Can we trust our allies in times of war? security policy expert Robert C. Castel asks the million-dollar question.
This question, one of the most important questions of international relations, is as old as humanity.
The first empirical research on the reliability of alliances and alliance contracts was published in the early 1980s. Perhaps influenced by the pessimism that followed the Vietnam War and the Carter years, these analyzes painted a rather gloomy picture of the subject of their research.
The big change in the "profession" and subsequently in the media and the practice of politics occurred in 2000 with the LLM research published by Leeds, Long, and Mitchell, and famous for the authors' initials. The conclusions of the much-cited research were quite clear. In about 75% of cases, states reliably fulfill their contractual obligations during peacetime during wartime. Ergo, it is a rational thing to join the existing alliance systems, or in the absence of such a rational decision to create new alliances.
Trusting our allies and alliance treaties is not a matter of faith, but a decision that can be scientifically supported.
The optimistic conclusions of the study published by the three researchers could never have come at a better time. For the American political leadership that dominates the unipolar world and intends to expand its federal systems, the LLM's conclusions massaged with empirical rigor served as valuable intellectual ammunition. While we were exporting democracy and reshaping the world in our own image, who would have had time to fuss with the fine print and footnotes?
It would have been worth it.
If someone had read the canonical LLM with cold objectivity, they would have noticed the objective limitations of the research in the early 2000s. The data series analyzed by the researchers dealt with the period from 1816 to 1944. Leeds, Long, and Mitchell summarized their conclusions for this period and established the 75% rule . The self-evident question of how relevant the patterns of the multipolar world before the atomic age are to our bipolar world, and to our somewhat later unipolar world, was probably not asked by anyone.
Since the researcher is also human, and since very few undertake to publish against the wind, the great sobering up had to wait until 2018, when the great, world-changing enthusiasm seemed to have cooled down considerably. This year, two political scientists, Molly Berkemeier and Matthew Fuhrmann, retrieved the old data series and retraced the path taken by the LLM with minor methodological changes. This time, however, the patterns of respect for federal treaties were not followed until 1944, but until 2003.
The conclusions of the two researchers are, for lack of a better term, shocking, even for a seasoned offensive realist.
For the period from 1816 to 2003, Berkemeier and Fuhrman found that states met their obligations in federal treaties only 50% of the time. This number is much lower than the nearly 75% published by LLM. This figure is shocking enough in itself because it suggests that the reliability of our federal systems is comparable to the reliability of a flipped coin.
In the next step, Berkemeier and Fuhrman divided the period from 1816 to 2003 into two periods. The first, from 1816 to 1944, corresponded to the period studied by Leeds, Long, and Mitchell (LLM). The second phase spanned from 1945 to 2003.
Regarding the first period, Berkemeier and Fuhrman came to roughly the same conclusions as LLM. They found that federal treaties stood the test of war 66% of the time. The discrepancy between the results (66% versus 75%) is probably due to the somewhat different methodology.
The analysis of the second period, the period from 1945 to 2003, was the one with which the two researchers overturned the decades-long consensus on the reliability of federal contracts.
Berkemeier and Fuhrman's analysis shows that after the Second World War, less than 23% of the federal treaties were fulfilled by the states joining the alliance in peacetime.
To put it another way, more than 77% of peacetime federal treaties were violated by the states that signed and ratified the treaties.
The two researchers didn't stop there, but also looked at what types of contracts were included in the basket and whether we tend to adhere to certain types of federal contracts less than others. The results in this case were also very surprising. During the period under review, states around the world were much less likely to honor their defense treaties (41%) and non-aggression pacts (37%) than their alliance treaties to attack a common enemy (71%) or neutrality treaties (78%). ).
Since the research was published, there have been many attempts to understand and explain these rather startling data. What was the break in international relations that made it standard practice in the post-1945 regime to break alliance treaties, especially defense treaties? Can this phenomenon be explained by the tectonic changes caused by the appearance of nuclear weapons?
Why are we more inclined to abide by an offensive alliance treaty against a third power than one that obligates us to aid our allies in time of war?
These are all very legitimate and very important questions, but perhaps even more important than understanding the past is drawing appropriate practical conclusions regarding the present and the future. This is especially important for the Western world, where most of the member states have completely reduced the ability to defend themselves against any external aggression without the support of the federal system. The outsourcing of Slovak air defense in 2022 to the allies is just one example among many.
Those who think that they can read a veiled or perhaps unveiled anti-NATO in this research are wrong.
Berkemeier and Fuhrman's conclusions show no significant difference between Western and non-Western treaty-breaking habits.
Therefore, there is no reason to assume that a Russian, Chinese or Indian alliance treaty can be trusted more than the security guarantees provided by NATO.
These contractual guarantees, regardless of whether the wind blows from the west or the east, are worth only 22% of their official, peacetime exchange rate in the war market.
At the same time, let's not fall from one extreme to the other just because the reality is much harsher than what we have imagined so far. 22% is exactly 22% more than nothing, and if we take proper care of our own independent national defense, we can see it as a useful addition.
Paradoxically and ironically, our only chance to chain our allies to us more strongly is not to expect help from them in defense, but to initiate an attack against a common enemy together with them.
You may or may not like this data.
However, until we can list more velvety figures compared to those of Berkemeier and Fuhrman, we have to make friends with the idea that the reliability of our allies in practice falls far short of the theory of a rules-based world order.
Featured image: Getty Images
