Despite the ubiquity of the term “alliance of convenience,” the dynamics of these especially tenuous alliances have not been systematically explored by scholars or policymakers. An alliance of convenience is the initiation of security cooperation between ideological and geopolitical adversaries in response to an overarching third-party threat; they are conceptually different from other types of alliances. Neorealist, two-level games, and neoclassical realist theories all seek to explain the outcome of intra-alliance bargaining between the United States and allies of convenience since 1945. Neorealism and two-level games theories broadly predict successful U.S. bargaining because of the United States' favorable position in the international system and the relatively tight constraints on executive power in the United States, respectively. By contrast, neoclassical realism predicts that tight constraints on executive power in the United States should have led the foreign policy executive to bargain unsuccessfully with allies of convenience. In the case of the U.S. alliance of convenience with Iraq during the 1980–88 Iran-Iraq War, neoclassical realism best explains the outcome of U.S. bargaining with Iraq. This case has implications for other U.S. bargaining efforts.
Unanswered Threats: Political Constraints on the Balance of
Power. By Randall L. Schweller. Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 2006. 200p. $29.95.
In this insightful and elegantly written book, Randall Schweller
examines the phenomenon of underbalancing, which he defines as
situations in which “threatened countries have failed to recognize a
clear and present danger, or, more typically, have simply not
reacted to it or, more typically still, have responded in paltry and
imprudent ways” (p. 1). The study is motivated by the failure of
many states throughout history to act in accordance with the
cardinal prediction of structural realist theory that states will
tend to balance against rising powers that threaten their survival,
through the acquisition of arms and/or allies. Schweller argues that
domestic political factors account for this discrepancy, enhancing
or diminishing the ability and/or willingness of states to mobilize
their national resources in response to systemic dangers.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.