{"id":44101,"date":"2018-12-06T06:00:14","date_gmt":"2018-12-05T19:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=44101"},"modified":"2018-12-05T17:00:55","modified_gmt":"2018-12-05T06:00:55","slug":"anzus-in-the-age-of-disruption","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/anzus-in-the-age-of-disruption\/","title":{"rendered":"ANZUS in the age of disruption"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

The network of US alliances built in the early years of the Cold War has proven remarkably resilient. Nowadays, it\u2019s easy\u2014and wrong\u2014to take that resilience for granted. Back in 1997, Stephen Walt, analysing alliance durability, penned one of the classic articles in international relations, \u2018Why alliances endure or collapse<\/a>\u2019. He argued that durable alliances turned upon hegemonic leadership; the alliance\u2019s importance as a symbol of credibility or resolve; the disproportionate influence of particular interest groups in a country\u2019s domestic politics; the level of alliance institutionalisation; and shared strategic identities.<\/p>\n

Not all of those factors apply with equal weight to the ANZUS alliance. I don\u2019t see much evidence, for example, that its durability turns upon the disproportionate influence of particular interest groups\u2014indeed, popular support for ANZUS is almost always broad and strong. Nor is the alliance held together by institutionalisation: if anything, ANZUS is under-institutionalised. But the remaining factors\u2014hegemonic leadership, the importance of the alliance to both the US and Australia as a symbol of resolve, and shared strategic identities\u2014do look highly relevant.<\/p>\n

Walt was writing when the alliances were 40 or 50 years old. Today, we\u2019re another 20-odd years down the track. So we\u2019re talking now about alliances that are 60 or 70 years old\u2014and have weathered the Cold War, the \u2018lost\u2019 decade of the 1990s, and the \u2018war on terror\u2019.<\/p>\n

Moreover, one might fondly imagine that in recent years US alliances have been given a new lease of life by the return of major-power competition to the international order. Alliances of states typically find greater purpose\u2014because of greater threat\u2014in an era of interstate rivalry than they do in an era of violent non-state actors, or in an era of comfortable unipolarity. So, rationally, we should be entering a period of reinvigorated Western alliances.<\/p>\n

But we aren\u2019t. While the evidence is anecdotal and impressionistic, US alliances seem to have become weaker in recent years. Certainly, the 45th US president\u2019s disdain for alliance commitments\u2014a sentiment that runs deeper than the longstanding burden-sharing issue\u2014hasn\u2019t helped. It\u2019s undercut the contribution that hegemonic leadership usually makes to alliance durability. And, by reducing alliances to self-interest and transactionalism, it\u2019s blurred the idea of shared strategic identities.<\/p>\n

European members of NATO have begun to talk openly of security options beyond the alliance. In France, President Emmanuel Macron has recently canvassed the possibility of an \u2018independent\u2019 army<\/a> to reduce Europe\u2019s reliance on the US. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has spoken of the need for EU leaders \u2018to look at the vision of one day creating a real, true European army<\/a>\u2019.<\/p>\n

If the US chooses to play a smaller role in NATO, there would still be 28 other members<\/a> of the alliance available to take up some of the slack. True, they\u2019d find life harder, given how much Washington currently brings to NATO. But the same can\u2019t be said of US allies in Asia, each bound to Washington in a tight, bilateral relationship. If the US decides to reduce its involvement in Asia, its bilateral allies (Japan, South Korea, Australia, the Philippines and Thailand) do not share residual alliance obligations towards each other.<\/p>\n

Here in Canberra, the future of ANZUS has emerged as a critical, if largely unspoken, question for the future of Australian strategic policy. That\u2019s because ANZUS has long been a one-stop shop for all of our security needs\u2014it backstops Australian security, allows us to make a meaningful contribution to the global and regional order, grants us access to substantial quantities of finished and raw intelligence, and underpins a defence force that\u2019s well armed and well trained. A weakened ANZUS, let alone no ANZUS at all, would leave big holes to fill in our strategic policy.<\/p>\n

But the current problems in US alliances aren\u2019t solely created by the occupant of the Oval Office. It\u2019s still far from clear what we\u2019re witnessing in the US. Is it a short-term deviation from the strategic mainstream, or a longer-term shifting of the mainstream itself? We may not know the answer to that question until sometime in the 2020s.<\/p>\n

And regardless of the answer, a broader structural shift in the international order\u2014towards greater multipolarity\u2014is continuing to eat away at alliance cohesion. As Walt observes:<\/p>\n

Alliances will tend to be less robust in a multipolar world, because the major powers will possess more options as their numbers increase, and because shifts in the distribution of capabilities will be more frequent when there are more great powers in the system. It will also be more difficult for each state to determine where the greatest threat lies, and international alliances are likely to be more flexible and fluid.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The emergence of a world in which international alliances are \u2018more flexible and fluid\u2019 would be discomfiting to Australian policymakers. \u2018Flexible\u2019 alliances carry connotations of voluntary\u2014and optional\u2014fulfilment of obligations; \u2018fluid\u2019 ones suggest relationships bereft of solidity.<\/p>\n

Australia is certainly redoubling its efforts to build new strategic relationships with a range of countries in Asia. And our alliance experience hasn\u2019t prepared us well for that venture\u2014ANZUS\u2019s closeness and intimacy don\u2019t translate well to the awkward political and cultural domain that is Southeast Asia, for example. In a shifting regional security environment, Asian countries are all trying to cross the river by feeling the stones. Everyone\u2019s treading lightly and keeping their options open.<\/p>\n

If alliances are on the wane, and new, less onerous forms of strategic partnership on the rise, we have a major challenge ahead. Critics of ANZUS allege that it has made Australia too subservient to the US. But Australian security would be poorer without it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The network of US alliances built in the early years of the Cold War has proven remarkably resilient. Nowadays, it\u2019s easy\u2014and wrong\u2014to take that resilience for granted. Back in 1997, Stephen Walt, analysing alliance durability, …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":44103,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[40,131,17,2047],"class_list":["post-44101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-alliance-2","tag-anzus","tag-australia","tag-australia-us-relations","dinkus-the-australia-us-alliance"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nANZUS in the age of disruption | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/anzus-in-the-age-of-disruption\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"ANZUS in the age of disruption | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The network of US alliances built in the early years of the Cold War has proven remarkably resilient. 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