Why do political actors join with
others, how do they do this, and to what effect? These concerns long have
focused attention of political thinkers and political scientists. Two
terms, coalition and alliance, are used to describe these relationships.
Each has different connotations depending on whether domestic politics or
international politics is being discussed; and depending on whether the
particular domestic political process under discussion is that of the United States or
that of a
parliamentary form of democracy.
The definitions and discussions below
illuminate these different usages. A final section discusses the role of
allies in the Global War on Terrorism.
Coalitions
in foreign countries’ domestic politics:
“In multiparty countries, the
coalition involves a fusion of a number of individual parties into a working
parliamentary majority.”
Jack
C. Plano and Milton Greenberg, The American Political Dictionary 8th
edition (NY: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1989): 61.
Coalitions
in American domestic politics:
“Coalition: A temporary
alliance or union of parties for the purpose of promoting a common legislative
policy or electing candidates.”
Edward
C. Smith and Arnold J. Zurcher, Dictionary of American Politics 2nd
edition (NY: Harper and Row, 1968): 68.
Jack
C. Plano and Milton Greenberg, The American Political Dictionary 7th
edition (NY: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1985): 141.
“When I look out at this
convention, I see the face of America, red, yellow, brown, black and white. We are all precious in God’s sight—the real rainbow
coalition.”
Jesse
Jackson, “Speech at the Democratic National Convention, Atlanta, July 19,
1988,” in Familiar Quotations ed. John Bartlett, 16th
edition (Boston: Little Brown, 1992): 771.
“Major parties have lived
more for patronage than principles; their goal has been to bind together a
sufficiently large coalition of diverse interests to get into power; and once in
power, to arrange sufficiently satisfactory compromises of interest to remain
there.”
Richard
Hofstadter, “The Age of Reform,” in The MacMillan Dictionary of Political
Quotations eds. Lewis D. Eigen and Jonathan P. Seigel (NY: MacMillan, 1993):
493.
Coalitions
in international relations. Different schools of thought in
international relations analysis conceive alliances and coalitions
differently. Realists follow the thinking of Hans Morgenthau, who viewed
all actions taken by states to be undertaken to advance national interests
defined as the accumulation of power. Thus, to enter an alliance or a
coalition with another set of states, to realists is optional:
"Whether or not a nation shall
pursue a policy of alliances is, then, a matter not of principle but of
expediency. A nation will shun alliances if it believes that it is
strong enough to hold its own unaided or that the burden of the commitments
resulting from the alliance is likely to outweigh the advantages to be
expected. It is for one or the other or both of these reasons that,
throughout the better part of their history, Great Britain and the United
States have refrained from entering into peacetime alliances with other
nations.
Hans Morgenthau,
"The Balance of Power," from Politics Among Nations (1949),
in Essential Readings in International Relations, eds. Karen Mingst and
Jack Snyder (NY: Norton, 2004): 127.
Many American liberals or
idealists hold an opposite view, and regard international alliances as
semi-permanent affiliations among like-minded communities. This assumption
is often articulated in political speech that easily refers to the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) as The Alliance, as if the Atlantic
partnership after 1949 represents the quintessence of aligning in general.
This view has come to be associated with Democratic Peace thinking, a derivative
of the political thought of Immanuel Kant that envisions world peace to emerge
from the joining together of republics disinclined ever to aggress on one
another due to their shared characteristics and other factors.
"The state of peace
must be established, for the suspension of hostilities does not provide the
security of peace... For the sake of its own security, each nation can
and should demand that the others enter into a contract resembling the civil
one and guaranteeing the rights of each... an ever expanding federation [of
republics] that prevents war and curbs the tendency of that hostile
inclination to defy the law..."
Immanuel Kant,
"To Perpetual Peace: A Philosophic Sketch," in Karen Mingst and Jack
Snyder, Essential Readings in International Relations 2nd edition (NY:
Norton, 2004): 20, 22, 24.
In response to this way of
thinking, George Modelski wrote:
"There are some...
reasons why NATO cannot serve as the prototype of alliances. For one, it
is as much the military arm of a political community built upon a common
culture and shared sentiments as it is an alliance pure and simple. The
NATO life cycle, moreover, is not yet completed and consequently, a
historically-oriented account of it cannot be conclusive... not all
instances of international cooperation which are political... can be described
as 'alliances.' "
George Modelski,
"The Study of Alliances," in Alliance in International Politics,
eds. Julian R. Friedman et.al. (Bowton: Allyn and Bacon, 1970): 69.
Morgenthau concurred,
arguing against conceiving alliances as deep marriages between contracted
partners:
"A purely
ideological alliance, unrelated to material interests, cannot but be
stillborn; it is unable to determine policies or guide actions and misleads by
presenting the appearance of political solidarity where there is none.
