Press-Barnathan Managing The Hegemon NATO Under Unipolarity

Security Studies 15, no.
2 (April–June 2006): 271–309

Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
DOI: 10.1080/09636410600829554
Managing the Hegemon: NATO

under Unipolarity
GALIA PRESS-BARNATHAN
The shift to unipolarity has introduced new dilemmas for America’s

allies. Their level of strategic uncertainty has increased, largely be-
cause under unipolarity, allies’ threat perceptions are more likely
to diverge across time or issue areas and are not shaped as much
by structural systemic factors. Although they want to maintain the
pre-existing security arrangements as a means of managing the ris-
ing uncertainty, allies need to deal with the dual concern of either
being trapped into the hegemonic partner’s policies, or being aban-
doned by the hegemon. These two concerns—the alliance security
dilemma—may become more or less prominent given the nature of
the divergence in threat perceptions on different issues and at differ-
ent times. To deal with this dual threat, allies employ two strategies:
using the pre-existing alliance as a pact of restraint, and developing
a division of labor with the hegemon. Both the dilemmas and the
strategies used to mitigate them are examined here in the context
of the European behavior within NATO following the Gulf War, the
NATO involvement in Kosovo, the war in Afghanistan, and the war
in Iraq.
The shift to unipolarity has introduced a new dilemma for America’s

European allies in NATO.1 Although allies have an interest in preserving
Galia Press-Barnathan is an assistant professor in the Department of International Rela-

tions at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Thanks to Dale Copeland, Korina Kagan, Peter Liberman, Carlo Masala, Benny Miller,
Robert Pape, Randy Schweller, and the anonymous reviewers of Security Studies for their
helpful input. This paper was first presented at the 2004 annual meeting of the American
Political Science Association in Chicago.
1 Although there are scholars who doubt the observation that we are living in a unipolar system,
there is greater consensus that this is indeed the case. William Wohlforth has argued that the United
States clearly crossed the “unipolar threshold”: it possesses an impressive and wide portfolio of mate-
rial capabilities and has an edge over others in every important dimension of power. See William C.
Wohlforth, “U.S. Strategy in a Unipolar World,” in America Unrivaled: The Future of the Balance of Power,
271
272 G. Press-Barnathan
the existing security arrangements with the United States, they face new
challenges linked to the increased strategic uncertainty following the sys-
temic change. This uncertainty leads to a complex alliance security dilemma,
which the allies are trying to mitigate through two strategies: using NATO
as a pact of restraint, and developing a division of labor with the United
States.
In the 1990s, international relations literature focused on the future of
the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), pitting realist scholars, who
predicted its demise, against neoliberal scholars, who stressed the institu-
tional characteristics that are likely to lead to the persistence of the alliance.2
Following the events of September 11, 2001, the aggressive American “war on
terror,” and the mounting criticism of U.S. policy, the analytical focus shifted to
the next big question: Are we witnessing the beginning of the long-awaited
process of balancing against the United States? Although few scholars ac-
tually argue that there are signs of traditional, hard balancing against the
United States,3 a more popular recent approach examines the phenomenon
of “soft balancing” against the United States. Soft balancing is defined as
actions that do not directly challenge U.S. military preponderance but that
use nonmilitary tools to delay, frustrate, and undermine aggressive unilateral
American military policies. These tools include international institutions, eco-
nomic statecraft, and diplomatic arrangements.4 Supporters of this approach
point, for example, to the behavior of France and Germany on the eve of the
Iraq war, or to the efforts to develop a European military capacity, as signs
of soft balancing.
This shift in focus may be relevant for powers not aligned with the
United States, such as Russia and China, but it is unwarranted when dis-
cussing the behavior of western European states. There are no signs of tra-
ditional hard balancing against the United States, simply because Europeans
ed. G. John Ikenberry (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002), 103–4; and Michael Mastanduno, “Pre-
serving the Unipolar Moment: Realist Theories and U.S. Grand Strategy after the Cold War,” International
Security 21, no. 4 (Spring 1997): 54. For a dissenting and interesting view regarding polarity, see Randall
L. Schweller, “Realism and the Present Great Power System: Growth and Positional Conflict over Scarce
Resources,” in Unipolar Politics: Realism and State Strategies after the Cold War, ed. Ethan B. Kapstein
and Michael Mastanduno (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 37–42.
2 For a review of the various arguments for alliance persistence, see Stephen M. Walt, “Why Alliances
Endure or Collapse,” Survival 39, no. 1 (Spring 1997): 156–79. For the institutional perspective, see, for
example, Helga Haftendorn, Robert O. Keohane, and Celeste A. Wallander, eds., Imperfect Unions: Security
Institutions over Time and Space (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). For examples of the European
scholarly approach, see Emil Kirchner and James Sperling, “The New Security Threats in Europe: Theory
and Evidence,” European Foreign Affairs Review 7 (2002): 423–52; and Barry Buzan and Ole Weaver,
Regions and Powers: The Structure of International Security (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2003).
3 See, for example, Christopher Layne, “America as a European Hegemon,” The National Interest 72
(Summer 2003): 17–29.

4 Robert A. Pape, “Soft Balancing against the United States,” International Security 30, no. 1 (Summer
2005): 10. See also T. V. Paul, “Soft Balancing in the Age of U.S. Primacy,” International Security 30, no.
1 (Summer 2005): 58–59.
NATO under Unipolarity 273
do not perceive the United States as a real threat to their sovereignty or

existential needs. Soft balancing, as well, is a misnomer for current Eu-
ropean behavior. As Stephen Brooks and William Wohlforth recently ar-
gued, for the notion of soft balancing to mean anything, one should be
able to show that the soft-balancing action was taken as a response to a
perceived threat stemming from the concentration of power in American
hands.5 Soft balancing can eventually turn into hard balancing, and that is
why it is considered an important phenomenon. I concur with the critics
of the soft-balancing literature, who argue that unless it is directly linked
to the premises of traditional balance-of-power theory, the concept of soft
balancing does not contribute much to the theory of international relations.
This article, in turn, argues that Europeans are not trying to balance the
United States in any way. Rather, they are trying to deal with the intensi-
fied strategic uncertainty resulting from the shift to unipolarity, by maintain-
ing their pre-existing security arrangements with the United States, chiefly
through NATO. Obviously, the idea of balancing within an alliance is an
oxymoron.
Maintaining the alliance and managing relations with the senior partner
are different under unipolarity, however. Under unipolarity there is a greater
potential for fluctuation in the threat perceptions of regional allies and of the
hegemonic ally. These threat perceptions cannot be fully deduced from the
system’s structure; they are influenced more than they were in the bipolar
system by geographic variations, different perceptions of intentions, various
domestic factors, and ideology. Within an alliance, such fluctuations in threat
perceptions pose a serious challenge to the allies, especially for smaller allies
in an asymmetric alliance. This challenge is best captured by the notion of
the alliance security dilemma, which is used in this article to analyze allies’
concerns.6 The potential divergence in threat perceptions forces smaller al-
lies to prepare themselves strategically to deal with the opposite concerns
of either entrapment in the hegemonic partner’s agenda, or abandonment
by the hegemon on other issues. Heightened concerns about abandonment
or entrapment, in turn, are the result of the varying threat perceptions of
both sides. On issues where the hegemon feels more threatened than the
allies, they will be more concerned about entrapment. On issues where
5 Stephen G. Brooks and William C. Wohlforth, “Hard Times for Soft Balancing,” International Se-
curity 30, no. 1 (Summer 2005): 76–78.

6 Glenn Snyder, “The Security Dilemma in Alliance Politics,” World Politics 36, no. 4 (1984): 461–
95; and Glenn Snyder, Alliance Politics (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997). For a good review of
the various approaches to intra-alliance relations, see Charles A. Kupchan, “NATO and the Persian Gulf:
Examining Intra-Alliance Behavior,” International Organization 42, no. 2 (Spring 1988): 317–46; and
Andrew Bennett, Joseph Lepgold, and Danny Unger, eds., Friends in Need: Burden Sharing in the Persian
Gulf War (New York: St. Martin’s, 1997). For an application in Asia, see Victor D. Cha, “Abandonment,
Entrapment, and Neoclassical Realism in Asia: The United States, Japan, and Korea,” International Studies
Quarterly 44, no. 2 (June 2000): 261–91; and Victor D. Cha, Alignment despite Antagonism: The United
States–Korea–Japan Security Triangle (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999).
the allies feel more threatened than the hegemon, they will fear abandon-
ment. The key problem is that, under unipolarity, both scenarios are likely
to co-exist in different issue areas or different regions, or to fluctuate over
time.
Consequently, this article suggests that allies advance two strategies to
manage their relations with the hegemon within the alliance. First, they may
create a pact of restraint to try to restrain the hegemon and influence its poli-
cies from within the alliance. Second, they may create a division of labor that
allows them to offer meaningful contributions to their hegemonic partner
when they want to (that is, when there is a shared threat); to deal indepen-
dently with regional threats, without the hegemon’s help, if needed; and to
enhance their bargaining and restraining capability vis-à-vis the hegemon on
other issues.7 Such a combination allows them to reduce the risks associ-
ated with both abandonment and entrapment, while enjoying the benefits of
remaining within the alliance with the hegemon.
This article deals only with the experience of NATO’s European allies. Yet
it develops a conceptual framework that unravels the dilemmas and possi-
ble solutions facing the members of any asymmetric alliance following the
shift to unipolarity. Although the validity of these claims for other cases can-
not be established here, further research on the dilemmas and behavior of
other allies of the United States should prove the relevance of this article’s
claims.
The article will proceed as follows. The first section examines the rise
in strategic uncertainty in light of the shift to unipolarity. Then the article
will explain why, under unipolarity, threat perceptions of the dominant state
and its regional allies are more likely to vary. The next section will illustrate
the value for the smaller allies of maintaining the pre-existing alliance and
the challenges they face in maintaining this alliance under unipolarity. These
challenges are captured via the concept of the alliance security dilemma.
Next the article will elaborate on how the use of two strategies—the creation
of pacts of restraint and the development of a division of labor within the
bounds of the alliance—can help overcome these problems and offer a useful
broad strategy for managing security relations with the hegemon. The second
half of the article offers a systematic examination of the development of
7 The concept of a pact of restraint as a function of alliances appears in Paul W. Schroeder, “Alliances,
1815–1945: Weapons of Power and Tools of Management,” in Historical Dimensions of National Security
Problems, ed. Klaus Knorr (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1976): 259–77. The most elaborate recent
development of this concept is in Patricia A. Weitsman, “Intimate Enemies: The Politics of Peacetime
Alliances,” Security Studies 7, no. 1 (Autumn 1997): 156–92; see also Patricia A. Weitsman, Dangerous
Alliances: Proponents of Peace, Weapons of War (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004). Weitsman
develops the concept of a “tethering alliance.” Her focus, however, is on restraining relations between
relatively equal states, which is not the case here. In discussions of pacts of restraint in asymmetric
alliances, though, little attention has been given to the second strategy of a division of labor that is also
important for restraining purposes.
European threat perceptions, and of the European strategies for dealing with
the United States via NATO, as they have evolved over the past fifteen years. To
capture these developments, I focus on the impact of four major crises during
that period, crises that helped sharpen the various challenges and promote
the strategies just described: the 1991 Gulf War, the crises in the Balkans
and especially in Kosovo in 1999, the war in Afghanistan, and the Iraq war.8
These are not independent case studies, but rather a series of events that
mark the path-dependent nature of the evolving European strategy vis-à-vis
the United States.
THE RISE IN STRATEGIC UNCERTAINTY UNDER UNIPOLARITY
The shift to unipolarity has increased the level of strategic uncertainty for the
smaller allies. Strategic uncertainty rises in general when the system under-
goes substantial change.9 The specific shift to a unipolar system, however,
increases the strategic uncertainty even further for smaller allies. In the con-
text of alliance theory, the previous bipolar system provided a relatively low
level of uncertainty; given the dynamics of the bipolar system, small allies
could rely on a strong security commitment from their allied superpower.10
The existing literature on alliances has focused on shifts between bipolar
and multipolar systems but has not yet sufficiently examined the transition
to unipolarity. The impact of this type of transition, then, needs to be ex-
plored further.
At the root of the smaller allies’ growing uncertainty lies the fact that,
unlike under bipolarity, when there was greater convergence in threat per-
ceptions among allies, in a unipolar system there is a greater potential for
divergence in threat perceptions between the hegemonic partner and the
other partner states. Such divergence can find expression in several ways:
the hegemon may attach a higher value to globally oriented threats that are
of limited interest to regional partners, or regional partners may attach greater
value to threats emanating from their region that are of lesser significance
or strategic value for the hegemon. Ultimately, a divergence in threat per-
ceptions will lead to disagreement about the conditions under which force
should be used.
8 I am not examining wartime behavior of the alliance as such, but rather how the pressures stemming
from these crises influenced European strategies. On the distinction between alliance behavior during
wartime and during peacetime, see Patricia A. Weitsman, “Alliance Cohesion and Coalition Warfare: The
Central Powers and Triple Entente,” Security Studies 12, no. 3 (Spring 2003): 79–113.
9 Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, “System Polarization and the Occurrence and Duration of War,” in
Explaining War: Selected Papers from the Correlates of War Project, ed. J. David Singer et al. (Beverly
Hills: Sage, 1979), 117.
10 See Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1979).
THE CONSTRUCTION OF THREAT PERCEPTIONS

