Alignment, Alliance, and American Grand Strategy

260 Pages·2016·2.55 MB·English

by  Zachary Alan Selden

Revised Pages
Alignment, Alliance, and American Grand Strategy
Although US foreign policy was largely unpopular in the early 2000s, many
nation- states expanded their security cooperation with the United States.
Here, Zachary Selden explores the ramifications of that trend for the endur-
ance of American hegemony and the ongoing discussion about American
grand strategy.
Noting that most of the states engaged in closer security cooperation
with the United States in this period border on Russia and China, Selden pro-
poses that the regional power of those two illiberal states and the ways that
power is used prompt neighboring states to align with the only state that can
balance against their influence. He then measures this alignment with the
United States according to participation in major joint military exercises,
participation in US- led operations, negotiating agreements for US military
bases, and efforts to join a US- led alliance. For the sake of comparison, Selden
also examines the case of another regional power, Brazil. Unlike China and
Russia, however, Brazil is a democratic state, and its Latin American neigh-
bors have not sought greater alliance with the United States.
Amid calls for retrenchment or restraint, Selden makes the case that a
policy focused on maintaining American military preeminence and the
demonstrated willingness to use it may be what sustains the cooperation of
second- tier states, which in turn helps to maintain American hegemony at a
manageable cost.
Zachary Selden is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of
Florida.
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Alignment, Alliance, and
American Grand Strategy
Zachary Selden
University of Michigan Press
Ann Arbor
Revised Pages
Copyright © Zachary Selden 2016
All rights reserved
This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form
(beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and
except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publisher.
Published in the United States of America by the
University of Michigan Press
Manufactured in the United States of America
c Printed on acid- free paper
2019 2018 2017 2016 4 3 2 1
A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Names: Selden, Zachary A., author.
Title: Alignment, alliance, and American grand strategy / Zachary Selden.
Description: Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press, 2016. | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016022326| ISBN 9780472130009 (hardback) |
ISBN 9780472122127 (e- book)
Subjects: LCSH: United States— Military relations. | Combined operations (Military
science) | Geopolitics— Asia. | Geopolitics— Europe, Eastern. | Geopolitics— South
America. | United States— Foreign relations— 21st century. | BISAC: POLITICAL
SCIENCE / Political Freedom & Security /
International Security.
Classification: LCC UA23 .S4167 2016 | DDC 355/.033573— dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016022326
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FOR IRVING SELDEN, 1929– 2014
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Contents
Preface ix
Introduction 1
ChaptER 1 Theory and Predictions 24
ChaptER 2 Measuring Alignment 38
ChaptER 3 Alignment and Alliance in Asia 55
ChaptER 4 Alignment and Alliance in Europe 102
ChaptER 5 Latin America: A Case of the Dog Not Barking 148
ChaptER 6 Conclusion 174
Appendixes
Appendix 1: Coding Scheme for Tables 197
Appendix 2: Interviews 203
Notes 205
Bibliography 221
Index 241
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Preface
From 2003 to 2011, I worked for the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, the inter-
national organization that brings together the members of parliament from
across the transatlantic alliance to discuss matters of mutual concern. For the
first four years, I was the director of the Defence and Security Committee; I
subsequently served as the deputy secretary-g eneral for policy. Although I
was based in Brussels, I had the opportunity to travel to nearly all of NATO’s
partner countries, aspirant states, and new members of the alliance. It was an
eye- opening and enriching experience on many levels, allowing me to meet
and speak with a wide array of politicians, government officials, and military
officers from Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and the South Caucasus.
This book has its origins in that experience. Although academic journals
in the mid- 2000s were filled with articles about the declining influence of
the United States and the tendency of secondary states to eschew security
cooperation with it, this did not seem to comport with the reality on the
ground. During the period that is often described as being defined by unilat-
eral US behavior that purportedly pushed states to distance themselves,
many states in the regions that I visited were eager to build security relations
with the United States. Although the 2003 Iraq War provoked a negative re-
action in many Western European capitals and led to a serious rift in the
transatlantic alliance, most states in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and even
Central Asia lent their support to that operation as well as took other steps to
extend the American military presence in their region. Although I was an
international civil servant and not a representative of the United States dur-
ing my time at the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, my interlocutors in the
many countries I visited were eager to point out to me how they assisted the
United States and how they could be valuable security partners. This funda-
mental contradiction between what I was reading and what I experienced