The ideological factor, when it is superimposed upon an actual community of
interests, can lend strength to the alliance by marshaling moral convictions
and emotional preferences to its support. It can also weaken it by
obscuring the nature and limits of the common interests which the alliance was
supposed to make precise and by raising expectations, bound to be
disappointed, for the extent of concerted policies and actions...
"General alliances
are typically of temporary duration and most prevalent in wartime..."
Hans Morgenthau,
"Alliances (from Politics Among Nations)," in Alliance in
International Politics, eds. Julian R. Friedman et.al. (Bowton: Allyn and
Bacon, 1970): 83, 85.
Some analysts emphasize
the negative glue that unites alliances:
"Alliances are
against, and only derivatively for, someone or something"
George Liska, Nations
in Alliance (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1962): 12
International alliances,
it must be recalled, often have involved quite temporary joining together of
altogether incompatible political systems. Beyond uniting temporarily
around policy toward a common adversary, alliances sometimes have emerged when
states very different ideologically have found that they shared objectives
toward some third party. This is how we should regard the
1939
non-aggression pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, an alliance
that endured less than two years, but which during its duration sufficed to
snuff out Poland. Ambassador Winston Lord generalized about this type of
alliances when he opined about the fate of such
international groupings:
“In
coalitions of bitter enemies, the thugs usually prevail”
Winston
Lord, U.S. Ambassador to China, in The MacMillan Dictionary of Political
Quotations eds. Lewis D. Eigen and Jonathan P. Seigel (NY: MacMillan, 1993):
120.
“Almost every great war has
led to a collapse of the coalition that won the victory.”
Foster Rhea
Dulles, “The United States Since 1865,” (1959), in The MacMillan
Dictionary of Political Quotations eds. Lewis D. Eigen and Jonathan P.
Seigel (NY: MacMillan, 1993): 690.
Allies in the
Global War on Terrorism
What are the most effective instruments of
state policy in combating terrorism?
Counterterrorism policies of necessity must
be multifaceted. In the best of worlds, effective infiltration of terrorist
groups most could disrupt them by making available to state authorities
sufficiently precise advanced warning to stymie attacks. We, however, confront
a contemporary set of determined adversaries whose security measures often have
frustrated this approach.
A range of less than perfect responses all
must be pursued in order to prepare defenses. Information gained from
electronic surveillance techniques (e.g., phone wiretaps; travel records, etc.),
can be integrated with intelligence information from other measures to attempt
to map “linkages” among suspicious persons, organizations, etc. A vigilant
public whose eyes and ears are attuned to listen can augment efforts of state
agencies in this regard, if habits of cooperation are cultivated. Measures to
secure borders and ports should be adequately funded so to provide
state-of-the-art technologies into the hands of security personnel.
Yet, no net of defenses can be guaranteed to
be leak proof. Thus, offensive strategies also must be employed. When adequate
intelligence is available, it is prudent to undertake covert action to detain,
relocate, and interrogate those with knowledge of terrorist organizations’
plans. In such offensive operations more than high levels of training and
capability are needed in a state’s specialized forces. Cooperative allies
are crucial. The byways and customs of some of the toughest neighborhoods
on the globe are best understood by those most experienced in traveling them.
Thus, among all the many things that must be done to defeat the contemporary
threat posed by international terrorism, it is most essential to establish and
maintain cooperative operational relations with allies committed to the same
goals.
As argued above, working cooperatively with
knowledgeable local allies is essential. Yet, when a state’s vital national
interests are at stake, excessive delegation of counter-terrorist operations to
untested allies also can prove disastrous. The battle strategy employed by the
U.S. in the campaign at Tora Bora, Afghanistan, 2001-2002, demonstrates this
point. In early stages of the war in Afghanistan, strongly parallel interests
reinforced the partnership of U.S. forces and the Afghan Northern Alliance.
Both sought removal of the Taliban regime and shared the objective of their
physical removal from Kabul, Kandahar, etc. But, while elements in the Northern
Alliance favored expulsion of Al Qaeda from its mountainous redoubt at Tora Bora,
their ardor for the project was considerably less intense than was the
Americans’. The U.S. had a sharp need to decapitate terrorists whose mere
departure from Afghanistan might satisfy many of the Afghan troops allied with
the U.S.. In spite of these large gaps in will and in interest, the wrong
choice was made by U.S. commanders. In perhaps the largest blunder along the
pothole-filled road that is the Global War on Terrorism, significant operational
responsibilities were delegated to these Afghan allies. No doubt: the American
forces lacked much of the particularized knowledge our Afghan allies possessed
at Tora Bora. But the discrepancy in zeal with which the two allied armies
might have approached the task of capturing Osama bin Laden counterbalances that
equation.
A close second in the catalog of U.S.
missteps would be the over-personification of the enemy that has developed from
recognition of this battlefield mistake. Even had Osama been slain at Tora Bora,
the networks of militant jihadists far removed from there would still
confront us. Indeed, conceptualizing the enemy as an organization, Al Qaeda,
remains a central, recurring blunder.