AND THE POTENTIAL FOR DIVERGENCE
According to Walt’s balance-of-threat theory, states form alliances in response

to perceived threats. Walt suggested that such threat perceptions are a func-
tion of four factors: aggregate power, geographic proximity, offensive power,
and perception of aggressive intentions. Walt admitted, however, that one
cannot determine a priori which source of threat will be most important in
any given case.11 Under bipolarity, the clarity of the Soviet threat and the
static nature of the global balance of power created a rather coherent mutual
threat perception among NATO members. Due to the intense global competi-
tion between the superpowers, geographic distance was less of an issue for
the United States, despite the ocean separating it from the European con-
tinent. There was also a basic agreement within the alliance about Soviet
aggregate offensive capabilities and aggressive intentions. The end of bipo-
larity, however, re-opened the issue of threat perceptions and the question
of what shapes them.12
Under unipolarity, we are less likely to find an automatic convergence
among allies on all four dimensions that shape threat perceptions. With the
end of the bipolar competition, differences between the geostrategic con-
cerns of the superpower-turned-hegemon and those of its regional great-
power partners (Europe, in this case) become accentuated. Geographically,
whereas a hegemonic power is likely to have global interests and global ca-
pacities, weaker regional states are more likely to concentrate on regional,
proximate threats. Such threats may or may not converge with the hegemon’s
perceived threats or be compatible with them, but this cannot be predicted a
priori. If anything, the geographic factor should suggest that regional states
are likely to perceive problems and crises on their borders as more threat-
ening than their ally across the ocean does. Conversely, regional allies are
less likely to be concerned about threats of a broader strategic, world-order
nature that the hegemon may wish to pursue. Finally, when there is no sin-
gle, overwhelming external threat, both domestic pressures and ideological
differences can play a greater role in shaping alliance dynamics, which in
turn can contribute to divergence in threat perceptions. This is especially
11 Stephen M. Walt, The Origins of Alliances (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987), chap. 1. This
logic has been challenged in the context of the Third World. Steven R. David argues that Third World
leaders balance against both external and domestic threats (omnibalancing) and will therefore often align
with the external power that can best help them deal with domestic threats. See Choosing Sides: Alignment
and Realignment in the Third World (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991).
12 There have been several recent attempts to unbundle Walt’s different sources of threat percep-
tions. See David Priess, “Balance-of-Threat Theory and the Genesis of the Gulf Cooperation Council: An
Interpretative Case Study,” Security Studies 5, no. 4 (Summer 1996): 143–71; Scott Cooper, “State-Centric
Balance of Threat Theory: Explaining the Misunderstood Gulf Cooperation Council,” Security Studies 13,
no. 2 (Winter 2003–4): 306–49; and F. Gregory Gause III, “Balancing What? Threat Perception and Alliance
Choice in the Gulf,” Security Studies 13, no. 2 (Winter 2003–4): 273–305.
the case for the hegemonic power, which, in light of its strategic position, is
more likely to shape its foreign policy according to its own worldview or in
response to domestic pressures.
When we translate this more concretely into an examination of cur-
rent threat perceptions in Europe and in the United States, we see the wide
gap between American concerns for issues of world order and traditional
security, versus European concerns with ethnic factionalism, terrorism, mi-
gratory pressures, criminalization of economies, narcotics, and environmen-
tal threats; concerns that are far less state-centric.13 Geographically, as op-
posed to American global security interests, European security interests lie
primarily in the European periphery: Russia, Ukraine, the Balkans, and the
Mediterranean area. Most of the threats emanating from this periphery do
not involve direct military threats. Furthermore, the Europeans differ in their
basic interpretation of security, focusing much more on a comprehensive
notion of security, involving economic, social, and cultural aspects.14 Will-
ingness to employ force is relevant only in defense of European vital or
essential interests. Alfred van Staden et al. have argued that vital European
interests include the defense of their national societies. Essential interests that
may require the use of force are relevant only in the region that stretches
from the Baltic states over the Balkans to Europe’s southeastern (Turkey)
and southern (Mediterranean and Northern Africa) flanks. Such essential in-
terests, these authors argue, need not be fully shared by the United States.
They also argue, however, that at least for the foreseeable future, the coun-
tries of the European Union (EU) are able to secure their vital interests only
in close military cooperation with the United States in the framework of
NATO.15
There are two points of divergence here. First, there is divergence in the
fundamental understanding of what constitutes a security threat, stemming
from geographic distance; from a lack of traditional, old-fashioned military
threats; and from different worldviews. One should not overstate this diver-
gence, however, especially since September 11. Europeans, like Americans,
perceive threats from terrorism and from the proliferation of weapons of mass
destruction (WMD), though not with the same intensity as they are viewed
13 See the impressive work of Kirchner and Sperling, “The New Security Threats in Europe,” 434–35.
Part of the gap in threat perceptions does stem from very different worldviews held by Americans and
Europeans. Still, I find Robert Kagan’s basic argument more convincing. European worldviews should
be seen as stemming, at least partially, from European weakness. See Robert Kagan, Of Paradise and
Power: America and Europe in the New World Order (New York: Knopf, 2003). This being said, these
differences still follow directly not from the unipolar structure, but rather from the particularities of the
Western European unique experience.
14 Sven Biscop, “In Search of a Strategic Concept for the ESDP,” European Foreign Affairs Review 7
(2002): 480–87.
15 Alfred van Staden, Kees Homan, Bert Kreemers, Alfred Pijpers, and Rob de Wijk, “Towards a
European Strategic Concept,” Netherlands Institute of International Relations, Clingendael, November

2000, 28–30.
in the United States.16 Shifts in the perceived intensity of these threats are
driven by dynamic factors (such as terrorist attacks in the United States or
Europe), not by the unipolar structure of the system.
The second and perhaps wider divergence is on the question of the best
means to deal with these threats. It is often argued that Americans tend to
rely on military force and unilateral action, whereas Europeans prefer the
use of soft power and multilateral approaches.17
Furthermore, because of the lack of a clear, strong traditional external
threat, differences in worldviews and domestic pressures in Europe can play
a greater role in disagreements about means.18 This article does not seek to
analyze in detail the sources of the diverging threat perceptions mentioned
above. Rather, the goal is to examine the consequences of increased strategic
uncertainty and of the growing potential for divergence in threat perceptions
for the way in which smaller allies choose to manage the alliance.
THE VALUE OF THE PRE-EXISTING ALLIANCE

FOR THE SMALLER ALLIES
Alliances will not be maintained if the costs of maintaining them exceed the
benefits.19 There are several reasons why the smaller NATO allies should be in-
terested in maintaining NATO after the shift to unipolarity and after the demise
of the original threats that were its raison d’être. First, although the main exter-
nal threat has disappeared, smaller allies should be interested in maintaining
the hegemon’s previous commitment to their security, in case new threats
arise in the future. Once an alliance exists, especially an institutionalized
16 For example, in 2002, 65 percent of Europeans viewed international terrorism as an extremely

important threat, compared to 91 percent of Americans. Similarly, the threat of Iraq’s developing WMDs
was seen as extremely important by 58 percent of Europeans, as opposed to 86 percent of Americans.
Conversely, more Europeans (50 percent) viewed global warming as an extremely important threat than
did Americans (46 percent). See Worldviews 2002 Survey of American and European Attitudes and Pub-
lic Opinion, available at http://www.worldviews.org/key findings/transatlantic report.htm, accessed July
2005. For the official policy perspective, see “A Secure Europe in a Better World-European Security Strat-
egy,” Brussels, 12 December 2003, available at http://ue.eu.int/uedocs/cmsUpload/78367.pdf, accessed 8
August 2005.
17 These differences are clearly expressed in the comparison of the American National Security
Strategy (NSS) and the European Security Strategy (ESS). See also James Sperling, “Capabilities Traps and
Gaps: Symptom or Cause of a Troubled Transatlantic Relationship?” Contemporary Security Policy 25,
no. 3 (December 2004): 465.
18 To clarify this point, consider the fact that during the cold war, any ideological differences between
Western Europe and the United States appeared minor in contrast to the communist, totalitarian ideology
of the common enemy. With the demise of the Soviet Union, attention was given to what now are
portrayed as the major differences in European and American liberal democratic traditions (again, Kagan,
Of Paradise and Power, is a good example).
19 See James D. Morrow, “Arms versus Allies: Trade-offs in the Search for Security,” International
Organization 47, no. 2 (Spring 1993): 207–33.

alliance, it makes sense to maintain it in times of strategic transition and in

the face of uncertain future threats.20
Empirically, despite the breakup of the Soviet Union, for the Europeans
there are still quite a few potential threats that merit the continuing existence
of NATO, such as the threat of a nationalistic Russia, a resurgence of nationalism
in Germany, or the more likely scenario of more violent eruptions in the
Balkans. Such potential long-term threats to western European security may
not merit the formation of a transatlantic alliance, but they do merit the
continuation of a pre-existing alliance. Although Europe can play a role in
crisis management in the Balkans and the Mediterranean, it cannot play an
independent crisis-management role when it comes to Russia, Ukraine, and
other former Soviet states.21 The EU prefers to manage its delicate relations
with Russia in the civilian realm; it is the transatlantic partnership, however,
that keeps Russia balanced militarily and thereby allows the Europeans to
preserve this distinction between their civilian interests, pursued through
the EU, and their military interests, pursued through the transatlantic military
organs.22 As events in Kosovo (discussed later) proved, there is still no real
alternative to the American military machine, with its command, control,
communications, and intelligence capabilities.
Second, the continued existence of the alliance with the hegemon also
offers the allies a comfortable opportunity to pass the buck whenever that is
feasible, especially with regard to issues that do not pose vital threats to them
but are still a matter of concern.23 This option would no longer exist were the
allies to break up the alliance and balance against the hegemon. Third, pre-
existing institutional arrangements that were created to manage cooperation
vis-à-vis a common external enemy (i.e., balancing) also serve other purposes
20 An alternative approach suggests that decisions to enter alliances are driven not by threat concerns
but rather by learning from past experience. See Dan Reiter, Crucible of Beliefs: Learning, Alliances, and
World Wars (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996). Reiter discusses the choice of small states between
alliance and neutrality. This is a different choice than that facing a state already within an alliance,
especially in a unipolar system.
21 Biscop, “In Search of a Strategic Concept,” 480.
22 Alpo M. Rusi, “Europe’s Changing Security Role,” in Europe’s New Security Challenges, ed. Heinz
Gärtner, Adrian Hyde-Price, and Erich Reiter (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2001), 118.
23 Mearsheimer has argued that the second most common strategy other than balancing is buck-
passing (and not bandwagoning). Buck-passing refers to the attempt to get another state to bear the
burden of deterring or possibly fighting an aggressor. Mearsheimer examines the allure of buck-passing
only in a bipolar and a multipolar system (balanced and unbalanced), and ignores the scenario of a
unipolar system. Logically, if one refers only to the great powers (that is, the poles in the system), then
under unipolarity only one great power exists (the hegemon), and naturally it has no one to whom to pass
the buck. Once we broaden our discussion to examine the other, nonhegemonic powers in the system,
however, we can reach interesting conclusions regarding buck-passing. On threats that are of interest
to the hegemon, the smaller powers are likely to try to buck-pass. Yet at the same time, the hegemon
may also have an incentive to encourage regional security cooperation among its allies so that, in cases
of regional threats to stability, it will also have the option of buck-passing to those regional states. The
hegemon’s perspective, however, is not discussed in this essay. On buck-passing see John J. Mearsheimer,
The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: Norton, 2001), chaps. 5 and 8.
for the smaller allies: they mitigate a future potential threat from their hege-
monic partner, and they bring side benefits of being aligned with the strongest
state in the system. Finally, the alliance as an institutionalized structure pro-
vides the allies with several additional tools to deal with the challenges of
unipolarity, and especially for managing security.24 At a time of increased
strategic uncertainty, operating from within a pre-existing arrangement re-
duces uncertainty because actors can rely on pre-existing acceptable rules of
the game that have already proved themselves. As explained later, the existing
alliance institutions and mechanisms serve as a linchpin with which allies can
try to restrain the hegemon, on the one hand, and develop semi-independent
capabilities in order to create a division-of-labor strategy, on the other.
THE CHALLENGE OF MANAGING THE ALLIANCE UNDER

UNIPOLARITY: THE ALLIANCE SECURITY DILEMMA
The previous section established that smaller allies have an interest in main-
taining the pre-existing alliance. This is not fully their choice, however. The
shift to unipolarity also raises the question of the hegemon’s own interest in
actually fulfilling its commitments to its previous allies. The concept that per-
haps best captures the dynamics within an existing alliance is Glenn Snyder’s
alliance security dilemma. This concept suggests that states in an alliance face
two types of conflicting challenges. On the one hand they fear entrapment—
that is, they fear being dragged, due to their alliance commitments and due
to reckless behavior of their ally, into conflicts in which they have no di-
rect stake. On the other hand, they fear abandonment—that is, they fear that
their ally will abandon them and not fulfill its alliance commitments in time
of need. The dilemma stems from the fact that trying to reduce the risk of
abandonment is likely to increase the risk of entrapment, and vice versa.25
Abandonment and entrapment usually refer to actual military behavior,
but both problems can also take on political or economic forms. Thus polit-
ical statements downplaying or conditioning alliance commitments, political
maneuvering vis-à-vis one’s joint enemy, or implicit threats to sanction al-
lies, for example, can be perceived as signs of abandonment. Even when
military entrapment is not a major concern, there may still be a significant
fear of political entrapment—that is, fear of a decline in one’s ability to make
meaningful foreign policy decisions and to conduct meaningful foreign policy
independently.26 Finally, it is also possible to talk about economic entrap-
ment, in which a state finds itself financially supporting the political or
24 Celeste A. Wallander and Robert O. Keohane, “Risk, Threat, and Security Institutions,” in Haften-
dorn, Keohane, and Wallander, Imperfect Unions, 21–47.

