The Weakest Link: Credible Deterrence Threats and Alliance Entrapment

the United States’ desire for isolationism and its desire to maintain hegemony. While the United States has initiated and continued wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that are increasingly unpopular with alliance members, it has also focused on increasing NATO buy-in and has become involved in ance members. This raises the question of whether strong states suffer from alliance entrapment, a that are outside of the scope of the alliance. Scholars have long argued that defensive alliances do not tested these claims while controlling for state strength. This paper will examine whether weaker allioriginated by alliance members. Ultimately, this paper will determine that weaker alliance members same compulsion. This has important implications for scholarship because it demonstrates that alliance behavior is measurably different for states of differing strengths and that weaker states are more Puzzle In the early days of the Libyan uprising, there was little US interest in becoming involved in the necessary to the overall security strategy. Nevertheless, on March 16th, the United States became Despite little strategic interest and even less desire to intervene, the United States eventually funded intervene was largely a result of external pressure placed on the United States by allies within NATO, particularly France. In this case, it seems as though the United States’ defensive alliance partners were the bounds of the North Atlantic Treaty. Conversely, the United States has also refused to intervene American University’s Clocks and Clouds, Volume II, Fall 2012