The myth of entangling alliances: Reassessing the security risks of U.S. defense pacts

Abstract

A large literature assumes that alliances entangle the United States in military conflicts that it might otherwise avoid. Since 1945, however, there have been only five cases of what might be characterized as U.S. entanglement-the 1954 and 1995-96 Taiwan Strait crises, the Vietnam War, and the interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s-and even these cases are far from clear-cut. U.S. entanglement is rare because the United States, as a superpower with many allies, is capable of exploiting loopholes in alliance agreements, sidestepping commitments that seriously imperil U.S. interests, playing the demands of various allies off of each other, and using alliances to deter adversaries and allies from initiating or escalating conflicts.