25 Snyder, Alliance Politics, 180–82.
26 On the political dimension see Snyder, “The Security Dilemma in Alliance Politics,” 486–89. On
the political manipulation of abandonment concerns under bipolarity see also Kupchan, “NATO and the
Persian Gulf,” 325.
military behavior of its ally, behavior of which it may not approve. The
dangers of military, political, and economic entrapment and abandonment
may become intertwined.
The alliance security dilemma exists all the time in any alliance, but
different conditions can increase the concern over entrapment or abandon-
ment. In a bipolar system, allies mostly fear entrapment. In the overarching
global competition between the two poles, allies are seen as precious, even
if only for reasons of prestige and reputation. There is little fear of being
abandoned. There is, however, a real fear of being dragged into superpower
conflicts in which one has little direct interest.27 In multipolar systems, al-
liances are much more flexible and fluid. Great-power military commitment
to specific allies and the motivation to come to their help are not automatic
and may shift over time. Smaller allies in multipolar systems should therefore
have a stronger fear of abandonment than of entrapment.28
How relevant is the concept of the alliance security dilemma for un-
derstanding life in an alliance in a unipolar system? One may argue that the
military stakes entailed in the alliance security dilemma are less severe in a
unipolar system. Being a hegemon, the hegemon can take care of its prob-
lems without desperately requiring allied military support. At the same time,
if serious threats do emerge against its allies, it is still likely to provide them
with security, given its strategic concerns. In light of the relatively benign
security environment facing allies in such a system, however, and in light
of the fact (stressed before) that domestic politics have a greater influence
in such times, even low military stakes (such as the potential loss of several
soldiers’ lives) can become politically salient. If we wish to understand al-
lies’ calculations, we need to consider these political considerations as well.
Furthermore, at a more fundamental level, the overwhelming power dispar-
ities within the alliance are likely to create a permanent concern for political
entrapment (reduced autonomy in foreign-policy making), regardless of the
issue at hand. This concern will constantly be at the background of any
strategic planning by the smaller allies.
27 Snyder, “The Security Dilemma in Alliance Politics,” 483–84; and Kupchan, “NATO and the Persian
Gulf,” 325. For a dissenting view see Avery Goldstein, “Discounting the Free Ride: Alliances and Security
in the Postwar World,” International Organization 49, no. 1 (Winter 1995): 47–48. It is true that even
under bipolarity we often heard about a European concern regarding the “de-coupling” of America’s
security guarantees. One can argue, however, that this was all part of the political game, whereas if a
true military crisis had arrived, the structure would have driven the United States to uphold its military
commitments. Snyder refers to this game under bipolarity as a truncated form of the dilemma and a
concern for “pseudo-abandonment.” See Snyder, “The Security Dilemma in Alliance Politics,” 486.
28 Snyder, “The Security Dilemma in Alliance Politics”; and Snyder, Alliance Politics, esp. 315. On the
greater complexity of interaction under multipolarity, see also Waltz, Theory of International Politics, 168–
70, and for the more positive interpretation, see Karl Deutch and David Singer, “Multipolar Power Systems
and International Stability,” World Politics 16, no. 3 (April 1964): 390–406; and Thomas Christensen and
Jack Snyder, “Chain Gangs and Passed Bucks: Predicting Alliance Patterns in Multipolarity,” International
Organization 44, no. 2 (Spring 1990): 137–68.
That being said, the shift to unipolarity poses a new challenge for allies
in terms of the alliance security dilemma. As explained before, this shift cre-
ates a greater potential for divergence in threat perceptions, which may vary
greatly depending on geostrategic considerations, domestic politics, or dif-
fering perceptions of security and of aggressive intentions. This divergence
affects the concerns of both abandonment and entrapment. On the one hand,
the hegemon may be less interested in threats of a regional nature that may
be vital for its regional allies. Because there is no systemic pressure on the
hegemon to uphold its alliance commitments, regional allies have good rea-
son to fear abandonment in these cases. On the other hand, regional allies
are likely to be less concerned about threats of a broader strategic, world-
order nature that the hegemon wishes to deal with. Under such a scenario,
the hegemon is likely to try to use its overwhelming power leverage to get
its partners involved, and consequently there is a good reason for the allies
to be concerned about entrapment (be it military, political, or economic).29
Politically, then, in a unipolar world the alliance security dilemma is inten-
sified, because allies need to consider seriously a rise in both the threat of
entrapment and the threat of abandonment, while they hold fewer policy
tools to deal with these challenges.
Because strategies that reduce the risk of abandonment may at the same
time raise the danger of entrapment, the challenge for smaller allies is to
devise a general strategy that can manage the fluctuations between aban-
donment and entrapment concerns. The next section examines the two main
strategies, their ability to deal with the alliance security dilemma under unipo-
larity, and the likelihood of pursuing either one of them given different threat
perceptions and different entrapment or abandonment concerns.
MANAGING STRATEGIC UNCERTAINTY VIA THE ALLIANCE:

PACTS OF RESTRAINT AND DIVISION OF LABOR
Allies are using two strategies that allow them to maximize their long-term
benefits from the alliance, to ensure its continuation, and to reduce the long-
run cost they have to pay for it. They are using the alliance as a pact of
restraint, or they are creating a division of labor with the hegemon. Either
of these two strategies may be emphasized, depending on the nature of the
variation in threat perceptions between the allies and the hegemon, which in
turn also influences the balance between the perceived risks of abandonment
and entrapment. Both strategies, however, are linked in one way or another
to the pre-existing alliance institutions.
29 On the likelihood of abandonment under unipolarity, see Peter Liberman, “Ties That Blind: Will
Germany and Japan Rely Too Much on the United States?”Security Studies 10, no. 2 (Winter 2000–2001):
98–138.
Creating a Pact of Restraint

Several scholars have already noted that alliances are created not just for the
purpose of capability aggregation vis-à-vis an external threat, but also for the
purpose of managing relations with other allies. Paul Schroeder discussed
the use of pacts of restraint or “grouping” coalitions as tools for managing
recalcitrant great powers from within the alliance.30 Patricia Weitsman put for-
ward the notion of a tethering alliance, which is basically a pact of restraint
among states of relatively equal power.31 Once the joint external threat dis-
appears, members may still have an interest in maintaining the alliance for
such management purposes.
The ability to restrain one’s ally depends in part on the nature of the
institutional ties linking members within an alliance. Institutionalized chan-
nels of communication, consultations, and decision-making and operational
procedures can allow members in the alliance to exert influence on other
members, to restrain them from unilaterally pursuing undesired policies, and
at the very least, to reduce uncertainty regarding others’ goals and moti-
vations. Joseph Grieco has advanced a similar notion with the concept of
binding, suggesting that if states share a common interest and undertake ne-
gotiations on rules constituting a collaborative arrangement, then the weaker
but still politically influential partners will seek to ensure that the rules are
constructed so as to provide effective voice opportunity for the weaker states
and thereby ameliorate their domination by stronger partners.32
Allies are more likely to pursue a pact-of-restraint approach when they
are concerned about domination by the powerful ally and have a greater
fear of entrapment. This is most likely when there is divergence of threat
perceptions with the hegemon and when that divergence involves a higher
threat perception on the part of the hegemon. Under such circumstances,
the hegemon is more likely to pursue a military strategy and demand allied
support. Consequently, the weaker states need mechanisms to restrain and to
influence their powerful ally not to pursue certain policies. Snyder discussed
methods to restrain an ally in order to reduce the risk of entrapment. He
30 Schroeder, “Alliances, 1815–1945.” See also Christopher Gelpi, “Alliances as Instruments of Intra-
Allied Control,” in Haftendorn, Keohane, and Wallander, Imperfect Unions, 107–39.
31 Weitsman, “Intimate Enemies”; and Weitsman, Dangerous Alliances.
32 Joseph Grieco, “State Interests and Institutional Rule Trajectories: A Neorealist Interpretation of the
Maastricht Treaty and European and Monetary Union,” Security Studies 5, no. 3 (Spring 1996): 261–308;
Joseph Grieco, “Understanding the Problem of International Cooperation: The Limits of Neoliberal Institu-
tionalism and the Future of Realist Theory,” in Neorealism and Neoliberalism: The Contemporary Debate,
ed. David Baldwin (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 331. For the notion of binding among
more equal elements, see Daniel Deudney, “Binding Sovereigns: Authorities, Structures, and Geopolitics
in Philadelphian Systems,” in State Sovereignty as Social Construct, ed. Thomas Biersteker (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1996), 213–14. John Ikenberry examines the binding strategy from the per-
spective of the powerful state, as opposed to Grieco’s and my own focus here on the smaller states’
perspective, in G. John Ikenberry, After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding of
Order after Major Wars (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001).
suggested that this is essentially a bargaining process in which allies can

threaten defection or realignment, withhold diplomatic support in a particular
dispute, or insist on consultation during a crisis.33 This being said, binding is
likely to be pursued only if the smaller allies have some grounds to believe
that their voice may be effective.34 This, in turn, depends on two factors:
(1) The nature and strength of the pre-existing institutional arrangements

within the alliance. A highly institutionalized alliance is more likely to be
used as a pact of restraint, especially when existing institutional arrange-
ments are democratic and provide voice opportunities to all members. In
the special case of an alliance among democracies, such arrangements
can help increase the pact’s influence through means of socialization and
persuasion. In such a case as well, coordinated action among the allies
is likely to be more effective.
(2) The degree of power disparities vis-à-vis the powerful ally. Using the al-
liance as a pact of restraint becomes more difficult when the power dis-
parities are very broad (as they are in an alliance in a unipolar system).
With such broad disparities, binding may become less credible and highly
dependent on the powerful ally’s interest in complying. The various bar-
gaining techniques described by Snyder are not likely to be effective if
used by individual allies vis-à-vis a hegemonic partner. Such tactics can
gain credibility and pose a serious cost for the hegemon only if pursued
jointly by the smaller allies. Therefore, in order to utilize the alliance effec-
tively to restrain the hegemonic partner, smaller allies have an incentive
to organize collectively, on a regional level, and exert a coordinated and
louder voice aimed at the hegemon. This can be done by using and build-
ing on pre-existing institutional arrangements within the alliance, but also
expanding coordination and cooperation among regional states. In Eu-
rope this is exemplified by the attempt to develop the European security
and defense policy (ESDP) while not breaking away from NATO.
The main problem with the pact-of-restraint approach as a long-term

strategy is that its effectiveness hinges on the premise that the hegemon
is already committed and remains committed to regional security. Conse-
quently, this strategy can work only if combined with another strategy that
can increase the added value of allies for the hegemon, and that can reduce
the possible cost of abandonment. Once they are more prepared to face
the possible consequences of abandonment, smaller allies will be able to
make a more credible threat of withholding cooperation in order to restrain
the hegemon effectively.
33 Snyder, Alliance Politics, 320–26.

