Loyalty, hedging, or exit: How weaker alliance partners respond to the rise of new threats

ABSTRACT

When new threats arise, how do weaker partners allied with great powers choose among loyalty (remaining allied to their great power patrons), hedging (improving political relations with the challenger, or – in the nuclear age – pursuing nuclear weapons), and exit (leaving the alliance by declaring neutrality or defecting to the rising challenger)? We argue that, in general, as protégés come to doubt the ability or willingness of patrons to defend them, they are likely to shift away from loyalty and towards exit. Where they end up on this alliance spectrum, however, depends on additional factors that we identify, including signals of commitment from patrons and the territorial claims of challengers against protégés. We illustrate our argument and these conditions in three cases from interwar and early Cold War Europe and draw implications for U.S. alliances today.

KEYWORDS:

• Alliances
• neutrality
• defection
• great powers
• power transitions
• interwar period
• Cold War

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the following individuals for helpful comments on earlier versions: Stephen Biddle, David Edelstein, Gene Gerzhoy, Charles Glaser, Michael Glosny, Avery Goldstein, Daniel Jacobs, Michael Joseph, Inwook Kim, Matthew Kroenig, Kathleen McNamara, Michael Mochizuki, Ivan Oelrich, Caitlin Talmadge, Christopher Twomey, Jane Vaynman, and two anonymous referees.

Disclosure statement

The authors have no conflict of interest to report.

Notes

¹ Darren J. Lim and Zack Cooper, ‘Reassessing Hedging: The Logic of Alignment in East Asia,’ Security Studies 24/4 (October-December 2015), 701. For the origin of the balancing-bandwagoning distinction, see Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1979).

² For a partial exception, see Lim and Cooper, ‘Reassessing Hedging.’

³ See, for example, Stephen M. Walt, The Origins of Alliances (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1987); Eric J. Labs, ‘Do Weak States Bandwagon?’ Security Studies 1/3 (Spring 1992), 383–416; and Robert G. Kaufman, ‘“To Balance or to Bandwagon?” Alignment Decisions in 1930s Europe,’ Security Studies 1/3 (Spring 1992), 417–47. For an explanation of bandwagoning based in revisionist preferences, see Randall L. Schweller, ‘Bandwagoning for Profit: Bringing the Revisionist State Back In,’ International Security 19/1 (Summer 1994), 72–107.

⁴ Tongfi Kim, ‘Why Alliances Entangle but Seldom Entrap States,’ Security Studies 20/3 (July 2011), 350–77; Michael Beckley, ‘The Myth of Entangling Alliances,’ International Security 36/3 (Winter 2011/2012), 7–48; and David M. Edelstein and Joshua R. Itzkowitz Shifrinson, ‘It’s a Trap! Security Commitments and the Risk of Entrapment,’ in U.S. Grand Strategy in the 21^st Century: The Case for Restraint, ed. A. Trevor Thrall and Benjamin H. Friedman (Abingdon: Routledge, 2018), 19–41. More broadly on entrapment versus abandonment, see Glenn H. Snyder, ‘The Security Dilemma in Alliance Politics,’ World Politics 36/4 (July 1984), 461–95; and Snyder, Alliance Politics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2007).

⁵ On alliance management in peace time, see Keren Yarhi-Milo, Alexander Lanoszka, and Zack Cooper, ‘To Arm or Ally? The Patron’s Dilemma and the Strategic Logic of Arms Transfers and Alliances,’ International Security 41/2 (Fall 2016), 90–139. The key work during wartime remains Patricia Weitsman, Dangerous Alliances: Proponents of Peace, Weapons of War (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004).

⁶ Brett Ashley Leeds, ‘Alliance Reliability in Times of War: Explaining State Decisions to Violate Treaties,’ International Organisation 57/4 (Autumn 2003), 801–27.

⁷ A.F.K. Organski, World Politics (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1965), 338–76; A.F.K. Organski and Jacek Kugler, The War Ledger (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980); Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981); Jack S. Levy, ‘Declining Power and the Preventive Motivation for War,’ World Politics 40/1 (October 1987), 82–107; and Dale C. Copeland, The Origins of Major Wars (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000).

