Chain Gangs and Passed Bucks: Predicting alliance patterns in multipolarity

Abstract

Kenneth Waltz’s rigorous recasting of traditional balance-of-power theory has provided the intellectual foundation for much of the most fruitful recent work in the fields of international politics and national security. 1 But there is a tension between Waltz’s theory and those who apply it in their practical research agendas. Waltz’s is a theory of international politics; it addresses properties of the international system, such as the recurrence of war and the recurrent formation of balances of power. 2 Those who have applied Waltz’s ideas, however, have normally used them as a theory of foreign policy to make predictions about or prescriptions for the strategic choices of states. 3 This is a problem because for a particular state in particular circumstances, any foreign policy and its opposite can sometimes be deduced from Waltz’s theory. In multipolarity, for example, states are said to be structurally prone to either of two opposite errors that destabilize the balancing system. On the one hand, they may chain themselves unconditionally to reckless allies whose survival is seen to be indispensable to the maintenance of the balance. This, Waltz argues, was the pattern of behavior that led to World War I. On the other hand, they may pass the buck, counting on third parties to bear the costs of stopping a rising hegemon. This was the pattern that preceded World War II. 4 For Waltz, as a systemic theorist, this is not a crippling problem. He deduces logically that multipolarity is structurally prone to instabilities, and the two major cases of [the twentieth] century illustrate his theory suitably. But for those who would use Waltz as a theorist of foreign policy, there is a problem. To explain, predict, or prescribe alliance strategy in particular circumstances, they need to specify which of the two opposite dangers-chain-ganging or buckpassing-is to be expected in those circumstances. An explanation that can account for any policy and its opposite is no explanation at all. Likewise, a prescription that warns simultaneously against doing too much and doing too little is of less use than one that specifies which of the two errors presents the more pressing danger in particular circumstances.