34 Grieco, “State Interests and Institutional Rule Trajectories,” 286–89.
Creating a Division of Labor with the Hegemon

Because in a unipolar world threats are more varied and complex, the per-
ceived dangers of abandonment or entrapment can vary from issue to issue.
Such variation creates an incentive to complement the pre-existing alliance
relations by developing a regional organization to deal with truly regional
security threats. Such an organization reduces the risks associated with aban-
donment, because if regional capabilities exist to deal with regional security
threats, then the potential cost of abandonment will be lower. Consequently,
we are likely to see more efforts to pursue the division-of-labor strategy
when there is a variation in threat perceptions in which threat perceptions
are higher for the regional allies. In such a situation there is greater concern
that the hegemon will be unwilling to commit the necessary forces to aid
the regional allies because it does not view the problem as posing a serious
direct threat. Such abandonment may also result from domestic pressures
within the hegemon to forgo the commitment.
This strategy can also mitigate the danger of domination and enhance the
effectiveness of the pact-of-restraint strategy. The division-of-labor strategy is
directly linked to an increase in effective burden sharing with the hegemon.
Significant burden sharing will make the alliance more worthwhile for the
hegemon. This can be achieved through a smarter, task- or issue-specific divi-
sion of labor that makes the best use of the allies’ capabilities and maximizes
their political influence.35 If allies can provide specific benefits to the hege-
mon, they can also gain greater influence over it through issue linkage. Issue
linkage implies that allies may be able to restrain the hegemon on one issue
by linking it to their (valuable) cooperation on another issue. Here again,
issue linkage is facilitated if the pre-existing institutional arrangements are
already well developed and cover a broad set of issues. Finally, the creation
of a division of labor also injects greater flexibility into the existing security
relations—a positive factor given the variety of threats out there.
Both the creation of a pact of restraint and the division-of-labor strat-
egy require meaningful cooperation among the smaller allies. The degree
of successful implementation of these strategies will depend on the ability
of these states to overcome collective-action problems among themselves.
Their ability to do that, in turn, will depend on various factors, including
the pre-existing nature of the regional security complex and the extent to
which regional allies hold similar threat perceptions. Realists would stress
that the higher such a mutual threat perception, the greater incentive they
should have to overcome collective-action problems. Institutionalists, on the
35 On the hegemon’s interest in developing regional cooperation for burden-sharing purposes, see
Galia Press-Barnathan, Organizing the World: The US and Regional Cooperation in Asia and Europe (New
York: Routledge, 2003). For a broader framework looking at both the hegemon’s and regional partners’
interest in regional institution building, see Galia Press-Barnathan, “The Changing Incentives for Security
Regionalization: From 11/9 to 9/11” Cooperation and Conflict 40, no. 3 (September 2005): 281–304.
TABLE 1 Unipolarity, Threat Perceptions, the Alliance Security Dilemma, and Strategies
Potential divergence in threat perception
Similar threat Higher threat Higher threat

perception perception for the perception for the
hegemon allies
Alliance security Low alliance security Allies fear Allies fear
dilemma dilemma entrapment abandonment
Nature of Cooperation, bilateral or Pact-of-restraint Division-of-labor
interaction with multilateral strategy prominent strategy prominent
the hegemon
Empirical Gulf War, Afghanistan France in Iraq war, Developments
examples (stage 1), U.K. in Iraq Afghanistan (stage 2) following the crises
war in the Balkans
other hand, would stress that overcoming collective-action problems is easier

the more advanced the institutional network is among these states.36 When
threat perceptions vary among the regional allies, however, such divergence
is likely to undermine collective efforts to either restrain the hegemon or offer
it meaningful burden sharing. A vicious circle can develop here, wherein no
regional collective action means that no significant political influence over
the hegemon is achieved, which in turn increases the temptation to cooperate
individually with the hegemon.
The connection between variations in threat perceptions between the
allies and the hegemon and the attractiveness of different strategies is sum-
marized in Table 1. Of course, several strategies can be advanced simultane-
ously; the clear separation here is mainly for analytical purposes. Indeed, the
successful development of both a division-of-labor strategy and a useful pact
of restraint can produce a positive synergy in achieving the allies’ overall
goal.
The rest of this article will trace the manner in which the European allies
have managed the transition to a unipolar system from within NATO. How did
they deal with the rise in strategic uncertainty? How did threat perceptions
among alliance members come to diverge? How did this influence their per-
ception of the alliance security dilemma? How did they manage fluctuations
in the concern over abandonment and entrapment, and how did the two
strategies of a pact of restraint and the creation of a division of labor develop
over the past fifteen years? To answer these questions, I have traced Euro-
pean behavior and dilemmas as these emerged and were reshaped in light
of the four military crises that have taken place under unipolarity: the Gulf
War of 1991, the Balkan crises culminating in the war in Kosovo in 1999, the
36 On regional security complexes, see David A. Lake and Patrick M. Morgan, eds., Regional Or-
ders: Building Security in a New World (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997); and
Barry Buzan and Ole Waever, Regions and Powers: The Structure of International Security (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2003). The concept originally was developed by Buzan.
war against Afghanistan following the events of September 11, and the war
against Iraq. These four crises were important stepping stones that pushed
the European partners to develop certain strategies to deal with the United
States. Each crisis prompted the European powers to examine their strategic
environment, the nature of their interaction with the United States, and the
nature of their military interactions with one another as they relate to the
United States. These are therefore not four distinct case studies, but rather
stages within a path-dependent process.
THE 1991 GULF WAR: INITIAL REACTIONS TO SYSTEMIC CHANGE
Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait and the crisis that followed marked the first large-
scale military conflict of the post–Cold War, unipolar era. Unlike the next
two crises, the Gulf War took place in the midst of the systemic transition,
when the full implications of the very recent power shift to unipolarity had
not yet been fully realized. This was a time of high systemic uncertainty for
the European allies. It also caught Europe itself in the midst of significant
changes within the European Community (EC), and most significantly, on
the eve of German reunification. Both the United States and the European
allies immediately condemned Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. The United States
was the first to threaten and consequently seek a military solution to the
crisis. The Europeans initially showed a clear preference for a diplomatic
solution using economic statecraft. Eventually, however, once the ultima-
tum given to Saddam Hussein to leave Kuwait expired on 15 January 1991,
they joined the United States in its military offensive (with the exception
of Germany, which instead of troops contributed a significant amount of
money).
Threat Perceptions and the Alliance Security Dilemma

in the Face of Systemic Change
In stark contrast to the recent war in Iraq, in the case of the war to lib-
erate Kuwait there was a basic consensus among all the allies with regard
to the Iraqi violation of international law, and to a lesser but still signifi-
cant extent with regard to the threat to international order that Iraq’s actions
posed. Consequently, we can conclude that a common threat perception
existed among the allies, which should have mitigated any alliance security
dilemma.
Still, the very recent systemic shift did create significant concerns among
the allies. The demise of bipolarity in itself increased overall uncertainty about
the future and increased general concern that the United States would lose
interest in European affairs. There was, therefore, among all the major allies,
a clear increase in the perceived likelihood of American abandonment. At
the same time, the European states varied in their specific threat perceptions
and their interpretations of the alliance security dilemma—variations that
stemmed from each state’s unique circumstances and calculations. This re-
flects the central point made before: that the shift to unipolarity, while it
created a basic underlying structural reality of American preponderance, also
opened up space for a greater impact of nonsystemic factors on states’ be-
havior than could have been seen under the bipolar system.
Following the end of the Cold War, the United Kingdom was perhaps
the state most concerned about the risk of American abandonment. This was
the case especially in light of the “special relations” it had with the United
States (a relationship that seemed to be under strain), the perceived declining
political and geopolitical value of the United Kingdom in American eyes
(compared to the emerging unified Germany), and the United Kingdom’s
own ambivalence vis-à-vis the European continent.37 The United Kingdom
was also the strongest supporter of American policy in the Persian Gulf. This
support, however, cannot be credited to the British fear of abandonment,
since Margaret Thatcher, the British prime minister on the eve of the Gulf
War, shared President George H.W. Bush’s threat perception with regard to
Iraq.38 It is this shared threat perception that, at the same time, reduced the
British concern over entrapment.
Even France, which throughout the Cold War was the least dependent
on the United States compared to its European neighbors, and which tried
to pursue an independent policy line, had to take into consideration factors
related to the shift to unipolarity, which gave the United States greater impor-
tance in French eyes than before. Most notably, the French were concerned
about the growing political role of a united Germany. They realized that
they depended on the United States in order to retain their world status. The
concern that France’s political clout was weakening was intensified by the
talk about enlarging the United Nations (UN) Security Council, another by-
product of the demise of bipolarity.39 Even recalcitrant France, then, could
not ignore the growing importance of the United States. At the same time,
unlike the British, the French were very much concerned about the cost of
entrapment in an American military adventure in the Gulf, in light of the spe-
cial relations they had cultivated over the years with the Arab states.40 For
this reason, France made every effort to follow a policy line independent of
the American one, but it ended up joining the military effort and providing
the second-largest military force after the British.
37 Joseph Lepgold, “Britain in Desert Storm: The Most Enthusiastic Junior Partner,” in Bennett,
Lepgold, and Unger, Friends in Need, 74–75.

38 Ibid., 77–80.
39 Isabelle Grunberg, “Still a Reluctant Ally? France’s Participation in the Gulf War Coalition,” in
Bennett, Lepgold, and Unger, Friends in Need, 118, 124.

40 Ibid., 123.
Germany, at the time of the invasion of Kuwait, was in a situation of great

dependence on the United States. Chancellor Helmut Kohl felt both a sense
of gratefulness for the American aid in pushing forward German unification
and a need for future American help to follow through on the signature of the
“two plus four” treaty.41 At the same time, the potential cost of entrapment
was raised for Germany, since active military support for the United States
could appear threatening to the Soviet Union—the other crucial player for
Germany in the prelude to unification.42 Ironically, although Germany was
the most indebted to the United States, the danger of entrapment it faced at
the time was the smallest in light of the domestic constitutional constraints it
faced regarding the use of force.43
The United States, for its part, was willing to go it alone to liberate
Kuwait if necessary. Certainly it could have managed alone when it came to
the use of force. After all, the 540,000 troops it sent to the Gulf numbered
more than twice those sent by all the other coalition members combined.44
Yet the United States was clearly dependent on allied burden sharing when
it came to the financing of the war. It is on this issue that the U.S. Congress
was demanding that other nations share the burden of the war. Without
such financing, the president would have faced strong domestic opposition.
Indeed the most significant diplomatic effort made by the United States was
in raising funds to finance the war, and most of the cost of the war ($54
billion in cash, supplies, and services) was covered by the European allies
and Japan.45 This sensitivity to financial cost and to its domestic toll is greater
under unipolarity than under bipolarity. Because the external threat is less
clear and less imminent under unipolarity, it is more difficult domestically
to justify high foreign-policy costs. This domestic constraint for the United
States greatly increased the danger of financial entrapment for its allies.
The growing importance of American domestic politics created a new
kind of implicit threat, which can be called “involuntary abandonment.” That
meant that the U.S. administration was constrained by its own domestic politics
and that the U.S. Congress could demand tougher policies should America’s
allies fail to share the burden properly. Thus, for example, the Germans
were pressured to provide generous financial aid after comments from the
41 This was the treaty between the Federal Republic of Germany, the German Democratic Republic,
and the four former occupying powers (France, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the Soviet
Union) that was signed in September 1990 and led to the creation of a sovereign unified Germany in
March 1991.
42 Gunther Hellmann, “Absorbing Shocks and Mounting Checks: Germany and Alliance Burden Shar-
ing in the Gulf War,” in Bennett, Lepgold, and Unger, Friends in Need, 166–78.
43 The same argument holds for Japan, a state not discussed in this article. In both cases, however,
we can see how, over time, these domestic constraints gradually lose their overwhelming power as a
legitimate excuse not to share the burden. I return to this later in the German context.
44 Andrew Bennett, “Sheriff of the Posse: American Leadership in the Desert Storm Coalition,” in
Bennett, Lepgold, and Unger, Friends in Need, 42.

45 Ibid., 42, 48, 53–54.
administration regarding Congress’s possible reactions, and after indications

from Secretary of State James Baker that the United States was for the first
time considering cuts in its forces in Europe.46 Here was the first post–Cold
War demonstration of the danger of financial entrapment.
Initial Adjustments to Life under Unipolarity: Emerging Strategies

What was most evident in the overall European reaction was the desire to find
a way to cooperate and contribute to the multilateral effort to liberate Kuwait
(given the mutual threat perception following Iraq’s aggression), yet at the
same time to exhibit independence, even if symbolic, vis-à-vis the United
States. The fear of American domination was an issue, more pronounced for
France, but also relevant for the United Kingdom. The multiple dimensions
of the entrapment concerns and the links between them are evident here.
Europeans were concerned not only about military entrapment, but as much
if not more about political entrapment. Consequently, they were looking for
ways to restrain the United States politically. The Europeans made a clear
connection between the military and political elements. Their consideration
was simple: military contribution meant political influence. This was one of
Thatcher’s main considerations, and it was also a crucial consideration for
the French. President François Mitterrand wanted to exert independence and
maintain as much autonomy as possible, but at the same time he realized
that France had to buy its political influence (a tool to reduce the danger of
entrapment) by making a serious military contribution.47
The French compromise during the Gulf War is indicative of the nascent
development of the division-of-labor strategy. France at the time conceded
to join the American war effort, to send a significant military force, and even
to put it under American command. It insisted, however, that its forces be
given a specific, clear mission—one that they could achieve by themselves
and take pride in. The Americans agreed to position the French forces to
guard the western flank of the coalition troops.48
A Joint European Response—First Attempt at a Pact of Restraint?

