Frenemies: When Ideological Enemies Ally 9781501761249

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Frenemies

a volume in the series

Cornell Studies in Security Affairs Edited by Robert J. Art, Alexander B. Downes, Kelly M. Greenhill, Robert Jervis, Caitlin Talmadge, and Stephen M. Walt Founding editors: Robert J. Art and Robert Jervis A list of titles in this series is available at cornellpress.cornell.edu.

Frenemies

When Ideological Enemies Ally

M ar k L . H a a s

Cornell University Press Ithaca and London

Copyright © 2022 by Cornell University All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. Visit our website at cornellpress.cornell.edu. First published 2022 by Cornell University Press Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Haas, Mark L., author. Title: Frenemies : when ideological enemies ally / Mark L. Haas. Description: Ithaca [New York] : Cornell University Press, 2022. | Series: Cornell studies in security affairs | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2021039459 (print) | LCCN 2021039460 (ebook) | ISBN 9781501761232 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781501761249 (pdf) | ISBN 9781501761256 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Alliances. | World politics—20th century. | World politics—21st century. Classification: LCC JZ1314 .H32 2021 (print) | LCC JZ1314 (ebook) | DDC 327.1/16—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021039459 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021039460

To my wonderful wife, Margaret Roosevelt Haas— my partner, friend, and pillar of support

Contents

Acknowledgments

ix

Introduction

1

1. Frenemy Alliances: What Are They, and When Are

They Likely to Occur?

13

2. An Unrealized Frenemy Alliance: Britain’s and France’s

Failure to Ally with the Soviet Union, 1933–39

69

3. A Tipping-Point Frenemy Alliance: The Delay in the

Formation of the Sino-American Alliance against

the Soviet Union, 1972–79

122

4. A Breaking-Point Frenemy Alliance: The Ending

of the Turkish-Israeli Alliance, 2009–10

160

Conclusion

198

Appendixes A. Summary of the Relationships between Configurations

of Ideological Distances and the Likelihood

of Frenemy Alliances

223

B. Examples of Realized and Unrealized Frenemy

Alliances by Ideological Configuration

231

C. Frenemy Allies of the United States, 1946–90

235

vii

CONTENTS

D. Formal Frenemy Allies of the United States, 1947–89

237

E. Formal Frenemy Allies of the Soviet Union, 1947–89

239

F. Frenemy Alliances Involving the Superpowers

in the Middle East, 1955–79

241

Notes

243

Index

285

viii

Acknowledgments

The central puzzle of this book is the fact that ideological enemies, or states that are dedicated to opposing ways of ordering domestic politics, are sometimes willing to set aside their differences and ally against shared threats and sometimes they are not. Liberal Britain and France allied with czarist Russia against Germany in the decades before World War I but op­ posed allying with communist Soviet Union against Germany before World War II. The shah’s Iran allied with liberal United States against the Soviet Union during the Cold War, but Islamist Iran chose not to ally with the So­ viet Union against the United States after the last became an enemy after the 1979 revolution. Communist China at the end of the 1970s allied with the United States against the Soviet Union, but authoritarian Russia today has shown little interest in forming a similar alliance with the United States to balance a rising China. This book endeavors to explain this variation in alliance policies in re­ sponse to shared threats. It does so by identifying the conditions when the effects of ideological enmity are likely to be most and least salient to deci­ sion-making. I am deeply indebted to a number of colleagues who read part or all of the manuscript and provided numerous insightful suggestions for im­ provement. They include Cliff Bob, Tim Crawford, Steven David, Robert Freedman, Greg Gause, Harry Harding, Morgan Kaplan, David Lesch, Henry Nau, Chad Nelson, John Owen, Binnur Özkeçeci-Taner, Mike Poznansky, Evan Resnick, Robert Ross, Jennie Schulze, Göktuğ Sönmez, Frederick Teiwes, Umut Uzer, Will Walldorf, Yafeng Xia, Keren Yarhi-Milo, and Andrew Yeo. I presented portions of the book and its argument at col­ loquiums at Brigham Young University, Cornell University, Dartmouth

ix

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

College, Johns Hopkins University, and Waseda University (Tokyo). I am grateful to the participants in all these events for their input. A portion of the evidence in chapter 4 was presented in “The Rise and Fall of the Turkish-Israeli Alliance,” in Israel under Netanyahu: Domestic Poli­ tics and Foreign Policy, ed. Robert O. Freedman (London: Routledge, 2020). I thank Routledge for permission to present the material here. An abridged version of the argument and part of the evidence from chapter 2 was pre­ sented in “When Do Ideological Enemies Ally?,” International Security 46, no. 1 (2021): 104–146. I also thank the anonymous reviewers for Cornell University Press, espe­ cially the series editor (later revealed to be Alex Downes), for their deep engagement with the manuscript. The final product benefited tremen­ dously from their numerous insights and suggestions. Michael McGandy and Roger Hayden at the press also provided valuable advice and encour­ agement. I am grateful for fellowships from the Earhart Foundation of Ann Arbor, Michigan, with the shepherding of Montgomery Brown, and from Duquesne University (a presidential fellowship). Colleagues at Duquesne at all levels have been extremely supportive of my research, and I am thank­ ful for their aid and the productive environment they have created. The university in 2017 appointed me the Raymond J. Kelley Endowed Chair in International Relations, and I remain extremely honored by this award. I thank in particular Cliff Bob and Jennie Schulze, deans Jim Swindal and Kristine Blair, provosts Timothy Austin and David Dausey, and President Ken Gormley. I am particularly indebted to Henry Nau, John Owen, and Steve Walt. Henry provided the most extensive feedback of any colleague. He has also been throughout my career a constant source of support and encourage­ ment, for which I will always be grateful. John was a member of my disser­ tation committee at the University of Virginia over two decades ago, and I was Steve’s research and teaching assistant while a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University in the early 2000s. Their work, along with Henry’s, continues to inspire and inform. This book, which is at heart one of ideolo­ gies, threat, and alliances, builds on the foundations that their scholarship has created. My deepest gratitude, as always, goes to my family. I have been blessed with a large extended family, all members of which have enriched my life. A few individuals, though, deserve special recognition. I thank my Aunt Trudy and Uncle John for their constant love and support; my brother, Kurt, and sister-in-law, Deedee, for always taking an interest in my work and for their encouragement; and my in-laws, Dotty and Dan Roosevelt, for pro­ viding a welcoming home to visit and a place of laughter and fun. My mother, Lorraine, has supported me in ways beyond counting. She is my model of love. My mother along with my late father, Carl, created a home

x

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

filled with love that inspired service and achievement. My greatest joys are my three children, Katie, Abby, and Will. I cannot express how much happi­ ness they have brought to my life, and it has been my great privilege to watch them (all too quickly) grow and mature. I dedicate the book to my wife, Margaret. She is an amazing spouse and mother, and I rely on her in more ways than I know. I am blessed to have her as my partner in our jour­ ney together.

xi

Introduction

Britain and France before both world wars confronted dire security envi­ ronments and for the same reason: the military rise of Germany. Germany in both periods was a massive material threat that created a clear and pres­ ent danger to the Western democracies’ security. To counter this threat, British and French policymakers before both wars pushed for their states to commit to an alliance with Russia (which was the Soviet Union after 1922). Russia / the Soviet Union was the only country, when combined with the power of Britain and France, that was capable of balancing Germany. It was also to Germany’s east, which created the major benefit of forcing Germany to fight a two-front war. These factors created very strong incentives for alliance. The chief British architect of the Anglo­ French-Russian coalition before World War I was Edward Grey, who was foreign secretary from 1905 to 1916. His statements, as George Monger summarizes, “leave no doubt that his chief motive in seeking a Russian entente was to change the balance of forces in Europe and in particular to create a counterpoise to Germany.”1 The same thinking was at work in the Western democracies in the 1930s. As French minister of state and former prime minister Édouard Herriot explained in 1935, “I consult the map. I see only one country which can bring us the necessary counterweight [against Germany] and create a second front in case of war. That is the Soviet Union.”2 Virtually all British and French leaders who advocated an alliance with Russia / the Soviet Union before the wars understood that their demo­ cratic countries were dedicated to very different ideological principles than were the illiberal czarist (Russia) and communist (Soviet) regimes. Indeed, the Western democracies and Russia / the Soviet Union can fairly be categorized as ideological enemies, which I define as states governed by leaders who are engaged in deep disputes about preferred domestic goals, institutions, and values. Many in Britain and France believed the

1

INTRODUCTION

monarchical regime in Russia before World War I and the communist re­ gime in the Soviet Union before World War II to be among the most repres­ sive in Europe.3 Supporters of an alliance agreed, however, that major ideological differences with Russia / the Soviet Union should not preclude extensive security cooperation to balance the German threat. The logic of realpolitik, they argued, should instead determine policymaking. As M. B. Hayne summarizes the views of Paul Cambon, France’s ambassador to Britain from 1898 to 1920 and one of the catalysts for the creation of the Anglo-French-Russian coalition, “Russia’s internal conditions seriously disturbed [Cambon]. . . . [The] insensitivity of the Romanov dynasty to the political, economic, and social plight of its people seemed to him utterly appalling.” Nevertheless, Cambon’s “fundamental mistrust of Germany” led him to believe in “the necessity of the Triple Entente.”4 Parliamentarian and former prime minister David Lloyd George subscribed to the same views a generation later, arguing in the House of Commons in November 1938 that because Britain “ought not to consider what ideology or system of government a country had before entering a pact with it,” London should ally with the Soviet Union based on the dictates of power realities.5 As evidenced by these quotations, when predicting the likelihood of alli­ ances among ideological enemies against shared threats it is easy to believe that the famous realist dictum “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” pro­ vides an adequate guide. There is certainly much wisdom in this phrase. Mutual animosity toward pressing dangers is often sufficient to induce alliances among states, even among those that are dedicated to opposing ideological principles. The necessities of politics, including international politics, frequently result in strange bedfellows. Unfortunately for ease of analysis and prediction, however, cross-ideo­ logical alliances against common dangers defy easy categorization. For the many examples of fierce ideological rivals allying to advance shared inter­ ests, numerous others can be found in which ideological enmity created major barriers to sustained security cooperation even if strong incentives for alliance were at work. For leaders in the latter category, the enemy of their enemy remains an enemy. Variations in British and French alliance outcomes before the world wars illustrate these opposing tendencies. Although virtually all Western policy­ makers before both conflicts recognized the massive material danger that Germany posed to their countries, and although many believed that ally­ ing with Russia / the Soviet Union would be very useful (if not necessary) in countering this threat, there was sufficient support to commit to this al­ liance only in the pre–World War I era. An Anglo-French-Russian coalition thus formed before World War I, but an analogous coalition with the Soviet Union did not before World War II.6 Those policymakers in the 1930s who pushed hard for creating an alliance with the Soviet Union were a clear minority as the most powerful British and French leaders in the period

2

INTRODUCTION

consistently opposed this outcome. The latter elites repeatedly attributed their aversion to cooperation to precisely the factor that supporters of an alliance asserted should be ignored: the effects of ideology-based hostility toward the Soviet regime. For many, intense mistrust of the communist re­ gime created massive barriers to alliance despite the common German threat. British prime minister Neville Chamberlain explained in a March 1939 letter to his sister Ida regarding why he opposed an alliance despite the rapidly deteriorating security environment: “I must confess to the most profound distrust of Russia. . . . I distrust her motives which seem to me to have little connection with ideas of liberty and to be concerned only with getting every one else by the ears.”7 Many French leaders not only shared their British counterparts’ mistrust of Soviet intentions but also were con­ vinced that allying with this state would result in communist revolution in France. Léon Blum (leader of France’s main socialist party, the French Sec­ tion of the Workers’ International, and prime minister at various times from 1936 to 1938 and one of the few in a position of power in France who supported allying with the USSR in the second half of the 1930s) explained in a November 1936 letter to the French ambassador to the Soviet Union, “A psychosis is being created according to which the Soviet entente leads to Communism; this fear tends to neutralize that which is inspired by the German threat and to paralyze cooperation among the pacific powers at the very time when this current ought to intensify.”8 The competing examples from the periods preceding the world wars of ideological enemies allying and not allying in response to shared threats are by no means unique. A liberalizing Britain, for example, allied with mo­ narchical France under Napoleon III against monarchical Russia during the Crimean War, but the absolute monarchy in Russia refused to ally with a more liberal France (when either a constitutional monarchy or republic) against shared rivals Austria and Prussia/Germany for almost the entirety of the nineteenth century. Communist China allied with the liberal, capital­ ist United States against the Soviet Union at the end of the 1970s but had refused to do so over the preceding decade (despite a major rapprochement with the United States) even though the Soviet threat to China was signifi­ cantly greater at the beginning of the 1970s than at the end. An authoritar­ ian Iran when ruled by the shah allied with liberal United States against the communist Soviet Union, but Islamist Iran did not ally with the Soviet Union when the United States became an enemy after the 1979 revolution. The Saudi monarchy in the 2010s apparently formed a secret alliance with democratic Israel against Iran, but Turkey in the late 2000s broke its alliance with Israel (which had been primarily directed against Iran and Syria) after the rise to power of an Islamist party. What accounts for these very different outcomes? Why is it, in other words, that international ideological enemies are sometimes able to over­ come their ideology-based differences and ally in order to counter common

3

INTRODUCTION

threats and sometimes they are not? This is the puzzle that I address in this book. Solving it is of the highest policy significance. It is crucial for states’ security to be able to predict the composition of alliances, both hostile and supportive. Moreover, because many of the world’s regions are ideologi­ cally heterogeneous, effective balancing against threats will depend to a great extent on the likelihood of stable cross-ideological coalitions forming. Alliances among ideological enemies confronting a common foe are un­ like coalitions among ideologically similar states facing comparable threats. Members of these alliances are perpetually torn by two sets of powerful contending forces. Shared material threats push these states together, while the effects of ideological differences pull them apart. Because of these op­ posing forces for and against cooperation, members of cross-ideological al­ liances are simultaneously friends and enemies. They are “frenemies.”9 To predict when ideological enemies are likely to ally in the pursuit of common interests, it is necessary to know which of the contending forces that constantly work on these states are likely to dominate at a particular time. Unfortunately, however, no study, to my knowledge, has examined the issue in a systematic manner, and existing international relations theo­ ries provide only partial insight into understanding it. Realist analyses stake out one end of the debate. To realists, alliances are a product of shared material interests. In comparison to the impact of material variables (most notably power distributions, offensive capabilities, and geographical close­ ness) on the alliance-formation process, ideologies will have very little ef­ fect. As John Mearsheimer puts it, when states “confront a serious threat . . . they pay little attention to ideology as they search for alliance partners.”10 Realist analyses are correct that shared material threats often force ideo­ logical enemies to cooperate. At the extreme, a state that is under attack is likely to ally with any country, regardless of ideological aversion, that it needs for the protection of its vital interests. Winston Churchill provided the archetypal expression of this sentiment in the spring of 1941. Despite his fierce anticommunism, the prime minister pushed hard for an alliance with the Soviet Union because he knew that it increased the chances of de­ feating Germany, stating, “I have only one purpose, the destruction of Hit­ ler. . . . If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favorable reference to the devil in the House of Commons.”11 Short of extreme situations like the one Britain confronted in the 1940s, what is the likelihood that the incentives for alliance created by shared ma­ terial threats will trump the repellent forces created by ideological enmity?12 Realist arguments cannot adequately answer this question. Realists’ prob­ lem is that they significantly underestimate how often ideologies have ma­ jor international effects. To realists, ideological variables will only have noticeable effects on states’ security policies when material threats to their core interests are low.13 This claim, though, is empirically false. In all the case studies and examples developed in the book, countries confronted

4

INTRODUCTION

very strong incentives to ally for realist reasons because they confronted large material dangers to their security, yet ideological enmity often had major negative effects on alliance creation and stability. The key decision makers in these cases explicitly attributed these outcomes to the effects of ideological disputes. Because ideological enmity often prevents stable alli­ ances even in highly threatening environments, realist arguments provide insufficient guidance to understanding when these coalitions are likely to form and endure. While realist analyses focus on the common-interest component of fren­ emy relationships, the literature on ideologies and international relations concentrates on the rivalry dimension. To scholars working in this tradi­ tion, leaders’ threat perceptions are to a great extent a product not of material variables, as realists contend, but ideological relationships. Large ideological differences and intense ideological disputes among leaders, or what I label “ideological enmity,” tend to result in highly threatening rela­ tions. Elites in these types of relationships frequently view one another as untrustworthy, aggressive, and dedicated to opposing interests.14 Ideological enemies’ tendency to view one another in highly threatening terms create obvious barriers to international alliances. Perceptions of mis­ trust, aggressiveness, and conflicts of interest are clearly not a firm founda­ tion upon which to build an alliance. These ideology-based impediments to alliance will exist even if shared material threats and common enemies are pushing the ideological rivals together.15 Ideology-based analyses of frenemy relationships have the opposite strength and weakness of realist arguments. Ideology-based arguments can account for why ideological enemies fail to ally to counter shared material dangers. They cannot explain, however, those frequent instances when ide­ ological enemies do set aside their differences and ally in response to incen­ tives created by material variables. Realist and existing ideological theories, in sum, each capture only one of the contending forces of rivalry and common interests that define frenemy relationships. The argument developed in this book accounts for both dy­ namics while explaining when each is likely to dominate the other. The starting point and a scope condition for my analysis is the existence of a shared, significant material threat pushing ideological enemies to ally. This condition is in play in all the examples and cases I use to develop, il­ lustrate, and test the argument. The existence of a shared material threat is what transforms a normal relationship between ideological enemies into a frenemy one (it puts the “friend” in frenemy). Without this condition, we would not be able to determine when ideological enmity is and is not likely to have major effects on states’ alliance policies. North Korea and Canada, for example, are ideologically disparate regimes that are highly unlikely to ally. In the absence of a common enemy, however, it is difficult to conclude that lack of an alliance is due to the effects of ideological rivalry. Without a

5

INTRODUCTION

shared threat, these states have little reason to ally, so the effects of ideo­ logical differences on their alliance policies are minimal. After stipulating the existence of strong material incentives incentivizing cross-ideological alliances, I then identify the values of other variables that tend to make the impact of either shared material threats or ideological en­ mity especially salient to decision-making. Identifying these variables is the book’s primary contribution to the literature. By illuminating the condi­ tions when ideological enemies are and are not likely to set aside their ideo­ logical differences to ally against common dangers, the argument not only helps us understand when realist or ideological theories of alliance forma­ tion tend to be more accurate but also provides important policy guidance to leaders on an issue that is central to their state’s security.

The Argument in Brief The core claim of my argument is that the values of two ideological vari­ ables in addition to that of ideological enmity play the key role in determin­ ing when either the rivalry or common-interest dimension of frenemy rela­ tionships is likely to prevail. Similar levels of ideological enmity and material threats will have vastly different effects on leaders’ alliance poli­ cies as the values of these additional ideological variables alter. The first variable is the level of regime or ideological vulnerability in the members of a potential frenemy coalition. By regime vulnerability, I mean the susceptibility of a government to major ideological changes up to and including revolution. The second variable is the particular configuration of ideological dis­ tances that exists among potential frenemy allies and their shared material threat. Ideological distance is the degree of ideological differences dividing the leaders of any two states.16 The more the ideological beliefs of the lead­ ers overlap, the smaller the ideological distance; the less their ideologies overlap, the larger the ideological distance. Configurations of ideological distances refer to the various ways in which one state relates to at least two others along an ideological continuum. More specifically, configurations of ideological distances reflect whether the ideological distance separating a state and its potential frenemy ally is larger than, smaller than, or equal to the ideological distance with its material danger. Regime vulnerability and the particular configurations of ideological dis­ tances that exist among potential frenemy allies and their common material threat go a long way in determining the likelihood of alliances by critically affecting the most important determinants of these coalitions: the antici­ pated costs of committing to an alliance with an ideological enemy and the perceived need to do so. These effects occur independently of the incentives created by material variables.

6

INTRODUCTION

High levels of regime vulnerability significantly increase the costs to leaders’ core domestic interests created by cross-ideological alliances. When levels of regime vulnerability are high, leaders tend to worry that allying with an ideological enemy abroad will facilitate major ideological changes at home. This anticipated cost to leaders’ domestic interests will signifi­ cantly reduce their willingness to join a frenemy coalition. Whereas high levels of regime vulnerability increase the relative saliency of the rivalry dimension of frenemy relationships in comparison to the common-interest one, low levels of this variable result in the reverse. Dur­ ing periods of low regime vulnerability, ideological enemies do not con­ front this extra set of impediments to alliance because elites will not feel that they have to choose between the security of their state and the stability of their regime. The lower the anticipated domestic costs associated with frenemy coalitions, the more political space elites have to act on the mate­ rial incentives pushing them to ally. Variations in the level of regime vulnerability were a central cause of Brit­ ish and French elites’ opposing alliance preferences toward Russia / the Soviet Union before the two world wars that I discussed above. Before World War II, British and French conservatives’ and French Radicals’ (the main centrist party) fears of regime vulnerability in relation to the Soviet Union’s ideology, communism, were high. Many of these leaders, as I docu­ ment in chapter 2, were convinced that allying with the Soviet Union would facilitate the spread of communism throughout Europe and beyond, in­ cluding in France and the British Empire. This belief significantly increased the impediments to this coalition despite Germany’s rapidly increasing ca­ pabilities. Before World War I, in contrast, British and French leaders’ fears of re­ gime vulnerability in relation to czarist Russia’s ideology, monarchism, were low, which meant that the domestic costs created by allying were small. Indeed, in a complete reversal from what would be the position in the 1930s, French conservatives and centrists before World War I viewed the Russian alliance as a support to their preferred ideological order be­ cause they believed it would help move France in a more conservative di­ rection and away from socialism. Members of the French Right and Center repeatedly argued that czarist Russia would only continue to ally with re­ publican France if the power of French socialists were minimized. As Georges Michon summarizes, the French government, which drew “its strength from the parties of the Right and Centre . . . [used] the Alliance to combat Socialism. . . . [Louis] Barthou, Minister of the Interior . . . asserted that a moderate policy in home affairs was an essential prerequisite of last­ ing agreement with Russia. [Deputy David] Raynal . . . declared the Alliance imposed on France a ‘new duty,’ that of fighting Socialism more vigorously than ever. .  .  . The Alliance became in this way an admirable weapon against the extreme Left.”17 These domestic-ideological calculations made it

7

INTRODUCTION

much easier to act on the material incentives pushing for the creation of a frenemy alliance with Russia against Germany. Configurations of ideological distances among the potential allies in the frenemy coalition and their shared material threat impact the perceived need to commit to cross-ideological alliances. In a world of three powers in which one country (the “initiating state”) is being pushed for material rea­ sons to ally with a potential “frenemy ally” against a shared “material threat,” five possible types of ideological configurations exist, depending on whether the initiating state’s leaders view the potential frenemy ally as a greater, lesser, or equal ideological enemy compared to the material threat. The same material calculations that take place in different ideological con­ figurations will tend to result in vastly different alliance policies. Three con­ figurations tend to decrease the likelihood of frenemy coalitions. They do so by enhancing leaders’ uncertainty regarding which state should be the primary object of their security fears or by increasing the perceived likeli­ hood of success of alterative security strategies to balancing and alliance formation: bandwagoning and especially buck-passing.18 The reverse hap­ pens in the remaining two configurations. In these, ideological relation­ ships add to the material incentives pushing ideological enemies to ally by enhancing the clarity and magnitude of dangers while also reducing the probability that alternative security policies to balancing and the creation of alliances will succeed. Different incentives created by different configurations of ideological dis­ tances provide another important explanation for variations in British and French alliance policies toward Russia / the Soviet Union before the world wars. Before World War I, British and French leaders were convinced that the ideological similarities uniting Russia and Germany (both were monarchies) would facilitate rapprochement between these states. This belief pushed the Western democracies to be particularly aggressive in pursuing a fren­ emy coalition with Russia, both to balance Germany and to keep the two monarchical powers divided. In the 1930s, in contrast, Western elites be­ lieved that ideological enmity dividing Germany and the Soviet Union (fascism versus communism) would result in conflictual relations, which signifi­ cantly lowered the perceived need for Britain and France to ally with the Soviet Union to contain Germany. The more British and French leaders were convinced that the totalitarian powers would focus their enmity on one another, the greater the incentives to avoid security commitments in favor of buck-passing to the USSR the costs of balancing Germany.