⁸ Damien Sharkov, ‘Majority of People Fear War in Russia’s Eastern European Neighbors,’ Newsweek, 4 July 2017; and David Filipov and Michael Birnbaum, ‘Fear and Confidence in the Face of Russian War Games,’ Washington Post, 10 September 2017.

⁹ Jun Osawa, ‘China’s ADIZ over the East China Sea: A “Great Wall in the Sky?”’ Brookings Institution, 17 December 2013; and Roncevert Ganan Almond, ‘South China Sea: The Case against an ADIZ,’ The Diplomat, 13 September 2016.

¹⁰ China Power Team, ‘Are Maritime Law Enforcement Forces Destabilising Asia?’ China Power, 18 August 2016 (updated 7 November 2017).

¹¹ Walt, Origins of Alliances.

¹² Of course, this assumes that existing alliances are worth keeping. The United States, for example, may be able to meet its security requirements by trimming its commitments. See Barry R. Posen, Restraint: A New Foundation for U.S. Grand Strategy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2014).

¹³ Julian Barnes and Drew Hinshaw, ‘U.S. to Deploy Tanks to the Baltics,’ Wall Street Journal, 30 January 2017.

¹⁴ The state, however, may still belong to other alliances not involving its former ally or the rising threat.

¹⁵ Hague Convention (V) Respecting the Rights and Duties of Neutral Powers and Persons in Case of War on Land (1907).

¹⁶ Paul W. Schroeder, ‘Historical Reality vs. Neo-realist Theory,’ International Security 19/1 (Summer 1994), 108–48.

¹⁷ Van Jackson, ‘Power, Trust, and Network Complexity: Three Logics of Hedging in Asian Security,’ International Relations of the Asia-Pacific 14/3 (2014), 333.

¹⁸ Cheng Chwee Kuik, ‘The Essence of Hedging: Malaysia and Singapore’s Response to a Rising China,’ Contemporary Southeast Asia: A Journal of International and Strategic Affairs 30/2 (August 2008), 163.

¹⁹ Kei Koga, ‘The Concept of “Hedging” Revisited: The Case of Japan’s Foreign Policy Strategy in East Asia’s Power Shift,’ International Studies Review 20/4 (December 2018), 637, 638.

²⁰ Lim and Cooper, ‘Reassessing Hedging,’ 699.

²¹ Ibid., 709.

²² Ibid., 707.

²³ Quoted in Jan Karski, The Great Powers and Poland, 1919–1945 (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1985), 170.

²⁴ Protégés that actually acquire nuclear weapons could conceivably choose to remain allied to the patron, continue to hedge, declare neutrality, or defect to the challenger. These choices may not be equally likely, but all are possible. Protégés lacking the nuclear option would still need to pursue traditional diplomatic hedging.

²⁵ Our setting thus resembles that described in Lim and Cooper, ‘Reassessing Hedging.’

²⁶ Ibid., 705–06.

²⁷ Although probably obvious from the discussion thus far, one additional assumption is that the patron is initially more powerful than the challenger.

²⁸ This observation is not to downplay the assets that protégés bring to the table. Aside from their own military forces, protégés often provide access to bases, prepositioned military equipment, or control of strategically important resources.

²⁹ We recognise that there are conditions under which failing to fulfill an alliance obligation would not be costly for a patron. Our assumption that reneging is costly for patrons therefore presumes that the protégé acts in good faith and does not violate the terms of the alliance by provoking, or initiating conflict against, the challenger.

³⁰ For differing views on the effect of a state’s past actions on its reputation, see Thomas C. Schelling, Arms and Influence (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1966); Jonathan Mercer, Reputation and International Politics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996); Daryl G. Press, Calculating Credibility: How Leaders Assess Military Threats (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005); Todd S. Sechser, ‘Goliath’s Curse: Coercive Threats and Asymmetric Power,’ International Organisation 64/4 (Fall 2010), 627–60; and Alex Weisiger and Keren Yarhi-Milo, ‘Revisiting Reputation: How Past Actions Matter in International Politics,’ International Organisation 69/2 (March 2015), 473–95.

³¹ Walt, Origins of Alliances, 21–26.