Beyond the responses of individual European states, the EC made an earnest
attempt to react collectively to the crisis in the Gulf. The EC itself reacted
quite efficiently in the first stage of the conflict when it decided to embargo
oil imports from Iraq and Kuwait and to adopt economic sanctions, even
before a resolution calling for such measures was passed by the UN Security
46
Hellman, “Absorbing Shocks and Mounting Checks,” 175–76.
47
Lawrence Freedman and Efraim Karsh, The Gulf Conflict 1990–1991: Diplomacy and War in the
New World Order (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 113, 349–50.
48 Grunberg, “Still a Reluctant Ally?” 118.
Council. The comprehensive sanctions that were agreed upon represented

the strongest punitive action ever taken by the EC.49 On the military side,
many Europeans had hoped for a more promising role for the one European
security institution that existed at the time: the Western European Union
(WEU), which had been revived in the mid 1980s.50 Many hoped already in
1990 that it would become the EC’s military arm. The WEU members met on 21
August 1990 to outline the principles of European coordination. They agreed
to send ships to the Gulf and to enforce sanctions militarily. Only after this
agreement was in place did European and American military commanders
meet to tighten their cooperation. Although the WEU did play some role in
enforcing the naval embargo on Iraq, however, it was irrelevant when actual
fighting broke out. The extremely limited ability of the Europeans to act
collectively in the Gulf left them with no choice but to put their forces under
American command. The president of the European Commission at the time,
Jacques Delors, concluded from that experience that indeed the EC had no
choice but to develop a common security policy.51
The Gulf War thus played an important role in exposing the weakness
of the unintegrated European approach to foreign and security policy and
ensured that the issue would be brought for discussion to the December
1990 intergovernmental conference of EC leaders in Rome. Consequently,
the notion of a common foreign and security policy (CFSP) was incorporated
into the structure of the European Union (EU) at the Maastricht summit in
1991.52 Throughout the 1990s, the Europeans made significant advances in
the development of a European Security and Defense Identity (ESDI), cul-
minating so far in the development of a European rapid reaction force of
60,000 troops. The debate over the development of the ESDI and of greater
security cooperation within Europe reflected not the desire to balance the
United States but rather the need to restrain it and to develop a mechanism
that would allow for a division of labor with the Americans. The experience
in the Gulf War can be seen as the first crisis that highlighted to the Eu-
ropeans the need to develop some form of coordinated European military
capacity.
49 Ilan Greilsammer, “European Reactions to the Gulf Challenge,” in The Gulf Crisis and Its Global
Aftermath, ed. Gad Barzilai, Aharon Klieman, and Gil Shidlo (London: Routledge, 1993), 210–13.
50 On developments in the WEU, see Willem Fredrick van Eekelen, Debating European Security 1948–
1998 (The Hague: SDU, 1998).

51 Trevor C. Salmon, “Europeans, the EC and the Gulf,” in Iraq, the Gulf Conflict and the World Com-
munity, ed. James Gow (London: Centre for Defense Studies/Brassey’s, 1993), 97–101; and Greilsammer,
“European Reactions,” 217–18, 225.
52 Kjell A. Eliassen, “Introduction: The New European Foreign and Security Agenda,” in Foreign
and Security Policy in the European Union, ed. Kjell A. Eliassen (London: Sage, 1998), 5; and Kevin
Featherstone and Roy H. Ginsberg, The United States and the European Union in the 1990s, 2nd ed.
(New York: St. Martin’s, 1996), 7–8.
THE IMPACT OF THE CRISES IN THE BALKANS: KOSOVO 1999
The war in Kosovo was the last of four violent conflicts that occurred follow-
ing the breakup of Yugoslavia. Its impact on transatlantic relations should
be understood in a broader time frame, going back to the war in Bosnia
that ended in 1995 with the Dayton accord. NATO’s part in Kosovo involved
only an air campaign. Repeated threats of NATO air strikes did not succeed in
halting the fighting in the region. After the failure of the Rambouillet talks
to reach an agreement, NATO began air strikes on 24 March 1999. It took two
and a half months until Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic and the Serbian
parliament accepted a proposal drawn up by representatives from Russia, the
EU, and the United States. On 9 June a formal agreement was signed calling
for the withdrawal of Serbian troops from Kosovo and the subsequent halt-
ing of NATO’s air campaign. The United States flew more than 60 percent of
all the sorties in the air and missile campaign, more than 80 percent of the
strike-attack sorties, more than 90 percent of the advanced intelligence and
reconnaissance missions, and more than 90 percent of the electronic warfare
missions using dedicated aircraft; fired more than 80 percent of the precision-
guided air munitions; and launched more than 95 percent of the cruise mis-
siles.53 Many considered the war in Kosovo as an important wake-up call
for the Europeans, as it demonstrated the huge gap in military capabilities
between them and the United States.
Threat Perceptions and the Alliance Security Dilemma in the Balkans

Although there was a shared humanitarian concern on both sides of the At-
lantic in light of the Serbian policy of ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, geostrategic
realities dictated that violence in the Balkans was of greater concern for Eu-
rope than for the United States. For the Europeans, ethnic violence in the
former Yugoslavia, while not a vital interest (as defined before), did fall into
the category of essential interests, given the proximity of the region to their
borders and the fear of a spillover of destabilization there. Furthermore, as
the German foreign minister Joschka Fischer suggested, the events in Kosovo
served to clarify the underlying common European interest in the process of
European integration—namely, the establishment of a lasting peaceful order
on the continent. The war was seen in Europe not so much in strategic terms,
but rather as a battle for a certain conception of Europe.54 Therefore, although
53 Data cited in Jonathan G. Clarke, “Silver Lining: Renewed Interest in European-Run Security Insti-
tutions,” in NATO’s Empty War: A Postmortem on the Balkan War, ed. Ted Galen Carpenter (Washington:
Cato Institute, 2000), 155.
54 Anne Deighton, “The European Union and NATO’s War over Kosovo,” and Alex Macleod, “France:
Kosovo and the Emergence of a New European Security,” in Alliance Politics, Kosovo, and NATO’s War:
Allied Force or Forced Allies? ed. Pierre Martin and Mark R. Brawley (New York: Palgrave, 2000), 66, 61,
117.
events in the Balkans in general and in Kosovo specifically did not pose a
traditional military threat for Europe, they did pose a serious threat in terms
of the broader and softer notion of security adopted by many Europeans.
Americans and Europeans have disagreed over the most relevant definition
of security in the post–Cold War world, but the violence in Kosovo actu-
ally posed a more serious threat according to European conceptions. These
two conceptions of security interacted when, ultimately, recourse to military
action became inevitable. It is here that the Europeans were forced to face
the consequences of their military weakness for their own comprehensive,
cooperative security goals.
The United States, for its part, did end up leading the military action
against Serbia. Yet the debates within the United States on the issue, as
well as its reluctance to use ground troops, made it clear that there was
a consensus in the United States that no vital American national interests, be-
yond humanitarian interests, were involved. Former secretary of state Henry
Kissinger was quoted as saying, “the proposed deployment [of U.S. troops] in
Kosovo does not deal with any threat to American security as this concept
has traditionally been conceived. . . . If Kosovo presents a security problem,
it is to Europe.”55 This approach found expression both in the stated limited
nature of military involvement that the United States was willing to undertake
(no ground troops), as well as in the strong congressional pressure to limit
the American involvement in the region.
Consequently, although the United States did end up leading the mil-
itary action against Serbia, the eventual lesson for the Europeans was that
it was highly uncertain that the United States would be willing to pursue
a similar strategy in the future. This uncertainty, combined with the stark
realization of European military weakness, increased fears of an American
abandonment in future European crises. The reluctance of the United States
to become fully engaged in solving the conflict in Bosnia and its refusal to
contribute ground troops to the peacekeeping operation there have led to a
shift in French perceptions away from fearing a continuing American hege-
mony in western Europe to a concern about American disengagement.56 This
fear was intensified following the Kosovo experience, in light of the inept-
ness of the European security institutions in dealing with the crisis.57 The
United Kingdom, for its part, was also concerned about the limited nature of
55 Henry Kissinger, “U.S. Intervention in Kosovo Is a Mistake,” Boston Globe, 1 March 1999, A15;
Charles A. Kupchan, “Kosovo and the Future of U.S. Engagement in Europe: Continued Hegemony or
Impending Retrenchment?” in Martin and Brawley, Alliance Politics, 77; and Sabrina P. Ramet, “The USA:
To War in Europe Again,” in The Kosovo Crisis: The Last American War in Europe? ed. Anthony Weymouth
and Stanley Henig (London: Reuters, 2001), 165–72.
56 Robert P. Grant, “France’s New Relations with NATO,” Survival, 38 no. 1 (Spring 1996): 63–64; and
Nicole Gnesotto, “Common European Defence and Transatlantic Relations,” Survival 38, no. 1 (Spring
1996): 23.
57 Macleod, “France: Kosovo and the Emergence of a New European Security.”
the American commitment and about the consequences of the broad power
disparities. British prime minister Tony Blair blamed the American reluctance
to use ground troops, not Milosevic’s self-delusion, for the fact that the Serbs
underestimated the determination of the West. The American ruling out of
a ground invasion undermined the credibility of the NATO threat from the
beginning.58
The war in Kosovo highlighted to the British the lack of any mechanism
through which the Europeans could formulate an agreed policy among them-
selves, especially in the absence of any clear U.S. lead; the Europeans were
effectively dependent on the United States for any military operations be-
yond medium-scale policing of an existing political settlement.59 This lesson
combined concerns of both abandonment and entrapment. Although clearly
the concern regarding American refusal to get involved in future conflicts
in the Balkans was prominent, there was deep frustration over the fact that
the Americans had run the military operation. In other words, once the mili-
tary option was decided on jointly, the huge capabilities gap led to a de facto
European entrapment in the American operation.
The Development of European Strategies in Light of the Balkan Crises

There is a clear link between the events in the Balkans, from Bosnia to
Kosovo, and steps taken by the Europeans to begin the development of an
independent military role for the EU. The rising concern over abandonment
led to the development of a division-of-labor strategy, as expected. At the
same time, it became clear that until such military capabilities were in place,
Europe would be militarily dependent on the United States. Given that the
Europeans and the Americans held different views regarding the meaning
of security and the main threats they faced, and an even greater difference
over the best means to deal with those threats, European dependence on the
United States also raised the risk of entrapment. From the mid-1990s, then, a
division-of-labor strategy began to emerge, coupled with a pact-of-restraint
approach that tried to use NATO more productively in order to bargain with
the United States. As noted at the end of the theoretical section of this article,
there is a positive synergy between the advancement of these two strategies.
Debates among Europeans throughout the 1990s reflected the search
for a strategy to deal with American hegemony. The allies were strongly
influenced by events in the Balkans. The agreement to create the Combined
Joint Task Forces (CJTFs) in 1995 marks an emerging understanding across
the Atlantic of the value of such a division of labor. The CJTF concept also
58 Louise Richardson, “A Force for Good in the World? Britain’s Role in the Kosovo Crisis,” in Martin
and Brawley, Alliance Politics, 145–64.