Ideological Enmity and the Alliance Literature Although the alliance literature is enormous, no study has adequately ex­ amined the subject of alliances among ideological enemies. The result, as

8

INTRODUCTION

Evan Resnick summarizes, is that “the dynamics of .  .  . alliances [among ideological enemies, or what Resnick labels “strange bedfellows”] have yet to be systematically explored by international relations scholars.”19 Some statistical studies have examined the relationship between regime type—which is obviously a key component of ideology—and alliances. The overall outcomes of these analyses are, however, inconclusive. Some quan­ titative analyses find that states that are dedicated to different regime types are significantly less likely to ally with one another than are countries that share regimes. Others dispute this finding, claiming that regime differences have little impact on alliance choices. Still others find mixed results, with regime type mattering to alliances in some periods but not others.20 These mixed findings are not surprising to my argument. In fact, they sup­ port it. I assert that the likelihood of ideological enemies allying will vary greatly depending on the presence or absence of two additional ideological variables: the level of regime vulnerability in the potential allies and the specific type of configurations of ideological distances that exists among these states and their shared material threat. If studies do not incorporate these variables into their analyses—which is the case for existing statistical examinations of the subject—we would expect inconclusive findings, with some studies capturing those times when the realist forces pushing frene­ mies to ally dominate and others recording the times when the repellent forces created by ideological enmity determine policies. Qualitative analyses have also failed to adequately examine the subject of cross-ideological alliances. Indeed, many prominent qualitative studies of alliances and balancing barely mention the potential effects of ideologi­ cal enmity as a barrier to alliance, if they do so at all.21 As I discussed above, some scholars operating in the realist tradition, on one hand, and in the ideologies and international relations research program, on the other, have given some attention to either the common interest or rivalry dimensions that lie at the heart of frenemy relationships. None, though, has adequately explored the specific situations when either dimension is likely to dominate the other. This book fills this hole in the literature. It both provides a comprehen­ sive analysis of the conditions under which ideological enemies are and are not likely to ally to counter shared threats and tests the argument’s predic­ tions in critical cases. These case studies demonstrate that when the condi­ tions I identify exist, ideological enmity can prevent, delay, and rupture alliances despite the existence of strong material incentives pushing for al­ liance. I examine British and French leaders’ failure to ally with the Soviet Union against Germany in the 1930s, the delay until 1979 in the formation of the Sino-American alliance against the Soviet Union, and the dissolution in 2009 and 2010 of the Turkish-Israeli alliance, which had been primarily directed at Iran and Syria. The findings from these cases based on an analy­ sis of leaders’ writings and statements reveal the high importance of the

9

INTRODUCTION

ideological conditions I identify to alliance policies, including in relation to the most prominent alternative theories of alliance formation and failure.22

The Significance of the Issue and Its Contemporary Relevance Understanding when ideological enemies are and are not likely to ally in response to common material threats is a major international security issue. Simply put, it is crucial to states’ interests for leaders to be able to anticipate which countries are likely to oppose or support their own—to know, in other words, how great the threats their country faces and how much aid they can expect to address these dangers. Despite the clear importance of the subject, policymakers frequently err in their predictions. This is not surprising. Because of the complex nature of frenemy relationships and the resulting difficulty in discerning when the common-interest or rivalry dimension of these types of interactions is likely to dominate, mistakes in predictions are likely. Leaders sometimes underes­ timate the probability of frenemies allying, and sometimes they overesti­ mate this likelihood. Both types of errors have been disastrous for states’ interests, which makes the need for an analysis that can predict when fren­ emies are and are not likely to ally all the more vital. I already alluded to one prominent example of leaders underestimating the likelihood of cross-ideological coalitions, much to the detriment of their state’s security. Many British and French elites in the 1930s were convinced that the ideological gulf separating Nazi Germany and communist Soviet Union would prevent alliance between these states. British foreign secre­ tary Edward Wood (Viscount Halifax), for example, asserted in a Novem­ ber 1938 letter to Eric Phipps, the military attaché in Paris, that “Soviet Russia . . . can scarcely become the ally of Germany so long as Hitler lives.”23 The Nazi-Soviet alliance agreed to the following August was thus a major intelligence failure that greatly endangered the Western democracies’ secu­ rity.24 The mistaken belief that Germany and the Soviet Union would not ally significantly decreased the perceived need to form an alliance with the Soviet Union, which left Britain and France highly vulnerable to German aggression when World War II began. Overestimating the likelihood of ideological enemies allying can be just as dangerous to states’ interests. This was the case, for example, for Soviet leaders in relation to the United States and China for most of the 1970s. Ac­ cording to Vitaly Kozyrev, “the concept of a growing alliance between ‘re­ actionary imperialists’ [the United States] and Maoist leaders had taken hold in the minds of Soviet leaders [in the 1970s]. This view laid the foun­ dation for a national security strategy that required Moscow to confront any combination of adversaries simultaneously. This strategy required an unprecedented level of military preparations,” which included the very

10

INTRODUCTION

high levels of military spending and geopolitical expansion that ultimately contributed greatly to the Soviet Union’s demise.25 The foundations of this strategy were misguided because, as I detail in chapter 2, they discounted the centrifugal effects created by ideological variables that prevented a Sino-American alliance until the very end of the decade. (This alliance did not form until 1979.)26 The importance of understanding when frenemies are and are not likely to ally is high in the contemporary era because many regions are ideologically heterogeneous. The greater the number of ideological divisions among states, the greater the number of possible frenemy alliances, and thus the more likely it is that the nature and effectiveness of international balancing will be dependent upon whether these types of coalitions are likely to form or not. The great powers are currently divided into two main ideological group­ ings, between established liberal democracies (the United States, Germany, Britain, France, and Japan) and “authoritarian capitalist” regimes (China and Russia).27 A related ideological division may also be occurring at the regional level in Europe, as Hungary’s and Turkey’s shifts to “illiberal democracies” may help create an ideological rift between Eastern and West­ ern European countries.28 Other key regions, including East Asia and the Middle East, are even more ideologically heterogeneous. In the Middle East, monarchies (e.g., Saudi Arabia, Jordan), theocracies (Iran), Islamist and Jewish democracies (Turkey, Israel), and secular authoritarian states (Egypt, Syria) exist. East Asia is just as complex, divided among one-party and military dictatorships (China, Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar), illiberal de­ mocracies (Philippines, Singapore), liberal democracies (Japan, Australia), and monarchies (Brunei, Thailand).29 Given the numerous possible frenemy alliances that can exist at both the great-power and regional levels, we should expect material variables to fre­ quently incentivize the creation of these types of coalitions. The rise of China, for example, will create strong material incentives, pushing many illiberal countries in Asia—including Russia—to increase security coopera­ tion with the United States. At the same time, Russia’s power will push countries in Eastern Europe—regardless of the growing illiberalism in many—to continue to ally with liberal powers in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). In the Middle East, mutual fear of Iran will continue to create powerful incentives for an alliance among the other regional pow­ ers, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Israel, all of which are ideological enemies of one another. To my argument, analyzing the effects of shared material threats will, however, frequently provide a poor guide to predicating when ideological enemies are likely to ally in these and other important cases. To understand these outcomes, the effects of material variables must be combined with an analysis of levels of regime vulnerability and the nature of the configura­ tions of ideological distances among states.

11

INTRODUCTION

In the book’s concluding chapter, I apply the argument to one of the most important international-security developments in the twenty-first century: the power rise of China and US-led efforts to form a broad balancing coali­ tion against it. I argue that ideological variables will create important opportunities and challenges for US efforts to balance China that realist theories miss. The good news for the United States is that liberal countries in Asia, which are among the most powerful in the region, are much more likely to ally with it against China than analyses based only on the effects of material variables indicate. The bad news is that there are some illiberal states that would make valuable frenemy allies but the ideological condi­ tions that facilitate these coalitions are currently lacking in key instances. Because different probabilities of frenemy alliances will have major effects on the efficiency of balancing in the international system, both regionally and globally, we need a framework to understand when these coalitions are and are not likely to form in response to shared security dangers. This book is dedicated to precisely this objective. The next chapter develops my argument in detail. I then test its predic­ tions and causal logic in three cases that examine British and French alli­ ance policies toward the Soviet Union in the 1930s, China’s alliance policies toward the United States in the 1970s, and Turkey’s alliance policies with Israel in the 2000s.

12

chapter 1

Frenemy Alliances What Are They, and When Are They Likely to Occur?

The nature of alliances is one of the most important topics in the study of international relations. The reason is obvious. It is crucial for leaders to be able to anticipate which states are likely to support or oppose their own. How large is an enemy coalition likely to be? How much aid can leaders expect from others to counter this danger? The answers to these questions go a long way in determining how secure a country is. My definition of alliance follows Stephen Walt’s, who explains, “An al­ liance is a formal or informal commitment for security cooperation be­ tween two or more states. Although the precise arrangements embodied in different alliances vary enormously, the defining feature of any alliance is a commitment for mutual military support against some external actor(s) in some specified set of circumstances.”1 An alliance is thus based on military commitments and assistance (as opposed to diplomatic or economic aid), is directed against other states for the purpose of increas­ ing the security of the alliance’s members, engages in the exchange of benefits for all parties, and involves the coordination of security policies (as opposed to leaders simply sharing interests and acting independently to achieve them).2 Despite the very high level of importance of the subject, an important dimension of alliances has thus far escaped scholars’ attention: the likeli­ hood of security cooperation among ideological enemies when these rivals confront a common and pressing material threat. I call such alliances “fren­ emy” coalitions because they are perpetually torn by powerful competing forces for and against cooperation. Shared material threats push these states together while the mistrust and fear that tends to be created by deep ideo­ logical disputes pull them apart. Each of these competing forces has dominated the other in critical in­ stances, which has resulted in the creation of stable frenemy coalitions in

13

CHAPTER 1

some cases and the delay, dissolution, or failure of these alliances in oth­ ers. What accounts for this variation in outcomes? Why are the barriers to cooperation among ideological enemies sufficiently strong to trump pow­ erful material incentives for alliance in some instances but not others? This book answers these questions. I argue that two ideological variables in addition to ideological enmity provide the key to understanding when frenemies are and are not likely to ally to counter common threats. These variables, in other words, play the central role in determining when either the ideology-based rivalry or material shared interests that define frenemy relationships are likely to prevail. These variables are the level of regime (or ideological) vulnerability in the potential frenemy allies and the specific configurations of ideological distances that exist among these states and their shared material threat. Some values of these two variables raise the costs associated with frenemy alliances while decreasing the perceived need to commit to them, thereby making these alliances unlikely. Other val­ ues of the independent variables, though, reverse these calculations. They reduce the costs associated with frenemy coalitions while amplifying their perceived need, which will make frenemy alliances likely. These changes occur independently of the effects of material variables, which are incentiv­ izing cooperation in all the cases I examine. The development of my argument in this chapter is divided into six sec­ tions. I first define what I mean by ideological enemies and discuss why relations among these states tend to be hostile. I then discuss the power and other material conditions that transform an ordinary relationship between ideological enemies into a frenemy one. The third section, which comprises the lion’s share of my argument, is dedicated to identifying and analyzing the conditions when ideological enemies are and are not likely to ally to counter common material threats. This section is followed by one that pres­ ents the argument’s predictions. The fifth section examines prominent al­ ternative theories of alliance failure. I conclude the chapter with a methods section that explores my operationalization of variables, research methods, and criteria for case study selection.

What Are Ideological Enemies, and Why Are Their Relations Often Hostile? I define ideologies as the principles of governance to which political leaders are dedicated. Ideologies, in other words, reflect political elites’ preferences for ordering the domestic-political world: the core institutional, economic, and social goals that they try to realize in their states.3 Do politicians, for exam­ ple, advocate for their country the creation or continuation of representa­ tive or authoritarian political institutions? Capitalist or socialist economies? Theocratic or secular values? Full rights of citizenship for some or all

14

FRENEMY ALLIANCES

groups in their state? Prominent ideologies include communism, fascism, liberalism, monarchism, and religious fundamentalism. Specific ideologies like the ones just listed can be divided into two broad types, and which category an ideology belongs to will have very different effects on leaders’ threat perceptions and international security policies, in­ cluding alliances. Walt labels these types of ideologies “divisive” and “uni­ fying.” Gregory Gause labels them “hierarchical” and “nonhierarchical.” Divisive or hierarchical ideologies call for political integration (e.g., PanIslam) or “for members to form a centralized movement obeying a single authoritative leadership” (as was the case for international communism). Unifying or nonhierarchical ideologies, in contrast, reject these prescrip­ tions and instead recognize the sovereignty and legitimacy of different states dedicated to the ideology. Examples of unifying ideologies include liberalism, monarchism, and fascism.4 These two different types of ideologies can produce two sources of ideo­ logical enmity, which is a scope condition of my analysis as I examine only alliances or potential alliances among ideological enemies. Ideological en­ mity (and related terms such as “ideological rivalry”) refers to relations among leaders who view themselves as dedicated to opposing and compet­ ing domestic principles and objectives. Elites in this situation condemn as illegitimate the other group’s core values and preferred institutions. Ideo­ logical enemies define and defend their principles in opposition to one an­ other. They thus believe that the adoption of the other’s ideology means the repudiation of their own and the creation of a fundamentally different kind of state. The first source of ideological enmity occurs when leaders are objectively dedicated to opposing ways of ordering domestic politics in terms of core institutions and values. Relations among policymakers dedicated to differ­ ent unifying ideologies (e.g., liberals versus monarchists) and between one set of leaders that is dedicated to a unifying ideology and another that is dedicated to a divisive one (e.g., liberals versus communists) fall into this grouping. The second source of ideological enmity occurs when elites are dedicated to objectively similar ideological beliefs but the ideology is a divisive one. Ideologies that do not respect state sovereignty or independence and in­ stead call for political integration or a single leader of a transnational ideo­ logical group often push proponents to view one another as intense ideological competitors. Although shared dedication to a divisive ideology may result in some important ideology-based cooperation among leaders, the frictions created by this set of beliefs will frequently make this coopera­ tion difficult to sustain. As part of an effort to determine who should head the ideological group, leaders dedicated to divisive ideologies will often engage in fierce doctrinal debates over who possesses the “true” interpreta­ tion of the ideology. Rivals in this debate will not view one another as

15

CHAPTER 1

ideologically similar but as heretics or apostates. Such views existed, for example, among leaders of Catholic, Lutheran, and Calvinist states during the wars of religion in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and between the communist regimes in the Soviet Union and China beginning in the 1960s. Gause summarizes the different effects created by unifying (or nonhierarchical) and divisive (or hierarchical) ideologies as follows: “Common ideas about appropriate domestic governance [ideology] will bring states together as long as respect for state independence and sovereignty under­ lies those ideas. If those common ideas call for hierarchical institutional forms (e.g., integral unity or formal subordination to a movement’s leader), they eventually will be perceived as threats by others in the same ideologi­ cal camp.”5 Regardless of its source, ideological enmity often results in threatening relations that create powerful barriers to security cooperation. Indeed, rela­ tions among leaders who view themselves as ideological enemies are much more likely to be hostile than cooperative. To be clear, in this section I am talking about the nature of the relations that typically exist among ideologi­ cal enemies; I am not talking about frenemy relationships. The latter exist only when ideological enemies confront strong material incentives to pool their resources and cooperate against a common rival. Subsequent sections both discuss these incentives for cooperation that create frenemy relation­ ships and detail the conditions that tend to make the barriers to coopera­ tion among ideological enemies even stronger than those that ordinarily exist—so strong that they frequently negate substantial material incentives for alliance. The development and testing of these additional conditions is the book’s primary contribution to the literature. The literature on ideologies and international relations, including argu­ ments that I have heretofore developed, explains why relations among ide­ ological enemies are often hostile. A central finding of this literature is that international ideological relationships tend to play a major role in shaping how leaders judge one another’s foreign policy intentions. Elites in differ­ ent states who are dedicated to a shared unifying ideology (high ideological similarities) often perceive one another as trustworthy individuals who share the same values and interests. Ideological enemies, in contrast, fre­ quently assume the worst about one another’s international intentions. They often view one another as untrustworthy people who are dedicated to opposing objectives. Most worrisome, elites frequently believe that ideo­ logical enemies will use the power that their states possess in an aggressive manner, thereby endangering the security of their state.6 According to Charles Duelfer and Stephen Dyson, “the core of an enemy image is the as­ sumption of malign intent. All behavior is seen as evidence of malign intent—with even cooperative-seeming behavior perceived as hostile—a function of either intent to deceive, a temporary weakness, or a retreat in the face of firmness from the perceiving state.”7 Ideological enmity

16

FRENEMY ALLIANCES

frequently results in precisely these assessments of others’ objectives. The more fearful leaders are of one another’s intentions, the more hostile their relations are likely to be. Insights from both psychological theories (especially social identity the­ ory) and constructivist theories of group formation help explain why ide­ ologies are often central to leaders’ intentions assessments. Key findings of these theories are that humans have universal needs both to divide them­ selves into in-groups and out-groups and to perceive members of these op­ posing groups in very different ways. People tend to see members of their own group(s) as trustworthy individuals who possess important common interests. Individuals in opposing groups will quite often be believed to possess the opposite qualities, to the point where they become the objects of mistrust, fear, and even hatred.8 Based on these findings, a critical determinant of patterns of trust and cooperation on one hand and suspicion and conflict on the other will be where individuals draw the line between in-groups and out-groups.9 Ideologies, because of their core qualities, are likely to play a major role in this process at the international level. The transnational nature of ideolo­ gies makes ideology-based group categorization at the international level possi­ ble. Because elites from different states can share ideological beliefs, ideological relationships can help determine the dividing lines among communities. Ideological agreement can push elites in different states to view one another as members of the same transnational group, with ide­ ological disputes producing the opposite result. The political nature of ide­ ologies makes ideology-based group categorization at the international level likely. As elites endeavor to understand and define the political world, it makes sense that their core political beliefs will be particularly salient to these efforts. As Thomas Risse-Kappen explains, “it is, of course, trivial that actors hold multiple identities. Which of these or which combina­ tion dominates their interests, perceptions and behavior in a given area of social interaction needs to be examined through empirical analysis and cannot therefore be decided beforehand. I submit, however, that val­ ues and norms pertaining to questions of governance [ideologies] are likely to shape identities in the realm of the political—be it domestic or international.”10 If this last claim is correct and ideologies are often central to how leaders define international in-groups and out-groups, then transnational ideo­ logical relationships should frequently be critical to how elites perceive one another’s intentions. Elites in different states who share ideological beliefs (of a unifying ideology) will tend to perceive one another as trust­ worthy individuals who share the same values and are dedicated to simi­ lar objectives.11 In many cases, members of a transnational ideological community will feel closer to one another than to ideological rivals in their state.12 More important for this book’s purposes, ideological enemies will

17

CHAPTER 1

tend to view one another as aggressive, untrustworthy, and dedicated to opposing values and interests.13 History is replete with prominent examples of leaders explicitly attribut­ ing malign intentions to others due to ideological disputes. President Dwight Eisenhower, for example, asserted in August 1954 that “the central core of the great world problem [the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union] is the aggressive intent of international commu­ nism.”14 This was still the view of America’s president over thirty years later. Ronald Reagan stated in a November 1985 address before a joint ses­ sion of Congress following the US-Soviet summit in Geneva, “We cannot assume that their [the Soviets’] ideology and purpose will change; this im­ plies enduring competition” with the United States.15 Iranian leaders have possessed the same highly suspicious views of the United States, consis­ tently attributing the two countries’ hostile relations to the effects of ideo­ logical enmity. Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei asserted in 2003, for example, that “the primary reason for U.S. hostility toward our country is the Islamic identity of our system” and that it was “natural that our Is­ lamic system should be viewed as an enemy and an intolerable rival by . . . the United States. . . . It is . . . clear that the conflict and confrontation be­ tween the two is something natural and unavoidable.”16 Ideological enemies’ tendency to assume the worst about one another’s international intentions is so strong that it frequently pushes leaders of these states to believe that any cooperation that does exist will be shortlived or is a ruse, bound to be replaced with overt hostilities. Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin, for example, noted that Germany’s cooperation with the Soviet Union in the early 1920s did nothing to eliminate the two states’ underlying enmity due to ideological differences: “Germany wants re­ venge [against France and Britain], and we want revolution. For the mo­ ment our aims are the same, but when our ways part, they will be our most ferocious and greatest enemies.”17 To Lenin, “international imperialism [i.e., capitalist states] . . . could not, under any circumstances, under any conditions, live side by side with the Soviet Republic. . . . In this sphere a conflict is inevitable.”18 These views led Soviet leaders to try to export communist revolution to Germany in the early 1920s despite major mate­ rial incentives to maintain cooperative relations with that state.19 Former Soviet foreign minister Maxim Litvinov similarly stated in an interview in 1946 that the “root cause” of the incipient Soviet-US confrontation, despite years of alliance, was “the ideological conception prevailing [in the Soviet Union] that conflict between the Communist and capitalist worlds is inevitable.”20 Under normal conditions, the effects of ideological enmity on leaders’ intentions assessments would be sufficient to prevent cross-ideological alli­ ances. The tendency for ideological rivals to view one another as aggres­ sive, untrustworthy, and possessing fundamentally opposed goals is clearly

18

FRENEMY ALLIANCES

not a firm foundation upon which to build extensive security cooperation.21 But frenemy relationships are not like relations among most ideological en­ emies. While frenemies continue to confront ideological barriers to alliance, they also confront substantial material incentives to ally. Consequently, in order for the centrifugal effects created by ideological enmity to prevent frenemies from allying, the ideological barriers to alliance must be particu­ larly high, considerably higher than typically exists. The next section dis­ cusses the material incentives for cooperation that transform typical relations among ideological enemies into frenemy ones. The subsequent section discusses the conditions that significantly augment and amplify the impediments to alliance created by ideological enmity alone, to the point that even frenemies frequently find it difficult to ally.

Why Would Ideological Enemies Ally? Incorporating the Insights of Realist Balancing Theories If ideological enemies tend to have threatening relations, why would they ally? To answer this question, I rely on the insights from realist balancing theories, especially balance-of-threat theory. Although there are important differences between different strands of realism (such as between balance­ of-power and balance-of-threat and offensive and defensive theories), real­ ists of all varieties largely agree on two big points that are integral to my argument. One of these points of agreement creates the key scope condition for my argument, the other its main counterhypothesis. The first area of agreement among realists involves the source of threats and the dominant responses to them. Most realist theories concur that (1) states balance—including forming alliances—when they are sufficiently threatened and (2) the source of this threat is due to the effects of a combi­ nation of material variables, chiefly military power. John Mearsheimer, for example, claims that “threatened states place a high premium on finding alliance partners.”22 Walt concurs, asserting that “the greater the threat, the greater the probability that the vulnerable state will seek an alliance.”23 To balance-of-power theorists such as Mearsheimer, “what matters most” in the determination of threat levels and states’ responses to them “is the dis­ tribution of power .  .  . and geography.” The greater the power disparity among states in terms of the distribution of military assets, the greater the incentives for weaker states to balance the stronger, including by forming alliances. A common land border with a strong state intensifies the threat created by power distributions because it is easier to project military power over land than water.24 Walt’s balance-of-threat theory subsumes balance-of-power theory. To balance-of-threat theory, international threats are not only a product of the two variables that are central to balance-of-power arguments—power

19

CHAPTER 1

distributions and geographical proximity—but also offensive capabilities and aggressive intentions.25 Walt most often operationalizes aggressive in­ tentions by examining revealed preferences: those states that have signaled a willingness to use force to resolve conflicts of interest are judged aggres­ sive and vice versa. Realist balancing arguments are the dominant explanation of alliance formation for security purposes in the literature, and balance-of-threat the­ ory is the most comprehensive of these arguments. I therefore use its insights to provide the key scope condition for my analysis. In all the ex­ amples I use to develop and illustrate the argument as well as in the case studies, two or more ideological enemies confront a shared, significant ma­ terial threat that creates very strong incentives for the ideological enemies to ally. I rely on balance-of-threat theory to determine the magnitude of this danger and thus the intensity of the incentives for alliances based on an ag­ gregated analysis of power distributions, offensive capabilities, geographi­ cal closeness, and displayed aggressiveness. The existence of a shared material threat based on the variables that de­ fine balance-of-threat theory is what transforms an ordinary relationship among ideological enemies into a frenemy one. In the absence of this con­ dition, ideological enemies would typically have no reason to engage in significant security cooperation. This scope condition also creates impor­ tant analytic advantages for testing the argument. Holding material incen­ tives for alliance largely constant allows me to isolate what other factors play key roles in hindering or facilitating alliances. If there is marked vari­ ation in alliance outcomes despite the constancy of the initial condition of a clear material threat, then some other factors must be responsible for this variation.26 A second key point of agreement among most realist theories of alli­ ances that is salient to my argument is the belief that ideologies matter little to states’ alliances policies, especially compared to the effects of ma­ terial variables during threatening periods. (As Walt expresses this point, “most realist scholars downplay the importance of ideology in alliance choices.”)27 Thus, to realists the likelihood of states allying in response to shared, high material threats will by and large be the same regardless of the nature of the ideological relationships among the potential allies. Mearsheimer aptly summarizes the realist position, asserting that when states “confront a serious threat . . . they pay little attention to ideology as they search for alliance partners.”28 Walt expresses similar views when he writes, “States are more likely to follow their ideological preferences when they are already fairly secure. When faced by great danger, however, they will take whatever allies they can get.” Thus, in threatening periods, mate­ rial “security considerations are likely to take precedence over ideological preferences” regarding alliance formation.29 These predictions create the chief counterhypothesis to my own: When two ideological enemies confront a

20

FRENEMY ALLIANCES

shared, major material threat, their ideological differences will have minor effects on their alliance policies. If this hypothesis is correct, my argument is wrong. To my argument, ideological enemies will tend to act on realist incentives for alliance primar­ ily only when the additional ideological conditions I identify are in play. When they are not, ideological rivals will tend not to ally despite the strong material incentives to do so. The book’s analytic setup facilitates testing of the counterhypothesis in relation to my own. Because the existence of a shared, substantial material threat for two or more ideological enemies is a scope condition for my argu­ ment, the likelihood of ideological enemies allying in all the cases I examine is high if ideological variables have minor effects on the balancing process.30 The preceding claims do not mean that the book’s argument only com­ petes with realist theories of alliance formation. The argument instead both competes and complements realist theories. It competes by detailing the conditions when the centrifugal effects created by ideological enmity are likely to be so powerful that they will tend to overwhelm strong material incentives for alliance. The argument, as I discuss in greater detail in the next section, also complements realist balancing theories by identifying the conditions when the effects of ideologies add to material incentives for alli­ ance, thereby making cross-ideological alliances even more likely than real­ ist balancing theories predict.

