance diplomacy around both World Wars, The Power to Divide artfully analyzes the past and future performance of wedge strategy in great power politics. Crawford argues that nations attempting to use wedge strategy do best when they credibly accommodate likely or established allies of their enemies. He also argues that a divider's own alliances can pose obstacles to success and explains the conditions that help dividers overcome them. He advances these claims in eight focused studies of alliance diplomacy surrounding the World Wars, derived from published official documents and secondary histories. Through those narratives, Crawford adeptly assesses the record of countries that tried an accommodative wedge strategy, and why ultimately, they succeeded or failed. These calculated actions often became turning points, desired or not, in a nation's established power. For policymakers today facing threats to power from great power competitors, Crawford argues that a deeper historical and theoretical grasp of the role of these wedge strategies in alliance politics and grand strategy is necessary. Crawford drives home the contemporary relevance of the analysis with a survey of China's potential to use such strategies to divide India from the US, and the United States' potential to use them to forestall a China-Russia alliance, and closes with a review of key theoretical insights for policy.

The Oil Wars Myth

The Oil Wars Myth PDF Author: Emily Meierding
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501748955
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
Do countries fight wars for oil? Given the resource's exceptional military and economic importance, most people assume that states will do anything to obtain it. Challenging this conventional wisdom, The Oil Wars Myth reveals that countries do not launch major conflicts to acquire petroleum resources. Emily Meierding argues that the costs of foreign invasion, territorial occupation, international retaliation, and damage to oil company relations deter even the most powerful countries from initiating "classic oil wars." Examining a century of interstate violence, she demonstrates that, at most, countries have engaged in mild sparring to advance their petroleum ambitions. The Oil Wars Myth elaborates on these findings by reassessing the presumed oil motives for many of the twentieth century's most prominent international conflicts: World War II, the two American Gulf wars, the Iran–Iraq War, the Falklands/Malvinas War, and the Chaco War. These case studies show that countries have consistently refrained from fighting for oil. Meierding also explains why oil war assumptions are so common, despite the lack of supporting evidence. Since classic oil wars exist at the intersection of need and greed—two popular explanations for resource grabs—they are unusually easy to believe in. The Oil Wars Myth will engage and inform anyone interested in oil, war, and the narratives that connect them.