The post-Cold War management of the United States alliances with Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines: A comparative analysis

This dissertation maintains that the existing body of theories explaining alliance continuity did not adequately explain the operational factors that account for alliance stability in the post-Cold-War era. Using the cases of the United States' alliances in East Asia, this study explains how alliance management plays an important role in enhancing alliance durability or continuity despite the end of the Cold War. The concept of alliance management provides an alternative analytical framework to explain alliance continuity. This framework combines a number of variables in such a way that it can provide a consistent and more adequate explanation for alliance duration in the Post-Cold-War era. This involves using variables that incorporate the rational explanation of an alliance as the states' calculated response to an external threat, as well as the irrational elements of domestic politics, bargaining or misperception, etc. The incorporation of these variables into a framework of alliance management---the political process by which allies handle their unavoidable disagreements about the changing calculus of alliance benefits and costs---is deemed necessary as politics usually combines the elements of rationality and irrationality.