The Ideological Conditions That Affect the Probability of Frenemies Allying If material incentives are pushing two ideological enemies into an alliance and the effects of ideological enmity are pulling them apart, which set of forces is likely to win? Different permutations of two ideological variables in addition to ideological enmity go a long way in answering this question. These variables are the level of ideological or regime vulnerability in at least one of the members of the potential frenemy alliance and the specific configurations of ideological distances that exist among the frenemy states and their shared material threat. These two variables affect the most important determinants of leaders’ willingness to pursue alliances: the anticipated costs of committing to an alliance and the perceived need of doing so. The variables of regime vulnerability and configurations of ideological distances are linked because they reflect how ideologies critically shape leaders’ assessments of threats to their two most important political interests: the security of their state and the stability of the regime type they support. High levels of regime vulnerability, or susceptibility to major domestic ideological changes, significantly increase the costs associated with fren­ emy coalitions. When this condition is in effect, elites will frequently worry

21

CHAPTER 1

that close ties with a country that shares the ideology of the domestic threat will increase the likelihood of revolution. The greater the anticipated costs associated with a particular policy, the less likely elites will opt for it, all other things being equal. Configurations of ideological distances refer to how a state relates to a potential frenemy ally and their shared material threat along an ideologi­ cal continuum. More specifically, this variable indicates whether the ideo­ logical distance separating a state and its potential frenemy ally is greater than, less than, or equal to the ideological distance with the material threat. These variations in ideological distances shape how leaders understand the perceived danger posed by the material threat relative to the potential frenemy ally and thus the extent of the need to form a cross-ideological coalition. Some configurations of ideological distances (what I label below configurations of “ideological betrayal,” “divided threats,” and “ideologi­ cal equidistance”) reduce the perceived need for frenemies to ally by en­ hancing leaders’ uncertainty regarding which state should be the primary object of their security fears or by increasing the perceived likelihood of success of alternative security strategies to balancing and alliance forma­ tion: bandwagoning and especially buck-passing. The greater the uncer­ tainty over threats and/or the greater the incentives to pursue alternative security policies, the less likely it is that elites will commit to frenemy coalitions. Other permutations of these two ideological variables reverse the proba­ bility of frenemy alliances forming. When fears of regime vulnerability are low, elites are unlikely to be highly concerned that close ties with an ideo­ logical enemy abroad will help stimulate major ideological changes at home. Leaders, as a result, will not feel that they have to choose between the security of their state and the stability of their regime. The lower the anticipated costs associated with frenemy coalitions, the more political space elites in frenemy states have to act on the material incentives pushing them to ally. While low levels of regime vulnerability facilitate leaders acting on mate­ rial incentives to create frenemy coalitions, the effects of particular configu­ rations of ideological distances among the potential frenemy allies and their shared material threat (what I label configurations of “double threat” and being an “ideological outsider”) add to these incentives. These ideologi­ cal configurations create, paradoxically, ideology-based reasons for ideo­ logical enemies to ally, thereby augmenting the material incentives pushing these states together. In these configurations, cross-ideological alliances are even more likely than realist balancing theories predict. At these times, my and realist arguments complement one another. For a diagram summariz­ ing the argument’s key linkages, see figures 1.1 and 1.2. It is important to stress that because my argument concentrates on attri­ butes that all ideologies and members of all ideological groups share, the

22

Condition

High levels of regime vulnerability in at least one of the potential frenemy allies

Ideological enmity

Particular configurations of ideological distances among potential frenemy allies and their shared material threat (ideological betrayal, divided threats, and ideological equidistance)

Effect Increased fears that cooperation with an ideological enemy will facilitate domestic revolution Increased need to mobilize domestic base Increased uncetainty over the source and magnitude of international threats (ideological betrayal and divided threats)

Decreased likelihood of frenemy alliances

Increased hope that buckpassing policies will succeed (divided threats and ideological equidistance) Enhanced ability for other states to adopt successful “ideological wedging” policies (ideological betrayal and divided threats)

Figure 1.1. Conditions that decrease the likelihood of frenemy alliances forming

Condition

Effect Low domestic costs of allying with ideological enemies

Low levels of regime vulnerability in the potential frenemy allies

Ideological enmity Particular configurations of ideological distances among potential frenemy allies and their shared material threat (double threat and ideological outsider)

Very high threat as states’ greatest material and ideological dangers coincide (double threat) Some ideological agreement between lesser ideological enemies (double threat), which also facilitates “ideological bolstering”

Increased likelihood of frenemy alliances

Increased common interests based on shared ideological enmity toward another state (double threat) Increased incentives to make extensive security commitments to wedge apart ideologically similar states (ideological outsider)

Figure 1.2. Conditions that increase the likelihood of frenemy alliances forming

CHAPTER 1

predictions apply to all ideological relationships regardless of which spe­ cific ideologies are under investigation. Because all leaders have a preemi­ nent interest in maintaining their political power and the ideological order they champion, variations in the level of regime vulnerability are likely to push members of all ideological groups to act in similar ways. Similar analysis applies to the incentives created by specific configurations of ideo­ logical distances among states’ leaders. To my argument, a system defined by relations among fascists, communists, and liberals in the 1930s will tend to exhibit similar dynamics as a system defined by relations among Catho­ lics, Calvinists, and Lutherans in the sixteenth century. What matters is the type of ideological configuration as I define them below and not the spe­ cific ideologies that create them. By focusing on ideologies’ commonalities, I create a generalizable theory of ideologies that examines their systematic effects. t h e level o f r egi me vu ln era bi li ty i n t he p o ten tia l fre n emy a lli es Leaders’ two most important political interests are the protection of the security of their state and the preservation of their political power and the regime type they support. The more one ideological enemy endangers these interests for another, the lower the likelihood of cooperation be­ tween them. The mere fact of international ideological enmity is often sufficient to generate perceived threats to states’ security interests.31 Because ideological enemies tend to assume the worst about one another’s international inten­ tions, leaders will frequently fear that ideological rivals will aggressively use the power they possess to endanger their country’s safety. Analogous statements cannot typically be made, however, about the rela­ tionship between the existence of international ideological enemies and threats to leaders’ core domestic interests. Ideological enemies can pose major dangers to these interests, with the ultimate threat being the spread of one rival’s ideology to the other, thereby resulting in revolution. This threat, though, will ordinarily not be created by the mere fact of interna­ tional ideological rivalry. If policymakers have good reason to believe that others’ ideologies will not be widely received in their state, the existence of ideological enemies abroad is unlikely to create high domestic threats and fears.32 The ideological divide separating the United States from the Is­ lamist theocratic regime in Iran, for example, is profound, and this gulf has played a key role in pushing many US leaders to be highly suspicious of Iranian intentions. Yet these elites exhibit little concern that Iranian ideo­ logical principles will spread to the United States because of widespread belief in the superiority of US values and lack of fit between Iranian ideol­ ogy and US political culture.

24

FRENEMY ALLIANCES

The relationship between international ideological enmity and threats to leaders’ domestic interests is therefore conditional. The condition that activates this relationship is high levels of ideological or regime vulnera­ bility. This variable refers to the level of leaders’ confidence in the continu­ ation of their preferred ideological order in their country. During periods of high regime vulnerability, elites believe that the domestic order they champion is susceptible to revolution. A revolution is more than the re­ placement of one set of leaders with another. A revolution instead involves the creation of a fundamentally different type of state in terms of its core values and/or institutions.33 Leaders during high periods of regime vul­ nerability view their potential replacements as illegitimate and lacking a right to rule.34 When leaders confront international ideological enemies and the level of regime vulnerability is high, the threats posed by those states that share the ideology of the domestic danger will be acute. Elites at these times will tend to believe not only that ideological enemies possess hostile international intentions but also that they will be powerful spurs to domestic ideological subversion, by which I mean the likely undermining at home of one set of ideological principles and the spread of a rival one. Fears of ideological subversion due to regime vulnerability explain why even militarily weak states can pose very large threats to other countries’ interests. If a country’s ideology possesses substantial appeal in other states, fears of this state will be disproportionate to the material capabili­ ties it possesses. During the Concert of Europe from 1815 to 1848, for ex­ ample, leaders in the monarchical great powers were highly concerned about the possibility of regime change in their countries. Because these elites believed that support for liberalism in their states was widespread, they viewed liberal revolutions even in much less powerful states—such as Naples—as major threats to their domestic interests. (Fears over the spread of revolution led Austria in 1821 to invade Naples to crush a revolt against its king.) I have identified three main sources of regime vulnerability, all of which I discuss in greater detail in the following sections.35 One is a product of developments in the ideologically vulnerable state. The other two result from the nature and policies of the international ideological rival. These three sources are the existence of powerful revolutionary groups inside a country, the demonstrated power of revolutionary forces in other states as revealed by the overthrow or significant weakening of an existing govern­ ment or governments, and the presence in the system of an ideological en­ emy that is endeavoring to export its ideological principles. There are other developments beyond these three—most notably an increased likelihood of coups—that can profoundly threaten leaders’ core domestic interests. I am, however, interested in examining the variables that threaten not just lead­ ers’ political survival but also the ideological character of the state. Coups

25

CHAPTER 1

are the illegal removal of a sitting executive. They need, not, however, re­ sult in major ideological changes in a state. The variables I identify and their effect on the probability of revolution—precisely because they affect the defining ideological character of states—are the ones that are the most likely to have major effects on relations with international ideological enemies. The most important source of regime vulnerability is the existence of powerful revolutionary groups inside a country.36 These groups are a nec­ essary and sufficient condition for creating high levels of regime vulnera­ bility. Powerful domestic revolutionary groups are a necessary condition for high levels of regime vulnerability because the other two sources of fra­ gility intensify the effects created by these revolutionary parties. The existence of domestic revolutionaries is a sufficient source of high levels of regime vulnerability because these groups will stimulate leaders’ fears of ideological subversion even if the other two sources are not in play. High levels of regime vulnerability add to the barriers to alliances that typically exist among ideological enemies due to presumptions of malign intent by significantly increasing the costs of these coalitions, in this case the costs to elites’ core domestic interests.37 When leaders confront strong material incentives to commit to a frenemy alliance but are domestically vulnerable to the spread of the ally’s ideology, their two most important political interests are in tension: allying with an international ideological enemy may enhance the security of their state while compromising the sta­ bility of their regime. This risk is one that elites will often be very reluctant to take. High levels of regime vulnerability can increase the costs of allying with ideological enemies by (1) increasing the likelihood that these alli­ ances will empower and embolden domestic revolutionary groups, (2) in­ creasing the ally’s ability to interfere in the vulnerable country’s domestic politics, and (3) incentivizing domestic ideological mobilization campaigns directed against these alliances. On this last point, if an alliance with an ideological enemy is unpopular with elites’ core domestic supporters, then breaking this alliance will tend to please them.38 Because leaders will be most interested in mobilizing their base during periods of regime vulnera­ bility, the incentives to weaken frenemy coalitions will increase at these times.39 When regime vulnerability is high, in other words, leaders are likely to adopt ideological policies—including ending alliances with ideo­ logical enemies—to rally their base against the domestic threat. The en­ hanced costs associated with frenemy alliances created by high levels of regime vulnerability in this situation are ones of opportunity. If leaders choose to commit to a frenemy alliance when breaking it would mobilize supporters against a pressing domestic threat, they would be forgoing sig­ nificant domestic benefits when these benefits are particularly valuable (high opportunity costs).

26

FRENEMY ALLIANCES

The reverse calculations occur when leaders’ perceptions of regime vul­ nerability are low, meaning that they have little fear of their country under­ going major changes to rival ideologies. At these times, it is easier for elites to base their alliance policies on the logic of realpolitik. The lower the level of regime vulnerability, the lower the potential domestic costs associated with committing to a frenemy alliance. When elites do not feel that they have to choose between the security of their state and the stability of their regime, they have much more political space to act on the realist incentives pushing the ideological enemies together. Different levels of regime vulnerability help explain, for example, why China’s leaders in the 1970s were much more hesitant to form a frenemy alliance with the United States than were officials in the Richard Nixon ad­ ministration with China (see chapter 3). Chinese elites believed their re­ gime to be much more susceptible to the spread of capitalist principles than US leaders were about the potential subversive impact of communism. For the Chinese, high levels of regime vulnerability incentivized ideological foreign policies and continued aversion to allying with an ideological en­ emy. For the Americans, low levels of regime vulnerability facilitated the adoption of realist-looking foreign policies in which ideologies seemingly had relatively minor effects. Although I contend that high levels of regime vulnerability will decrease leaders’ willingness to commit to frenemy alliances, some scholars assert the reverse. Steven David, for example, claims that when leaders are highly concerned about domestic threats, they are likely to “appease [or ally with] the international allies of their domestic opponents.”40 Allying with an in­ ternational ideological enemy could help alleviate domestic regime vulner­ ability by (1) convincing the foreign state to stop aiding the domestic threat and (2) appeasing or placating a domestic threat that is dedicated to the frenemy alliance. An important problem with committing to a cross-ideological coalition to alleviate regime vulnerability is that this tactic requires leaders trust ideological enemies. Officials must believe either that the international ide­ ological enemy/frenemy ally will honor commitments not to aid the do­ mestic threat or that the domestic threat will remain placated because of the existence of the frenemy alliance. Not allying with an international ideological enemy to alleviate high lev­ els of regime vulnerability, in contrast, endeavors to achieve this objective by reducing the power of the domestic danger. Not allying with an interna­ tional ideological enemy can help reduce the prestige and legitimacy of the rival ideology (which would help limit the likelihood of ideological conta­ gion created by successful revolutions abroad while also weakening the power of domestic revolutionary groups dedicated to the ideology), will reduce the international ideological enemy’s opportunities to interfere in

27

CHAPTER 1

the home state’s domestic politics, and can provide a rallying point to help mobilize leaders’ ideological base against domestic revolutionary forces. Because leaders tend to be highly suspicious of the intentions of ideologi­ cal enemies, they are more likely to try to reduce high levels of regime vulnerability by policies that do not require them to trust these groups. I therefore conclude that high levels of regime vulnerability are more likely to result in increased rather than decreased barriers to frenemy coalitions.41 Trying to alleviate high levels of regime vulnerability by convincing an ideological enemy to change its foreign policies also assumes that these policies are the main source of domestic fragility. They are not. Although ideological promotion by an ideological enemy can intensify high levels of regime vulnerability, the most important source of ideological fragility is the existence of powerful domestic revolutionary groups. When this condi­ tion is in play, leaders are likely to view the mere existence of an interna­ tional ideological enemy as a subversive threat based on the example it provides and the possibility that it could engage in ideological promotion abroad.42 This perceived threat will exist independently of the ideological rival’s policies. If high levels of regime vulnerability exist to a great extent independently of ideological enemies’ actions, allying with these states to induce a change in behavior will not eliminate the root sources of the do­ mestic danger. Sources of Regime Vulnerability: Powerful Domestic Revolutionary Forces. The most potent source of regime vulnerability occurs when leaders confront powerful revolutionary forces in their country. There are two types of revo­ lutionary actors that are germane to my analysis. Both varieties are ideo­ logically opposed to a state’s most powerful political elites and thus aim to replace the current regime’s institutions and values with opposing ones. One type, though, shares the ideology of the potential frenemy ally and the other is deeply opposed to it. I call the first “ideological fifth columns” be­ cause they are sympathetic to the frenemy ally’s ideology and the second “double rebels” because they are revolutionaries who are ideological ene­ mies of both their government and the frenemy ally. The existence of either variety of revolutionary force is likely to increase the costs of frenemy coali­ tions, though for different reasons. Ideological Fifth Columns. A “fifth column” is a domestic faction al­ lied with a foreign country that undermines its government from within.43 Ideological fifth columns are defined by both domestic and international relationships. An ideological fifth column is a group that is dedicated to major ideological changes in its country while also sharing the defining ide­ ology of another state. Ideological fifth columns can exist at both the elite and societal levels. These groups are differentiated by the amount of political power they

28

FRENEMY ALLIANCES

currently possess. An ideological fifth column at the elite level exists when a government possesses a minority faction of significant power that is dedi­ cated to promoting an ideology that is shared with another country. Turk­ ish Islamists in the Welfare Party in the mid-1990s are an example of this type of group. The Welfare Party controlled the office of prime minister in 1996 and 1997, sought to overthrow the strict secularist principles that de­ fined the state, and was ideologically sympathetic to the ruling regime in Iran. An ideological fifth column at the societal level possesses the same revo­ lutionary objective and relationship with a foreign country, but it has little or no current influence in governmental institutions. The most visible sign of the existence of this variety of fifth column is a recent uprising or mass protest that is dedicated to installing the ideology of a foreign state. The roughly one million protestors in China’s Tiananmen Square in 1989 are an example of this grouping. These individuals pushed for the adoption of liberal institutions in China and invoked the United States as an exemplar (even erecting a model of the Statue of Liberty). This section analyzes the effects of elite ideological fifth columns on leaders’ alliance policies. Subse­ quent sections incorporate both varieties into the analysis. The existence of an ideological fifth column at the elite level is particu­ larly likely to stimulate leaders’ fears of revolution. The more political power an ideological rival possesses, the greater the likelihood that this group will eventually dominate the government and transform the re­ gime. More important for this book’s purposes, ideological factionaliza­ tion at the elite level is likely to provide foreign governments an enhanced opportunity to promote ideological change in the ideologically divided country because they have ideological allies in positions of power in this state. In this situation, there are known and powerful groups in the target state to which a foreign government can give financial and other support to further enhance their power. As Wade Jacoby finds after reviewing many of the leading scholarly books on the subject, the ability of foreign states to influence others’ domestic politics is significantly amplified when target countries possess “substantial levels of internal contesta­ tion” in their governments and when one of the contending political factions is “a minority tradition that favors the principles pushed by out­ siders but that has, so far, failed to carry the day.” These conditions define elite ideological fifth columns. When they are met, “outsiders have a fighting chance of seeing their institutional preferences achieved” in the target state.44 High regime vulnerability that is created by the existence of an ideologi­ cal fifth column at the elite level will increase the potential costs of alli­ ances with ideological enemies by enhancing the risks associated with interacting with these states. The greater a foreign government’s ability to subvert another’s regime, the more leaders will want to minimize

29

CHAPTER 1

interactions with this state both to delegitimize it and reduce its opportu­ nities to boost the power of the ideological fifth column. Importantly, this aversion to close interactions will exist even if the foreign government is currently not trying to exploit the opportunities to shape others’ domestic politics. Vulnerabilities created by powerful domestic revolu­ tionary forces create fears of subversion—and with them an enhanced aversion to cooperating with countries capable of taking advantage of this vulnerability—independently of other states’ actions. To this perspective, the existence—not the policies—of ideological enemies that can exploit others’ domestic weaknesses will significantly reduce the likelihood of coopera­ tion with these states. Fears of revolutionary change due to the existence of an ideological fifth column help explain an important reversal in US-Iranian relations in the 2000s. The two longtime ideological enemies engaged in a significant amount of security cooperation in the fall of 2001 after the United States at­ tacked Taliban-led Afghanistan, which was also an enemy of Iran.45 A key problem for sustaining this cooperation, however, was that Iran’s govern­ ment in these years was divided into two main ideological groups: “conser­ vatives” (or Islamist hard-liners) and more liberal politicians known as “reformers.” Reformers at this time controlled Iran’s presidency and parlia­ ment; conservatives held the Office of the Supreme Leader, the Council of Guardians, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Reformers hoped that cooperation with the United States would aid their domestic power by helping provide the resources and legitimacy necessary for economic and political liberalization. Although the George W. Bush administration gave reformers little support, Iranian conservatives remained highly concerned about their domestic vulnerability created by the power of the reformist fifth column and how closer ties with the United States might further un­ dermine their domestic position. These fears played a key role in conserva­ tives choosing to sabotage and eventually end security cooperation with the United States, despite the common enemies of both Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Scholar of Middle Eastern politics Daniel Brum­ berg expresses this point: “Knowing that the reformers’ support of normal­ ization [with the United States was] organically linked to their quest for freedom and democracy, [conservatives were] determined to ensure their ultimate control over the debate on U.S.-Iranian relations.”46 Ideological di­ visions in the Iranian government and resulting perceptions of regime vulnerability, in sum, made cooperation with an international ideological enemy difficult to sustain. Double Rebels. The other variety of domestic revolutionary forces that I examine I label “double rebels” because they are ideological enemies of both their government and its potential international frenemy ally. This group wants to overthrow its government but, unlike ideological fifth

30

FRENEMY ALLIANCES

columns, has no ideological ties to the frenemy ally. Hard-line Sunni Is­ lamist groups operating in states such as Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Kuwait are examples of double rebels. These groups are ideologically opposed to both their government and its key potential or actual frenemy allies, most notably Israel and the United States. The existence of a powerful group of double rebels can impede leaders from committing to a frenemy coalition due to fears of strengthening the resolve of this revolutionary faction or because they believe that preserving or increasing hostility to an ideological enemy abroad will help mobilize supporters against this domestic threat. Ending an alliance with one ideo­ logical enemy to mobilize supporters against a double rebel faction was, for example, critical to the evolution of US-Iranian relations after the 1979 revo­ lution. Specifically, this logic was central to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s increasing anti-Americanism in the fall of 1979, which culminated in No­ vember in the occupation of the US embassy in Tehran, the taking of Ameri­ can hostages, and the breaking of the bilateral military treaty with the United States. Before this period, the government in Iran, which had come to power after the ouster of the shah in January and was supported by Kho­ meini, had stated the intention of continuing military ties with the United States.47 The effects of high levels of regime vulnerability and efforts by Khomeini and fellow Islamists to weaken the power of a double rebel faction explain the end of cooperation with the United States in favor of highly ideological foreign policies. Iranian leftist groups, led by various communist parties, possessed considerable popular support in 1979, especially among stu­ dents, laborers, and minority ethnic groups. These parties were siphoning off support from the left wing of Khomeini’s Islamist coalition, were able to mobilize hundreds of thousands of demonstrators in cities across the coun­ try, and engaged in the assassination of a number of Khomeini’s support­ ers. They were also explicitly dedicated to the overthrow of the new Iranian government. Intense anti-Americanism was the groups’ “most dominant theme in their publications and statements.”48 To defeat the pressing double rebel domestic threat, Khomeini adopted these groups’ intense anti-Americanism to co-opt their supporters and mo­ bilize his. This decision was costly, as it not only ended the frenemy alliance with the United States but also turned it into a bitter enemy. However, the domestic benefits in a condition of high regime vulnerability created by the double rebel factions were worth the international costs. As Mohammad Ayatollahi Tabaar explains, “the occupation of the US embassy certainly created an external enemy for the Islamic government, but it weakened a more immediate internal adversary. .  .  . Without resorting to antiAmericanism and occupying the US embassy, the Islamists might not have consolidated their power. Although that drastic action brought about mas­ sive political and economic costs that undermined Iran’s national security

31

CHAPTER 1

for decades, it empowered the Islamists and helped them capture the de­ bilitated state. Their factional interests trumped the state’s interests and de­ termined their ideological turn.”49 The existence of powerful revolutionary groups (either fifth columns or double rebels) will tend to increase leaders’ fears of regime vulnerability to a great extent regardless of whether they govern a liberal or authoritarian state. It is true that strong authoritarian governments possess a high capac­ ity to suppress revolutionary movements. These governments, as a result, may be able to better insulate themselves from revolutionary pressures than can either liberal regimes or weak governments.50 But high repressive capacity will not necessarily alleviate fears of regime vulnerability. Indeed, this capacity reveals particularly motivated domestic enemies: only highly committed revolutionary groups will demonstrate a willingness to push for major ideological changes when the threat of repression is great. Instead of stabilizing the regime, repressive policies at these times may further under­ mine it by fueling greater resentment and commitment to major change.51 The greater revolutionary groups’ commitment levels, the greater leaders’ fears of regime vulnerability are likely to be. Moreover, even if a government has apparently crushed its revolutionary opponents, leaders’ levels of regime vulnerability are likely to be high for some time, likely for years, after the last mass protest and/or uprising. There are numerous reasons for this: governments can eliminate people, not ideas; powerful revolutionary movements have frequently reemerged after apparently being suppressed (e.g., liberals in monarchical France, communists in czarist Russia, and Islamists in the shah’s Iran); and, most important, when dealing with such critical interests as regime (and even personal) survival, elites confront powerful incentives to err on the side of caution and believe that even seemingly crushed revolutionary movements have a reasonable likelihood of reconstituting.52 The more leaders, even highly authoritarian ones, doubt their ability to destroy revolutionary movements by domestic actions, the more likely their foreign policies will be shaped in ways consistent with my argu­ ment. Because revolutionary movements have important transnational dimensions (see the next section for more details on this point), elites will confront incentives to deal with these domestic threats in transnational ways—for example, by isolating states that are ideologically similar to the domestic threat (including potential frenemy allies) and cooperating with states that confront the same domestic danger (including material threats). Sources of Regime Vulnerability: Successful Revolutions Abroad by Rival Ide­ ologies. Successful revolutions in other countries will exacerbate the fears of regime vulnerability created by the existence of fifth columns at either the elite or societal levels. The core finding of the “demonstration effects”

32

FRENEMY ALLIANCES

literature is that political developments across states are in important ways interconnected.53 When particular policies or actions succeed in one state, leaders and activists in others are likely to be inspired by these successes and try to emulate them in their own country. The transnational nature of ideologies makes it likely that ideological de­ velopments in one country will inspire similar outcomes in others. Because individuals in different states can share ideological beliefs, ideologies can act as transmission belts that help connect developments across countries. This fact increases the likelihood that the success of an ideology in one country will inspire emulation in others. Although the success of any type of ideological enemy is capable of gen­ erating demonstration effects that stimulate ideological changes in other states, one variety is likely to be especially threatening to others’ domestic interests: an ideological enemy that has recently come to power through successful revolution. The reason the example created by an ideological en­ emy that is also a revolutionary regime is especially threatening to others is obvious: a revolution represents the most abrupt and extreme threat to leaders’ core domestic interests and possibly their lives. Scholars have found that the logic of demonstration effects does apply to revolutions, which helps explain why revolutions and attempted revolu­ tions often cluster in time, including those in Europe in 1848, the “color revolutions” in Eastern Europe and Central Asia in the 2000s, and the Arab Spring mass protests that began in 2010.54 Given the tendency for revolu­ tions to spread, elites’ perceptions of regime vulnerability are likely to in­ crease when they witness their ideological enemies coming to power in other countries. Politicians’ fears of ideological contagion will tend to be particularly intense when the states that are changing regimes are ones that had been dedicated to similar ideological principles as their own. It is bad enough when a rival ideology is spreading. It is even worse when this ide­ ology is spreading at the expense of ideologically similar states.55 Leaders’ fears of ideological contagion will likely last only as long as the rival ideology appears to be on the march. Scholars refer to the clustering of regime changes as “revolutionary waves,” and these have varied consider­ ably in length.56 It is reasonable to assert that elites’ fears of ideological con­ tagion will continue within a few years of the last revolution. After this time, leaders are likely to believe that the revolutionary wave has subsided and with it their fears of revolutionary contagion. Successful revolutions abroad can be connected to an increased likeli­ hood of revolution at home in a number of ways. Most important for this book’s purposes, successful revolutions will enhance the prestige and per­ ceived viability of the revolutionaries’ ideology while simultaneously dam­ aging the prestige and legitimacy of the ideology that the revolutions replaced.57 These trends will help empower and embolden groups through­ out the system that share the ideology of the revolutions, or ideological fifth

33

CHAPTER 1

columns. Enhanced ideological prestige will help empower a fifth column (at either the societal or elite level) by making it easier to recruit people to its cause. Growing ideological prestige will embolden a fifth column by pushing members to increase their estimated likelihood of revolutionary success, which will help spur them into action.58 In these ways, successful revolutions in some states increase the levels of regime vulnerability in others. The boost that ideological fifth columns are likely to receive in revolu­ tionary eras will increase the costs of committing to frenemy alliances. The more elites believe that the legitimacy of their ideology is being eroded by the success of a competing set of beliefs, the more they will want to isolate, stigmatize, and harm proponents of the rival ideology as part of an effort to reverse this trend. As John Owen explains in related analysis, the success of an ideological group in one country frequently results in “transnational ideological polarization,” meaning the “progressive identification of one’s individual interests with those of one’s ideological group and against the interests of competing ideological groups.” The more polarized an era, “the more do members desire gains for their own ideological group and losses for the other.”59 Committing to an alliance with a state that is dedicated to the spreading rival ideology will harm leaders’ efforts to delegitimate this set of beliefs. Indeed, committing to a frenemy coalition is likely to further enhance the competing ideology’s prestige because allying with an ideological enemy recognizes the legitimacy and value of this state. These outcomes will fur­ ther amplify the power of the demonstration effects that are facilitating revolutionary change abroad. The more worried leaders are that allying with an international ideological enemy will aid revolutionary forces in their country, the less likely they are to commit to the coalition. The preceding calculations help explain a reversal in Uzbekistan’s alli­ ance policies in the mid 2000s. Despite the major ideological gap separating authoritarian Uzbekistan and liberal United States, Uzbekistani leaders en­ thusiastically welcomed US offers of alliance that were designed to help fight the war in Afghanistan that began in October 2001. These elites from the beginning of the war granted the US military overflight and basing rights, with the stationing of over one thousand military personnel. Uz­ bekistani leaders welcomed the alliance with the United States, which was formalized in March 2002 with the signing of the bilateral Declaration on the Strategic Partnership and Cooperation Framework, because it facili­ tated the destruction of terrorist Islamist groups (which also threatened Uz­ bekistan), aided in the balancing of Russian power, and provided annually hundreds of millions of dollars in aid. In October 2002, President Islam Karimov stated that US forces should not leave Uzbekistan “until peace and stability is established throughout Central Asia. . . . They should stay as long as needed.”60 Less than three years later, though, Karimov effectively