³² Ibid., 24.

³³ In particular, protégés examine the military balance for the missions most critical to their own security – such as a limited or all out conventional land invasion, strategic air or missile attack, or naval blockade. On military missions see, Charles L. Glaser and Chaim Kaufmann, ‘What Is the Offense-Defense Balance and Can We Measure It?’ International Security 22/4 (Spring 1998), 44–82.

³⁴ Gregory Poling and Eric Sayers, ‘Time to Make Good on the U.S.-Philippine Alliance,’ War on the Rocks, 21 January 2019, https://warontherocks.com/2019/01/time-to-make-good-on-the-u-s-philippine-alliance/.

³⁵ Kenneth N. Waltz, ‘Nuclear Myths and Political Realities,’ American Political Science Review 84/3 (September 1990), 731–45; and Robert Jervis, The Meaning of the Nuclear Revolution: Statecraft and the Prospect of Armageddon (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press 1989).

³⁶ Francis J. Gavin, ‘Strategies of Inhibition: U.S. Grand Strategy, the Nuclear Revolution, and Nonproliferation,’ International Security 40/1 (Summer 2015), 9–46.

³⁷ Gene Gerzhoy, ‘Alliance Coercion and Nuclear Restraint: How the United States Thwarted West Germany’s Nuclear Ambitions,’ International Security 39/4 (Spring 2015), 91–129.

³⁸ T.V. Paul, Power versus Prudence: Why States Forgo Nuclear Weapons (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2000), 121–24; see also Nuno P. Monteiro and Alexandre Debs, ‘The Strategic Logic of Nuclear Proliferation,’ International Security 39/2 (Fall 2014), 41. At the same time, protégés worry that challengers might attempt a preventive strike before they can build a nuclear weapon.

³⁹ An additional implication of our theory, which we do not explore here, is that protégés are unlikely to acquire nuclear weapons even if they engage in nuclear hedging. Patrons, however, may not want or be able to stop all protégés from acquiring nuclear weapons. The conditions under which patrons allow protégés to proliferate is an intriguing question for further research.

⁴⁰ Sometimes, however, protégés will defect to pursue revisionist aims. During World War I, for example, Italy and Romania defected from the Central Powers to the Triple Entente. The principal reason they switched sides was that each had territorial claims against its ally Austria-Hungary that the Entente promised to satisfy.

⁴¹ A possibility that arises in one of our cases is that a protégé faces multiple rising powers. In this situation, the protégé may have to choose between them. We predict it would defect to the challenger that poses the least threat to its survival.

⁴² We do not claim that this is an exhaustive list. For additional potential cases, see Randall L. Schweller, ‘Domestic Structure and Preventive War: Are Democracies More Pacific?’ World Politics 44/2 (January 1992), 256.

⁴³ John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: Norton, 2001), 317.

⁴⁴ Correlates of War National Material Capabilities Dataset, v. 4.0, available at http://www.correlatesofwar.org/.

⁴⁵ In the face of German threats, France then pledged (along with Britain) to defend Poland on 31 March 1939.

⁴⁶ France also agreed to a neutrality pact and a defense pact with the Soviet Union in 1932 and 1935, respectively, but neither treaty provided for much actual security cooperation. Data on alliances are drawn from the Alliance Treaty Obligations and Provisions (ATOP) Project, available at http://atop.rice.edu/home; and the Correlates of War Formal Alliance dataset, available at http://www.correlatesofwar.org/.

⁴⁷ Dov B. Lungu, Romania and the Great Powers, 1933–1940 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press 1989), 3.

⁴⁸ Article 3 of the Franco-Romanian Treaty of Alliance and Friendship, as quoted in the ATOP coding sheet, available at http://atop.rice.edu/.

⁴⁹ Keith Hitchins, Rumania, 1866–1947 (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1994), 437, 438.

⁵⁰ Ibid., 437. Bucharest also perceived Hungary as a serious, if lower order, threat because of Hungary’s claims on Transylvania.

⁵¹ The reasons for France’s failure are beyond the scope of this paper. On the domestic drivers of French foreign policy during this period, see Eugen Weber, The Hollow Years: France in the 1930s (New York: Norton, 1994), 237–56.