59 Joylon Howorth, “Britain, NATO and CESDP: Fixed Strategy, Changing Tactics,” European Foreign
Affairs Review 5 (2000): 382–83.

reveals how Europeans could use the pre-existing institutional and logistical
capabilities of NATO to organize future European cooperation more easily,
without direct American involvement.
By the end of that decade, a compromise seems to have been reached
within Europe. The French became less anti-Atlanticist and the British became
more Europeanist. For both of these states, the shift in policy was linked to
the Balkan experience. The United Kingdom, which held the EU presidency
during the first six months of 1998, when the fighting in Kosovo broke out,
came to realize how bureaucratically complicated it was to organize an EU
military intervention.60 In a dramatic shift, the British came to the conclusion
at the end of 1998 that only an EU security policy could (1) allow Europe to
speak with a single voice on foreign policy matters, (2) enable the Europeans
to act alone if the United States was not able or willing to participate, and
(3) avoid corrosive burden-sharing debates with the United States that would
eventually undermine the alliance.61 This conclusion reflects the need to deal
with the simultaneous dangers of abandonment and entrapment (and not a
desire to balance the United States).
This major shift found expression in the Franco-British summit at Saint
Malo in December 1998 and then, fueled by the events in Kosovo, led to the
EU Council’s Cologne (June 1999) and Helsinki (December 1999) summits, at
which EU leaders pledged support for improving European collective military
capabilities to perform the tasks outlined in the 1992 Petersburg Declara-
tion.62 The EU announced its intention to absorb the WEU and to create the
European rapid reaction corps for peacekeeping operations and regional cri-
sis management. It also decided to set up appropriate decision-making struc-
tures to allow autonomous capacity to make decisions and operate when NATO
as a whole is not engaged. These decisions reflected the growing consensus
in Europe about the need to develop a viable division-of-labor strategy in
light of the growing concern that the United States would not be willing to
intervene militarily in regional conflicts in the future (abandonment).63
Were the Europeans able to use NATO to restrain the Americans during
the Kosovo crisis? Despite the fact that the United States dominated the scene
during NATO’s air campaign in Kosovo, Europeans still were able to use the
alliance framework as a restraining, binding device, albeit with limited suc-
cess. As Wesley Clark, the U.S. general who served as the supreme allied
60 Richard G. Whitman, “NATO, the EU and ESDP: An Emerging Division of Labor?” Contemporary
Security Policy 25, no. 3 (December 2004): 436.
61 Emil Kirchner and James Sperling, “Will Form Lead to Function? Institutional Enlargement and the
Creation of a European Security and Defence Identity,” Contemporary Security Policy 21, no. 1 (April
2000): 42.
62 The 1992 Petersburg Declaration discussed the strengthening of the Western European Union’s
operational role, focusing on humanitarian and rescue tasks, peacekeeping tasks, and tasks of combat
forces in crisis management, including peace making.
63 See Peter Schmidt, “ESDI: Separable but Not Separate?” NATO Review 48 (Spring–Summer 2000): 12.
commander Europe at the time, recalled, Americans spent long hours with
European defense officials, walking them through proposed targets in Serbia
and reasoning with them, and at times the Americans were forced to modify
their lists.64 At least at the tactical level, then, NATO still played a role as a pact
of restraint for the European partners.
Although most of the decisions to develop greater military capacity have
yet to materialize, in practice a division of labor has been employed in the
Balkans. The United States may have provided more than two-thirds of the
aircrafts in the campaign over Kosovo and Serbia, but in the peacetime after-
math the EU nations have provided five times as many peacekeeping forces
as the United States has. European nations provided 80 percent of the troops
in the Kosovo peacekeeping force (KFOR). Financially as well, the EU has pro-
vided approximately $16.5 billion to the Balkans since 1991. It has spent
more than three times what the United States has on nonmilitary assistance.
In fact, the Europeans have covered 90 percent of such costs in Kosovo.65
The division-of-labor strategy was most recently applied in the Balkan con-
text with the decision of NATO to terminate its nine-year mission in Bosnia
and Herzegovina. Instead, the EU announced it would take over that mis-
sion.66 This contribution is significant, but until an actual military capability
is created to accompany such actions, the abandonment danger will not be
resolved.
ALLIANCE DYNAMICS AND THE WAR IN AFGHANISTAN
The post-Kosovo developments in the ESDP were put to the test in the im-
mediate aftermath of the attack on the United States on September 11, 2001.
Less than a month after those terrorist attacks, on 7 October 2001, the United
States began Operation Enduring Freedom to destroy the terrorist training
camps and infrastructure in Afghanistan, capture al Qaeda leaders, and elim-
inate further terrorist activities emanating from that country. This was but one
stage in America’s new global battle against terror. Unlike during the situa-
tion ten years earlier, America’s allies reacted swiftly. On 12 September 2001,
NATO members, for the first time in the alliance’s history, invoked Article 5 of
the North Atlantic Treaty, which states that an armed attack against one or
more NATO member countries will be considered an attack against all. NATO
64 Wesley Clark, “An Army of One?” Washington Monthly, September 2002, available at http://www.
washingtonmonthly.com/features/2001/0209.clark.html, accessed 10 August 2005.

65 Heinz Gärtner, “European Security, the Transatlantic Links and Crisis Management,” in Gärtner,
Hyde-Price, and Reiter, Europe’s New Security Challenges, 140. Gärtner argues that a division-of-labor
strategy must be used.
66 “Our Security in a New Era,” issued by the Heads of State and Government participating in the
meeting of the North Atlantic Council in Istanbul on 28 June 2004, commonly known as the Istanbul
Declaration, available at http://www.nato.int/docu/pr/2004/p04-097e.htm, accessed 30 March 2006.
aircraft were sent to protect the U.S. airspace from mid-October 2001 to mid-
May 2002, and NATO’s standing naval forces were sent to patrol the eastern
Mediterranean and monitor shipping.67 Beyond these NATO missions, each Eu-
ropean NATO member state individually offered to send forces to Afghanistan
to aid the Americans.
Threat Perceptions and the Alliance Security Dilemma:

Divergence over Time and an Intensified Dilemma
The dramatic shift in American foreign policy following the events of Septem-
ber 11 further demonstrates that, in a unipolar system, fluctuations in threat
perceptions are caused by factors that cannot necessarily be deduced from
the system’s structure. In the short run, September 11 led to a mutual threat
perception across the Atlantic. In the longer-run, however, given the differ-
ent security philosophies discussed above, it accentuated differences in threat
perceptions between Europe and the United States. The European behavior
during the war in Afghanistan reflected the transition between these two pe-
riods. At the outset of the war, there was a clear common threat perception
between the Americans and their European allies. The American reaction
to the September 11 events appeared reasonable and justified. American
sovereignty was violated violently by al Qaeda, which clearly operated in
Afghanistan under government sanction. Hence, attacking Afghanistan ap-
peared to be a legitimate reaction. At that initial stage, then, there was little
concern regarding the alliance security dilemma. There was a sense of com-
mon interests, combined with a desire to remain relevant after American
attention had shifted away from Europe.
As time went by, though, the growing gap between European and
American threat perceptions and policy goals became clear and once again
enhanced the alliance security dilemma for the Europeans. Two factors were
responsible for this shift. One was the polite refusal of the United States to
make use of the forces offered to it by its European allies at the outset of
the war. This created among the European states a growing sense of irrel-
evance,68 the long-term implication of which was a greater risk of future
abandonment. At the same time, the Europeans began to have serious con-
cerns about entrapment following President George W. Bush’s “axis of evil”
speech on 29 January 2002. This speech, and consequent American behavior,
led to a growing realization of the broadening gap in American and European
threat perceptions and interests. On the eve of the Gulf War in 1990, many
67 “September 11—One Year On: NATO’s Contribution to the Fight against Terrorism,” available at
http://www.nato.int/terrorism/index.htm, accessed 1 April 2006.
68 Javier Solana was quoted saying, “NATO invoked its most sacred covenant . . . and it was useless!
Absolutely useless!” Cited in Martin A. Smith, “Conclusions: Where Is NATO Going?” in Where Is NATO Going?
ed. Martin A. Smith, special issue, Contemporary Security Policy 25, no. 3 (December 2004): 550.
had feared that the United States would turn inward or renege on its inter-
national commitments with the demise of Soviet threat. Consequently, fear
of abandonment intensified. In contrast, the entrapment concerns that arose
in 2002 resulted from the aggressive and crusade-like reactions of the United
States. As for the likelihood of abandonment, the emerging American global
agenda had, in fact, further diverged from that on which Europe had been fo-
cused. In the context of “the war on terror,” Balkan crises appeared even less
significant for the United States. Spreading U.S. military, economic, and polit-
ical resources in this global campaign against terrorism could not but come
at the expense of other security commitments. Those, most likely, would be
the ones concerning Europe’s periphery. Such concerns seemed reasonable
given the fact that, only three years earlier, the Americans had stalled on
intervening in Kosovo—even before the globally oriented war on terrorism
was on the agenda.69
Strategies to Manage Relations with the United States in the Alliance

COOPERATION AND THE LIMITS OF A PACT OF RESTRAINT
Immediately after the United States began its operation in Afghanistan, there
was a real eagerness on part of the European allies to offer military burden
sharing to the operation. Since there was a mutual threat perception, Euro-
peans were eager to cooperate with the United States. The important issue
to stress here is that, while the offer of military help came collectively via
NATO, in practice, much of the actual military cooperation was bilateral and
did not come as a coordinated European response. Since there was a shared
threat perception, this did not seem to be a problem at the time. The United
Kingdom immediately made clear its willingness to share the military burden
and send forces to Afghanistan. It basically placed its entire military capabil-
ities at U.S. disposal and was the first to send ground forces to Afghanistan.
France cooperated fully as well, allowing U.S. military aircraft to use French
airspace, sending French air defense frigates and command and logistics ves-
sels to the Indian Ocean to assist in operations, and offering its special forces
if needed.70
The most overwhelming change in the motivation to share the military
burden, however, occurred in Germany. During the Gulf War, Kohl barely
came through with a financial contribution to the war effort. This time,
however, Germany supported the invocation of Article 5 and German crews
69In March 2004, serious violent clashes erupted again in Kosovo, leading to a re-enforcement of
NATO’s peacekeeping force (K-FOR) with 1,000 troops to control the rising tensions. Those troops were
European (750 from the United Kingdom), not American.
70 On the specifics of each state’s contribution see Congressional Research Service, “Operation En-
during Freedom: Foreign Pledges of Military and Intelligence Support,” 17 October 2001, available at
http://fpc.state.gov/documents/organization/6207.pdf, accessed 2 April 2006.
participated in Operation Noble Eagle, which patrolled the North American

airspace. Even more significant, in a historic move Chancellor Gerhard
Schröder requested that the German parliament approve the deployment
of 3,900 German troops in both the American-led Operation Enduring
Freedom and in the UN International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). Such a
request, unthinkable ten years earlier, was authorized in the Bundestag in a
vote of 538-35, with only the former communists opposing the chancellor’s
request.71 As the war continued, Germany became the leading state in ISAF,
taking command of the force in March 2002.72 This dramatic change in
German behavior reflected domestic changes and evolution that were not
directly linked to the shift to unipolarity. Yet it also reflected a growing under-
standing on the part of Germany that, in order to maintain political relevance
in a unipolar world, it had no choice but to be willing to show some military
muscle.
These German considerations also reflected a broader European ratio-
nale. The strong motivation of the Europeans to act on (for the first time)
their official alliance commitment under Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty
and to contribute to the war effort, despite the obvious fact that such aid,
at least in the short run, was negligible compared to the capabilities of the
American war machine, reflected the attempt to maintain the relevance of
the NATO framework and to keep the United States engaged in the alliance.
In other words, this was a means of restraining and influencing the poli-
cies of the United States in Afghanistan by being an active part of its cam-
paign. It would not have been possible to use NATO’s institutional mech-
anisms to try to restrain U.S. actions in Afghanistan if NATO had not been
actively involved in the campaign. Once again, as in 1991, military contribu-
tion was seen as a key to political influence, which in turn could be used
in the future to reduce the risk of political entrapment. From a broader per-
spective, it made sense for the Europeans to contribute as much as pos-
sible in the Afghan case in order to reap the benefits elsewhere in the
future.
In the short run, however, the Europeans failed to activate the restrain-
ing device because the Americans chose to bypass NATO institutions in imple-
menting their war plans in Afghanistan and viewed the invocation of Article 5
more as a political gesture. The reality of unipolarity allowed the Americans
to choose when to operate via NATO and consequently made the ability of the
allies to use the alliance as a pact of restraint contingent on initial American
cooperation. To make such cooperation more forthcoming, it was critical to
develop the division-of-labor strategy as well.
71 BBC News, “Germany Approves Afghan Force,” 23 December 2001, available at http://news.bbc.
co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/1724276.stm, accessed 2 April 2006.