34

FRENEMY ALLIANCES

suspended the alliance by evicting the Americans. He also joined with Rus­ sia and China in calling for Washington to withdraw its forces from Central Asia altogether. A major increase in regime vulnerability due to a successful revolution in neighboring Kyrgyzstan (the “Tulip Revolution”), coupled with the ex­ istence of domestic revolutionary forces (an ideological fifth column at the societal level), explains Uzbekistan’s reversal in alliance policies. The Tu­ lip Revolution occurred in March 2005. When this event was combined with significant domestic protests against the regime, Uzbekistani leaders’ fears for the continuation of their ideological order reached high levels. The most important of these protests occurred on May 13, 2005, in the city of Andijan, which reportedly resulted in five hundred killed or wounded at the hands of Uzbekistani security forces. To Karimov, revolution abroad was inspiring revolutionary forces at home. As Shahram Akbarzadeh ex­ plains, “there is little doubt that President Karimov saw Andijan as an attempt to replicate the color revolutions.”61 Once Karimov became con­ vinced that revolution abroad was helping to inspire and embolden an ideological fifth column at home, he viewed close cooperation with the United States—a country that shared the ideology of the domestic protes­ tors and Tulip revolutionaries—as increasingly threatening to his regime’s core domestic interests. The result was the decision in July 2005 to sus­ pend the alliance, despite the continued existence of the factors that led Uzbekistani leaders to eagerly support the frenemy coalition in the first place. Sources of Regime Vulnerability: Attempted Ideological Exportation by the Potential Frenemy Ally. Ideologies can spread from one country to another by more than the processes of inspiration and diffusion (demonstration effects). Countries can also try to take advantage of others’ domestic vul­ nerabilities and endeavor to spread their ideological principles abroad by supporting ideological allies (fifth columns) in other states. Leaders can try to export their ideology in a number of ways that vary significantly in their forcefulness. At one end of the spectrum, elites can try to boost the power of ideological allies in the target country by rhetorically delegiti­ mizing this state’s government, by giving financial and rhetorical support to the fifth column, and by implementing economic and other sanctions against the target to achieve ideological objectives. Policymakers can also try to export their ideologies by much more forceful means, including providing arms to revolutionary groups, assassinating leaders, and invasion. Attempted ideological exportation by others creates obvious barriers and increased costs to cross-ideological coalitions. This will be true even in rela­ tion to those ideological rivals that are engaging in less violent forms of ideological promotion, such as rhetorical and financial support to

35

CHAPTER 1

revolutionary groups. Leaders will quite naturally be mistrustful of a state that is endeavoring to increase the power of an ideological fifth column in their country. The greater leaders’ mistrust of an ideological enemy, the greater the perceived risks of relying on this state to help protect their coun­ try’s security. Elites in this situation are likely to have particularly high doubts that the frenemy ally will honor its commitments. An alliance with an ideological enemy that is endeavoring to export its ideology is also risky because close interactions with this state are likely to provide greater op­ portunities for it to engage in ideological proselytization and other aid to ideological fifth columns, thereby increasing these groups’ ability to affect revolutionary change. Even if leaders that have engaged in ideological exportation in the past renounce these policies, impediments to cross-ideological coalitions are likely to remain high because feelings of mistrust and resentment are not likely to quickly dissipate. This mistrust is likely to be particularly strong when the same individuals (as opposed to the same state) who engaged in ideological promotion in the past are promising not to do so in the future. Joseph Stalin’s August 1935 declaration that the Comintern (which helped organize, fund, and direct communist parties around the world) would no longer be dedicated to the destruction of capitalism and colonialism but to the creation of a “united front” coalition of antifascist groups did not, for example, reduce British and French conservatives’ and French Radicals’ (the main centrist party) fears of Soviet-sponsored subversion (see chapter 2). Britain’s ambassador to the Soviet Union, Lord Chilston, among other political elites, dismissed the Comintern’s new policy as “a new-fangled Trojan horse.” The shift was “not a change of heart . . . but a change of tactics”; “world revolution remains as ever the ultimate end of Comintern policy.”62 The result of these suspicions and resentments was continued high opposition to forming a frenemy alliance with the Soviet Union despite Germany’s rapidly increasing capabilities. Regardless of the cause of high levels of regime vulnerability, the effects on the probability of frenemy alliances will be the same. The more leaders fear that allying with international ideological enemies will facilitate major ideological changes at home, the higher the anticipated costs of the alliance and thus the more reluctant they will be to commit to these coalitions. (For a summary of how the sources of regime vulnerability decrease the likeli­ hood of frenemy alliances, see figure 1.3.) These calculations are reversed when leaders’ fears for the continuation of their domestic ideological order are small. The lower elites’ fears of re­ gime vulnerability, the lower the domestic costs associated with frenemy alliances are likely to be. And the lower these costs, the easier it for leaders to base their alliance choices on the logic of realpolitik and the incentives created by international material variables.

36

FRENEMY ALLIANCES Source of regime vulnerability

Powerful domestic revolutionary forces, either ideological fifth columns or double rebels

Successful revolutions in other countries

Ideological promotion by an international ideological enemy

Effect

Why the likelihood of frenemy alliances is reduced

When ideological fifth columns exist, international ideological enemies will possess an enhanced ability to affect others’ domestic politics

Leaders will want to minimize ties with states that possess a high capacity to subvert

Leaders will fear that the revolutions will spread as domestic fifth columns may be empowered and emboldened

Leaders will want to weaken, not support, international ideological enemies in order to decrease their inspirational value

Leaders may be fearful of antagonizing domestic rivals that are highly opposed to the frenemy alliance (double rebels)

Leaders will be mistrustful of those states that support ideological subversion abroad and will want to minimize interactions with them

Figure 1.3. The linkages between high levels of regime vulnerability and reduced likelihood of frenemies allying. The figure highlights the unique pathways that connect specific sources of regime vulnerability to a reduced likelihood of frenemy alliances. In all cases but those involving double rebels, the potential frenemy ally shares the ideology of the domestic threat. All of these sources of regime vulnerability could also reduce the likelihood of cross-ideological coalitions by incentivizing leaders to engage in ideologybased mobilization campaigns in an effort to rally their base against domestic rivals.

The likelihood of frenemies allying becomes even higher if these states’ leaders believe that their domestic interests are to some degree intercon­ nected, due to the existence of either some ideological commonalities or shared domestic ideological threats based on mutual hostility to a third ide­ ology. For example, the existence of ideological commonalities played an important role in the formation of a frenemy alliance between China and the United States in the late 1970s, as we shall see in chapter 3. Despite its profound ideological gap with the United States, China’s domestic mod­ ernization campaign initiated at the end of the 1970s (led, most notably, by Deng Xiaoping) produced for the first time an important degree of ideo­ logical overlap. The ideological agreement based on Deng’s preference to incorporate “market elements into China’s socialist system” incentivized cooperation based on China’s need to learn from the economic successes of the United States.63 Chinese leaders throughout the 1970s had always been pushed to ally with the United States due to the massive material threat posed by the Soviet Union. Alliance finally occurred beginning in 1979 when this threat was combined with a perceived interdependence of do­ mestic interests with the United States based on some ideological similari­ ties. Deng reportedly told his assistants after returning from his visit to the United States in early 1979, “If we look back, we find that all those

37

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[developing states] that were on the side of the United States have been successful [in modernizing], whereas all of these that were against the United States have not been successful. [Because we desire modernization], we shall be on the side of the United States.”64 Similar incentives for the creation of cross-ideological coalitions will exist when two ideological enemies are domestically vulnerable to a third ideol­ ogy. In this situation, ideological enemies will confront incentives to sup­ port the other’s regime—despite their ideological differences—to inhibit the spread of a more pressing domestic threat. Mutual fear of revolution to political Islam, for example, was central to the tight alliance formed be­ tween Iraq and Saudi Arabia in the wake of the Iranian Revolution in 1979.65 pa rti cu lar co n fi gu rati o n s o f i d eo lo g i c a l di stan ces am o n g th e po ten ti a l frene m y a l l i e s an d th eir sh ared materi a l th reat The second ideological variable that is critical to determining if ideological enemies are or are not likely to ally to contain a shared material threat is the particular configuration of ideological distances among the potential allies in a frenemy coalition and the state(s) against which the alliance is directed. In developing this variable, I stipulate a system of three powers: the initiat­ ing state, its potential frenemy ally, and their shared material threat. I then vary the ideological distances among these three countries from the initiat­ ing state’s perspective based on whether (1) the initiating state views its potential frenemy ally or the shared material threat as a greater, lesser, or equal ideological danger; (2) whether the initiating state and the material threat share an ideology; and (3) whether the potential frenemy ally and the material threat share an ideology. Based on these variations of ideological distances, five ideological configurations are possible. These configurations impact in major ways the likelihood of the initiating state pursuing an alli­ ance with the potential frenemy ally by affecting the perceived strength of the incentives pushing for an alliance or the perceived need to ally. Variations in ideological distances affect the need to commit to a frenemy alliance by (1) shaping the initiating state’s assessment of how menacing the material threat is compared to the potential frenemy ally and (2) affecting the initiating state’s assessment of how successful alterative security strategies to balancing and alliance formation—specifically buck-passing and band­ wagoning—are likely to be.66 To repeat, the variations in perceived need to commit to a frenemy alliance across the five ideological configurations exist despite the fact that the realist incentives for alliance are identical in all. In all five, the existence of a shared material threat created by a combination of power distributions, offensive capabilities, geographical closeness, and dis­ played aggressiveness results in strong incentives for the initiating state to pursue an alliance with the potential frenemy ally.

38

FRENEMY ALLIANCES

The first three ideological configurations decrease the perceived need for the initiating state to pursue a coalition with the potential frenemy ally. These three configurations thus add to the disincentives to frenemies ally­ ing that exist in a strictly bilateral context (i.e., the disincentives to coopera­ tion created by ideological enemies’ tendency to assume the worst about one another’s intentions). The reverse happens in the last two configura­ tions. In these, the particular ideological distances among the key actors add to the realist incentives pushing ideological enemies to ally, thereby increasing the likelihood of frenemy coalitions. In the first three ideological configurations, in other words, frenemy alliances are less likely than realist balancing theories predict; in the latter two, cross-ideological coalitions are more likely than realists anticipate. For a summary of how the ideological configurations impact alliance preferences, see figure 1.4. I also provide a more extensive summary of these configurations, including their core dy­ namics, rationale for predictions, and examples, in appendix A.

Configuration

Ideological betrayal

Divided threats

Ideological equidistance

Double threat

Ideological outsider

Core dynamic

Effect

Initiating state is being pushed for realist reasons to ally with an ideological enemy (the potential frenemy ally) against an ideologically similar state (the material threat).

Decreased need for frenemy alliances because of the initiating state’s ideological similarities with the material threat. Also enhanced ability for the material threat to adopt successful wedging polices based on appeals to ideological solidarity.

Initiating state’s greatest material danger (the material threat) and ideological danger (the potential frenemy ally) diverge

Decreased need for frenemy alliances due to the initialting state’s uncertainty over which rival (potential frenemy ally or material threat) is the greater overall danger. Also, enhanced ability for material threat to adopt successful wedging policies based on appeals to ideological commonalities.

Initiating state, potential frenemy ally, and material threat are all ideological enemies at roughly the same level of intensity

Decreased need for frenemy alliances due to the initiating state’s hope that its ideological rivals (potential frenemy ally and material threat) will concentrate their hostilities on one another while it sits on the sidelines.

Initiating state’s greatest material and ideological danger coincide in the material threat

Increased need for frenemy alliances because material and ideological variables work together to create very high threat perceptions for the initiating state that demand active balancing. Also, enhanced ability for the frenemy allies to adopt ideological bolstering policies.

Initiating state’s potential frenemy ally and material threat are ideologically similar

Increased need for frenemy alliances as the initiating state’s leaders feel the need to be particularly aggressive in pursuing a frenemy coalition in order to divide the ideologically similar states (potential frenemy ally and material threat).

Figure 1.4. The linkages between configurations of ideological distances and the probability of frenemies allying. The material incentives in all configurations are identical. The material threat pushes the initiating state to ally with the potential frenemy ally.

39

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Ideological Betrayal: A Frenemy Alliance against an Ideologically Similar State (Inhibits Alliance). The first ideological configuration that inhibits frenemies allying occurs when leaders in the initiating state are being pushed for real­ ist reasons to ally with an ideological enemy (the potential frenemy ally) against a state (the material threat) that is ideologically similar to theirs (the initiating state and the material threat share a unifying ideology). I call this configuration ideological betrayal. An example of it occurred in the 1930s when fascist Italy was being pushed by realist factors to ally with liberal France (the potential frenemy ally) against a fellow fascist state, Nazi Germany (the material threat). The dynamics of this ideological configuration are likely to lower the need for the initiating state to ally with the frenemy ally by significantly reducing the perceived danger posed by the material threat. The high ide­ ological similarities uniting the initiating state and the material threat in this situation will often result in high levels of trust and common interests that obviate the need for costly balancing policies, including allying with the potential frenemy ally. Expressed differently, in order for leaders in the initiating state to commit to a frenemy alliance in a configuration of ideological betrayal, they must set aside not only the repellent forces cre­ ated by ideological enmity with the potential frenemy ally but also the in­ centives for cooperation with the material threat that tend to result from shared ideological beliefs. These dual sets of incentives significantly re­ duce the likelihood of cross-ideological coalitions. Indeed, major common interests created by a shared ideology will create strong incentives for the initiating state to ally (bandwagon) with—not against—the material threat. In the example just given, Italian leader Benito Mussolini clearly recog­ nized the realist factors (which included Germany’s massive power advantages and major conflicts of interests between Germany and Italy over Austria) that were pushing Italy to ally with France against Germany.67 Yet the forces of attraction with ideologically similar Germany ultimately proved too powerful to be overcome. Mussolini believed that high levels of ideological commonalities between Italy and Germany created extensive common interests, including the same international enemies (chiefly com­ munist Soviet Union and France, especially when led by the socialistcommunist Popular Front coalition). Adolf Hitler, as Robert Whealey sum­ marizes, indicated to Mussolini that “he regarded ideology as the basis for an [alliance] agreement with Italy.” Mussolini responded in kind, including expressing in January 1936 his “great hope in creating a common front with Hitler against the democracy of England and France and against the com­ munism of the Soviet Union.” The Italian dictator explained in a January 1936 meeting with a German emissary, “Between Germany and Italy there is a common fate. That is becoming stronger and stronger. . . . Germany and

40

FRENEMY ALLIANCES

Italy are congruent cases. One day we shall meet whether we want to or not. But we want to! Because we must! . . . We have the same enemies, don’t we? And Russia! This Russian Army—Bolshevism. Only we know about it. I and Herr Hitler.”68 In November 1936, Mussolini declared the existence of the Rome-Berlin Axis, around which the other European countries rotated. One year later, Italy joined Germany and Japan in the Anti-Comintern Pact. In May 1939, Italian and German representatives signed the “Pact of Steel” alliance. Divided Threats: A Frenemy Alliance against a Lesser Ideological Danger (In­ hibits Alliance). A second ideological configuration that inhibits the creation of frenemy alliances refers to a situation when the initiating state is being pushed for realist reasons to ally with one ideological enemy (the potential frenemy ally) against another ideological enemy (the material threat) but the initiating state has more in common ideologically with the material threat. The material threat is a lesser ideological enemy based on some important ideo­ logical overlap, the potential frenemy ally a greater one. An example of this dynamic occurred in the 1930s when British and French conservatives were being pushed for realist reasons to ally with communist Soviet Union (the potential frenemy ally) against Nazi Germany (the material threat). Al­ though both states were ideological enemies of the Western democracies, British and French conservatives were crystal clear in their view that the Soviet Union was the greatest ideological enemy in the system. Fascist Ger­ many was a lesser ideological enemy based on a shared commitment to anticommunism. The central dynamic of this configuration is the divergence between a country’s greatest material and ideological dangers: the potential frenemy ally is the greatest ideological threat, and the material threat the most press­ ing material danger. It is for this reason that I label this configuration di­ vided threats. A configuration of divided threats reduces the need for the initiating state to commit to a coalition with the frenemy ally against the material threat by increasing the uncertainty over the relative dangers posed by these other countries. When states’ most pressing ideological and mate­ rial threats diverge, there is likely to be confusion and disagreement about which country is the greatest overall menace. Is it the state (the material threat) with the greater material capabilities to harm but with which there is some degree of shared ideological beliefs? Or is it the state (the potential frenemy ally) that is likely to be viewed as particularly untrustworthy and aggressive due to especially high levels of ideological disputes but possess­ ing less military power? Some leaders in the initiating state will likely be unable to definitively answer these questions, which will reduce the ur­ gency to actively balance the material threat. Other groups of elites in the

41

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initiating state will definitively answer these questions but will disagree on their responses: some will identify the material threat as their country’s greatest danger, while others will view the potential frenemy ally as the most menacing. This disagreement will reduce the initiating state’s ability to adopt consistent alliance policies as different groups of leaders are likely to push for opposing outcomes: some are likely to advocate allying with the potential frenemy ally against the material threat, while others will lobby for the reverse. The more elites are uncertain about and disagree over the primary dangers confronting their state and the appropriate responses to them, the less likely it is that the initiating state will be willing to incur the costs of balancing, including committing to an alliance with the poten­ tial frenemy ally.69 Buck-passing policies that aim to get other states to counter potential threats are more likely than active balancing in these circumstances. The uncertainty and disagreement over threats that exists when states’ greatest material and ideological dangers diverge in a configuration of di­ vided threats is illustrated by a debate in the British Foreign Ministry from 1937 to 1939, according to a summary by Zara Steiner, “over the relative dangers of the Fascist and Communist threats to the western democracies.” One faction argued that the Soviet Union—chiefly because of its particu­ larly disparate ideological beliefs—was the greater threat. The other argued that Germany was the chief danger due primarily to its greater extant capa­ bilities and geographical proximity. Critically, “no consensus emerged [out of this debate], making it difficult to arrive at a settled policy,” especially whether to ally with the Soviet Union against Germany.70 The perceived need to commit to frenemy alliances is also likely to be low during periods of divided threats as well as ideological betrayal because these configurations are particularly susceptible to what I call “ideological wedging” policies. Wedge strategies are efforts by states to prevent, weaken, or break up hostile coalitions.71 Ideological wedging policies are efforts by states to amplify the effects of ideological disputes to weaken or prevent frenemy coalitions in particular.72 The greater the opportunities for states to adopt successful ideological wedging policies, the more we should expect countries to try to take advantage of these opportunities, thereby further diminishing the likelihood of stable frenemy alliances in configurations of ideological betrayal and divided threats. The tactic by which a wedging state is likely to have the largest impact in shaping how others’ ideological disputes shape their alliance policies is based on the logic of communicative action and the processes of argumen­ tation and strategic framing. Numerous studies have shown that it is pos­ sible for one group of leaders to affect how others understand a situation depending on how the former frame an issue in the process of negotiating and in public diplomacy. Words, in short, can convince: how leaders negoti­ ate can change others’ bargaining positions.73

42

FRENEMY ALLIANCES

Given these relationships, if leaders in the material threat want to pre­ vent two ideological enemies from allying against their state, policies that are likely to help achieve this outcome are those that consistently frame negotiations and public diplomacy in ways that emphasize the ideological enmity between the potential allies. By stressing the importance of this par­ ticular ideological axis, the material threat can help make the ideological identities dividing the potential frenemy allies highly salient to their rela­ tions, which will help wedge them apart.74 German chancellor Otto von Bismarck, for example, consistently ap­ pealed in the 1870s and 1880s to monarchical solidarity to help prevent czarist Russia from forming a frenemy alliance with republican France against Germany. (Russia’s configuration of ideological distances in rela­ tion to the frenemy ally, France, and the material threat, Germany, was one of ideological betrayal because Russia and Germany were fellow monar­ chies.) These themes resonated with Russian elites and helped keep Russia allied with Germany and not France throughout Bismarck’s time in power.75 Similarly, Nazi leaders’ emphasis on anticommunism as a founda­ tion of their policies (which they repeatedly made not only publicly but also in private meetings with British and French officials throughout the 1930s) was to an important degree designed to validate and strengthen Western conservatives’ existing ideological aversion to allying with the So­ viet Union in a configuration of divided threats, as I detail in chapter 2. In these cases, leaders successfully tapped into and intensified particular axes of ideological enmity, thereby making committing to frenemy coalitions less likely. Strategic framing as a wedge strategy is most likely to succeed in ideo­ logical configurations of ideological betrayal and divided threats because in both of these situations the material threat possesses some degree of ide­ ological overlap with what I have labeled the initiating state. In configura­ tions of ideological betrayal, the material threat and the initiating state are ideologically similar regimes. During periods of divided threats, they are lesser ideological enemies (compared to the initiating state’s potential fren­ emy ally) that possess some ideological commonalities despite their major differences. In order for strategic framing to affect others’ policies, these arguments must resonate with the target; they must have “pertinence, rel­ evance, or significance.”76 The ideological agreement between the initiating state and the material threat in configurations of ideological betrayal and divided threats allows these requirements to be met. Leaders in these con­ figurations of ideological distances can emphasize the importance of ideo­ logical solidarity, ideological commonalities, or shared ideological enemies to try to convince elites in a target regime not to base their alliance policies on realist incentives but their ideological inclinations.77 Leaders can also try to wedge apart frenemy coalitions by targeting the argument’s other independent variable, levels of regime vulnerability.

43

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Elites in the wedging state can try to intensify fears of regime vulnerability in the target by stressing the ideological threat’s subversive intent and abil­ ity. For example, the Nazis in the 1930s repeatedly emphasized in their dis­ cussions with British and French officials the dangers posed by the likely spread of communism throughout Europe. Such emphasis may push lead­ ers in the target regime to intensify their focus on (and even exaggerate) the domestic dangers created by the existence of ideological fifth columns, suc­ cessful revolutions in other countries, and efforts by another state to spread its ideology. A Frenemy Alliance in a Condition of Ideological Equidistance (Inhibits Alli­ ance). In the third configuration of ideological distances that reduces the likelihood of cross-ideological coalitions, the initiating state is being pushed for realist reasons to ally with one ideological enemy (the potential frenemy ally) against another equally divergent one (the material threat), and these latter two states are themselves fierce ideological rivals. I label this configuration ideological equidistance. Here, the three states are ideological enemies of one another at roughly the same level of intensity. Very little, if any, ideo­ logical affinity exists among them. An example of this configuration oc­ curred in Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries among leaders in Catholic, Lutheran, and Calvinist states, all of whom viewed one another as intense ideological enemies. A configuration of ideological equidistance reduces the need for the initi­ ating state to commit to cross-ideological coalitions by increasing the likeli­ hood that buck-passing policies will succeed in advancing this country’s interests. Buck-passing policies are efforts by countries to get others to pay for the realization of shared interests. The greater their likely success, the lower the incentives for leaders in the initiating state to engage in costly balancing policies, including allying with the potential frenemy ally. When a state confronts multiple varieties of ideological enemies, as is the case in a configuration of ideological equidistance, a hope is created that does not exist when confronting only one set of ideological rivals: that all its ideological enemies will balance each other while it remains free of en­ tangling commitments. The ideal is not so much that other powers—in a generic sense—will pay the costs of balancing (elites will not want to see ideologically similar states weakened, which will limit the incentives to buck-pass to these countries). Instead, leaders will hope that representa­ tives of the other ideologies will do the dirty work of balancing each other. Thus, for example, those French leaders in the 1930s who preferred buckpassing policies did not want to see Britain, a fellow liberal power, weak­ ened. Many did, though, want fascist Germany and communist Russia to contain one another by focusing their enmity on each other. During periods of ideological equidistance, policymakers in the initiat­ ing state will have good reason to expect that the material threat and

44

FRENEMY ALLIANCES

potential frenemy ally will concentrate their hostilities on one another be­ cause of these countries’ ideological enmity. The initiating state’s leaders will also possess no significant ideological attraction with these countries that could facilitate cooperation or push them to be more sympathetic to one rival over another. The initiating state’s leaders, in other words, are likely to be highly hostile to and mistrustful of both the material threat and the potential frenemy ally—and therefore desirous of their weakening— and also inclined to believe that these other countries will do the dirty work of containing one another. This combination creates powerful incentives for elites to prefer buck-passing over balancing policies. An ideologically equidistant configuration helps explain widespread buck-passing as opposed to balancing among Lutheran, Calvinist, and Catholic powers during the wars of religion in the sixteenth century. The balancing process among these countries became noticeably less efficient with more buck-passing after the emergence of Calvinism as a third rival ideology in the mid-1500s. Although both Lutherans and Calvinists op­ posed Catholicism, they also viewed one another as fierce ideological ri­ vals, even as “heretics.”78 All Protestant powers—both Lutheran and Calvinist—had an interest in blocking Catholic Hapsburg supremacy, which was the greatest danger in terms of capabilities. (The Hapsburg fam­ ily ruled in Spain, Portugal, and Central Europe and threatened to gain su­ premacy in France as well.) However, after the Peace of Augsburg in 1555 between Catholics and Lutherans (Calvinists were deliberately excluded) that committed rulers to stop aiding co-ideologues in other states, Lutheran powers had good reason to expect that their ideological enemies would weaken one another, which was their ideal outcome. Lutheran powers’ dominant strategy after this date was thus, not surprisingly, not to balance the Hapsburg threat by forming frenemy alliances with Calvinist countries. They instead were largely content to buck-pass the balancing of Hapsburg states to their other ideological enemy, letting Calvinist states do most of the fighting until the 1620s.79 In contrast to the preceding, two of the five configurations of ideological distances among potential allies in a frenemy coalition and their shared material threat facilitate the formation of an alliance. Here, international ideological configurations, paradoxically, incentivize cooperation among ideological enemies. These configurations add to the material incentives that are pushing ideological enemies to ally, thereby making frenemy coali­ tions more likely than both realist balancing theories and other ideological arguments predict.80 Double Threat: A Frenemy Alliance against a Greater Ideological Danger (Fa­ cilitates Alliance). In the fourth configuration, the initiating state is being pushed for realist reasons to ally with an ideological enemy (the potential frenemy ally) against a state (the material threat) that is a greater ideological

