Today, the US administration is expanding and consolidating these links seeking to build a latticework of alliances and partnerships globally that are fit for purpose for the twenty-first century.79A Conversation With Jake Sullivan, Council on Foreign Relations, December 17, 2021, https://www.cfr.org/event/conversation-jake-sullivan. 1907. Such conflicts could, however, escalate quickly. Entrapment is a form of undesirable entanglement. See Tongfi Kim, Why Alliances Entangle but Seldom Entrap States,, Dominic Tierney, Does Chain-Ganging Cause the Outbreak of War?,, Choong-Nam Kang, Capability Revisited: Allys Capability and Dispute Initiation,, Macias and Higgins, Trump Says Defending Tiny NATO Ally Montenegro., Brett V. Benson et al., Ally Provocateur: Why Allies Do Not Always Behave,. . Thus, if simple models of a division of labor between Europeans and Americans in case of major war accurately reflect the complex realities of how such crises would unfold, Europeans should expect to take up more defense responsibilities for the defense of the continent, whatever the scenario. Two additional arguments will make this clearer. 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The NATO Alliance has welcomed fourteen new members since 1990, nearly doubling its membership. Reuters, Inconceivable Australia Would Not Join US to Defend Taiwan: Australian Defence Minister, November 13, 2021, Japan, Australia Sign Defense Pact to Counter Chinas Rise,. Sharon Stirling, German Marshall Fund of the United States, 2018, https://www.gmfus.org/sites/default/files/ Assessing%2520the%2520US%2520Commitment%2520to%2520Allies%2520in%2520Asia%2520and%2520Beyond_0_0.pdf. In both cases, however, clarifications were given by the protector. 4 (2015), https://www.belfercenter.org/sites/default/files/legacy/files/IS3904_pp007-048.pdf. It also helps reduce the risk of nuclear proliferation, a long-standing US and global concern: extended nuclear deterrence is widely considered the best way to discourage an ally from embarking on developing a nuclear weapons program of their own. 4 (2000), https://www.jstor.org/stable/174649. Meanwhile, Western countries, their allies, and their partners would do well to think through the various scenarios in which contemporary alliances would interplay in order to avoid being surprised at the various ways events could unfold. Russia and China have few military allies (only one formal ally for Beijing: North Korea). There was a variety of causes that influenced the beginning of World War I, but the primary causes consisted of three major crisis areas which eventually led to the creation of World War I: Balkan nationalism, entangling alliances, and militarism as welll as the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Ayaz Gul, Pakistans PM Urges US, China to Reduce Tensions, Voice of America, December 9, 2021, China Believes That America Is Forging Alliances to Stop Its Rise,, Artyom Lukin, JAUKUS and the Emerging Clash of Alliances in the Pacific,, Robert Farley, Can the US Military Still Fight a Two Front War and Win?,. This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged. Emmanuel Macron, Speech of the President of the Republic on the Defense and Deterrence Strategy, February 7, 2020. While definitive judgments are impossible to make, arguments claiming that alliances are good for stability are convincing. 2 (2014), https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0738894213503440. The most egregious cases of U.S. overreach, however, have stemmed not from entangling alliances, but from the penchant of American leaders to define national interests expansively, to overestimate . 12 (January 2012), https://www.jstor.org/stable/41485490. Triple Entente. . To be sure, faced with the prospect of their protector getting involved in a distant contingency, they could welcome the effective exercise of security guarantees since it would validate in their eyes the one they benefit from. The consolidation of the Western system of alliances in Asia was made even stronger in 2021, when Australian and Japanese officials made it clearer that their countries would support the United States in a conflict over Taiwan.43Reuters, Inconceivable Australia Would Not Join US to Defend Taiwan: Australian Defence Minister, November 13, 2021, https://www.reuters.com/ world/asia-pacific/inconceivable-australia-would-not-join-us-defend-taiwan-australian-defence-2021-11-12/; Reuters, Japan Deputy PM Comment on Defending Taiwan if Invaded Angers China, July 6, 2021, https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/japans-aso-peaceful-solution-desirable-any-taiwancontingency-2021-07-06/; and Jeffrey W. Hornung, Taiwan and Six Potential New Years Resolutions for the US-Japanese Alliance, War on the Rocks, January 5, 2022, https://warontherocks.com/2022/01/taiwan-and-six-potential-new-years-resolutions-for-the-u-s-japanese-alliance/. . The UK signed its own defense agreement with the UAE in 1996; the UK governments comments in Parliament suggest that London is committed to deterring threats or preventing aggression against the Emirates, and, in the event of such aggression taking place, to implementing the joint military plans which are judged appropriate for the defense of the UAE.57UK Parliament, Co-operation Accord (United Arab Emirates), Hansard (official report of debates) 286, Commons: November 28, 1996, Written Answers, Defense, https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/1996-11-28/debates/becc7cbf-c160-4d16-95f4-b2fbf024a1ef/Co-OperationAccord(UnitedArabEmirates). Diplomacy was critically important to the success of the American Revolution (17751783) and the founding and early growth of the Un, Foreign policy, conceptualized most broadly and simply, is the totality of a states external behavior toward other states and nonstate actors (e.g.,, Elitism In early 2022, according to two different polls, a surprising number of Americans and Europeans were ready to defend Ukraine.51Carl Bildt et al.,Survey: Western Public Backs Stronger Support for Ukraine against Russia, Atlantic Council, January 25, 2022, https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/survey-western-public-backs-stronger-support-for-ukraine-against-russia/; and Ivan Krastev and Mark Leonard, The Crisis of European Security: What Europeans Think About the War in Ukraine, Policy Brief, European Council on Foreign Relations, February 9, 2022, https://ecfr.eu/publication/the-crisis-of-european-security-what-europeans-think-about-the-war-in-ukraine/. The endurance of existing military alliances can be partly explained by mere inertia, vested interests, and sunk costs.72Stephen M. Walt, Why Alliances Endure or Collapse,Survival39, no. In case of a conflict in East Asia, the probability that allies would be directly pulled into combat operations is low (except perhaps for the case of South Korea, due to the aforementioned 1953 commitments by sixteen countries to defend the peace on the peninsula). Separately, UK forces participate in UN peacekeeping forces on the island. In aggregate, the . the same time we are warned by the admonitions of history and the voice of our own beloved Washington to abstain from entangling alliances with foreign nations.