⁵² The case of interwar Europe thus contains not one threat but two. Secondary states allied to France thus had to weigh these threats and choose the lesser of two evils.

⁵³ Lungu, Romania and the Great Powers, 10.

⁵⁴ Ibid., 72. For similar assessments, see Hitchins, Rumania, 437; and Rebecca Haynes, Romanian Policy towards Germany, 1936–40 (Houndmills: Macmillan 2000), 5.

⁵⁵ Quoted in Lungu, Romania and the Great Powers, 72.

⁵⁶ This change meant that the pro-French Titulescu’s days as Foreign Minister were numbered; he was dismissed by King Carol in late August 1936.

⁵⁷ Haynes, Romanian Policy towards Germany, 13.

⁵⁸ Romania could not turn to the Soviet Union, the other growing threat, owing to their territorial dispute over Bessarabia. Repeated attempts to negotiate a solution were finally abandoned after the dismissal of Titulescu.

⁵⁹ Haynes, Romanian Policy towards Germany, 19. Another author describes Romania’s foreign policy ‘as one of equilibrium – balancing between the Big Powers.’ Nicholas Constantinesco, Romania in Harm’s Way, 1939–1941 (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 2004), 43.

⁶⁰ Haynes, Romanian Policy towards Germany, 20–21.

⁶¹ Constantinesco, Romania in Harm’s Way, 2. Germany also paid for Romanian exports, including oil, with armaments. Haynes, Romanian Policy towards Germany, 20; and Lungu, Romania and the Great Powers, 124–25.

⁶² Lungu, Romania and the Great Powers, 124.

⁶³ Ibid., 109–11.

⁶⁴ Constantinesco, Romania in Harm’s Way, 2–3. These sentiments were expressed as early as 16 November 1936, in a meeting between Hitler and King Carol’s ‘unofficial ambassador’ Gheorghe Brătianu. Haynes, Romanian Policy towards Germany, 22–23.

⁶⁵ Quoted in Haynes, Romanian Policy towards Germany, 23.

⁶⁶ Hitchins, Rumania, 440. See also Lungu, Romania and the Great Powers, 136; and Haynes, Romanian Policy towards Germany, 55.

⁶⁷ Haynes, Romanian Policy towards Germany, 52.

⁶⁸ Ibid., 56.

⁶⁹ On this strange episode, see Haynes, Romanian Policy towards Germany, 76–78.

⁷⁰ Hitchins, Rumania, 443.

⁷¹ Constantinesco, Romania in Harm’s Way, 43.

⁷² Lungu, Romania and the Great Powers, 177.

⁷³ Haynes, Romanian Policy towards Germany, 99. The greatest danger to Romania, after all, as demonstrated below, was not a German but a Soviet attack. The British guarantee was apparently issued with no thought given to whether it applied to Soviet rather than German aggression. Constantinesco, Romania in Harm’s Way, 33.

⁷⁴ Lungu, Romania and the Great Powers, 159.

⁷⁵ Hitchins, Rumania, 443–44.

⁷⁶ Haynes, Romanian Policy towards Germany, 106.

⁷⁷ Lungu, Romania and the Great Powers, 200.

⁷⁸ Carol declared neutrality in the context of the German-Polish war, in part to avoid triggering Romania’s existing defense pact with Poland and having to fight against Germany. His proclamation, however, did not void Romania’s alliance with France, which is not considered terminated by ATOP until the defeat of France in June 1940. We interpret the neutrality declaration – consistent with Hypothesis 2a – as simply another step towards Germany in Romania’s policy of diplomatic hedging. Even if one were to consider Romania to have ended its alliance with France by this neutrality declaration, however, this choice would be consistent with H3 given the Soviets’ claim on Bessarabia and Germany’s refusal to guarantee Romania’s territorial integrity. In this interpretation, Romania switched from neutrality to defection when Germany finally guaranteed rump Romania against further Soviet aggression.

⁷⁹ Haynes, Romanian Policy towards Germany, 108–09. See also Lungu, Romania and the Great Powers, 201, 205; and Hitchins, Rumania, 444.