45

CHAPTER 1

rival than the potential ally. I label this configuration double threat because at these times the initiating state’s most pressing ideological and material dangers coincide in the state that is the material threat. The initiating state has no, or only minimal, ideological commonalities with the material threat. In contrast, the potential frenemy ally and initiating state possess an impor­ tant area of ideological agreement, making the former a lesser ideological rival. An example of this configuration occurred during the Cold War when Saudi Arabia was being pushed by realist variables to ally with liberal United States (the potential frenemy ally) against communist Soviet Union (the material threat). Although the ideological gap separating the “theocratic-monarchical” Saudi regime from the United States was very large, Saudi leaders viewed atheistic communism as a greater ideological danger than liberalism.81 Despite their differences, Saudi and US leaders agreed that communism was a greater ideological threat than their ideolo­ gies were to one another. In a configuration of double threat, ideological and material variables work together to make the material threat especially dangerous to the initi­ ating state. The state with the greatest capacity to harm will also likely be viewed by the initiating state as particularly hostile and untrustworthy be­ cause of its disparate ideological beliefs. The greater the perceived threat, the stronger the need for extensive balancing policies, including allying with (lesser) ideological enemies. At the same time that a configuration of double threat enhances the per­ ceived need for the creation of frenemy coalitions by making the level of international threats particularly high, it also lowers the ideological barri­ ers to cross-ideological alliances. The differences that divide ideological en­ emies in a strictly bilateral relationship will tend to become less salient when a state dedicated to even more divergent principles is added to lead­ ers’ calculations. When greater ideological enemies exist, lesser ideological rivals are likely to emphasize the ideological commonalities that unite them rather than the differences that divide them, which facilitates cooperation. When ideological rivals view themselves as lesser ideological enemies in relation to greater ones, they will also possess more common interests than they would in other ideological contexts, chiefly mutual ideology-based en­ mity toward another country. To realists, lesser material threats are likely to ally against greater ones. A similar logic applies to relations among lesser ideological rivals in relation to states they judge to be greater ideological dangers. Finally, the likelihood of cross-ideological coalitions forming in configura­ tions of double threat is increased because potential frenemy allies in this situation are susceptible to “ideological bolstering” policies. These policies adhere to a similar dynamic as ideological wedging tactics but for the op­ posite outcome: the strengthening of cross-ideological alliances rather than their weakening. Because members of a frenemy coalition in a configuration

46

FRENEMY ALLIANCES

of double threat are ideologically closer to one another than they are to their shared material danger, leaders of these states can use the logics of commu­ nicative action and strategic framing to reinforce the saliency of their ideo­ logical commonalities and shared ideological hostility to the material threat. The more salient these ideological axes are to decision-making, the tighter the frenemy alliance is likely to be. The incentives and developments created by a configuration of double threat that facilitate cross-ideological coalitions help explain why the USSaudi frenemy alliance during the Cold War was so durable. Although the United States and Saudi Arabia were dedicated to very different ideological principles, leaders in both countries agreed that the Soviet Union was a greater ideological danger than they were to one another. Mutual hostility to communism made the shared danger posed by the USSR particularly high. Rather than preventing a US-Saudi coalition, ideological calculations thus powerfully reinforced the realist reasons pushing for it. According to Rachel Bronson, “because Soviet-inspired Communism was based on a hostility toward religious belief, the more religious a country, the more likely it would be to rail against Communism and look toward the United States. . . . Saudi Arabia, a deeply religious state, was [for the Americans] the perfect prophylactic against the spread of Communism and [thus] a natural American partner.”82 US policymakers endeavored to amplify the ideological incentives for the US-Saudi alliance by repeatedly stressing the importance of their states’ shared antipathy to communism. The Reagan administration was especially clear how the religiosity of Saudi Arabia could help roll back Soviet influence. A 1986 interagency meeting concluded that “our best bet, in a long term PD [public diplomacy] strategy, is to make Commu­ nism the issue. . . . We should stress the diametrical opposition of Com­ munist and Islamic values. . . . Such an approach should strike a resonant chord in the strongly anti-Communist Arabian peninsula as well as ap­ peal to pious Muslims generally who should be reminded of the USSR’s militant atheism.”83 This public diplomacy tactic was the essence of ideo­ logical bolstering in a configuration of double threat. It emphasized par­ ticular ideological relationships to strengthen the ideological bonds—and thus the frenemy alliance—among lesser ideological rivals against a greater one.84 An Ideological Outsider: A Frenemy Alliance When Confronting Ideologically Similar Rivals (Facilitates Alliance). In the fifth configuration, the initiating state is being pushed for realist reasons to ally with one ideological enemy (the potential frenemy ally) against another (the material threat), both of which are dedicated to similar ideological beliefs. In this configuration, the initi­ ating state is an ideological outsider, ideologically isolated from the mate­ rial threat and potential frenemy ally. France’s relations with Germany and

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Russia in the decades before World War I are an example of this ideological configuration: realist calculations were strongly pushing republican France to ally with Russia (the frenemy ally) against Germany (the material threat), and the latter were ideologically similar (both were monarchies). When the initiating state is an ideological outsider, its potential fren­ emy ally confronts a shared material threat, but the initiating state’s lead­ ers are likely to doubt that the potential frenemy ally will reliably help counter it. The initiating state’s leaders are instead likely to anticipate co­ operation between the other two countries because they are ideologically similar. Buck-passing in this situation would be risky. To attempt to freeride when others are more likely to cooperate with than balance one another is likely to reinforce the initiating state’s isolation and thus the dangers it confronts. The initiating state’s concerns will increase its need to ally with the potential frenemy ally, both to balance the material threat and to ensure that the material threat and potential frenemy ally remain divided. The incentives created by being an ideological outsider, in other words, are those of divide and balance. One country that is ideologically different from the other two key countries tries to separate them to weaken the threat it confronts. The initiating state’s objective of allying with the potential frenemy ally will be difficult to realize, however. When the initiating state is an ideo­ logical outsider, it has increased incentives to ally with the potential fren­ emy ally. The potential frenemy ally, though, will be reluctant to commit to this coalition because it will typically be operating in a configuration of ideological betrayal because of its ideological similarities with the mate­ rial threat. (A configuration of ideological betrayal occurs when a fren­ emy alliance is directed at an ideologically similar state.) Thus, for the potential frenemy ally to ally with the initiating state against the material threat, it will have to set aside both repellant forces created by ideological disputes with the initiating state and attractive forces created by ideologi­ cal similarities with the material threat. Given these twin barriers to cross-ideological alliance from the potential frenemy ally’s perspective, the initiating state needs to be particularly aggressive in reaching out to the potential frenemy ally, likely even offering extensive security commit­ ments. Being an ideological outsider, paradoxically, creates ideologybased incentives for the aggressive pursuit of alliances with ideological enemies. The origins of the Franco-Russian alliance in 1894 from France’s perspec­ tive illustrate these dynamics. French elites were convinced that the ideo­ logical similarities uniting Russia (the potential frenemy ally) and Germany (the material threat) would be a powerful source of cooperation between the two monarchical powers. To create a frenemy alliance with Russia while preventing a German-Russian rapprochement based on these states’

48

FRENEMY ALLIANCES

ideological similarities, French leaders believed that they had to be espe­ cially aggressive in their outreach, committing not just to the defense of Russia but to the support of Russian offensive aims in the Balkans. As Georges Michon summarizes, to “detach Russia from Germany,” the French “had to offer sufficient inducements to the Tsar to compensate him for the loss of German friendship. These concessions . . . completely reassured the Tsar as to his interests in the Near East being safeguarded since France . . . would afford armed support for Russia’s Balkan ambitions.”85 This analysis indicates that the Franco-Russian alliance is not as clear-cut of a victory for realist understandings of alliance formation as it might ap­ pear. Russian leaders may have allied with France against Germany based primarily on the strength of realist incentives and the logic of realpolitik. But this decision was made much easier because France was extra solici­ tous in its offers of security cooperation, and these policies were largely a product of the effects of the ideological configuration among the great pow­ ers from France’s perspective.

Predictions about the Likelihood of Frenemy Alliances This section predicts the likelihood of cross ideological coalitions when combining the effects of the two independent variables.86 Although regime vulnerability is best conceptualized as a continuous variable that depends on the number and intensity of the key sources of this variable, for ease of prediction it can be dichotomized into categories of “high” and “low” (see below for how I operationalize these categories). There are five different configurations of ideological distances among potential frenemy allies and their shared material threat. These, though, can be collapsed into two cate­ gories: those configurations that increase or decrease the likelihood of cross-ideological coalitions. Although this maneuver loses important differ­ ences among the configurations (which I capture in the narrative), it allows for the creation of a two-by-two table and the advantages of predictions and recall that these tables tend to generate. These predictions are summa­ rized in table 1.1. As explained, the two main pathways that connect the independent variables to changes in the probability of frenemy alliances forming are the anticipated costs and perceived need of these coalitions. High levels of re­ gime vulnerability in relation to the potential frenemy ally’s ideology make the government’s anticipated domestic costs of committing to this alliance high. Low levels of regime vulnerability result in low domestic costs of committing to the alliance. When a country’s configuration of ide­ ological distances with the potential frenemy ally and material threat are ones of ideological betrayal, divided threats, or ideological equidistance, the ideology-based need to create a frenemy coalition is low. This

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Table 1.1. Predictions Domestic costs of frenemy alliances created by level of regime vulnerabilitya Low costs

High costs

Ideology-based “need” to commit to frenemy alliances based on configurations of ideological distances High needb (1) Frenemy alliance likely (3) Indeterminate

Low needc (2) Hedging policies toward potential frenemy ally and material threat likely (4) Frenemy alliance unlikely

a

High levels of regime vulnerability create high domestic costs for frenemy alliances with states that share the ideology of the domestic threat. Low levels of regime vulnerability create low domestic costs for these alliances. b The configurations of ideological distances that produce high ideology-based need for frenemy alliances are ones of double threat and being an ideological outsider. c The configurations of ideological distances that produce low ideology-based need for frenemy alliances are ones of ideological betrayal, divided threats, and ideological equidistance.

perception offsets to a significant degree the need to ally created by shared material threats, which are pushing for the creation of frenemy coalitions in all instances. When a state’s ideological configuration with the potential frenemy ally and material threat are ones of double threat or being an ide­ ological outsider, the ideology-based need to commit to the frenemy alli­ ance is high, which augments the material incentives working for this outcome. The predictions based on different combinations of these variables in cells 1 and 4 in table 1.1 are straightforward and compelling. In cell 1, low levels of regime vulnerability and ideological configurations of double threat or ideological outsider make the domestic costs associated with join­ ing a frenemy alliance low and the ideology-based need to join high. The incentives created by these outcomes make commitment to a frenemy alli­ ance the dominant outcome. When costs are low and need is high, leaders are very likely to ally with an ideological enemy to counter a shared mate­ rial danger. Britain’s and France’s alliance with czarist Russia before World War I exemplify these dynamics. In cell 4, high levels of regime vulnerability and ideological configura­ tions of ideological betrayal, divided threats, or ideological equidistance make the domestic costs associated with allying with a state that shares the ideology of the domestic threat high and the ideology-based need to ally low. In this situation, a frenemy alliance is unlikely. When the costs to vital interests created by allying are believed to be substantial and the perceived need to adopt this policy is in significant doubt, elites are unlikely to opt for this choice. British and French conservatives’ intense aversion to allying with the Soviet Union in the 1930s illustrate these dynamics.

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Predictions in cells 2 and 3 are more complicated because the incentives created by the argument’s two independent variables are pushing in differ­ ent directions. In cell 2, ideological configurations of ideological betrayal, divided threats, or ideological equidistance make the initiating state’s ideology-based need to commit to a frenemy coalition low, while low levels of regime vulnerability make the likely domestic costs created by close ties with an ideological enemy small. Core dynamics of this cell for the initiat­ ing state are high uncertainty over threats and high flexibility in alliance partners. Uncertainty over threats is high because material variables push for active balancing against the material threat, while ideological configura­ tions offset this need. Alliance flexibility is also high because the domestic costs created by allying with ideological enemies are low. When this is the case, leaders’ alliance choices are less constrained by the effects of ideologi­ cal differences. Here, “hedging” policies are likely to be the dominant outcome. ChengChwee Kuik defines hedging as “insurance-seeking behavior under highstakes and uncertain situations, where a sovereign actor pursues a bundle of opposite and deliberately ambiguous policies vis-à-vis competing pow­ ers to prepare a fallback position should circumstances change. The aim of these contradictory acts is to acquire as many returns from different powers as possible when relations are positive, while simultaneously seeking to offset longer-term risks that might arise.”87 Hedging policies are defined by their ambiguity and flexibility of partners, which match the alliance incen­ tives of cell 2. Applied to my argument, a hedging state would not form a tight alliance with either the potential frenemy ally or the material threat. It would in­ stead opt for more ambiguous policies, including making supportive com­ ments regarding the interests of both countries and engaging in security cooperation with both. The goal of these hedging policies is to buy time to determine if either the material threat or potential frenemy ally becomes a more certain danger that requires more forceful and definitive balancing. Bismarck’s offers in the late 1880s of security cooperation to both Russia (an ideologically similar regime but a material threat) and Britain (a potential frenemy ally) to restrain both states are an example of hedging policies in the situation I describe.88 At the same time, for example, that Germany and Russia signed the Reinsurance Treaty (which committed the two to benevo­ lent neutrality should the other become involved in a war with a third country as long as Germany did not attack France or Russia attack AustriaHungary), “the British connection became of ever-greater importance to Bismarck, and perhaps the more so after he had made his secret [Reinsur­ ance] treaty with Russia in June [1887].” Bismarck at this time helped bro­ ker the Second Mediterranean Agreement, which committed Britain, along with German allies Italy and Austria-Hungary, to preserve the status quo in

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the Mediterranean in the face of Russia revisionism. The result of Bis­ marck’s decisions to “lean” toward Britain while maintaining security ties with Russia was a number of opposing policies that created uncertainty over which side Germany would take in a conflict.89 This ambiguity and flexibility are the essence of hedging tactics. As Paul Kennedy summarizes, “with one hand, he [Bismarck] waved the Russians forward [by telling Rus­ sian leaders that he would not oppose annexation of Bulgaria]; but with his other hand, he secretly ensured that there would be sufficient opposition to make them hesitate about moving at all.”90 Hedging policies are particularly likely during periods of divided threats (when the uncertainty between the dangers posed by the material threat and potential frenemy ally is most clearly on display) and ideological equi­ distance. The latter is a game of triangular politics among three competing, equally divergent ideological groups. In this configuration, leaders could reasonably conclude that having some cooperative relations with the other two key actors is the best way of avoiding pushing the latter together while increasing the likelihood that they focus their enmity on one another. Hedg­ ing policies in a configuration of ideological equidistance, in other words, could ensure that one state has better relations with the other two rivals than they have with each other, thereby making the latter’s enmity dominant. The dynamics of cell 3 are the most complex and therefore the most dif­ ficult to predict. In this cell, the trade-offs between leaders’ two most im­ portant political interests—the protection of the security of their state and the preservation of their political power and the regime type they support—are particularly stark. High levels of regime vulnerability are likely to make the anticipated domestic costs associated with frenemy alli­ ances substantial. The ideology-based need to commit to these coalitions will, however, also be great due to the effects created by configurations of double threat and being an ideological outsider. Given these competing forces, leaders operating in cell 3 are likely to be convinced of the need to commit to a frenemy alliance to protect their state’s security but will be fearful that a coalition with a state that shares the ideology of the domestic threat will subvert the regime. Given the extreme importance that leaders place on protecting both the security of their state and the continuation of their regime, it is not clear which of these outcomes they will tend to privilege. Alliance policies will depend on which set of threats (to the state or to the regime) leaders deem greater and more pressing. Soviet leaders’ and French socialists’ alliance policies in the 1930s illustrate these opposing outcomes. Both sets of leaders were ideological outsiders in relation to other great powers (fascist Italy and fascist Germany for French socialists, all the other “capitalist” great powers for the Soviets), which made the ideology-based need to form fren­ emy alliances high.91 Levels of regime vulnerability (fear of the domestic

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spread of fascism for the French and capitalism for the Soviets) were also high, which made the domestic costs of frenemy coalitions great. Soviet leaders set aside these domestic risks and actively pursued crossideological alliances. French socialists, in contrast, privileged these domes­ tic costs and thus refused to work for a frenemy alliance with Italy because it shared the ideology of the domestic threat (fascism). It was these costs that Prime Minister Léon Blum was referring to when explaining to a French senator why an alliance with Italy was unacceptable: “I am the leader of the Popular Front [coalition of socialists and communists]. . . . For this action, you need another Prime Minister and another majority.”92

Alternative Explanations of Alliance Failure There are other explanations besides my own that can potentially account for states failing to ally even in the face of strong material incentives to do so. The most prominent of these are various realist arguments that attribute alliance failure to incentives to buck-pass due to effects of material vari­ ables, lack of elite consensus on key foreign policy issues, and worries about activating the security dilemma. If my explanations of alliance failure are correct, these alternative accounts are wrong or at the very least missing major pieces of the analytical puzzle. The objective of buck-passing is to get other countries to pay the costs of containing shared dangers. These policies are therefore the opposite of bal­ ancing through alliances. Instead of countering threats by committing to the defense of other states and working in concert with them, buck-passing is based on sitting on the sidelines while others bear the burdens of balancing. To structural or neorealists, power multipolarity is the key condition that makes widespread buck-passing likely. Multipolar systems create incen­ tives for buck-passing because in these types of worlds leaders of each of the key states recognize that there are other countries that are capable of balancing threats. Each will hope that others assume the costs of countering dangers while the former enjoy the benefits. Because all states will be tempted to adopt buck-passing policies in multipolar worlds, the result will be that effective balances against shared international dangers will go undersupplied. Perceptions of defense dominance, as some realists note, will reinforce the incentives to buck-pass. Confidence in the superiority of the defense boosts states’ security, thereby lowering the need to increase military spending and make alliance commitments.93 My argument attributes leaders’ unwillingness to commit to alliances with ideological enemies in favor of buck-passing policies to the effects of particular configurations of ideological distances, especially the incentives created by configurations of divided threats and ideological equidistance.

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I contend that leaders’ core objective in these configurations is not so much to get other powers, generally speaking, to pay the costs of balancing shared dangers. Elites will not want to see ideologically similar states weakened, which will limit the incentives to buck-pass to these countries. Leaders will instead hope that representatives of other ideologies will do the dirty work of balancing one another. The ideological incentives for buck-passing are strong in a configuration of ideological equidistance be­ cause leaders in this situation confront multiple, equally divergent ideo­ logical dangers that they will want to see weakened. They will also have good reason to expect that these states will concentrate their hostilities on one another because of their own ideological enmity, which will increase the anticipated success of buck-passing. The ideological incentives for buck-passing are strong in a configuration of divided threats because poli­ cymakers in this situation are likely to be uncertain about which rival, the material threat or potential frenemy ally, is the greater overall danger. This uncertainty reduces the perceived need to engage in costly balancing poli­ cies in favor of buck-passing. I judge the accuracy of the two competing explanations of buck-passing by analyzing the conditions that inform the different predictions. Structural realists such as Mearsheimer claim that leaders are more or less likely to choose buck-passing in relation to balancing policies based primarily on the values of two variables: the availability of effective “buck catchers” and the size of the material threat posed by rivals.94 With regard to the former, if there are no other countries that can plausibly balance a potential aggres­ sor, or if potential buck catchers are less immediately threatened than one’s own state because of geographical distance, then relying on buck-passing policies for security makes little sense from a realist perspective. For buckpassing to have a reasonable likelihood of succeeding, there must be at least one other country that is not only able to balance potential threats but also inclined to do so because the danger to it is greater. It would have been ir­ rational for the French leaders in the 1930s, for example, to buck-pass to the United States the costs of balancing Nazi Germany. Although the United States had the power to do so, its geographic position meant that it was much less directly threatened than France. By the time Germany presented a clear and present danger to the United States, France most likely would have already been defeated. The other variable that is central to structural realist arguments in deter­ mining when leaders are likely to choose buck-passing or alliances to con­ tain a potential aggressor is threat level. The greater the material danger posed by a particular country, the riskier buck-passing policies become as their probability of success shrinks. As material threats increase, leaders confront growing incentives not to rely on buck-passing to protect their state’s security but to instead band together with others to counter the dan­ ger.95 I have already discussed the primary variables that determine threat

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level to realist balancing theories: power differentials, geographic proxim­ ity, offensive capabilities (which include the offense-defense balance), and displayed aggressiveness. The preceding points help judge the accuracy of realist buck-passing ar­ guments in relation to my own. If leaders opt for buck-passing over alliance commitments either under conditions of high threat (as determined by real­ ist variables) or when other countries are unlikely or unable to be effective buck catchers, there is good reason to doubt structural realism’s ability to best explain these choices.96 My argument is further supported when lead­ ers’ puzzling choices from a realist perspective are coupled with evidence that points to the centrality of ideological calculations to these decisions. The most important evidence is if policymakers explicitly attribute buckpassing policies to an effort to weaken other states not regardless of ideo­ logical relationships but precisely because these countries are ideological enemies, if leaders buck-pass primarily only to ideological enemies while making security commitments to ideologically similar states, or if changes in the configurations of ideological distances among states (such as a shift from divided threats to double threat) result in very different levels of bal­ ancing and buck-passing even when material variables are held largely constant. Randall L. Schweller’s neoclassical realist theory of “underbalancing” is a second potential alternative explanation of alliance failure. I say “poten­ tial” alternative account because under particular circumstances Schweller’s argument and mine are complementary. Schweller argues that whether or not states effectively counter dangers to their security depends largely on the potency of various domestic con­ straints.97 Schweller labels “elite consensus” in particular “the most neces­ sary of necessary causes of balancing behavior.”98 To Schweller, in order for a government to assume the major costs that balancing requires, there must be widespread agreement among decision makers on the need for these policies. Specifically, leaders must concur on the nature and magni­ tude of the external threat and the most effective ways to deal with it. Without consensus on these key issues, a government will lack the politi­ cal will that is required to pay the high costs of balancing. Underbalancing (which occurs when states need to increase military spending or form alli­ ances to deter or defeat an enemy but fail to do so) is the most likely out­ come in this situation. If domestic constraints prohibit states from forming alliances in the face of international dangers, and if these domestic constraints are not a product of ideological calculations, then Schweller’s neoclassical real­ ist argument provides a better explanation than my own for these outcomes. As the emphasized clause in the previous sentence implies, Schweller’s argument and mine are not necessarily opposed. To the contrary, they are complementary if ideological variables create the domestic barriers to

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alliance—including lack of elite consensus regarding the perceived need and appropriate means of containing threats—that inform Schweller’s analysis. I believe that this is frequently the case. (Schweller, though, im­ plicitly rejects this assertion because he spends almost no time analyzing how the effects of ideological variables might be a key source of the domes­ tic barriers to balancing.)99 Different configurations of ideological distances play a central role in how leaders understand dangers and supports to their state’s security. A critical implication of this claim is that different ideologi­ cal groups from the same country at the same time are likely to disagree on which states are threats, the size of dangers they pose, and which countries make acceptable allies to counter them. The more leaders disagree on these issues due to their ideological differences, the more alliances (at least with ideological enemies) will be the object of intense domestic contestation. At the extreme, the enemy of one elite ideological group will be the preferred ally of another, and vice versa. In this situation, each group will try to veto the other’s alliance preferences, with political paralysis or inconsistency, as opposed to effective balancing, the likely result. French policies in the 1930s offer a good example of these problems. The French government throughout the decade was riven by political instabil­ ity (France had twenty-one different governments in the 1930s) and relatively evenly divided between rival ideological groups. French conser­ vatives wanted an alliance with fascist Italy to balance Germany while opposing for most of the decade an alliance with the Soviet Union. French socialists and communists possessed the opposite alliance preferences. The result was alliance with neither Italy nor the Soviet Union as each ideologi­ cal group blocked the realization of the other’s preference. As the historian Robert Young explains, “confronted by diplomatic advice to consolidate the alliance with Soviet Russia, and by equally authoritative advice to forge a bond with Fascist Italy, [the French] governments of the 1930s hesi­ tated. . . . They could predict the divisiveness which a decision [for Italy or the Soviet Union] would cause .  .  . from the benches on the left or from those on the right.”100 My argument, in sum, explains a central reason why elites will tend to disagree on the issues that make effective balancing likely. When ideological differences among groups of leaders are the key cause of dissensus on balancing strategies and thus ultimately alliance failure, I judge my argument supported. A third alternative explanation for leaders’ decision not to form alliances in response to a potential threat is based on the insights of the security di­ lemma and the spiral model of conflict.101 The spiral model asserts that war is possible even among states that have no aggressive intentions. A country may augment its power by increasing military expenditures and forming new alliances solely for the purposes of enhanced defense and the better protection of its security. But if others perceive these actions as a prelude to aggression, they may feel compelled to adopt power-enhancing policies of

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their own, which will scare the first state, and so on. As a product of this cycle, leaders’ efforts to enhance their country’s safety will result in a situa­ tion in which all are less secure. Some realists (often called defensive realists) believe that policymakers can avoid this tragic outcome, at least in certain circumstances. To defen­ sive realists, the intensity of the security dilemma is not fixed. As it varies, so, too, should leaders’ willingness to engage in cooperative and competi­ tive policies, with the latter including alliance formation.102 From a defensive realist perspective, the key variables that allow the magnitude of the security dilemma to vary are the offense-defense balance and offense-defense differentiation.103 When the defense has the advantage and defensive weapons are distinguishable from offensive ones, the inten­ sity of the security dilemma is low. At these times, leaders are likely to judge that their country would be safer if they chose not to increase its mili­ tary capabilities, including by allying with ideological enemies. By eschew­ ing alliances, elites could increase their odds of escaping the spiral model of conflict. In order for defensive realists’ insights into the security dilemma to best explain leaders’ decision not to commit to international alliances, elites must reference fears of unnecessarily provoking another country as the central motivation for their decision, and these fears must be rooted in the effects of the offense-defense balance and differentiation. If, however, elites attribute their worries about unnecessarily provoking another state by allying against it to ideological calculations, I deem my argument sup­ ported. Two possibilities in this area are particularly likely. First, leaders in the initiating state, because of ideological similarities with the material threat in configurations of ideological betrayal and divided threats, could believe that the material threat has largely limited ambitions, which would make alliances against it unnecessary and counterproductive. Using ide­ ologies to judge intentions is an example, according to Charles Glaser, of relying “on sources of information beyond those that structural realism allows . . . to reduce uncertainty further and thereby mitigate the security dilemma.”104 Second, policymakers could subscribe to what some scholars have la­ beled the “war-revolution nexus.”105 This concept refers to leaders’ fears that the costs and hardships of international war will significantly increase the likelihood of revolution by creating or empowering domestic revolu­ tionary groups. If elites oppose allying with an ideological enemy not only because they fear that this choice will increase the likelihood of an unnec­ essary war (the spiral model of conflict) but also because they believe war is likely to result revolution, I judge my argument supported. In these instances, fears of unnecessarily provoking another state based on the workings of the spiral model of conflict and my argument that attributes alliance failure to the effects of regime vulnerability are complementary

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due to the perceived interconnectedness of alliances and war on one hand and war and revolution on the other. Although leaders who believe in connections among alliances, war, and revolution should be reluctant to form alliances with all states, not just with ideological enemies, the barriers to frenemy coalitions should be particu­ larly powerful for these elites. If policymakers in one state fear that war will propagate a rival ideology, they are likely to be highly suspicious of the in­ tentions of another country that is dedicated to this ideology. Specifically, the first state’s leaders are likely to believe that the other country has an interest in provoking international conflict because this will increase the probability of its ideology spreading. This opinion will push elites in the first state to view the second one as an unreliable partner with which it is particularly risky to ally.

