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Alliances,Threats,and the Uses o f Neoreabm Book Review: The Origins of Alliances by Stephen M. Walt Ithaca:Cornell University Press, 1987. 321 pp. Robert 0.Keohane icy-oriented literature on United States foreign policy, who also reflect on the major geopolitical events of the last forty years, may be struck by what seems to be a paradox. Much writing on American foreign policy has long been severely critical of its alleged incoherence and lack of strategic design. In particular, there is a well-established tradition of pessimism about the future of American alliances, including NATO. If one took policy-oriented articles on NATO literally, one might believe that NATO has been on the brink of disaster for thirty-five years. Yet as we know, NATO is the most successful multilateral alliance in modern history. Despite the vulnerability of the United States to Soviet nuclear attack, the decline in the productivity of its economy relative to many of its allies, and its defeat in Vietnam, NATO persists. And so have many other American alliances, through which the United States remains at the hub of world politics. Forecasts of alliance crisis and collapse have proved highly misleading. If American success as an alliance leader is due to more than good luck, some of the implicit theories on which the prophets of doom rely may be false. This, at any rate, is the implication of Stephen M. Walt’s argument in The Origins of AZZiances. Walt clearly believes that the elites in charge of state policy seek above all to maintain themselves in power, and if possible to extend that power. Since they are shrewd judges of their own interests, this leads them to “balance” against threatening states, rather than to “bandwagon ,’’ joining the stronger side in hope of picking up some crumbs from the victors’ table. In pursuing their interests, these elites are not fundamentally affected by ideological appeals: they are unwilling to pay a large price in terms of interests to join with powers whose domestic political structures I am indebted to Andrew Moravcsik for comments on an earlier draft of this review. ~ ~~ Robert 0.Keohane is Professor of Government at Harvard University. International Security, Summer 1988 (Vol. 13, No. 1) 0 1988 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and o f the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 169 International Security 13:l I 170 and legitimating doctrines are similar to their own. And they are even more impervious to manipulation through foreign aid or informal political penetration . It follows that if aggressive states seeking to expand their spheres of control succeed in their early efforts, future success will become harder rather than easier to attain. Other states will tend to form alignments against powerful and threatening states, rather than rushing to their sides. The independence of states within the system will therefore tend to be preserved by thwarting bids for hegemony; system stability will be maintained. Relatively satisfied states that support the status quo, such as the United States, will benefit from balancing: their failure to act promptly to halt incursions by more offensively minded competitors will lead threatened states to "lean to their side." To students of international political theory, this argument is familiar, since it has been made forcefully and eloquently over the last thirty years by Walt's former teacher, Kenneth N. Waltz, particularly in his 1979 book, Theory of International Politics.' Waltz, following a suggestion by Stephen Van Evera, introduced the term "bandwagoning" into the international relations literature from domestic politics. If states bandwagon, a state whose power is increasing will attract support, rather than repel it. Waltz, however, emphasized that states seek less to maximize power than to maintain their positions in the system, and that therefore "balancing, not bandwagoning, is the behavior induced by the system. . . . Secondary states, if they are free to choose, flock to the weaker side; for it is the stronger side that threatens them."2 Glenn Snyder has used Waltz's analysis to good effect in arguing that despite the recurrent popular alarms, NATO's durability is ensured as long as European governments do not have the capabilities to defend themselves against a Soviet threat: It follows...

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