⁸⁰ Via a series of agreements from December 1939 to May 1940, for example, Germany ended up obtaining two-thirds of the petroleum produced by Western-owned companies in Romania. Haynes, Romanian Policy towards Germany, 126–31.

⁸¹ Haynes, Romanian Policy towards Germany, 145.

⁸² Quoted in Dennis Deletant, Hitler’s Forgotten Ally: Ion Antonescu and His Regime, Romania 1940–44 (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 2–3.

⁸³ On these measures, see Hitchins, Rumania, 447.

⁸⁴ Haynes, Romanian Policy towards Germany, 153.

⁸⁵ The case of Yugoslavia largely parallels the Romanian experience and similarly resulted in defection to the Axis, with the twist that anti-Axis officers launched a coup afterwards and Germany was forced to invade. See Frank C. Littlefield, Germany and Yugoslavia, 1933–1941: The German Conquest of Yugoslavia (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 1988). Polish decision-making also parallels that of Romania until 1939, when Poland chose to remain loyal to its French ally. The difference is explained by two factors: first, Poland’s discovery that Germany had serious claims to Polish territory and thus was (along with the Soviet Union) the principal threat to its security; and second, Poland’s patron France (and Britain) signaled its commitment by pledging to go to war to defend Poland against Germany. On the Polish case, see Roman Debicki, Foreign Policy of Poland, 1919–39: From the Rebirth of the Polish Republic to World War II (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1962); and Jan Karski, The Great Powers and Poland, 1919–1945 (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1985).

⁸⁶ Sally Marks, Innocent Abroad (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1981), 170–77.

⁸⁷ Dan Reiter describes this policy as ‘imposed neutrality.’ See his Crucible of Beliefs: Learning, Alliances, and World Wars (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996), 124.

⁸⁸ For specific terms of the alliance, see the ATOP coding sheet for the alliance, available at http://www.atopdata.org/documentation.html.

⁸⁹ Zara Steiner, The Triumph of the Dark: European International History, 1933–1939 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 70.

⁹⁰ Judith M. Hughes, To the Maginot Line: The Politics of French Military Preparation in the 1920s (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971), 66. Both Belgium and France hoped eventually to include Britain and the United States in the alliance. Sally Marks, ‘Ménage à Trois: The Negotiations for an Anglo-French-Belgian Alliance in 1922,’ International History Review 4/4 (1982), 524–52.

⁹¹ Martin S. Alexander and William J. Philpott, ‘Introduction: Choppy Channel Waters – the Crests and Troughs of Anglo-French Defence Relations between the Wars,’ in Martin S. Alexander and William J. Philpott, eds., Anglo-French Defence Relations between the Wars (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 2.

⁹² The Belgian Foreign Ministry, Belgium: The Official Account of What Happened, 1939–1940 (New York: Didier Publishers 1942), 3; Frank Magee, ‘“Limited Liability”: Britain and the Treaty of Locarno,’ Twentieth Century British History 6/1 (January 1995), 1–22; and F. P. Walters, A History of the League of Nations (London: Oxford University Press, 1960), 149.

⁹³ Weber, The Hollow Years, 245.

⁹⁴ Indeed, the French army promptly adopted a defensive doctrine. On the origins of this decision, see Elizabeth Kier, Imagining War: French and British Military Doctrine between the Wars (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997), 56–88.

⁹⁵ Robert Allan Doughty, The Seeds of Disaster: The Development of French Army Doctrine, 1919–1939 (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1985), 14–40.

⁹⁶ Arnold Wolfers, Britain and France between Two Wars: Conflicting Strategies of Peace from Versailles to World War II (New York: Norton, 1966), 141.

⁹⁷ David Owen Kieff, Belgium’s Return to Neutrality: An Essay in the Frustrations of Small Power Diplomacy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), 49.

⁹⁸ Belgian Foreign Ministry, Belgium, 4.

⁹⁹ Pierre Henri Laurent, ‘The Reversal of Belgian Foreign Policy, 1936–1937,’ The Review of Politics 31/3 (July 1969), 370–84; and Paul van Zeeland, ‘Aims of Recent Belgian Foreign Policy,’ Foreign Affairs 18/1 (October 1939), 140–47.