Methods operatio nali zati o n o f va ri a bles The argument has two independent variables: levels of regime vulnerabil­ ity in particular states and configurations of ideological distances among potential frenemy allies and their shared material threat. I argue above that levels of regime vulnerability in relation to a potential frenemy ally will primarily be determined by three factors: the existence of powerful domes­ tic revolutionary groups in a state, successful revolutions abroad by propo­ nents of the potential frenemy ally’s ideology, and ideological promotion by the potential frenemy ally. Although regime vulnerability is an inher­ ently subjective variable that expresses policymakers’ beliefs about their country’s susceptibility to major ideological changes, the clear and power­ ful incentives created by these three factors are likely to strongly push lead­ ers’ subjective perceptions of regime vulnerability to track more objective determinants of it. The more of these three factors that are present, the more elites are likely to fear for the continuation of their regime and thus the higher the costs of cross-ideological alliances. If none of these three sources of regime vulnerability exist, this variable will be low. For regime vulnera­ bility to be high, powerful revolutionary forces most likely must be in play as the other two sources of regime vulnerability amplify the effects created by this factor. All three of the sources of regime vulnerability can be operationalized in a straightforward manner, especially whether other countries recently ex­ perienced changes in regimes due to revolutionary pressures and whether one ideological rival is endeavoring to subvert another (e.g., by rhetorically delegitimizing the target and/or providing rhetorical, financial, or military support to ideological allies [fifth columns] in this state).106 I deem a

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powerful revolutionary group at the elite level to exist when a rival domes­ tic ideological party or faction possesses sufficient political power to affect policy, either negatively (by blocking the preferences of the dominant group or forcing it to adjust its policies in significant ways to counter a perceived threat) or positively (by implementing its own agenda, at least in some key instances).107 To be clear, a revolutionary group is not necessarily violent, nor is it an ordinary rival domestic party. It is a rival party that is dedicated to vastly different ideological principles than a state’s dominant decision makers and seeks to replace the existing ideological order with its own. Because of these objectives, the dominant ideological group will view the revolutionary party as illegitimate and lacking the right to rule. A revolu­ tionary group that is an ideological fifth column shares the ideology of the potential frenemy ally; a group of double rebels does not. I judge a powerful revolutionary group at the societal level to exist when a movement that is ideologically opposed to the regime is sufficiently orga­ nized and motivated to engage in mass protests involving thousands of people and/or an armed uprising against the government. The Nazis’ at­ tempted Beer Hall Putsch in 1923, Iranian communists’ organizing in 1979 hundreds of thousands of demonstrators and the assassination of some of Ayatollah Khomeini’s supporters, and Islamists’ seizure in 1979 of the Grand Mosque in Saudi Arabia and the organization of violent protests among the kingdom’s Shia population are examples of developments that revealed powerful revolutionary groups that threatened their ruling regime. The other independent variable is particular configurations of ideologi­ cal distances among potential frenemy allies and their shared material threat. In judging it, I recognize, following Peter Katzenstein, that identities “cannot be stipulated deductively. They must be investigated empirically in concrete historical settings.”108 Thus, although I define leaders’ ideolo­ gies as their principles of governance, any principle that organizes statesociety relations can be a component of these beliefs. Which ones constitute leaders’ ideology and which ones are most salient at a particular time can only be determined by analyzing what policymakers say and do, including examining parties’ political platforms and mission statements, the writings and speeches made by party or factional leaders, and their domestic poli­ cies. Which ideological principles do elites claim to be most important to them in terms of their vision for domestic politics? Which principles are leaders actively trying to establish, protect, or advance?109 The same logic applies to judging configurations of ideological distances among leaders, which I judge by analyzing their perceptions. In making these assessments, I must determine where elites viewed themselves and others along an ideological continuum—that is, whether leaders viewed particular states or groups as ideological enemies, ideologically similar, or lesser ideological enemies compared to greater ones. International

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ideological enemies condemn as illegitimate one another’s domestic prin­ ciples and institutions, describing them as ineffective, immoral, and op­ posed to their own. Ideologically similar groups view one another as part of a transnational community based on a dedication to similar ways of or­ ganizing domestic politics. There can be noteworthy political differences within this community (e.g., liberals can support presidential or parliamen­ tary democracies), but members will not denounce these differences as illegitimate. Lesser ideological enemies will condemn one another’s prin­ ciples. At the same time, they will be in ideological agreement on some important issues, especially in relation to a third ideology. These lesser ide­ ological enemies believe that a shared ideological rival represents a more profound and pressing challenge to their ideological beliefs than they do to each other, making this state a greater ideological enemy. The key to determining leaders’ configurations of ideological distances is found in their legitimation policies.110 Those states that leaders focus on as the antithesis of their beliefs and against which they define and defend their principles are their primary ideological enemies. Ideological enemies, in other words, are the out-group against which leaders define their beliefs as they endeavor to legitimate their claim to rule. Those states that leaders defend for sharing values are ideologically similar. And those states that leaders condemn while recognizing important areas of ideological agree­ ment are lesser ideological rivals in relation to ideological enemies for which such agreement is lacking. To account for the often substantial ideological differences among different groups of leaders in the same state, I operationalize perceptions of ideological configurations by looking at the views possessed by the most powerful policymakers of states’ governing parties or political factions. When a state is governed by a single ideological group or there is wide­ spread ideological agreement among all major parties and factions, leaders are likely to possess similar perceptions of international ideological config­ urations. At these times, a state can be viewed as largely a unitary actor in ideological terms. When, however, ideological rivals share political power, leaders of these different groups are likely to have very different under­ standings of how their state relates ideologically to others. Operationaliz­ ing leaders’ ideological beliefs at the party or factional level allows for the incorporation of these key differences into the analysis. Judging leaders’ understandings of the configurations of ideological dis­ tances among states can be difficult, but it is not impossible, and often it is a relatively straightforward exercise. French conservatives in the 1930s, for example, repeatedly claimed that they followed the motto “Better Hitler than Stalin” and that they looked on Hitler somewhat favorably (despite their major ideological differences with fascism) because he was a “bul­ wark” against communism. It is therefore straightforward to judge that many members of the French Right viewed Nazi Germany (the material

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threat) as a lesser ideological danger than was the potential frenemy ally, the Soviet Union (the divided threats configuration). Chinese leaders in the 1970s were similarly open that they viewed both the United States (the po­ tential frenemy ally) and Soviet Union (the material threat) as not only in­ tense ideological enemies of China but also of one another. This was a core claim of Mao’s “Theory of the Three Worlds,” which was publicly champi­ oned. These views match my definition of an ideologically equidistant configuration. Turkey’s leaders in the 2000s increasingly stressed the im­ portance of Islamic ideology to their perceptions and policies. This devel­ opment pushed them to increasingly and publicly identify with other Muslim-majority countries, including Iran (the chief material threat), and against a frenemy ally, Israel (a configuration of ideological betrayal). Examining policymakers’ perceptions of ideological configurations is po­ tentially problematic because it opens the door to charges of spuriousness, meaning that correlations between perceptions of configurations of ideo­ logical distances and alliance policies are not causal but instead a product of a third variable. Realists, for example, frequently claim that material variables are not only the key cause of shifting alliance policies but also changes in perceptions of identity. Applied to my argument, realists would contend that leaders will tend to define material threats as ideological ene­ mies and potential allies against the threat as ideologically similar. To this view, perceptions of ideological configurations have little independent causal effect and instead simply mirror material calculations.111 I control for this potentiality in three ways. First, I demonstrate that lead­ ers’ perceptions of international ideological configurations are frequently independent of the effects of material variables. Thus, leaders’ understand­ ings of configurations of ideological distances either tend not to change when material variables fluctuate significantly or alter in important ways when material factors remain largely constant.112 An important component of this method is the analytical separation in the case studies of leaders’ as­ sessments of ideological configurations and the policy I am endeavoring to explain. British and French conservatives and French Radicals were in­ tensely anticommunist and viewed the Soviet Union as their primary ideo­ logical enemy well before their decision in the 1930s not to ally with the Soviet Union against Germany. Mao was intensely hostile ideologically to the United States well before he decided not to ally with it against the So­ viet Union in the 1970s. Turkish Islamists were ideologically opposed to Is­ rael well before these elites ended the alliance with it in the late 2000s. By assessing the independent variable of ideological configurations tempo­ rally prior to the policy I am endeavoring to explain, I am avoiding poten­ tial endogeneity between the two. It is also worth stressing on this point that leaders’ professed understand­ ings of international ideological relationships were often the opposite of realist predictions. If material threats push elites to redefine which states

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they view as ideological enemies and which they view as ideologically sim­ ilar, then the material threat posed by Germany in the 1930s should have pushed British and French conservatives and French Radicals to downplay the ideological danger posed by the Soviet Union, the material threat posed by the Soviet Union in the 1970s should have inclined Chinese leaders to minimize the ideological danger of the United States, and the material threat from Iran in the 2000s should have pushed Turkish elites to down­ play their ideological enmity with Israel. These redefinitions of ideological configurations did not occur. Perceptions of ideological enmity, in short, were independent of power shifts, and they worked against the formation of frenemy alliances and effective balancing in each case. A second method I use to control for potential spuriousness between leaders’ perceptions of ideological configurations and their alliance choices is to demonstrate that these perceptions tend to track objective phenomena. To my operationalization of ideologies, any principle of governance can be central to elites’ vision of domestic politics. This is a subjective decision. Once they make this choice, though, their under­ standings of which states are rivals to these principles tend to be rooted in objective data. As discussed, there are two main sources of ideological enmity. The first occurs when leaders are objectively dedicated to funda­ mentally different ways of ordering domestic politics in terms of core institutions and values. The second occurs when elites are dedicated to objectively similar ideological beliefs but the ideology is a divisive one, meaning that it calls for political integration (e.g., Pan-Islam) or a single leader of a transnational ideological group (as was the case for interna­ tional communism). Policymakers in either situation should consistently define one another as ideological rivals. When, in contrast, leaders are objectively dedicated to similar political, economic, and social objectives and the ideology in question is a unifying one that respects states’ sover­ eignty and legitimacy, they should recognize one another as part of the same ideological community. The more leaders’ subjective understandings of international ideological relationships and configurations of ideological distances (e.g., which states are ideological enemies, ideologically similar, and lesser ideological rivals in relation to greater ones) track objective ideological facts and develop­ ments, the less likely these perceptions are a product of power and other material calculations. The objective ideological differences separating Brit­ ish and French conservatives from the Soviet Union in the 1930s, for exam­ ple, were extremely large. It is therefore to be expected that these elites would view the Soviet Union as a fierce ideological enemy. A similarly large objective ideological gap separated Chinese communist leaders from lib­ eral, capitalist United States in the 1970s. When this fact is combined with communism’s prescriptions of subordination to a single leader of the trans­ national ideological group, it is not surprising that Mao understood both

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the United States and the Soviet Union to be intense ideological enemies of China. When there is not a relatively close match between objective mea­ sures of ideological enmity based on the two situations discussed and lead­ ers’ subjective assessments of this variable, realists’ claims of spuriousness become more credible. Third, I control for realist charges of spuriousness by demonstrating how different ideological groups in the same country at the same time of­ ten possess very different understandings of their threat environment and subsequent policy preferences.113 If leaders’ perceptions and policies are primarily a product of the effects of international material variables, as structural realists contend, we should not witness significant within-state variation in policy preferences along ideological lines because many of these variables, including international power distributions, geography, and other countries’ policies, are identical for all members of the same state. If such variation exists, ideological variables and not external mate­ rial factors are the most likely source of it. In the case studies, British and French conservatives and socialists in the 1930s had opposing alliance preferences toward the Soviet Union in response to the German threat, Mao and other ideological hard-liners in China in the 1970s were much less willing to ally with the United States against the Soviet Union than were modernizers within the Chinese Communist Party, and Turkish Is­ lamists in the 2000s were much less willing to ally with Israel against Iran than were secular Kemalists. I define the argument’s dependent variable, alliances, as a formal or in­ formal commitment for security cooperation between two or more states. I have four general criteria for alliance formation, as well as more specific policy benchmarks for determining when states have crossed the threshold between nonalliance and alliance. An alliance is (1) based on military com­ mitments and cooperation (as opposed to diplomatic or economic aid), (2) is directed against other states or groups for the purpose of increasing the security of the alliance’s members, (3) engages in the exchange of bene­ fits for all parties, and (4) involves the coordination of security policies (as opposed to leaders simply sharing interests and acting independently to achieve them). I recognize that some scholars define alliances by formal security com­ mitments that are typically enshrined in a treaty.114 I choose to focus on both formal and informal alliances because what matters to my analysis is the level of security cooperation among states, not whether or not this coopera­ tion is formalized by a treaty. Although formal security commitments will in many cases be sufficient to create alliances as I define them, they do not always do so, and many informal alliances can involve much higher levels of cooperation that formal ones.115 Examining both formal and informal al­ liances in a study of security cooperation makes sense, as Walt explains, because “states may provide considerable support to one another even

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without a formal treaty, and because the presence of a formal agreement often says relatively little about the actual degree of commitment.”116 Because states can engage in various levels of security cooperation, an alliance is best thought of as a continuous variable ranging from weak to strong, depending on the type of policies and the extent of the commit­ ments that define the relationship. A weak alliance is created by a number of commitments and actions, including leaders’ statements of security sup­ port for one another against a common rival, the sharing of intelligence re­ garding the military capabilities and intentions of this rival, the provision of arms sales or related military aid, and the coordination of military poli­ cies based on such things as joint staff talks and war planning. A moderate alliance deepens the level of commitment created by the preceding by en­ gaging in routine joint training exercises and combat operations and the granting of limited access agreements to the ally’s military (such as military overflight rights). A strong alliance combines the preceding with perma­ nent or semipermanent military basing and a pledge to defend the other from attack.117 Although the differences between weak and strong alliances are obvi­ ously important, they are not my focus. I am most interested in determin­ ing when ideological enemies in response to shared material threats are and are not likely to cross the threshold between no alliance on one hand and security cooperation that creates at a minimum a weak alliance on the other. The extent of cooperation once this threshold is passed is less impor­ tant to my analysis. The decision to focus on the threshold between no alliance and security cooperation that constitutes at a minimum a weak alliance makes for hard tests for my argument, given its scope conditions. In all the cases and ex­ amples I use, very strong material incentives are pushing ideological enemies to ally. Ideological variables, according to realist arguments, are supposed to matter least to states’ security policies during periods of high material threats. Based on this claim, all the periods I examine are hard tests for ideological explanations of foreign policies. If ideological enmity in a condition of high material threats prevents the formation of even a weak alliance, then we must judge the importance of ideologies to security poli­ cies to be all the greater. Thus, in the case studies, Britain and France in the 1930s could not form and sustain even a weak alliance with the Soviet Union despite the massive material threat posed by Germany, China until 1979 would not commit to even a weak alliance with the United States de­ spite a very large Soviet danger, and Turkey would not preserve even a weak alliance with Israel at the end of the 2000s despite a substantial Ira­ nian threat. Expressed differently, in those instances when my argument predicts that ideological enemies will not engage in significant security cooperation de­ spite strong material incentives to do so, I judge the formation and

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continuation of even a weak alliance to be disconfirming evidence. If ideo­ logical enemies in response to shared material threats had to commit to a strong alliance in order for these predictions to be deemed wrong, I would be setting the bar much higher for disconfirming my hypotheses. r e search m et h o d s a n d ca se stu d i es My approach for testing the book’s predictions in relation to alternative ex­ planations of alliance dynamics utilizes two main research methods. The first assesses covariation between variables. Does the dependent variable (alliances) covary with the independent variables (levels of regime vulner­ ability and specific configurations of ideological distances among states’ leaders) in ways consistent with the predictions laid out in table 1.1? In other words, when the independent variables change, does the dependent variable change in the predicted directions? If the dependent variable al­ ters, was there movement on the independent variables not long before? If we cannot answer “yes” to these questions, a causal relationship between the argument’s variables is unlikely. The second research method I rely on is process tracing, which is one of the best methods in the social sciences for testing causality.118 This method tries to get inside actors’ heads by examining private and public source ma­ terial (e.g., governmental documents and leaders’ correspondence, diaries, speeches, and pronouncements) that explain why leaders make the choices they do. If policymakers do not publicly and privately attribute their ac­ tions to an argument’s independent variables, the extent of the causal im­ pact of these variables on outcomes must be questioned. For my argument to be supported and competing ones rejected, leaders must consistently at­ tribute their alliance policies not to the core variables of competing theories but to ideologies’ effects and the causal mechanisms linking ideologies to outcomes that I identify. In making assessments about how the indepen­ dent variables shaped leaders’ alliance choices, I rely to a great extent on private documents that speak directly to motives for policies. (Public sources are also included in this analysis.) Examining private sources to determine motives for decision-making provides the best way to confirm that elites were acting for the reasons I hypothesize. To help identify and interpret this information and to provide independent analyses, especially given the broad scope of the case studies, I also examine numerous second­ ary sources of the periods under study. I have tried to mitigate any bias that may occur as a result of this method by extensively documenting events while using multiple sources that describe the same developments from several different perspectives. To test my argument, I investigate in depth three case studies: British and French leaders’ failure to ally with the Soviet Union against Germany in the 1930s, the delay until 1979 in the formation of the Sino-American alliance

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against the Soviet Union, and the dissolution in 2009 and 2010 of the Turkish-Israeli alliance, which had been primarily directed against Iran. I choose these cases for four main reasons. First, the cases satisfy my scope conditions. Each involves relations among ideological enemies that are be­ ing strongly pushed by material factors to ally against a common danger. Each case, as a result, provides important opportunities for both material and ideological variables to shape alliance policies. Second, the cases are important not only to the evolution of global and regional politics but also to the development of international relations the­ ory. Regarding the latter, Britain’s and France’s failure to ally with the So­ viet Union in the 1930s is often highlighted by realists as a key case that confirms their explanations for buck-passing and underbalancing, and the Sino-American and Turkish-Israeli alliances are often pointed to as exem­ plars of the power of realpolitik.119 These assertions reinforce the previously discussed point that the cases are hard ones for my argument. Demonstrat­ ing the accuracy of my claims in cases that seem to confirm competing theories increases our confidence all the more in the power of ideologies to alliance formation and failure. Third, the case studies exhibit substantial variation in the argument’s in­ dependent and dependent variables. This variation exists both within and across cases. In appendixes C, D, E, and F, I reproduce other scholars’ as­ sessments of the universe of formal and informal frenemy alliances of the United States and Soviet Union during the Cold War. I then code these co­ alitions by configurations of ideological distances among the frenemy allies and their shared threat. One of the key findings from these lists is that the configuration of double threat is strongly associated with the creation of cross-ideological coalitions, which is a finding that is consistent with my claims. This configuration existed in twenty-eight of the thirty-eight fren­ emy alliances identified by others’ analyses. If, as the data in the appendixes indicate, a configuration of double threat is a key source of frenemy coalitions, the case studies must test this finding. The most effective test would be to identify cases that possess within-state variation of this variable, with some actors in a particular country operat­ ing in an ideological configuration of double threat and others in the same state working in configurations of ideological betrayal, divided threats, or ideological equidistance, which I claim significantly reduce the need to commit to cross-ideological coalitions. In-state variation is a particularly useful for testing the argument because it allows many competing vari­ ables, especially from the realist tradition, to be held largely if not com­ pletely constant. The selected cases collectively satisfy this criterion. Two (Britain and France in the 1930s and China in the 1970s) have powerful leaders who operate in a configuration of double threat, which makes these cases repre­ sentative of the examples compiled in the appendixes. Both cases also have

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another powerful group of leaders who operate in ideological configura­ tions that reduce the likelihood of frenemies allying (divided threats in the British and French case and ideological equidistance in the Chinese case). The third case study, Turkey’s alliance policies with Israel in the 2000s, pri­ marily examines the effects of a configuration of ideological betrayal, which is the remaining configuration of ideological distances that impedes crossideological coalitions. It, too, possesses an ideological control group: secu­ lar policymakers who viewed themselves ideologically close to Israel. All the case studies also exhibit across and within-state variation in regime vul­ nerability, with some leaders fearful for the continuation of their ideologi­ cal order in relation to the ideology of the potential frenemy ally and others in the same country not. Finally, there is high variation in the ideologies examined, as the policies of leaders dedicated to liberalism, fascism, com­ munism, and Islamism are explored. Choosing cases that have different groups of leaders who possess differ­ ent values of the argument’s independent variables allows me to double the number of tests of the hypotheses. In the 1930s case (chapter 2), for ex­ ample, I not only look at the alliance policies of two different states (Britain and France) but also two groups of leaders within each country for whom the values of the independent variables were very different (conservatives and centrists on one hand and socialists on the other). These differences, as my argument predicts, resulted in opposite alliance preferences in relation to the Soviet Union. Similar dynamics existed among Chinese elites before and after Mao’s death in relation to the United States in the 1970s (chapter 3) and between Turkey’s Islamist and secular leaders in relation to Israel in the 2000s (chapter 4). In terms of the argument’s dependent variable, three broad types of fren­ emy alliances are represented. British and French relations with the Soviet Union in the 1930s can be understood as an “unrealized” frenemy alliance. In this case, members of the British and French Right and Center confronted major material incentives to ally with their chief ideological enemy, the So­ viet Union, but they were never able to create a sustained, functioning alliance. China’s relations with the United States in the 1970s can be under­ stood as a “tipping-point” frenemy alliance. In this case, Chinese leaders confronted strong material incentives throughout the 1970s to commit to a cross-ideological coalition with the United States but resisted them for most of the decade before finally allying in 1979. The Turkish-Israeli alliance is an example of a “breaking-point” frenemy alliance. In this case, ideological enemies were allied, but they split apart even though material factors that brought them together were still at work. Each of these varieties of cases illustrates different dimensions of alliance failure resulting from the prevention, delay, or rupture of frenemy coali­ tions against a shared danger. Although all of the case studies exhibit varia­ tion in the dependent variable—with different parties or leadership groups

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in each supporting and opposing frenemy alliances—it is particularly im­ portant that alliance failure play a prominent role in each case. This is my fourth criterion for case selection. Decisions not to ally when confronting high material threats are likely to be puzzling for realist balancing theories (both balance-of-threat and balance-of-power), and demonstrating that my argument can account for important outcomes that are puzzling for its chief competitors is a particularly effective way of indicating its value. Expressed differently, the cases that allow for the clearest tests of the book’s argument in relation to realist balancing theories are those in which the two make op­ posing predictions. This variation is most likely to occur for instances of alliance failure under condition of high material threats. Realist theories are likely to predict that frenemy alliances will form in this situation, whereas my argument predicts either alliance failure or commitment, depending on the value of its independent variables. I now turn to my case studies. The central questions in these chapters are always the same. Did ideological enmity create major barriers to the forma­ tion of stable alliances even when powerful material incentives for alliance existed? If so, under what conditions were these barriers able to be over­ come, and when did they prove insurmountable?

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chapter 2

An Unrealized Frenemy Alliance Britain’s and France’s Failure to Ally with the Soviet Union, 1933–39

One of the most important international relations puzzles from the twenti­ eth century is why Britain and France did not form a frenemy alliance with the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany in the years leading up to World War II. Despite the profound ideological differences dividing the capitalist democracies and communist dictatorship, there are good reasons to have expected this coalition to materialize, especially from a realist perspective. The key indexes of threat according to balance-of-threat theory indicate that the danger posed by Germany to Britain and France was massive, which made the forces pushing for the alliance extremely powerful. Ger­ many had a substantial power advantage over Britain and France, was geo­ graphically close to both (including sharing a land border with France), possessed an offensive doctrine of war, and had a number of important conflicts of interest with the Western democracies for which it indicated a willingness to use force to resolve. British and French leaders recognized early on the potential extreme dan­ ger that Nazi Germany posed to their states’ security.1 They nevertheless declined to avail themselves of all options that could have countered this threat. Most notably, powerful policymakers in both states opposed allying with the country that offered the best opportunity to balance Germany in the shortest amount of time: the Soviet Union. The USSR was the only Eu­ ropean country, in combination with Britain and France, that possessed suf­ ficient capabilities to match Germany’s. It was also to Germany’s east, which offered the additional major benefit of forcing Germany to divide its troops to deal with threats on two fronts. The decision not to ally with the Soviet Union in the 1930s greatly imper­ iled British and French security. “The West’s hesitant approach [to the So­ viet Union],” as the military historian Williamson Murray summarizes, “did little to commend Anglo-French strategic sense. In the final analysis

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only the Soviet Union possessed the strength to establish an eastern front of any real value.” The failure to act on this reality and form an alliance placed British and French core interests in mortal danger and “decisively affected the course of the Second World War.”2 My argument explains this alliance failure. For the large majority of Brit­ ish conservatives (who controlled policymaking for most of the 1930s), the values of both independent variables throughout the decade combined to make a frenemy alliance with the Soviet Union unlikely. High levels of regime vulnerability significantly increased the costs of allying with the Soviet Union. Conservatives believed that the alliance would facilitate com­ munist revolutions in the British Empire, which to conservatives was an integral part of Britain and its defining institutions. A configuration of ideo­ logical distances among the great powers of divided threats added to these impediments to alliance by reducing the perceived need to commit to the coalition. For members of the British Right, the Soviet Union was the great­ est ideological danger in the system. Germany was the greatest material threat but a lesser ideological danger than the Soviet Union due to a shared commitment to anticommunism. The divergence between greatest power and ideological dangers that is the core dimension of divided threats im­ peded the formation of an Anglo-Soviet alliance by masking the extent of the German menace while also creating opportunities for the Nazis to adopt successful ideological wedging policies toward Britain. When the antici­ pated costs created by committing to a frenemy alliance are high and the perceived need to commit to this coalition in significant doubt, the likeli­ hood that leaders will commit to the alliance is low, even in the face of strong material incentives to do so. British conservatives repeatedly refer­ enced the effects of ideological variables as central to their aversion to ally­ ing with the Soviets. Similar analysis applies—though only after 1935—to members of the French Right and Center (the latter being led by the Radical-Socialist, or Radical, Party). These groups were the dominant policymakers for most of the decade. Widespread fears of communist revolution in France after 1935—which made levels of regime vulnerability high—combined with an ideological configuration of divided threats to prevent an alliance with the Soviet Union. My argument not only explains why most British conservatives and members of the French Right and Center rejected allying with the Soviet Union in the second half of the 1930s but also why most British and French socialists pushed hard for this coalition. Socialists’ problem was that they lacked sufficient political power to achieve their preferences over other groups’ opposition. For socialists, the values of the argument’s independent variables were the reverse of conservatives’ and French Radicals’. This fact resulted in

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AN UNREALIZED FRENEMY ALLIANCE

opposing alliance preferences toward the Soviet Union even though a host of key variables—including international power distributions, geography, the offense-defense balance, and other states’ policies—were identical. So­ cialists’ fears of regime vulnerability in relation to the USSR were relatively low, which made the anticipated domestic costs of allying small. Socialists also viewed Germany as the not only the greatest material danger in the system but the greatest ideological threat as well, which created an ideo­ logical configuration of double threat. When leaders’ greatest power and ideological threats coincide, the perceived danger will be extremely high: the country with the greatest capacity to harm will also likely be viewed as particularly hostile and aggressive. The greater the perceived threat, the more powerful the incentives to balance it with all available means, includ­ ing forming frenemy alliances with lesser ideological dangers (which is how most socialists viewed the Soviet Union in relation to Germany). The evidence does not completely support the argument’s predictions, however. Regime vulnerability for French conservatives and Radicals in 1934 and 1935 was low. I predict that when regime vulnerability is low and leaders’ configuration of ideological distances in relation to the other key actors is that of divided threats, policymakers are likely to adopt hedging policies toward the potential frenemy ally and their shared material threat. I define hedging policies as ones that exhibit important security coopera­ tion with both the potential frenemy ally and material threat, though with­ out allying with either. Leaders of the French Right and Center, though, went beyond hedging in 1934 and 1935 by pursuing an alliance with the Soviet Union (this preference was reversed after 1935, for reasons consis­ tent with my argument). See table 2.1 for a summary of the values of the arguments’ independent variables for different groups of British and French policymakers and the predictions for alliance formation they generate. My analysis of British and French leaders’ failure to ally with the Soviet Union in the years leading up to World War II proceeds as follows. I first examine the magnitude of the German danger to the Western democracies based on the defining material variables of balance-of-threat theory. The size of this threat reveals the force of the incentives pushing Britain and France to ally with the Soviet Union. This first section also explores the security overtures to the Soviet Union by British and French officials throughout the 1930s. In the second section, which is the heart of my analy­ sis, I detail how my argument and the effects of ideological variables explain why most British and French conservatives and French Radicals (especially after 1935) opposed allying with the Soviets. The third section examines so­ cialists’ consistent advocacy for an alliance with the Soviet Union as well as the ideology-based reasons that facilitated this preference. The final section discusses alternative explanations for the failure of an Anglo-Franco-Soviet coalition to form as well as these arguments’ weaknesses.

