Reliability and Alliance Politics: Interdependence and America’s Asian Alliance System

Abstract

Throughout the Cold War, US officials feared that Washington’s disloyalty to one ally would automatically cause other allies to doubt America’s security reliability. These doubts could prompt allies to adopt policies of neutrality, or even defect to the Communist bloc. This dissertation challenges the conventional wisdom—that alliance interdependence is underpinned by loyalty—by proposing the “alliance audience effect”. The alliance audience effect framework shows that discrete alliance commitments can be practically interdependent, but that this interdependence is not underpinned by loyalty. Through an investigation of Cold War case studies, using a process tracing methodology and archival research, this dissertation argues that US allies in Asia were unconcerned about whether America was loyal to other allied states. Instead, they monitored America’s behaviour in order to reassure themselves that the US was reliable: that their own alliance did not pose risks of either abandonment or entrapment. When allies feared abandonment, they encouraged America to solidify its presence in Asia and adopt a more aggressive posture. But when allies feared entrapment, they encouraged conciliatory US policies and worked to restrain Washington, thus reducing the risk of conflict. In some cases, American disloyalty to one ally was welcomed, or even encouraged, by other allies, as this disloyalty better served their own interests. Like the adage that “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter”, this dissertation shows that one state’s disloyal ally can be another state’s reliable ally. Because US allies have different interests, they will have different views of American behaviour: one ally might praise an instance of US disloyalty as proof of reliability, while another ally might condemn Washington for unreliability. In short, reliability is not synonymous with loyalty, and America does not have a collective alliance loyalty reputation. Beyond the allied perspective, this research also demonstrates how the United States managed its alliances and used alliance interdependence to achieve its own ends. This dissertation’s findings have relevance for the alliance politics literature, theories about international reputation, and the practical management of alliances.