The Unquiet Frontier: Rising Rivals, Vulnerable Allies, and the Crisis of American Power by Jakub J. Grygiel & A. Wess Mitchell

Author:Jakub J. Grygiel & A. Wess Mitchell [Grygiel, Jakub J.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, pdf
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2016-02-23T05:00:00+00:00

Figure 5.1. U.S. and allies’ military spending, share of global total with impact of factors, prior five years.

Sources: International Monetary Fund, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, CGS estimates.

Note: Allies include NATO, Japan, South Korea, Israel, and Saudi Arabia. Projection based on IMF growth estimates, assuming static military spending as percent of GDP after 2013.

As America’s military advantage over large land power rivals narrows, the military value that it derives from alliances will increase. Part of the reason is technology. With the proliferation of sophisticated capabilities—nuclear weapons, advanced missiles, satellites, guided munitions—the United States will be able to count less on the dominance of its own military for deterring or overcoming competitors and will need the help of others more. The spread of lethal technologies makes American technological supremacy more difficult to sustain, increasing the value of allies. Great Britain had less strategic use for allies in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, when the Royal Navy enjoyed wide numerical and technological superiority over its continental rivals, than in the early twentieth century, when French, Russian, and especially German advances in fleet construction had eroded this advantage. For the United States, the proliferation of advanced conventional war-fighting technologies to competitors like China necessitates, to a certain extent, the proliferation of these same technologies to U.S. allies. Since proliferation is occurring anyhow, it is in the interests of the United States that it take place in ways that benefit friendly states to create the widest possible array of countervailing capabilities on America’s side of the ledger in the event of a conflict. This requires alliances.

Another reason that the military value of alliances to the United States is likely to increase is the growing shift in many frontline allied states toward defensive capabilities that augment the long-range military assets of the United States. Historically, the most effective alliances have been those that not only add raw fighting abilities but provide a force capability that their patron lacks. Hence, Thucydides noted that Corinth’s navy depended for its success on the “land forces furnished by their barbarian allies.”42 In its confrontation with Athens, Sparta could not have won the Peloponnesian War had it not been aided by Persian naval power. The Roman Army depended on allied auxiliary contingents specializing in tactical capabilities—archers, slingers, and above all cavalry—that complemented Rome’s heavy legions. Similarly, Britain’s large Royal Navy and small expeditionary army were most effective when waging European wars in combination with allied land armies—whether Austria in the wars against Louis XIV, Portugal in the Peninsular campaign against Napoleon, or the French Army against Germany in 1914.

The degree of military complementarity between U.S. forces and the militaries of American allies is generally considered to be low.43 This is largely based on U.S. military experience during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, where allied contingents sometimes performed poorly in combat, added to the supply costs and difficulties of U.S. forces, and in a few cases even interfered with important operations. Allied contributions in both conflicts often consisted of

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