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Table 2.1. Predictions for British and French leaders’ alliance policies toward the Soviet Union in the 1930s Domestic costs of frenemy alliance created by level of regime vulnerability Low costs

Ideology-based “need” to commit to frenemy alliance based on configuration of ideological distancesa High need Groups: British and French socialists

Low need Groups: French conservatives and Radicals in 1934 and 1935

Prediction: Frenemy Prediction: Hedging policies toward USSR alliance with USSR likely and Germany Outcome: Pursued an alliance with USSR High costs

Outcome: Pursued an alliance with USSR Groups: British conservatives throughout the decade; French conservatives and Radicals after 1935 Prediction: Frenemy alliance with USSR unlikely Outcome: Opposed an alliance with USSR

a

British and French conservatives’ and French Radicals’ configuration of ideological distances in relation to Germany and the Soviet Union was one of divided threats. Socialists’ configuration of ideological distances in relation to Germany and the Soviet Union was one of double threat.

The Scope of the German Threat and the Resulting Incentives to Ally with the Soviet Union The potential danger that Germany posed to Britain and France in the 1930s based on an examination of material variables was extremely large. By the second half of the decade, Germany possessed not only the most powerful army in the world but also over one third of the total land-based capabili­ ties in the system. This is the threshold, according to Jack Levy and William Thompson, that states become “hegemonic threats.” It is at these points that concentrations of power usually stimulate balancing alliances by the other great powers.3 By 1939, the size of Germany’s army as a share of the European powers’ total strength was higher than it was during World War I.4 The grave material threat posed by Germany was recognized by British and French elites at the time, as I detail in the following. b r iti sh an d fren ch esti mates o f th e g e rm an m ater i a l th reat British and French intelligence agencies painted an increasingly dire pic­ ture for their states’ security over the course of the 1930s. By 1937, accord­ ing to Peter Jackson in one of the most extensive analyses of French

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AN UNREALIZED FRENEMY ALLIANCE

estimates of German power in the period, “perceptions of the German threat evolved dramatically from deep concern over the future ramifica­ tions of Nazi rearmament to the conviction that Germany had established decisive superiority over France both on the ground and in the air. . . . The result was an often crushing sense of inferiority.”5 After the Anschluss (the incorporation of Austria into Germany) in March 1938, according to JeanBaptiste Duroselle, “few illusions were possible. The superiority of the Ger­ man army—with the additional Austrian divisions—was obvious. 900,000 men versus 400,000, according to [Army Chief of Staff Maurice] Gamelin.”6 By April 1939, French intelligence judged that Germany and Italy (which was close to becoming a formal ally of Germany) could field a combined 250 divisions, France and Britain only 120.7 French estimates of Germany’s airpower were just as, if not more, alarm­ ing, as they “painted a truly frightening picture of the future balance of power in the air.”8 French intelligence in 1938 judged Germany to have twice the first-line airpower of France (in terms of numbers of military air­ craft) and more than Britain and France combined.9 In January 1938, Gen. Joseph Vuillemin, commander of the First Air Corps, warned his superiors that due to the obsolescence of French aircraft, shortages in matériel, and the low-state of morale, “I am convinced that, if a conflict erupts this year, our air force would be annihilated in a matter of days.”10 British intelligence estimates of power distributions were just as dire. Af­ ter 1936, British intelligence reports were not only “unequivocal that the total balance of power favored Germany” but also stated that Germany’s rearmament policies had shifted from defensive to offensive purposes.11 As Keren Yarhi-Milo summarizes, “from 1936 onward .  .  . British estimates concluded that the German army was readying for total war.”12 The British noted with alarm the growing power of Germany’s army rel­ ative to France’s, the latter of which helped to shield Britain. Intelligence assessments in November 1937 judged “that France and Germany could mobilize sixteen divisions and thirty divisions respectively within a day of the mobilization order, thirty-three and seventy-eight respectively within a week, and sixty-two compared to eighty-one divisions within the first three months of war.”13 (As late as 1938, Britain’s expeditionary force could field only three fully equipped divisions.)14 The British also believed that Ger­ many could sustain its troops in the field much longer than France, which intensified its quantitative advantages. The same November 1937 intelli­ gence report judged that France could not sustain sixty divisions in the field for longer than three months, but Germany could keep its maximum divisions engaged virtually indefinitely.15 British assessments of German airpower were even more frightening than estimates of the growing capabilities of Germany’s army. Not only was the size of Germany’s air superiority more pronounced, but Germany’s air force was also much more of a direct, offensive threat to British security.

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In September 1938, British intelligence asserted that Germany possessed roughly six times as many bombers as Britain or France and two and a half times as many as the Western democracies combined. London also judged Germany to possess twice as many total first-line military aircraft as either Britain or France, while equaling their combined power.16 Wesley Wark summarizes the massive threat created by this disparity: “Every element of the air intelligence picture as it developed from the autumn of 1936 sug­ gested the increasing striking power and numerical lead of the Luftwaffe over other European air forces.” Indeed, “so ominous was the air threat perceived to be and so unprepared were British defenses that estimates of what might happen were framed on the basis of worst possible contingen­ cies,” including fears of a “knockout blow” by German bombers. By 1939, “it was clear that Britain had lost the thirties air arms race and could not hope to deter Germany on the strength of the RAF’s [Royal Air Force’s] of­ fensive force alone.”17 Other material sources of threat according to balance-of-threat theory re­ inforced the massive danger to the Western democracies created by power distributions and Germany’s offensive capabilities. Germany was geo­ graphically close to the Western democracies and shared a land border with France. Although Western intelligence agencies did not fully understand the nature of the Nazis’ blitzkrieg tactics, there was a consensus that Ger­ many had adopted an offensive military orientation.18 It was also clear that Germany had major conflicts of interest with Britain and France for which its leaders were willing to use at least the threat of force to resolve. Germa­ ny’s provocations and aggressive actions included withdrawing from the Disarmament Conference and League of Nations in October 1933; remilita­ rizing the Rhineland in 1936 (which involved marching troops into this buf­ fer zone in violation of the Versailles Treaty); annexing Austria under the threat of force in March 1938; demanding the following August, again un­ der threat of war, that the Sudetenland be separated from Czechoslovakia and annexed to Germany; demanding in January 1939 that the Polish city of Gdańsk be incorporated into Germany; attacking the remainder of Czechoslovakia in March 1939; renouncing the Anglo-German Naval Agreement in April 1939; and committing to a formal military alliance with Italy in May 1939.19 These policies (even those before 1939) provided Western elites good reason to be very suspicious of Hitler’s international intentions, even if some policymakers remained hopeful that he could be placated by various concessions. Given the material danger posed by Germany in the 1930s, the incentives pushing Britain and France to repeat the balancing strategy before World War I and ally with the Soviet Union were strong. The alliance with the So­ viet Union offered Britain and France the possibility of reversing combined relative power inferiority in relation to Germany into combined relative power superiority. Intelligence agencies in the Western democracies judged

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AN UNREALIZED FRENEMY ALLIANCE

that the Soviet army possessed 125 divisions in 1938 and 1939, which were roughly equal to the estimates of German power described above and con­ siderably more than the combined power of Britain and France. Similar re­ lationships existed for airpower. Intelligence reports estimated that the Soviet Union in 1938 and 1939 possessed roughly the same number of mili­ tary aircraft as Germany, which equaled that of Britain and France com­ bined.20 The Soviet Union had the additional benefit of being to Germany’s east, which, when combined with a threat from the Western democracies, would have forced Germany to divide its forces along two fronts. Although the Soviet military possessed important weaknesses in these years (which I discuss at the end of the chapter), an Anglo-French-Soviet alliance, based solely on power calculations, provided the best opportunity to balance Ger­ many in the shortest amount of time. Yet neither British nor French policy­ makers, as I detail in the next sections, demonstrated sufficient, sustained interest in allying with the Soviet Union to ensure the realization of this outcome. b ri ti sh ou tre ach to th e sovi et u n i o n Conservatives controlled policymaking in Britain during the crucial years of Germany’s rise in the 1930s. British governments in the decade were of­ ficially labeled “national” ones because they possessed members from the Conservative, Liberal, and Labour Parties. Conservatives, though, held by far the greatest power, especially when the governments were led by the conservative Stanley Baldwin (prime minister from June 1935 to May 1937) and Neville Chamberlain (prime minister from May 1937 to May 1940). Conservatives won 387 parliamentary seats in the November 1935 elec­ tions. Labour held the second most seats with 154. Communists had one. Conservatives were dedicated to the preservation of existing political and economic institutions (including the monarchy and empire), private property, and political order. The Labour Party was a socialist one that was dedicated to the nationalization of industry, centralized economic plan­ ning, and workers’ rights. Conservatives’ defining ideological principles created deep ideological enmity with communism and the Soviet Union. This ideological enmity had existed from the Soviet Union’s founding. Ide­ ological antipathy, for example, led conservative leaders to intervene militarily in Russia’s civil war beginning in 1918 to try to overthrow the Bolshevik regime.21 Labour leaders were much less hostile to the USSR than were conservatives, especially when fascism was added into elites’ calcula­ tions of ideological relationships. I discuss these (and French) groups’ con­ figurations of ideological distances in relation to Germany and the Soviet Union in much greater detail later in the chapter. Conservative leaders in the 1930s exhibited little interest in allying with the Soviet Union despite Germany’s power rise. Before the spring of 1939,

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no conservative cabinet member advocated an alliance with the Soviet Union, and most were highly opposed to this outcome. The Foreign Office was nearly unanimous on this subject as well, with only a few prominent officials—most notably Permanent Undersecretary at the Foreign Office Robert Vansittart and Laurence Collier, who headed the Northern Depart­ ment in the Foreign Office—pushing for an alliance.22 From 1935 to 1939, the government considered at length only one pro-Soviet policy of signifi­ cance. From the summer of 1935 to the following January, the Foreign Of­ fice discussed the possibility of guaranteeing a loan to the USSR. Even this relatively minor outreach, however, was rejected by a wide margin. Instead of seeking to establish a cooperative relationship with the Sovi­ ets as Germany rose in power, the conservative-led governments led the way in excluding the USSR from security negotiations and institutions. Conservative leaders, for example, agreed with their German counterparts that the Soviets should not be allowed to participate in the Munich Confer­ ence in September 1938, even though these discussions took place when the probability of war was high. Conservatives also opposed the 1935 Franco-Soviet Treaty of Mutual Assistance (see below for details on the pact) and pressured the French to terminate it.23 Conservative elites were therefore not only uninterested in allying with the Soviet Union but also tried to prevent other states from cooperating with it, even though such developments could have helped contain Germany without requiring Brit­ ish commitments. For almost the entirety of the decade, as Louise Grace Shaw summarizes, “there remained no intention on the part of London to collaborate with Moscow regarding the resistance to future German aggression.”24 Even Germany’s invasion of Czechoslovakia in March 1939—which was a watershed event for British foreign policies because it massively increased the perceived German threat—did not immediately result in an increased interest in allying with the Soviet Union. Germany’s aggression did result in major alterations in British alliance policies, just not toward the Soviets. Britain in March and April allied with Poland, Romania, and Greece against Germany. Outreach to the Soviet Union, in contrast, continued to be de­ layed, despite the fact that it was the only country in Eastern Europe that could create a viable second front against Germany. Prime Minister Cham­ berlain continued to reject the idea of allying with the Soviets, and the cabi­ net for the first two months after the invasion of Czechoslovakia supported this decision.25 It was not until the end of May that the British government committed to alliance negotiations with the USSR. This change was primarily due to reports from Britain’s chiefs of staff that asserted that the defense of East­ ern Europe “required active Soviet cooperation.”26 On May 24, the govern­ ment voted to pursue creating a triple alliance of Britain, France, and the Soviet Union. Over the course of the next three months, the British would

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AN UNREALIZED FRENEMY ALLIANCE

make a number of important concessions to Soviet prerequisites for an al­ liance, most notably agreeing to guarantee the territorial integrity of even those states that did not want such commitments. (Leaders in the Baltic states and Poland did not want territorial guarantees from the Soviet Union due to fears that the Red Army would never leave once the Soviets helped defeat the Germans. When the Western powers agreed to guaran­ tee even those states that did not want such commitments, they were ap­ proving the legitimacy of the Soviet Union’s sphere of influence in Eastern Europe.) This momentum toward an alliance proved, however, to be short-lived. Although the cabinet voted in May to pursue a coalition and even made important progress toward this goal, many elites by the middle of summer became surprisingly ambivalent, if not outright opposed, to finalizing an agreement. Chamberlain, for example, predicted that the alliance negotia­ tions would ultimately fail, and he expressed relief in this prediction. The prime minister wrote his sister Ida on July 23 that “we are only spinning out the time before the inevitable break [with the Soviets] comes. . . . It is rather hard that I should have to bear the blame for dilatory action when if I wasn’t hampered by others I would have closed the [alliance] discussions one way or another long ago.”27 The previous month, Foreign Secretary Ed­ ward Halifax stated in a cabinet meeting that although Britain needed an alliance agreement with the Soviet Union to defeat Germany, his “consider­ able distrust” of Soviet motives made him believe that it was not worth making concessions to secure the accord.28 By the end of July, many mem­ bers of the cabinet and Foreign Office who had pushed for an alliance in the previous months switched back to antipathy to this outcome, or at least ambivalence, thereby allowing Chamberlain’s opposition to an alliance to dominate decision-making. The main reason for this reversal was the Soviet demand that an AngloFranco-Soviet alliance be activated not only by a German invasion of an­ other country but also by “indirect aggression,” which the Soviets defined as internal developments in other states that were deemed to be hostile to the members of the coalition. Although the British had met a number of Soviet demands during the negotiations, on the subject of indirect aggres­ sion (which was first raised by the Soviets at the end of June) they would not budge. If indirect aggression as the Soviets defined it were a casus belli, armed conflict could begin, for example, if a country’s domestic orientation became anticommunist, which the Soviets could interpret as a hostile development. The demand that internal developments be a potential trigger for war reignited British leaders’ intense ideology-based hostility toward the Soviet Union that is discussed in much greater detail below. They feared that the Soviets’ primary international objectives were not to deter Germany from aggressing but to provoke conflict and spread communism. The result was

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increasing opposition to an alliance despite approaching war with Ger­ many. According to Shaw, when the Soviets “demanded and then refused to compromise on a guarantee against indirect aggression, the Prime Minis­ ter [Chamberlain] seized the opportunity to evoke once more the suspicion and resentment ministers had managed to suppress completely only a few weeks earlier. . . . Those in the Cabinet and Foreign Policy Committee who had supported an alliance had done so only because it appeared the lesser of two evils. .  .  . The Soviet government’s demands from June onwards, however, seemed to confirm the prejudice that had never disappeared from the conscience of ministers, and an alliance no longer seemed the lesser evil. Communist expansion again appeared to be Europe’s greatest threat.”29 British leaders’ half-hearted interest in allying with the Soviet Union by midsummer is revealed by the nature of the diplomatic mission sent to Moscow in August, the putative objective of which was to finalize an alli­ ance. The mission revealed a startling lack of urgency to reach an accord. The British delegation was led by relatively low-ranking officials who lacked the authority to complete an agreement. Lack of this authority was strategic because the officials were under orders from the British govern­ ment “to conduct negotiations very slowly”; the less power the negotiators possessed, the slower talks went as the representatives frequently had to confer with London.30 These officials were also given instructions from their superiors that were replete with statements describing the duplici­ tous nature of the Soviet government.31 Such statements reduced the moti­ vation for the British negotiators to come to terms with the Soviets. Until the possibility of allying with the Soviet Union was foreclosed due to the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of nonaggression on August 23, the British government remained very reluctant to commit to this coalition. f r ench ou tre ach to th e sovi et u n i o n French politics in the 1930s were divided into four main political parties/ groupings: conservatives (represented chiefly by the Republican Federa­ tion and Democratic Alliance Parties and a majority of the French high command), political centrists (represented chiefly by the Radical-Socialist, hereafter Radical, Party), socialists (represented primarily by the French Section of the Workers’ International party, or SFIO), and communists (the French Communist Party). Members of the French Right were fierce de­ fenders of the existing social and economic order. In practice, this meant that conservatives championed the protection of private property, minimal interference by the government in social and economic affairs, the preser­ vation of social and economic hierarchy, and the maintenance of domestic order. Radicals shared with leftist parties anticlericalism and dedication to

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social justice. They were, however, also dedicated to many of the same do­ mestic objectives of more conservative groups, including protecting private property, maintaining order, and the rejection of class struggle and revolution.32 Radicals’ and especially conservatives’ ideological beliefs created in­ tense ideological hostility toward communism and the Soviet Union, as I discuss in greater detail later in the chapter. As with British conservatives, this ideological enmity existed from the time of the Russian Revolution in 1917. According to Anthony Adamthwaite, “anti-Bolshevism was a central plank in the Right wing platform in the immediate aftermath of [the First World] war. . . . In April 1927, the Radical Albert Sarraut, Minister of the Interior [and future Prime Minister] proclaimed ‘Communism is the enemy.’”33 French socialists desired nationalization of industries, major expansion of workers’ rights, and greater economic and social equality. Although the long-run goal of the SFIO was to fundamentally alter the existing economic order, in the short run the leader of the party, Léon Blum, advocated achiev­ ing this objective by working within the existing parliamentary system.34 Socialists’ ideological beliefs, as I examine at the end of the chapter, created important areas of ideological agreement and dispute with the Soviet Union. Most socialists in the 1930s agreed, though, that fascist Germany was the greater ideological danger. The French Communist Party by 1934 was “unequivocally Stalinist.” Its leadership endeavored to create through revolutionary means and the “mobilization of the masses” a communist regime in France on the Soviet model. French communist leaders submitted to the discipline of the Comin­ tern and identified “the French Communist interest with that indicated by the Soviet Party leadership.”35 The key to understanding France’s alliance policies toward the Soviet Union in the 1930s is found in the preferences of conservatives and Radi­ cals. These groups dominated French politics from February 1934 until the outbreak of World War II. One or the other or both groups in these years led all governments (but one) that lasted longer than a month.36 The exception occurred from June 1936 to June 1937 when Blum governed.37 Even during Blum’s premiership, however, conservatives continued to dominate the high command, and Radicals controlled the key foreign policy positions in the cabinet, most notably the Ministries of Foreign Affairs (Yvon Delbos), National Defense and War (Édouard Daladier), and State (Camille Chau­ temps). Given the power of the Center and Right, no alliance with the So­ viet Union was possible over these groups’ objections. What, then, were conservative and Radical leaders’ views on the desir­ ability of Franco-Soviet alliance against the German threat? Their prefer­ ences and policies can be divided into two distinct and opposing phases. In the first, both Radical and conservative elites pushed for an alliance with

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the Soviet Union. In this period, realist incentives for alliance formation dominated policymaking. Both Radical and conservative leaders were highly hostile to the Soviet Union for ideological reasons, but the material threat posed by Germany superseded at this time the barriers to alliance created by ideological enmity. In the second period, this pattern was re­ versed, and both groups of leaders opposed allying with the Soviets. In this phase of policymaking, the effects of ideological enmity trumped the incen­ tives for alliance created by Germany’s power rise. The first of these phases existed in 1934 and 1935. In these years, a major­ ity of the most powerful Radical and conservative politicians and military leaders, including former and future prime minister Chautemps, Minister of State and former prime minister Édouard Herriot, future foreign minis­ ter Georges Bonnet, future foreign minister Delbos (all Radicals), Prime Minister Pierre Laval, Chief of the French General Staff Gen. Maurice Gamelin and much of the rest of the high command, Minister of War and future prime minister Marshal Philippe Pétain, Minister of State and for­ mer prime minister André Tardieu, Secretary-General of the Foreign Minis­ try Alexis Léger, Prime Minister Pierre-Étienne Flandin, and Minister of State and leader of the Republican Federation Louis Marin (all of whom were of the Center and Right) supported forming an alliance with the So­ viet Union.38 These individuals justified this choice by appealing to realist logic. Radical and conservative leaders in these years repeatedly referred to the grave material danger created by Germany’s rise and how an alliance with the Soviet Union—because of its power and geography—was neces­ sary to counter this threat. Herriot explained in 1935: “I consult the map. I see only one country which can bring us the necessary counterweight [against Germany] and create a second front in case of war. That is the So­ viet Union.”39 Henri de Kérillis, the editor of the influential conservative newspaper L’Echo de Paris and future parliamentarian, summarized conser­ vatives’ support in 1934 for an alliance with the Soviet Union by appealing to the “the coldest of realisms” and the incentives created by France’s rela­ tive weakness: “France is too weak to stand alone against Germany, whose population is a third more numerous, whose industrial resources are five or six times larger. France knows what isolation cost her in 1870–71.” Because Soviet power made it “capable of playing a decisive role” in a war against Germany, an alliance with the Soviet Union would significantly benefit France’s interests.40 These statements of strong support for forging a frenemy alliance with the Soviet Union were not just talk but also were backed by actions. Radical and conservative politicians took the lead in negotiating the Franco-Soviet Treaty of Mutual Assistance, which stated that if either country were attacked, the countries would “immediately give each other aid and assis­ tance.”41 The pact was signed in May 1935 and ratified by the French gov­ ernment in February 1936.

