How entangling are the alliances of the most militarily active state in the world

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How entangling are the alliances of the most militarily active state in the world

by confuzzled dude Tue Aug 04, 2015 8:40 pm

A common lament of foreign policy realists is that the United States has made way too damn many overseas commitments. According to this narrative, the complex network of American alliances and security commitments entangles and ensnares the United States in militarized conflicts that are not vital to the national interest. This forces the United States to expend blood and treasure in faraway conflicts, contributing to “imperial overstretch.”

Over a sixty-two-year period in which the United States maintained more than sixty alliances, I find only five ostensible episodes of U.S. entanglement—the 1954 and 1995–96 Taiwan Strait crises, the Vietnam War, and the interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s. Even these cases are far from clear-cut, because in each there were other important drivers of U.S. involvement; U.S. policymakers carefully limited support for allies; allies restrained the United States from escalating its involvement; the United States deterred adversaries and allies from escalating the conflict; or all of the above.

To be sure, the United States has intervened on the side of allies on numerous occasions. In most cases, however, U.S. actions were driven by an alignment of interests between the United States and its allies, not by alliance obligations. In fact, in many cases, U.S. policymakers were the main advocates of military action and cajoled reluctant allies to join the fight. …

Since 1945 the United States has been, by some measures, the most militarily active state in the world. The most egregious cases of U.S. overreach, however, have stemmed not from entangling alliances, but from the penchant of American leaders to define national interests expansively, to overestimate the magnitude of foreign threats, and to underestimate the costs of military intervention. Scrapping alliances will not correct these bad habits. In fact, disengaging from alliances may unleash the United States to intervene recklessly abroad while leaving it without partners to share the burden when those interventions go awry.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/08/04/just-how-entangling-are-americas-alliances/?hpid=z10

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