72 See http://www.afnorth.nato.int/ISAF/about/about history.htm, accessed 2 April 2006.
DEVELOPMENT OF A DIVISION-OF-LABOR STRATEGY

The division-of-labor strategy became a real and significant strategy in
Afghanistan with the creation of ISAF by the UN in December 2001. In the
face of the military irrelevance of the Europeans in the first months of the
war, the creation of ISAF was a significant tool to show the value of collec-
tive European involvement. ISAF is pretty much a European project, not an
American one. NATO members (excluding the United States) have played a
significant role in ISAF since its creation, providing 95 percent of the troops
involved. The military cooperation of European countries to help their Amer-
ican ally, via the institution of ISAF, reveals the usefulness of taking advantage
of pre-existing institutional capabilities in order to facilitate the development
of a pan-European, as opposed to individual national, military action.
This division of labor became clearer in August 2003 when NATO officially
took command of the 5,000 ISAF peacekeepers. This was the first time in
NATO’s history that the alliance took upon itself a mission outside Europe.73
This step turned ISAF simultaneously into a division-of-labor tool (since no
American troops were involved) and another manifestation of the pact-of-
restraint strategy (since this collective response was orchestrated now in close
cooperation with and under the actual control of the United States). This
made a lot of sense, for by the summer of 2003, the Europeans were clearly
very concerned about the danger of entrapment, given that the events in Iraq
(to be discussed in the next section) were already unfolding. The operation
of ISAF is a fine example of the positive synergy between the pact-of-restraint
and the division-of-labor strategies.
The NATO-led ISAF also reflected a growing consensus, both among Euro-
pean states and in the United States, regarding the merits of a division-of-labor
strategy. Clearly, despite America’s overwhelming air campaign and the on-
going involvement of ground troops in Afghanistan, the U.S. mission there is
far from complete. The Americans gradually realized that there was no quick
solution to state building in Afghanistan: this would be a long-term project
with high long-term high costs. ISAF has played an important role in assisting
the Afghan Transitional Authority by providing a safe and secure environment
within Kabul and its surroundings. It patrols the huge city and works with
the Afghan authorities, the UN Assistance Mission to Afghanistan, international
organizations, and nongovernmental organizations. It also currently runs the
civil-military cooperation projects throughout the city. Although this does
not sound very exotic, one must remember that these missions are crucial
73 This move also exemplified the unique advantages of using NATO’s pre-existing institutional ar-
rangements to facilitate international cooperation, as well as the organization’s accumulated experience in

peacekeeping and crisis-response operations. This is a good example of an argument made earlier in this
article: that once the alliance exists, it can provide various benefits. On ISAF see “NATO and the ISAF Mission:
NATO Takes the Helm: Why NATO Now?” available at http://afnorth.nato.int/ISAF/structure NATOISAF.htm, ac-
cessed 7 October 2003.
ingredients in enabling the formation of a stable regime in Afghanistan. As

events of recent months indicate, this is not an easy task.74
As was stressed above, the issue of cost remains America’s “soft belly,”
and it is here that allied contribution becomes crucial. By September 2003,
U.S. secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld had expressed interest in the ex-
pansion of the ISAF mandate beyond Kabul.75 At the same time, it is striking
that the one country other than the United States that has been promoting the
expansion of NATO responsibilities in Afghanistan is Germany. In an appeal
to the Americans, Schröder stressed Germany’s willingness to participate in
extending the reconstruction program beyond Kabul and to assign military
personnel for this purpose, as well. This, he stressed, can be done if there is
true cooperation on the part of the United States.76 The Germans understand
that the best way to have any influence on the United States is by stressing
their potential for future burden sharing. This, of course, became even more
crucial in light of the dramatic rift between the two states over the war in
Iraq.
Finally, a division-of-labor strategy is also developing outside the scope
of NATO activities. The U.S.-EU summit on 2 May 2002, at which leaders dis-
cussed Afghan security and reconstruction, was a vivid example of the mutual
understanding that there is room for a division of labor. At the summit it was
agreed that the United States would lead the reconstruction of the Afghan
national army, Germany would lead the building of the national police, Italy
and the EU Commission would lead judicial training, the United Kingdom
would lead the counternarcotics campaign, and the UN would be in charge
of demobilization.77
THE WAR AGAINST IRAQ: 2003 AND BEYOND

Diverging Threat Perceptions and the Alliance Security Dilemma
The process leading to the American decision to attack Iraq was set into
motion in the immediate aftermath of the events of September 11. The events
of that day did not change the global power distribution, but they did change
74 “NATO in Afghanistan (ISAF 4),” available at http://www.nato.int/issues/afghanistan/index.htm, ac-
cessed 2 April 2006.

75 Liz Sly, “Rumsfeld: Bigger NATO Role Needed,” Chicago Tribune, 8 September 2003, cited at
http://www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/news/world/6717006.htm, accessed 7 October 2003.

76 Gerhard Schröder, “Germany-U.S.: We Can Do More, but Only All Together,” International
Herald Tribune, 20 September 2003, available at http://www.iht.com/cgi-bin/generic.cgi?template=

articleprint.temlh&ArticleId=110563, accessed 13 October 2003.
77 The White House, Office of the Press Secretary, “Fact Sheet: U.S.-EU Summit: Afghanistan Security
and Reconstruction, The Afghan Reconstruction Steering Group,” 2 May 2002, available at http://usinfo.
state.gov/is/Archive Index/U.S. EU Lead Afghanistan Security and Reconstruction Group.html, accessed
2 April 2006. The EU is also contributing a substantial amount of money for reconstruction; it pledged
$2 billion for 2002–6. For details, see “EU Aid to Afghanistan” European Union Fact sheet, available at
http://europa.eu.int/comm./external relations/us/sum06 03/afghan.pdf, accessed 3 August 2005.
substantially the American motivation to be involved in world affairs. As

described in the previous case, September 11 intensified and expanded the
gap in American and European threat perceptions. For the Americans, the
terrorist attacks were a watershed event that changed the face of history. For
the Europeans, they were indeed a tragic event, but not of the same historic
magnitude as the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Berlin Wall.78
This divergence in threat perception has been one of the causes of the shift
in the balance between the fear of abandonment and the fear of entrapment
on part of the Europeans.
The main difference between the war in Afghanistan and that in Iraq
lay in the intensity of the entrapment concerns. Whereas these were low in
the case of Afghanistan, they were very high in the case of Iraq. In the case
of Afghanistan, there was a shared threat perception and a consensus about
the legitimacy of the attack on the Taliban. By 2003, however, this shared
threat perception had diminished, except perhaps for the British. On Iraq
itself, it is clear that countries such as France, Germany, and Russia simply
did not buy into the argument linking Saddam’s dark regime with the “war
on terror.” Americans genuinely perceived a threat from Iraq, but Europeans
genuinely did not.79 The gap in threat perceptions was demonstrated even
with one of America’s initial supporters, Spain, which decided to withdraw
its forces from Iraq following a terrorist attack in Madrid.
Furthermore, by 2003 the Europeans had already accumulated two years
of experience with what they perceived to be an arrogant, unilateral Ameri-
can approach. In the Iraqi case, contrasted with Afghanistan, the Europeans
also felt they had much more at stake, much more to lose as a consequence
of American aggression, especially given the French economic ties in the
region. Consequently, this time around concern for entrapment was very
high. With the exception of the United Kingdom, Spain, Italy, Denmark, and
the Netherlands, other European states were reluctant even to support the
United States on the UN diplomatic front, let alone its military effort. France,
Germany, and Russia expressed persistent opposition, both on the UN “bat-
tleground” and in their bilateral relations with the United States. Here as well,
the main concern was mostly one of political entrapment—the sense that Eu-
ropeans could not design and advance a relevant independent foreign policy
and that the United States was taking over the setting of the international
agenda. Clearly, on the level of public opinion in Europe, there was also
concern about military entrapment, which would risk the lives of European
citizens.
78 See, for example, Emil Kirchner and James Sperling, “The New Security Threats in Europe: The-
ory and Evidence,”European Foreign Affairs Review 7 (2002): 423–52; and Ivo H. Daalder, “The End of
Atlanticism,” Survival 45, no. 2 (Summer 2003): 147–66.
79 Philip H. Gordon and Jeremy Shapiro, Allies at War: America, Europe, and the Crisis over Iraq
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 2004), 83–91.

Finally, it seems that the Europeans came to appreciate another, less ob-
vious implication of the overwhelming military preponderance of the United
States within the alliance. This wide asymmetry meant that denying military
aid to the United States in the Iraq war was not likely to have dramatic im-
plications for the chances of military victory. This fact was brought home
to the Europeans during the war in Afghanistan, where the United States
ignored most of their initial offers of military assistance. It follows, then, that
the risks of refusing to help the United States are lower. This, in turn, made
the choice not to participate less intimidating.80 In terms of the alliance se-
curity dilemma, this realization meant that it was possible to work to escape
entrapment without causing enough damage to the hegemon so as to raise
the danger of abandonment.
Strategies for Dealing with the Hegemon: Iraq and Beyond

Despite some suggestions to the contrary, the apparent anti-American front
should not be interpreted as an attempt to construct a balancing coalition
against the United States. The overwhelming American military advantage,
clearly exemplified in Afghanistan, means that even Germany and France,
the most anti-American voices in western Europe, understand quite well that
they cannot actually prevent an American military move if the United States
decides to pursue it. Instead, the Germans and French have tried, though
unsuccessfully, to restrain the United States through various forums. They
conducted the struggle against the Iraq war on the floor of the UN Security
Council, they tried bilateral restraining, and they attempted to use NATO to re-
strain the United States. This was evident in February 2003, when the United
States requested that NATO provide military assistance to Turkey should the
latter be attacked after allowing the movement of American troops from its
territory into northern Iraq. This was by no means a sign of the allies’ weak-
ened security commitment to Turkey, but rather an attempt to restrain the
American military buildup in the region in preparation for war. The main
exception to this behavior came from the United Kingdom, which chose
to pursue bilateral cooperation with the United States. British behavior in
the war and its aftermath reflects a smaller divergence of threat perceptions
between the United Kingdom and the United States, as compared to other
European states. Blair clearly shared many of Bush’s concerns regarding Sad-
dam, the danger of WMD, and the war against terrorism. Consequently, there
was less British fear of entrapment.
80 Consider the counterfactual, in which the French, for example, would have received information
according to which if they did not send forces to Iraq the American campaign would actually fail, hundreds
of soldiers would die during the attack, and Saddam would regain control over his country. In such a
situation the decision to refuse to send forces would have been much more difficult, and the potential
political cost associated with it would have been dramatically higher.
The fact that the United States chose to pursue its campaign against Iraq
in the face of such unprecedented European opposition has brought home
to Europe two main lessons that will need to be dealt with in the future. First,
the strategy of creating a pact of restraint is problematic and can work only
if there is wider European cooperation. The split within Europe between
supporters of the war and opponents of the war undermined the likelihood
that this strategy of restraint would succeed. To sharpen the point, consider
the counterfactual situation, in which the United Kingdom sided with the
French and the Germans to oppose the war. Such a united European front
would have had a much greater impact on U.S. policy. The divisions within
Europe, together with the desire to come together to develop military means,
found expression first in the suggestion by France, Germany, Belgium, and
Luxembourg in April 2003 to set up a European military-planning center sep-
arate from NATO headquarters. This was followed by clear British opposition
to the move, which could appear to challenge NATO, and subsequently by
an Italian compromise proposal to form a team of EU military planners who
would rotate among the military headquarters of the member states.81 The
British themselves, however, who often argued that it was through direct
cooperation with the United States that Washington could be constructively
influenced and restrained, have also learned in Iraq that a meaningful re-
straining strategy on the part of smaller allies must come collectively. There-
fore, despite their ongoing divisions, the major European states are still trying
to reach consensus, because without unity there is little chance of either re-
straining the United States or being able to provide a meaningful force for a
division of labor.
The second lesson has to do with the important linkage between a pact-
of-restraint strategy and a division-of-labor strategy. As argued earlier, the
pact-of-restraint strategy, beyond its demanding conditions in terms of col-
lective action, could become more effective if pursued simultaneously with
a division-of-labor strategy. The more smaller states can actually contribute,
the greater their ability to restrain their large ally.82 According to this logic,
it is easy to understand how, five months after the beginning of the war
in Iraq (which represented the failure of the initial restraining strategy), the
NATO-led ISAF came into being in Afghanistan. This same rationale explains
the almost simultaneous strong opposition from Germany to the war in Iraq
and its willingness to play a very active role in ISAF.
81 Stephen Castle, “Italy Brokers Deal to End EU Defence Rift,” The Independent, 3 October 2003,
available at http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/story.jsp?story=449367, accessed 7 October 2003.

82 Several scholars suggested that one strategy that allies could use to influence the hegemon is to
withhold cooperation. This, however, would be helpful only if the withheld cooperation can actually make
a difference. See, for example, Judith Kelley, “Strategic Non-Cooperation as Soft Balancing: Why Iraq Was
Not Just about Iraq” International Politics 42, no. 2 (June 2005): 153–73; and Jeremy Pressman, “Strategies
of Resistance and the Road to Balancing,” paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political
Science Association, Chicago, 2–5 September 2004.
The division-of-labor strategy is likely to play an important role in the

future due to the American sensitivity to cost. This is the main reason that a
division-of-labor strategy is likely to work and to provide the Europeans some
desired political leverage. The developments in Afghanistan exemplified the
logic of this approach. Events in Iraq followed a similar pattern: a quick
and swift military victory followed by myriad problems in reconstruction and
postwar stabilization—and hence a heavy and long-term burden.83 As early
as May 2003, growing criticism was voiced in the U.S. Congress about the
rising cost of occupying and reconstructing Iraq. As a consequence of these
growing concerns, the Bush administration decided to ask the United Nations
to back its control in Iraq and, of course, to share the financial burden. From
May to October 2003 the United States and the United Kingdom engaged
in a long process of negotiation and bargaining with the UN and with their
reluctant European allies about an acceptable proposal for a UN resolution on
the issue. The high cost of the occupation was becoming politically untenable
for the Bush administration. Many shared the feeling of Senator Joseph Biden,
a Delaware democrat, who claimed, “We’re 95 percent of the deaths, 95
percent of the costs, and more than 90 percent of the troops. The costs are
staggering, the number of troops are staggering, we’re seeing continuing
escalation of American casualties, and we need to turn to the UN for help, for
a UN-sanctioned military operation that is under U.S. command.”84
Bush requested from Congress an $87 billion appropriations package for
the military effort in Iraq and Afghanistan. The timing of the passage of the
bill leaves little doubt about the linkage between congressional approval of
additional costs and the expectation of burden sharing from others. The UN
Security Council voted unanimously to adopt the final version of a resolution
that authorized an American-led multinational force in Iraq on 16 October
2003. On the following day, Congress voted overwhelmingly in favor of
Bush’s appropriations request.85
83 David Calleo argued that the new Bush Doctrine would create an extremely heavy economic load
on the United States. See David P. Calleo, “Power, Wealth and Wisdom: The United States and Europe
after Iraq,” The National Interest 72 (Summer 2003): 515.
84 Biden is cited in Douglas Jehl, “High Cost of Occupation: U.S. Weighs a U.N. Role,” New York
Times, Friday, 29 August 2003, A10. For other examples of public congressional criticism of the mount-
ing costs, see Felicity Barringer with Steven R. Weisman, “U.S. Will Ask U.N. to Back Control by Allies
in Iraq,” New York Times, 9 May 2003, available at http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/09/international/
worldspecial/09DIPL.html, accessed 12 May 2003; Eric Schmitt, “Senators Sharply Criticize Iraq Re-
building Efforts,” New York Times, 22 May 2003, available at http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/23/
international/worldspecial/23PENT.html, accessed 24 May 2003; “Fuzzy Math on Iraq,” editorial, New
York Times, 27 April 2003, available at http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/27/opinion/27SUNI.html, ac-
cessed 27 April 2003; and David E. Sanger and David Firestone, “Bush Looks to U.N. to Share Bur-
den on Troops in Iraq,” New York Times, 2 September 2003, available at http://nytimes.com/2003/
09/03/international/middleeast/03PREX.html, accessed 6 September 2003.
85 Felicity Barringer, “Unanimous Vote by U.N.’s Council Adopts Iraq Plan,” New York Times, 17 Oc-
tober 2003, available at http://nytimes.com/2003/10/17/international/middleeast/17NATI.html, accessed

