Alliances

Agreements made between groups or states for purposes such as defense or increasing power capabilities. Alliance formation occurs during both peacetime and wartime.

[Page 19]Scholars have identified four alliance-formation behaviors: balancing, bandwagoning, hedging, and tethering. States may form more than one type of alliance at a time. For example, a state might form a tethering alliance with one state and a balancing alliance with another, as Russia did in the Triple Entente alliance, which it formed with Britain and France.

Arguably one of the most commonly observed alliance formations is the balancing alliance. These alliances are formed to create or maintain a balance of power within the international system. For example, a state, reacting against a perceived external threat, may form an alliance with another state to counter this threat. Threats are often identified as states that are potential military rivals. A state would be most threatened by a state whose power is comparable to its own and would seek to ally itself against this state. Alliances are then made against the potential rival, creating a balance of power. It has been argued that a lack of balance in the international system causes international instability that often culminates in war. Some scholars argue that states are more likely to form balancing alliances than any other type of alliance. World War I is one of the strongest illustrations of state-balancing behavior.

The second type of alliance-formation behavior, bandwagoning, occurs when a state chooses to make an alliance with a threatening state rather than balance it. To scholars who believe balancing is the normal state behavior, bandwagoning, when it has occurred historically, is an exception to the rule. Some scholars have argued that the decision to balance or bandwagon is based on the level of the threat. The preponderance of balancing behavior throughout history, which has caused scholars to view alliance behaviors such as bandwagoning as a deviation from the norm, is instead the result of limited periods of time in which there was a high enough threat level to cause bandwagoning.

Unlike the high level of commitment made between allies in balancing and bandwagoning alliances, hedging is an alliance in which there is a low level of commitment between the parties. This type of alliance allows a state to keep its future alliance options open, should it wish to strengthen an alliance or align itself with another state or states. For example, a state might form an agreement with opposing sides in a conflict. Additionally, hedging behavior encourages opposing sides to sometimes offer greater rewards to the hedging state to strengthen the alliance. The alliances between Germany and Russia and between Germany and Austria-Hungary in 1873 and 1881 are good examples of hedging.

Tethering, a fourth type of alliance, describes an alliance in which states in conflict form alliances with each other for the purpose of mediating the conflict. States that tether hope to increase interstate cooperation, lessen the chance of conflict between them, and perhaps create a relationship that might allow trust to grow. Alliances such as the Leagues of the Three Emperors, formed in 1873–1878 and 1881–1887 by Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Russia, were made to try to manage conflicts, such as the one over the Balkans. Arguably, the failure of many tethering alliances lies in the high level of internal conflict and lack of an external one. Although a strong tethering alliance may be beneficial to its members, the more successful a tethering alliance is, the more threatening it may seem to those outside it. For example, the 1950 Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Alliance, and Mutual Assistance clearly threatened many other states. Elements of tethering also can be found in alliances that, on the surface, appear to be balancing, such as the pre–World War I Triple Entente. The 1939 Nazi–Soviet Pact is another historical example of tethering behavior. In this case, the attempt to decrease the likelihood of conflict between the two states was not successful. However, in other cases, the success has been more long lasting.

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