Bringing institutionalized cooperation into military affairs: Alliances and the determinants of the cooperation

I address the issue of alliance cooperation and its determinants. The main question is under what condition allies honor their promise. I suggest that allies honor their alliance commitments when they are in a military division of labor and when military interdependence is high among the allies. The effect of institutionalized alliances behavior, I argue, is reinforced by the short time-horizon in crises or war. Three sets of cases from the 1900--10s, in the 1930s, and in the 1950--60s will be used. I will control the effect of perceived offense-defense balance and threat and measure their biases.; The more alliances were institutionalized, the more often the allies honored their alliances. In the 1900s and 1910s, states did not cooperate with each other in times of diplomatic crises or outbreaks of war, without institutionalized alliance. In the 1930s, the Western Powers failed to cooperate against the German threat. The absence of institutionalized alliance made security cooperation among the potential victims of a German expansion. In the years of the Cold War, NATO kept a constantly high level of alliance cooperation as well as a high level of alliance institutionalization.; I suggest that the US foreign policy to the allies in East Asia should be focused upon keeping the current level of alliance institutionalization, rather than the China threat. Without highly institutionalized alliance, East Asian states will not cooperate with the United States or with each other even if they perceive a threat from China. In case the United States would choose to play a role of "offshore" balancer, the states in East Asia will pursue independent nuclear programs rather than balancing cooperation.