19 October 2003. On the congressional vote, see David Firestone, “Lawmakers Back Request by
What the United States did not foresee was the reluctance of other states
to contribute to the multinational force. In this second, yet no less impor-
tant, phase of the Iraq mission (involving reconstruction and stabilization,
not to mention democratization), there is a greater American awareness that
the United States cannot succeed on its own. It is here that the huge power
disparities become less relevant, and room for a division-of-labor strategy is
created. Once the official war was over, NATO, which had not been involved
in the war, re-emerged as a relevant actor in the context of the urgent task of
training Iraqi security officers. European allies such as France and Germany
were extremely reluctant to get involved in this endeavor. Eventually, by
February 2005, an agreement was reached on a modest plan to train and
equip Iraq’s new security forces, but even so, France, Germany, Belgium,
Luxemburg, Greece, and Spain have refused the request that they train mil-
itary forces inside Iraq.86 Although the European allies share the goal of a
stable, prosperous, and democratic Iraq, they are reluctant to appear to be
serving American needs that were created by a policy they clearly rejected
from the outset. Once again this reflects not a European effort to balance
the United States, but one to deal with the alliance security dilemma. On the
European front we find increasing signs of a division of labor forming in the
face of overstretched American commitments and ongoing European security
challenges. This was most clearly demonstrated in the June 2004 decision to
replace NATO’s peacekeeping mission in Bosnia with the EU’s Althea mission.
The findings from the four cases are summarized in Table 2.
NATO: THE LINCHPIN OF EUROPEAN SECURITY POLICY
The European NATO allies have had to develop ways to manage their rela-
tions with their hegemonic American partner in the unipolar system that has
arisen since 1991. Their dilemmas stem from the basic systemic transition to a
unipolar system. The systemic transition to unipolarity has increased overall
uncertainty regarding the hegemon’s future behavior, as was clear on the eve
of the 1991 Gulf War. That war, however, and the Europeans’ first experience
of actually cooperating with the Americans in a serious military operation,
brought to the forefront the new dilemmas of life under unipolarity. Even in
a case where there was a mutual threat perception, Europeans began to re-
alize the implications of the large power disparities between themselves and
the Americans and the inevitable need to cooperate on a European level to
better deal with the United States. The early 1990s were also characterized by
Bush on Funds for Iraq.” New York Times, 18 October 2003, available at http://nytimes.com/2003/
10/18/international/middleeast/18COST.html, accessed 19 October 2003.
86 Elaine Sciolino, “NATO Agrees on Modest Plan for Training Iraqi Forces,” New York Times, 23
February 2005, A7.

TABLE 2 Threat Divergence and Allies’ Behavior in the Four Crises
Higher for hegemon Higher for partners Low divergence
Gulf War (1991):

cooperation +
beginning of European
security cooperation
Afghanistan (stage 2): gradually Kosovo (1999): followed by Afghanistan (stage 1):
increased understanding of intensified effort to initial reaction of
reduced U.S. interest in develop a division of labor voluntary cooperation,
European periphery due to by creating the military mostly bilateral, but
shift of focus. Development arm of the EU + use NATO largely ignored by the
of the division-of-labor as a pact of restraint United States (raising
strategy via ISAF, which turns concerns of
into a pact of restraint by abandonment)
August 2003 with the
NATO-led ISAF
Iraq war (2003): France and Iraq war (2003): U.K.
Germany refuse to perceives real threat
cooperate; attempts to from Iraq; chooses to
develop a joint opposition cooperate with the U.S.
and to restrain the U.S. via on its own + attempts
the UN and NATO fail; attempts to use NATO as a pact of
to advance independent restraint
European security
cooperation meet with
problems of collective action
due to British cooperation
with the U.S.
the concern that the Americans were about to turn inward after the demise
of the Soviet threat.
Consequently, the European allies had to consider a dual challenge. On
the one hand, they worried about American abandonment of its European
allies in regional crisis management. On the other hand, they were concerned
about the risks of entrapment—political, military, or financial—in future mil-
itary operations, since the United States clearly would call the shots. The
experience in the Balkans highlighted this dual concern: the United States
ended up leading the military effort to end the conflict, but did so reluctantly
and to a large degree controlled the nature and scope of military opera-
tions there. In Afghanistan, the beginning of the war against terrorism, the
Europeans were eager to cooperate but found that, at least in the initial stages
of the campaign, they were not considered relevant at all. Again, the expe-
rience in Afghanistan served to raise the dual concern. On the one hand,
the American military preoccupation with the global fight against terrorism
increased the danger that it would not send troops to another Balkan-type
crisis in Europe’s periphery. On the other hand, the aggressive and unilateral
approach of the Bush administration raised concerns about entrapment (if
not military, then at least political)—being presented with an American fait
accompli and then being forced to follow along. This latter concern became
most evident with the 2003 Iraq war. Once the American war came to an end,
the European allies were pressed to help in the rebuilding of post-Saddam
Iraq.
These concerns stemmed to a large extent from diverging threat percep-
tions. Whereas the Cold War bipolar era led to a strong consensus within the
Western alliance regarding the sources of threat (communism) and the pur-
pose of military buildup and action (deterrence and prevention of commu-
nist military advances into western Europe), the post–Cold War era brought
a natural divergence in threat perceptions, stemming from the very differ-
ent geostrategic positions of the Europeans and the Americans, from their
different worldviews regarding international order and the use of force, and
from their different domestic constellations. The Europeans wanted to main-
tain the existing security framework because it helped mitigate the strategic
uncertainty related to the shift to unipolarity. Yet they faced the challenge
of managing relations within the alliance despite the fluctuations in threat
perceptions.
To do that the Europeans pursued two strategies. One was to try to
use the pre-existing security arrangements—NATO’s elaborate and democratic
decision-making mechanisms—to restrain their hegemonic partner. This strat-
egy, on its own, proved to be of limited success. Such a restraining act, the
Europeans discovered, requires a high level of cooperation among the Euro-
pean states themselves. The Europeans were more equipped to do this than
any other group of allies in the world, given the ongoing institutional devel-
opment of the EU. Even so, they found it difficult to act together on foreign
policy and security issues, thus undermining their ability to use NATO as a
useful pact of restraint. Thus the Europeans had little choice but to develop
regional military capabilities to allow for a division-of-labor strategy. Such a
strategy was crucial both to reduce the risk and cost of future American aban-
donment, but also to better restrain the Americans. Restraining capacity can
develop only if one has something to offer and hence something meaningful
to withhold from one’s partner.
This strategy found expression in the impressive development of
European military institutional capacity throughout the 1990s and beyond.
It is true that most of these capacities still exist only on paper, but given
the relatively short time span since their development, together with the ac-
tual potential that does exist, it is unwise to dismiss these. The working of
ISAF in Afghanistan and the EU operations in Macedonia and Bosnia are all
signs that such a division of labor, which is meaningful to the Americans, is
emerging.
For the Europeans, the great virtue of NATO is that it serves as the linch-
pin that allows them to pursue these two strategies simultaneously; other-
wise they may have clashed sooner. Indeed, these two strategies reinforce
each other, but without the NATO linchpin the division-of-labor strategy could
have more easily been interpreted as the beginning of a balancing effort,

which clearly would have undermined any attempt to restrain U.S. foreign
policy from within NATO. Despite ongoing European frustrations, and de-
spite the limited success so far of these strategies, this still appears to be
the most convenient option for Europe’s management of its security for
now.

Press-Barnathan Managing The Hegemon NATO Under Unipolarity

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Security Studies 15, no.

2 (April–June 2006): 271–309

Managing the Hegemon: NATO

The shift to unipolarity has introduced new dilemmas for America’s

The shift to unipolarity has introduced a new dilemma for America’s

Galia Press-Barnathan is an assistant professor in the Department of International Rela-

(Summer 2003): 17–29.

do not perceive the United States as a real threat to their sovereignty or

curity 30, no. 1 (Summer 2005): 76–78.

THE RISE IN STRATEGIC UNCERTAINTY UNDER UNIPOLARITY

THE CONSTRUCTION OF THREAT PERCEPTIONS

According to Walt’s balance-of-threat theory, states form alliances in response

European Strategic Concept,” Netherlands Institute of International Relations, Clingendael, November

THE VALUE OF THE PRE-EXISTING ALLIANCE

16 For example, in 2002, 65 percent of Europeans viewed international terrorism as an extremely

Organization 47, no. 2 (Spring 1993): 207–33.

alliance, it makes sense to maintain it in times of strategic transition and in

THE CHALLENGE OF MANAGING THE ALLIANCE UNDER

dorn, Keohane, and Wallander, Imperfect Unions, 21–47.

MANAGING STRATEGIC UNCERTAINTY VIA THE ALLIANCE:

Creating a Pact of Restraint

suggested that this is essentially a bargaining process in which allies can

(1) The nature and strength of the pre-existing institutional arrangements

The main problem with the pact-of-restraint approach as a long-term

33 Snyder, Alliance Politics, 320–26.

Creating a Division of Labor with the Hegemon

Potential divergence in threat perception

Similar threat Higher threat Higher threat

other hand, would stress that overcoming collective-action problems is easier

THE 1991 GULF WAR: INITIAL REACTIONS TO SYSTEMIC CHANGE

Threat Perceptions and the Alliance Security Dilemma

Lepgold, and Unger, Friends in Need, 74–75.

Bennett, Lepgold, and Unger, Friends in Need, 118, 124.

Germany, at the time of the invasion of Kuwait, was in a situation of great

Bennett, Lepgold, and Unger, Friends in Need, 42.

administration regarding Congress’s possible reactions, and after indications

Initial Adjustments to Life under Unipolarity: Emerging Strategies

A Joint European Response—First Attempt at a Pact of Restraint?

Council. The comprehensive sanctions that were agreed upon represented

1998 (The Hague: SDU, 1998).

THE IMPACT OF THE CRISES IN THE BALKANS: KOSOVO 1999

Threat Perceptions and the Alliance Security Dilemma in the Balkans

The Development of European Strategies in Light of the Balkan Crises

and Brawley, Alliance Politics, 145–64.

Affairs Review 5 (2000): 382–83.

ALLIANCE DYNAMICS AND THE WAR IN AFGHANISTAN

washingtonmonthly.com/features/2001/0209.clark.html, accessed 10 August 2005.

Threat Perceptions and the Alliance Security Dilemma:

Strategies to Manage Relations with the United States in the Alliance

participated in Operation Noble Eagle, which patrolled the North American

co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/1724276.stm, accessed 2 April 2006.

DEVELOPMENT OF A DIVISION-OF-LABOR STRATEGY

rangements to facilitate international cooperation, as well as the organization’s accumulated experience in

ingredients in enabling the formation of a stable regime in Afghanistan. As

THE WAR AGAINST IRAQ: 2003 AND BEYOND

74 “NATO in Afghanistan (ISAF 4),” available at http://www.nato.int/issues/afghanistan/index.htm, ac-

cessed 2 April 2006.

http://www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/news/world/6717006.htm, accessed 7 October 2003.

Herald Tribune, 20 September 2003, available at http://www.iht.com/cgi-bin/generic.cgi?template=

substantially the American motivation to be involved in world affairs. As

(New York: McGraw-Hill, 2004), 83–91.

Strategies for Dealing with the Hegemon: Iraq and Beyond