Thread by @morcos_pierre

[#BookoftheWeek] Just finished “Shields of the Republic” of @MiraRappHooper, a compelling and important essay on the value of America’s system of alliances in Europe and Asia but also on the need to adapt them to the new realities of our strategic environment.

1/ After having avoided “entangling alliances” during the 19th century, US calculus changed after WWII (“Our geographical security is now gone” - President Truman) leading to the creation of a vast network of defensive security guarantees.

This system of alliances was based on a new kind of strategy. Rather than aiming at wining specific wars, these alliances were “intended to keep conflict from breaking out in the first place” by maintaining the peacetime balance of power in Europe and Asia.

2/ As rightly stressed by @MiraRappHooper, “these alliances were never mission of benevolence". Rather, they were "means for accomplishing strategic ends" in the interest of 🇺🇸: forward defense through basing access, extended deterrence and control over allies.

Often there is a “faulty presumption that the purpose of US alliances is to do a service to the allies. But the United States has never spent on allies’ defense as such. It assumed alliance commitments in order to preserve its own national security”.

3/ Nonetheless, US alliances are now facing adversities coming “from within and from without”. First, US global partnerships have become “partisan objects” and are therefore less predictable and reliable.

“Even in a post-Trump world, Washington’s allies will recall their benefactor’s ability to hold their national security hostage”.

Second, in their endeavors to be treated as great powers, 🇷🇺&🇨🇳 are pursuing strategies based on “competitive coercion” which aims at “diminishing alliances’ effectiveness and exploiting gaps in alliances by advancing adversary aims in ways that do not trigger treaty provisions”.

“The alliances themselves are now under threat, as adversaries seek to make them less credible in military terms and nullify them through the use of nonmilitary coercion”.

4/ In that context, US alliances “need new purpose, derived from the realities of modern power competition” and must in particular “be reformed to deter and defend against actions below the military threshold” notably against cyber-attacks and disinformation campaigns.

Regarding NATO, @MiraRappHooper also spotlights the need to tackle “serious antidemocratic tendencies within” the Alliance. Her recommendation: “NATO should institute regular procedures to monitor democratic deficits within the alliance”.

5/ Last quote : “What has not changed since the Cold War is the fundamental benefit of having alliances. Then as now, shared competitors can be bested more efficiently through collective peacetime approaches than through unilateral action in the midst of hostilities”.