¹⁰⁰ Kieff, Belgium’s Return to Neutrality, 49–51 (quote appears on 51).

¹⁰¹ B.J.C. McKercher, ‘National Security and Imperial Defence: British Grand Strategy and Appeasement, 1930–1939,’ Diplomacy and Statecraft 19/3 (2008), 405.

¹⁰² L.F. Ellis, The War in France and Flanders (East Sussex: The Naval and Military Press Ltd., 2004), 8.

¹⁰³ Jonathan A. Epstein, Belgium’s Dilemma: The Formation of the Belgian Defense Policy, 1932–1940 (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 172–73.

¹⁰⁴ Ibid., 107. The Flemish Christian Democrats were also known as the Catholic Party, Catholic Union and Catholic Block.

¹⁰⁵ Robert J. Young, In Command of France: French Foreign Policy and Military Planning, 1933–1940 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978), 151.

¹⁰⁶ G.N. Clark, Belgium and the War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1942), 16.

¹⁰⁷ Epstein, Belgium’s Dilemma, 172–73.

¹⁰⁸ Brian Bond, War and Society in Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986).

¹⁰⁹ Steiner, The Triumph of the Dark, 151–52.

¹¹⁰ Belgian Foreign Ministry, Belgium, 55.

¹¹¹ Clark, Belgium and the War, 16.

¹¹² Ibid., 93.

¹¹³ Eleanor M. Gates, End of the Affair: Collapse of the Anglo-French Alliance, 1939–1940 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), 52–53.

¹¹⁴ Martin S. Alexander, ‘In Lieu of Alliance: The French General Staff’s Secret Cooperation with Neutral Belgium, 1936–1940,’ Journal of Strategic Studies 14/4 (December 1991), 413–27.

¹¹⁵ Clark, Belgium and the War, 18.

¹¹⁶ Belgian Foreign Ministry, Belgium, 9.

¹¹⁷ Ibid., 10.

¹¹⁸ On the difference between the neutrality imposed on Belgium in 1914 and the decision to adopt neutrality in 1939, see Reiter, Crucible of Beliefs, 136–37.

¹¹⁹ Marc Trachtenberg, A Constructed Peace: The Making of the European Settlement 1945–1963 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), 158.

¹²⁰ ‘Massive retaliation’ thus actually implied ‘massive preemption.’ Trachtenberg, Constructed Peace, 162.

¹²¹ Carte Blanche simulated a Soviet attack with tactical nuclear weapons. The results were staggering: over three hundred atomic bombs detonated in West Germany, killing an estimated 1.7 million people and generating about 5 million total casualties. See Catherine McArdle Kelleher, Germany and the Politics of Nuclear Weapons (New York: Columbia University Press, 1975), 36.

¹²² Trachtenberg, Constructed Peace, 179.

¹²³ Pertti Ahonen, ‘Franz-Josef Strauss and the German Nuclear Question, 1956–1962,’ Journal of Strategic Studies 18/2 (June 1995), 30.

¹²⁴ In practice, dual control was largely a fiction because European forces possessed the ability to launch U.S. nuclear weapons had they desired to do so. See Trachtenberg, Constructed Peace, 194–97. This system persisted until the Kennedy administration re-centralised U.S. control over nuclear weapons stationed in Europe as part of its Flexible Response doctrine.

¹²⁵ Kelleher, Germany and the Politics of Nuclear Weapons, 44.

¹²⁶ Quoted in Hans-Peter Schwarz, Konrad Adenauer: A German Politician and Statesman in a Period of War, Revolution and Reconstruction, Vol. 2, The Statesman: 1952–1967, trans. by Geoffrey Penny (Providence, RI: Berghahn Books, 1997), 235.

¹²⁷ Adenauer quoted in Kelleher, Germany and the Politics of Nuclear Weapons, 89. For similar sentiments from Adenauer, see ibid., 52; and Ronald J. Granieri, The Ambivalent Alliance: Konrad Adenauer, the CDU/CSU, and the West, 1949–1966 (New York: Berghahn Books, 2003), 89.

¹²⁸ Trachtenberg, Constructed Peace, 232.

¹²⁹ Matthias Küntzel, Bonn and the Bomb: German Politics and the Nuclear Option (London: Pluto Press, 1995), 3.

¹³⁰ Schwarz, Konrad Adenauer, 2: 239.

¹³¹ Ibid., 239–40. See also Trachtenberg, Constructed Peace, 233.

¹³² In that year, the U.S. nuclear arsenal numbered 25,540, compared to 3,346 for the Soviets. Hans M. Kristensen and Robert S. Norris, ‘Global Nuclear Weapons Inventories, 1945–2013,’ Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 69/5 (2013), 78.

¹³³ Natural Resources Defense Council, Archive of Nuclear Data, ‘USSR/Russian Nuclear Warheads, 1949–2002,’ and ‘US Nuclear Warheads, 1945–2002,’ available online at http://www.nrdc.org/nuclear/nudb/datainx.asp. For similar figures, see Trachtenberg, Constructed Peace, 181.

¹³⁴ Schwarz, Konrad Adenauer, 2: 313.

¹³⁵ Gerzhoy, ‘Alliance Coercion and Nuclear Restraint,’ 109. See also Ahonen, ‘Franz-Josef Strauss and the German Nuclear Question,’ 31. Other histories noting that ‘Sputnik shock’ undermined the credibility of U.S. nuclear promises include Schwarz, Konrad Adenauer, 2: 311, 318; Beatrice Heuser, NATO, Britain, France and the FRG: Nuclear Strategies and Forces for Europe, 1949–2000 (Houndmills: Macmillan, 1997), 129; Granieri, Ambivalent Alliance, 101; Kelleher, Germany and the Politics of Nuclear Weapons, 128–29; and Küntzel, Bonn and the Bomb, 16.

¹³⁶ Schwarz, Konrad Adenauer, 2: 319. See also Trachtenberg, Constructed Peace, 233.

¹³⁷ Schwarz, Konrad Adenauer, 2: 318.

¹³⁸ Ibid., 318.

¹³⁹ Quoted in Küntzel, Bonn and the Bomb, 8.

¹⁴⁰ Ibid., 8.

¹⁴¹ De Gaulle, writes Küntzel, ‘would have been the last person to have allowed the Germans to interfere with the force de frappe.’ Ibid., 10.

¹⁴² Franz-Josef Strauss, for example, ‘viewed the Soviets as the chief demons behind “expansive … communist imperialism.”’ Ahonen, ‘Franz-Josef Strauss and the German Nuclear Question,’ 28.

¹⁴³ Kelleher, Germany and the Politics of Nuclear Weapons, 72.

¹⁴⁴ Küntzel, Bonn and the Bomb, 13.

¹⁴⁵ Schwarz, Konrad Adenauer, 2: 324.

¹⁴⁶ Gerzhoy, ‘Alliance Coercion and Nuclear Restraint,’ 111. Kennedy also opposed ceding launch authority over U.S. nuclear weapons as part of the Multilateral Force.

¹⁴⁷ Ibid., 113–17.

¹⁴⁸ Ibid., 123.

¹⁴⁹ To the extent that real hedging has occurred – as in Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s turn towards China – it may have resulted from signals of weakening U.S. resolve to defend Filipino interests, as when Washington did not back Manila in the 2012 Scarborough Shoal crisis.

¹⁵⁰ For the basics of this argument, see Eugene Gholz, Daryl G. Press, and Harvey M. Sapolsky, ‘Come Home, America: The Strategy of Restraint in the Face of Temptation,’ International Security 21/4 (Spring 1997), 5–48.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported in part by a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

Notes on contributors

Jasen J. Castillo

Jasen J. Castillo is Associate Professor, Evelyn and Ed F. Kruse ’49 Faculty Fellow, and co-Academic Director of the Albritton Center for Grand Strategy at the Bush School of Government and Public Service, Texas A&M University.

Alexander B. Downes

Alexander B. Downes, the corresponding author, is Associate Professor of Political Science and International Affairs and co-Director of the Institute for Security and Conflict Studies at The George Washington University. He can be reached at [email protected].