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If the signing and ratification of the treaty of mutual assistance was the end of the story of security relations between France and the Soviet Union in the 1930s, it would be reasonable to conclude that the two countries had forged an alliance and that realist calculations had superseded the effects of ideological enmity. The pact, if taken at face value and sustained, could even be considered what I label in chapter 1 a “strong” alliance based on a formal pledge to defend one another from attack. The year 1936, however, marked a transition point in French politics and the beginning of the second (and highly ideological) phase in conserva­ tives’ and Radicals’ alliance policies toward the Soviet Union. This phase lasted until the end of the decade. Despite their high interest in allying with the Soviet Union in 1934 and 1935, both conservative and Radical elites reversed course after 1935 and became adamantly opposed to the coalition. By the time the treaty of mutual assistance was up for ratification in February 1936, conservative politicians overwhelmingly opposed the pact, with most refusing to vote for the accord that they had championed only a year before.42 Almost all Radical members of parliament voted to ratify the pact. Their support, along with unanimous consent from social­ ists and communists, resulted in passage.43 Yet, by the fall of 1936, most Radicals—including the then minister of national defense and war Dala­ dier and Foreign Minister Delbos—joined with conservatives in opposing a Soviet alliance. Although Radical leaders did not prevent ratification of the treaty of mu­ tual assistance (and conservatives were unable to do so), these groups joined forces beginning in 1936 to rebuff repeated Soviet requests to de­ velop the accord in ways that would have significantly increased its utility. Radical politicians and conservative leaders in the military refused to nego­ tiate a military convention with the USSR that would have specified how the two states would aid one another if Germany invaded. They also es­ chewed concrete military cooperation with the Soviets, such as staff talks, joint training, and war planning. In the absence of these specific forms of cooperation and coordination, the pact had little operational value.44 These outcomes were in clear contrast to the Franco-Russian alliance a generation earlier, which was repeatedly updated based on military-to-military inter­ actions.45 Adding to this puzzle is the fact that before 1936, conservative and Radical leaders had indicated a willingness to develop the pact in pre­ cisely the ways that they refused to after this year.46 Conservative and Radical elites beginning in 1936 not only refused to develop the operational value of the pact but also repeatedly questioned the accord’s value, to the point where many—including Soviet leaders— doubted that France was committed to the agreement. Deputy Chief of Staff Gen. Victor-Henri Schweisguth, for example, told the British military attaché in Paris in April 1936 that “the pact had no military clauses and no military value for France. The Russians would have liked to have had

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conversations between the two General Staffs but had received no encour­ agement.”47 The following October, Gen. Henri Giraud, commanding the Sixth Region, told Winston Churchill (as recounted in British documents) that the pact “conferred no benefit at all upon France, and he claimed also that he was speaking for the great majority of the French Command and Staff, it would be a very good thing if the Franco-Soviet Pact could be dropped.”48 Prime Minister Chautemps told the US ambassador to Paris, William Bullitt, in December 1937 that although he was unable to formally abrogate the treaty of mutual assistance, it was his intent to “never make a military alliance with the Soviet Union directed against Germany or in­ dulge in military conversations with the Soviet Union.”49 Soviet leaders were well aware of conservatives’ and Radicals’ high hos­ tility beginning in 1936 to both the Soviet Union and the treaty of mutual assistance. The result was that Soviet officials had little or no confidence that France would honor the accord’s commitments. Soviet ambassadors to Paris repeatedly relayed to Moscow, according to Michael Carley’s sum­ mary of the archival data, that “the Franco-Soviet mutual assistance pact appeared defective at birth, and so little valued by the French as to be al­ most worthless.”50 Soviet foreign minister Maxim Litvinov wrote to Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin in September 1936 that French leaders’ behavior and statements had made the pact “inactive.”51 The following fall, Ivan Maisky, the Soviet ambassador to London, dismissed the pact as “not worth two pence.”52 Litvinov relayed to the Soviet ambassador in Paris in November 1937 that the Soviet government had “absolutely reliable information that the French high command is resolutely opposed to the Franco-Soviet pact and is openly talking about it.”53 French ambassador to the Soviet Union, Robert Coulondre, told his superiors in October 1938 after meeting with Soviet officials, including Litvinov, that “for now, the USSR expected noth­ ing more” from France and that from the Soviet perspective the pact was “null and void.”54 In May 1939, Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov told the British ambassador to Moscow, William Seeds, that the pact was a “pa­ per delusion.”55 Because of French leaders’ unwillingness to develop the pact with concrete military cooperation and coordination, many French elites’ open aversion to the accord, and Soviet leaders’ belief that the pact was inactive or null and void, I conclude that the pact after 1936 did not constitute a functioning alliance.56 The French Center and Right’s aversion to cooperating with the Soviet Union became crystal clear during the 1938 Munich Crisis. Instead of en­ deavoring to develop and deepen an alliance with the Soviet Union, the French government led by Prime Minister Daladier and Foreign Minister Bonnet (both Radicals) worked for the USSR’s isolation and supported the British in excluding the Soviets from all negotiations. “For London and Paris,” wrote Ambassador Coulondre, “Moscow was no longer in Europe.”57

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Radical leaders in 1939 appeared to return to the 1934–35 realist phase of alliance policies toward the Soviet Union, but this conversion was only par­ tial. Daladier’s and Bonnet’s willingness to forge a coalition with the USSR increased considerably in this year. This change was due primarily to the starkness of power realities and intense fears of German aggression. French intelligence in the spring estimated that Germany and Italy could field over twice as many army divisions as Britain and France combined and that an attack by the fascist countries against the Western democracies was, as one report put it in April, “inevitable and very near.”58 Once alliance negotiations among the British, French, and Soviets began in May, the French proved to be willing to meet many Soviet demands. Like the British, French leaders agreed to guarantee the security of even those Eastern European states, Poland and the Baltic countries, that did not want this commitment. The French, unlike the British, were even prepared to ac­ cept the Soviet demand regarding the concept of indirect aggression.59 Despite these concessions, as well as the continued existence of the pow­ erful material forces pushing for cooperation with the Soviets that led to them, key French elites remained surprisingly reluctant to commit to a full military alliance with the Soviet Union that would have required extensive coordination with Soviet armed forces.60 The French, in other words, em­ phasized general principles of cooperation while remaining reluctant to specify war-fighting obligations and coordination, which were critical to the Soviets. French intransigence on this issue played a major role in the failure to agree to a coalition during the August negotiations in Moscow. Despite the urgency of the situation given the rapidly deteriorating security envi­ ronment, the French representatives sent to the Soviet Union in August 1939 did not possess the authority to sign a military accord. Without this ability, France’s lead negotiator, Gen. Joseph Doumenc, complained in a private let­ ter to Alexis Léger (the secretary-general of the Foreign Ministry) that he was going to Moscow “empty-handed” (Léger agreed with this assess­ ment).61 When the Soviets asked early in the talks “about the strength of the British and French forces, what plans had been made to fight the Germans, and how the western forces would be deployed,” the representatives from the Western democracies could not respond with specifics because “neither the British nor the French were prepared to discuss [with the Soviets] mili­ tary cooperation in wartime.”62 Not until August 21 did Daladier send Gen­ eral Doumenc a cable that instructed that he was now “authorized to sign as best you can . . . the military agreement pending approval by the French government.”63 This change was, however, too late. Two days after Daladier increased Doumenc’s negotiating authority, the Soviets and Germans an­ nounced the signing of the nonaggression treaty. Despite approaching war, “nothing that transpired during the military talks [in Moscow],” as Zara Steiner summarizes, “brought any assurance that the Western powers . . . were prepared to fight alongside the Russians.”64

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Why the Failure to Ally? Ideological Barriers to Security Cooperation Both of the ideological conditions that make the barriers to the creation of frenemy coalitions particularly high were at work for British conservatives and members of the French Right and Center in relation to the Soviet Union in the 1930s. These conditions were (1) intense fears of regime vul­ nerability, which raised the anticipated costs of allying with the Soviet Union by increasing the likelihood of communist revolution and the un­ dermining of domestic institutions, and (2) a particular configuration of ideological distances in relation to Germany and the Soviet Union—in this case one of divided threats—that reduced the perceived need to ally with the USSR. Members of the British and French Right and Center viewed Germany as the greatest material threat but the Soviet Union as the great­ est ideological danger. This configuration helped mask the extent of the German peril while facilitating Germany’s ability to adopt successful ideo­ logical wedging policies regarding a potential Anglo-French-Soviet alliance.

high levels of regi me vu ln era bi li ty and m aj o r do mesti c co sts o f a llyi n g wi th the sovi et u n i o n I argued in chapter 1 that high levels of regime vulnerability will signifi­ cantly reduce the likelihood of leaders committing to frenemy alliances by increasing the domestic costs of these coalitions. When regime vulnerabil­ ity is high, elites will worry that allying with a country that shares the ideology of the domestic danger will facilitate ideological subversion and revolution. All three of the variables that tend to high make policymakers’ fears for the continuation of their preferred ideological order were at work by the mid-1930s for members of the French Right and Center, and two were in play for British conservatives. Leaders in all of these groups were worried about the undermining of domestic institutions and communist revolution due to the increasing power of communist fifth columns and ef­ forts by the Soviet officials to spread their ideology. French conservatives and Radicals were also concerned about the creation of harmful demonstra­ tion effects due to potential communist revolutions in other states (chiefly Spain). The result was extremely high fears of regime vulnerability for the British and French Right and Center and correspondingly high domestic costs of allying with the Soviet Union. Regime Vulnerability for French Conservatives and Radicals. The chief puz­ zle to be explained for French conservative and Radical leaders’ alliance policies toward the Soviet Union in the 1930s is their stunning reversal

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halfway through the decade. Until 1936, these elites not only supported forming a frenemy alliance with the Soviet Union to counter the German danger but also made important progress in achieving this objective with the signing of the Franco-Soviet Treaty of Mutual Assistance in May 1935. After this year, however, most of these elites reversed course and opposed committing to a Soviet alliance. Most conservative and Radical leaders re­ fused to engage in concrete military cooperation and coordination with the USSR, called for terminating or ignoring the pact, and worked to ostracize the Soviet Union at key periods (most notably at Munich). These officials rejected allying with the Soviet Union in the second half of the 1930s even though France’s relative power in relation to Germany continued to deteri­ orate as the decade progressed. Changes in levels of regime vulnerability explain this remarkable aboutface in alliance policies. Most conservative and Radical officials were will­ ing to commit to a cross-ideological coalition with the Soviet Union only when levels of regime vulnerability and fears of communist revolution in France were low—which was the case in the first half of the 1930s.65 As long as regime vulnerability was low, leaders did not have to choose between the security of their state and the stability of their regime, which greatly fa­ cilitated the basing of alliance policies on the logic of realpolitik. This favorable situation for the formation of a Franco-Soviet alliance ended, however, over the course of 1935 and 1936 and with it most conser­ vative and Radical leaders’ willingness to support the coalition. The most important cause of rising levels of regime vulnerability was a significant increase in the power of an ideological fifth column tied to the Soviet Union: French communists. For most conservatives, an advance in power of French communists at the elite level was sufficient to cause them to op­ pose allying with the Soviet Union. Most Radical leaders reached the same conclusion when this source of regime fragility was combined with the demonstrated power of the fifth column at the societal level. As I indicated in chapter 1, the existence of a powerful ideological fifth column is often a necessary and sufficient condition for the creation of high levels of regime vulnerability. When powerful ideological fifth columns do not exist, re­ gime vulnerability is typically low. Whey they do, regime vulnerability tends to be high. Radicals and especially conservatives had always viewed the French Communist Party as an ideological fifth column for the Soviet Union. The last was not an unreasonable belief. French communists openly identified with the Soviet Union, called for its protection, and advocated for the support of Soviet interests. These facts do not mean, though, that the Com­ munist Party was always sufficiently powerful to create a plausible revolu­ tionary threat and thus high levels of regime vulnerability. To qualify as a powerful ideological fifth column at the elite level, a group must possess sufficient political power in the government to affect policy. The most

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visible indicator for the existence of a powerful ideological fifth column at the societal level is large-scale protests in support of revolutionary change. French communists met neither threshold for powerful during the first half of the 1930s. The Communist Party’s political power at the beginning of the decade was weak, which made its ability to shape governmental pol­ icy negligible. The party in the 1932 parliamentary elections won only ten seats in parliament (compared to eleven in the 1928 elections). Trend lines were also not encouraging, as communists received roughly 26 percent fewer votes in 1932 compared to 1928 (784,833 compared to 1,063,943).66 Popular protests in support of communists’ political objectives were also relatively rare in this period, as were strikes on behalf of working-class in­ terests. According to Edward Shorter and Charles Tilly, “strike rates in France .  .  . peaked in 1919–20, to decline through the 1920s and into the Great Depression.”67 The weakness of the French Communist Party was an important permis­ sive condition that facilitated Foreign Minister Louis Barthou’s original outreach to the Soviet Union that ultimately culminated in the treaty of mu­ tual assistance. “Sometime at the end of April” 1934, William Evans Scott explains, “Barthou made up his mind to grasp the Russian alliance. What did he think about the interaction of foreign and domestic politics? He had always been a bitter opponent of the French Communists; did it bother him to seek the friendship of their masters? He . . . seems to have dismissed the danger as small because the French Communist party was so small, a paltry ten out of six hundred in the Chamber of Deputies.”68 The power of the communist fifth column at both the elite and societal levels increased considerably in the mid-1930s and with it conservatives’ and Radicals’ regime vulnerability. Three developments were particularly important in escalating these groups’ fears of revolution due to commu­ nists’ growing power. First, the Communist Party demonstrated an en­ hanced electoral appeal in the May 1935 municipal elections, which were held less than a week after the Franco-Soviet pact was signed. The commu­ nists nearly doubled the number of town councils under their control com­ pared to the 1929 elections, from 150 to 297.69 Second and much more important, French communists beginning in 1935 became members of a political coalition, known as the Popular Front, that promised to significantly increase the party’s electoral fortunes. The Com­ munist Party and the SFIO had agreed to the coalition in 1934, and the Rad­ ical Party, chiefly spurred by a fear of the rise of French fascism, agreed to join in 1935. (Radicals at this time viewed French communists as the lesser of two evils compared to French fascists. This view, though, would not last long. By the summer of 1936, as I discuss below, most Radicals viewed com­ munists as the greatest domestic revolutionary threat.)70 Communists’ participation in the Popular Front promised a significant boost in the party’s prestige and legitimacy.71 The coalition, as was well

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understood at the time, was also likely to win the 1936 parliamentary elec­ tions. This outcome would significantly increase the Communist Party’s ability to shape policy, thereby making it an elite ideological fifth column as I define it. Although the Communist Party was the junior member of the coalition in terms of electoral strength, it nevertheless, as David Levy ex­ plains, “became the moving force behind the Popular Front, providing both the political initiatives and the slogans for the movement.”72 These developments, especially the second, were sufficient to activate conservatives’ fears of regime vulnerability and with them opposition to forming an alliance with the Soviet Union. According to Scott, by the end of 1935 many conservatives “were convinced that the Communists were run­ ning the Popular Front and were on their way to take over France. Within nine months their image of the Communist Party changed from a handful of noisemakers to that of a powerful menace. With that changing image came a different response to the Russian alliance.”73 In December 1935 and January 1936, the French ambassador to the Soviet Union, Charles Alphand, explained to his Soviet counterpart, Vladimir Potemkin, “[Prime Minister] Laval was alarmed by the growth of the French communist party and the consolidation of the Popular Front. The communists did not trouble him while they remained a small ‘extremist’ group,” but events were indicating this was no longer the case. The result was that “domestic politics were adversely affecting Franco-Soviet relations.”74 Conservatives after 1935 repeatedly identified the enhanced domestic power of the communist ideological fifth column at the elite level as the key reason why they went from supporting the signing of the treaty of mu­ tual assistance in May 1935 to opposing the ratification of the accord the following February. Members of the French Right feared that allying with the international patron of their domestic ideological enemy at a time when the power of the latter group was significantly expanding would further increase the likelihood of regime change. An alliance with the Soviet Union, conservatives believed, would provide French communists greater re­ sources and popularity and the Soviet Union enhanced opportunities for ideological proselytization. According to William Irvine, “the domestic situation had changed drastically since the mutual assistance pact had first been signed. The Communists, who had seemed relatively weak and iso­ lated at the beginning of 1935, had demonstrated their growing strength in the intervening municipal elections. With the Communists an increasingly important political force [especially after the formation of the Popular Front], a pact with the Soviet Union seemed [to conservatives] more dan­ gerous, and its ratification risked giving the domestic Communists a new­ found respectability.”75 One conservative parliamentary member, Henri de Kérillis, stated in the Chamber of Deputies in February 1936 during the debate over ratification of the pact, “The Communists, in as much as they are active elements of the Popular Front, are trying to gain power, and we

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cannot combat them while at the same time proclaiming our friendship for M. Stalin. . . . At the Right, nationalist deputies have been declaring: ‘What a tragedy to have to vote against a possible ally [the Soviet Union] even if that ally is monstrous, at the moment when the German menace is becom­ ing real!’ But we do not hesitate to say here that our friends have done well to vote in a body against the pact, considering the conditions in which it was presented and the [domestic] risks that it involves at present.”76 To de Kérillis and most of his fellow conservatives, allying with the Soviet Union during a period of high regime vulnerability would help undermine the domestic regime they supported. This was a cost they were unwilling to pay, even if the alliance helped protect France’s security against Germany. De Kérillis in 1936 opposed allying with the Soviet Union even though, as discussed above, just two years earlier when editor of L’Echo de Paris he had lobbied for the coalition based on the cold logic of realism and power realities.77 Although the mere likelihood of the communist ideological fifth column participating in a governing coalition was sufficient to activate conserva­ tives’ fears of regime vulnerability to the point where they opposed allying with the Soviet Union, the actual results of the June 1936 parliamentary elections and their aftermath powerfully reinforced these fears for not only conservative elites but Radical leaders as well. These are the third develop­ ment that escalated conservatives’ and Radicals’ fears of revolution due to the increasing power of the communist fifth column. The Popular Front, especially the SFIO and the Communist Party, won a major victory in the elections. Socialists increased their seats from 129 to 149, making them the largest party in parliament. The Communist Party experienced the largest electoral growth of any party after receiving 15 per­ cent of the vote (compared to 8 percent in 1932) and increased its seats from 10 to 72.78 The Radicals lost 48 seats (from 157 to 109), and the two largest conservative parties, the Republican Federation and Democratic Alliance Parties, gained a collective 2 seats (from 170 to 172).79 The results of the elec­ tion led to socialist leader Léon Blum being prime minister from June 1936 to June 1937. The policies adopted by the Popular Front after coming to power con­ firmed conservatives’ suspicions that the coalition was moving the country in a revolutionary direction. Almost immediately after assuming power, the Blum government implemented a number of social and economic policies that were anathema to conservatives, including passing legislation that granted the rights to strike, collectively bargain, and to a paid vacation; re­ moved obstacles to union organization; and established the forty-hour workweek. This legislation was accompanied by a massive increase in the number of sit-in strikes across France, as over a million factory workers oc­ cupied their places of work and demanded wage increases and social re­ forms.80 The number of strikes per hundred thousand workers increased

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from roughly four per year before the Popular Front took power to forty after this change.81 There were more strikes in France in June 1936 than there had been the previous fifteen years.82 As a result of these develop­ ments, “much of the right began to fear imminent [communist] revolution in France.”83 Radicals, in a major development, concurred with this assessment. Lead­ ers of the party had agreed to join the Popular Front primarily because of the fear of the rise of French fascism. They understood that joining the co­ alition could boost the prestige and legitimacy of the Communist Party but were willing to live with this outcome as long as the communists were un­ able or unwilling to push for radical policies. The results of the 1936 elec­ tions, especially combined with the strikes and widespread social unrest in the summer of 1936 and beyond—which indicated the existence of a pow­ erful ideological fifth column at the societal level—demonstrated that this condition was no longer met. These developments convinced Radical lead­ ers that the threat of revolution now came primarily from the Communist Party and its supporters.84 The power of the communist ideological fifth column at both the elite and societal levels beginning in 1936 pushed Radical leaders to reject their previous policies and oppose a cross-ideological coalition with the USSR. Radicals believed that to ally with the Soviet Union at a time when the Communist Party was both increasing its power and flexing its political muscles risked emboldening domestic revolutionary forces. Coulondre, on behalf of Foreign Minister Delbos, warned Litvinov in November 1936 that Franco-Soviet relations were in a “critical” state because of the “posi­ tion of the French Communist party.”85 “Strikes, plant occupations, and rumors that the Communists were ready to seize power had disquieted the French middle class and even elements within the Popular Front [the Radical Party].” Even Herriot, Coulondre explained, “thought that FrancoSoviet relations had been ‘poisoned.’”86 In the Foreign Ministry’s view, ac­ cording to Nicole Jordan, “extensive reliance on the Soviets could only lead to uncontrollable ideological contagion [in France] and conflict with Germany.”87 The other two main sources of regime vulnerability—belief that the So­ viet Union was endeavoring to export its ideology to France and the antici­ pated impact of demonstration effects created by revolution in other countries—significantly amplified Radicals’ and conservatives’ fears of re­ gime vulnerability created by the communist fifth column, thereby making the anticipated costs of an alliance with the Soviet Union even higher. Radi­ cal and conservative leaders had always been hostile to the Soviet Union because of the subversive activities of the Comintern. The growing and demonstrated power of French communists beginning in 1936, members of the Right and Center feared, would significantly enhance the Soviet Union’s ability to push for revolutionary change in France. Worries that Soviet

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officials would use an alliance with France to further their subversive objec­ tives were particularly important in convincing Delbos and Daladier to op­ pose a coalition. Both leaders, according to John Dreifort, were “in the mainstream of Radical thought on this matter. Like most other officials, they believed that the French Communist activities [including facilitating mass protests in the summer of 1936 and beyond] were due to the instruc­ tions of the Comintern, which in turn merely reflected the international de­ signs of the Soviet Union. Therefore, it was up to Stalin to bring a halt to those activities before confidence could be restored in Soviet intentions and meaningful negotiations [to form an alliance] initiated. The Soviets would have to choose between the Pact [of mutual assistance] and the continua­ tion of their interference in French domestic affairs.”88 Radical and conservative leaders’ worries about ideological subversion in France’s armed forces due to Soviet orders and efforts were particularly high. This concern, according to Nicole Jordan, “embodied some of the deepest fears of the General Staff. With the paralytic wave of strikes [in 1936], which he attributed to Soviet influence, [the then minister of war] Daladier had predicted unchecked Communist agitation in the army, a fear which had besieged the military since the Front Populaire’s formation.”89 Indeed, the key reason why the (mostly conservative) “French High Com­ mand rejected a military alliance with the Soviet Union,” according to Pa­ trice Buffotot, was because this group “feared subversive action by the Communist Party, under orders from the Soviet Union, within its own forces.”90 Conservatives’ and Radicals’ fears of regime vulnerability and conse­ quent opposition to an alliance with the Soviet Union became even more intense during the Spanish Civil War, which began in July 1936. The war pitted a democratically elected Popular Front coalition government of so­ cialists and communists (similar to the governing coalition in France) against right-wing insurgent forces led by Gen. Francisco Franco. Franco’s forces were aided by fascist Germany and Italy, and the Popular Front’s with matériel from the Soviet Union. Despite interference by all the illiberal great powers, French Radicals and conservatives focused primarily on the Soviet Union, viewing Soviet policies as part of an effort to spread commu­ nism in Western Europe. These officials worried that a Soviet-backed communist victory in Spain would inspire or embolden ideological fifth columns in other countries, including potentially in France. Although a communist revolution did not ultimately occur in Spain, Radicals and con­ servatives anticipated the harmful consequences created by demonstration effects if this outcome were to transpire. Fears that revolution in Spain would spread to France were particularly great because both countries were governed by similarly constituted Popu­ lar Front coalitions. If the Spanish Civil War (which lasted until the spring of 1939) resulted in the enhancement of communists’ power and the

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creation of a communist regime on the Soviet model, the pressure for simi­ lar outcomes in France, conservatives and Radicals believed, would grow.91 These worries increased the costs of allying with the Soviet Union. Lead­ ers of the Right and Center wanted to weaken the Soviet Union’s inspira­ tional and subversive abilities, not potentially strengthen them through alliance. The result was the decision not to ally with the Soviets in Spain in favor of a policy of nonintervention. French officials chose this policy de­ spite the facts that without aid the Spanish republican forces were unlikely to defeat the nationalists (especially given the substantial support Franco’s forces were provided by Germany and Italy) and that Franco’s victory was likely to create major strategic threats to France. If a victorious Franco allied with Germany and Italy, which many assumed would happen, France would face enemies on three fronts. Moreover, a hostile Spain could have impeded the rapid transfer of troops to France from North Africa, where one third of France’s army was stationed. Without the North African divi­ sions, France’s ability to withstand a German onslaught was even less likely.92 The historian Anthony Adamthwaite summarizes how increasing regime vulnerability after the Popular Front’s rise to power in France and the out­ break of the civil war in Spain significantly increased the risks created by allying with the Soviet Union, so much so that many leaders became more concerned about the subversive effects created by associating with their chief ideological enemy, the Soviet Union, than they were about the mate­ rial danger posed by Germany: “The domestic bitterness of the summer of 1936 extinguished any hope of an effective Franco-Soviet alliance. . . . The traditional Germanophobia of the right was dissolved by Blum’s Popular Front and the Spanish war. Stalin, not Hitler, was the enemy.”93 Regardless of the source of regime vulnerability—elite and societal ideo­ logical fifth columns, fears of Soviet-backed subversion, and the anticipated impact of demonstration effects due to potential revolution abroad—the ef­ fects on French Radicals’ and conservatives’ alliance policies were the same. The more these elites feared that cooperation with the Soviet Union would facilitate communist revolution in their states, the more costly an alliance with this country became. This relationship significantly reduced conserva­ tives’ and Radicals’ willingness to commit to the coalition despite the ever-increasing German material threat. Socialist leader Blum sorrowfully summarized these relationships in a November 1936 letter to Ambassador Coulondre: “A psychosis is being created according to which the Soviet entente leads to Communism; this fear tends to neutralize that which is in­ spired by the German threat and to paralyze cooperation among the pacific powers at the very time when this current ought to intensify.”94 Regime Vulnerability for British Conservatives. Regime vulnerability and consequent opposition to alliance with the Soviet Union was also high in

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the 1930s for the dominant British policymakers: conservatives. The key sources of vulnerability were the power of communist fifth columns and efforts by Soviet leaders to export their ideology. Conservative elites in the 1930s were not primarily worried about the power of a communist fifth column in metropolitan Britain. (The British Communist Party never had more than one parliamentary member in the interwar period.) They were instead highly concerned about the revolu­ tionary potential of communist fifth columns at the societal level in the em­ pire. These revolutionary forces were frequently inspired or backed by the Soviet Union. There is a potential disconnect between conservatives’ fears of ideologi­ cal subversion in the empire and my argument, which concentrates on the international effects of domestic ideological vulnerability. There are obvi­ ously major differences between a metropole and its colonies. Conserva­ tives’ core ideological beliefs, though, to a great extent blurred this distinction. Conservatives were dedicated to the preservation of Britain’s existing institutions, and the preservation of the empire and the authority of the king/emperor were very high on this list.95 The party’s Central Council in March 1937, for example, defined “the fundamental and in­ separable principles of the Conservative Party” as “empire unity, social progress and constitutional democracy.’”96 To conservatives, the empire was central to Britain’s identity and the type of state Britain was and should be. It is telling that conservative leaders in the 1930s consistently described the communist revolutionary threat in the empire in terms of dangers to domestic politics and the undermining of domestic institutions and values (e.g., the undermining of the sovereignty and prestige of the king/emperor). Conservatives throughout the 1930s were particularly concerned about the likelihood of communist revolution in India, the empire’s crown jewel. “Communist activities” in India by the early 1930s, as Habib Manzer ex­ plains, “posed a severe threat to the government.” Proponents of an emer­ gency powers bill passed by British policymakers in London in October 1935 described “communism as the greatest danger to the British as it was steadily growing” throughout India.97 British officials in response to this threat both instructed the Indian government to outlaw communism and arrested and tried prominent Indian communists. These efforts, though, were largely unsuccessful as communist supporters continued to grow throughout the decade.98 These revolutionary forces in India, conservatives believed, were tied to the Soviet Union, making them an ideological fifth column at the societal level.99 The prosecution in the Meerut Conspiracy Case (a trial from 1929 to 1932 of accused communist revolutionaries), for example, accused the de­ fendants of endeavoring to “create a revolution; one of the objects of which is to destroy the present Government of the King [of Britain], secure

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complete independence for India and set up a Workers’ Republic on Soviet lines.”100 To the lead prosecutor, the defendants aimed “for the overthrow of the King Emperor and the setting up of the dominion of Moscow.”101 The conviction that the Soviet Union was endeavoring to take advantage of the power of the ideological fifth column in India and elsewhere in the empire exacerbated conservatives’ feelings of regime vulnerability. Indeed, there was “a pervasive belief [among British leaders] that Soviet Commu­ nist . . . agents were actively seeking to undermine the empire, stoking the flames of unrest with adroit propaganda and pulling strings behind the scenes whenever trouble occurred.”102 British officials were so worried about the Soviet subversive activities that the Intelligence Bureau in the early 1930s issued a handbook given to all British agents sent to India that argued that “any discontent and political unrest in India was likely the re­ sult of Comintern conspiracies.”103 Conservatives’ worries about the power of communist fifth columns in the empire, combined with the conviction that the Soviet Union was at­ tempting to take advantage of this subversive danger and export commu­ nist revolution, created powerful barriers to an Anglo-Soviet alliance in the 1930s despite the growing material danger created by Germany’s rise. To begin with, many members of the British Right believed that a state pro­ moting revolution could not be trusted to be a reliable ally. Foreign Secre­ tary Anthony Eden recollected in his memoirs, “Reports constantly arrived on my desk [when foreign secretary] about the Comintern’s world-wide activities against the British Empire. It was not possible to work in confi­ dence with a power which pursued such methods.”104 Lord Chilston, the British ambassador to Moscow, provided a similar ac­ count of the barriers to cooperation with the Soviet Union in a January 1936 memorandum. The effects of ideological enmity in general, and fears of Soviet-sponsored subversion in particular, were central to the analysis. Ac­ cording to the ambassador, “any real friendliness . . . of relations [with the USSR] is difficult to conceive. The immense difference in the system and institutions of the government .  .  . and in the conception of liberties .  .  . make a broad gulf which for the present has no bridge. . . . Thus is the hy­ pocrisy of the Janus-headed Communist State, facing both ways, stands for peace for itself, peace in its own time, while simultaneously wishing to dis­ turb the internal security of those with whom it claims to collaborate for the ‘peace indivisible’ and collective security. . . . Well might the stern rebuke of the prophet—‘What hast thou to do with peace?’—be applied to that State which protects, nurtures and uses the Comintern.”105 Conservatives’ worries about communist revolution in the empire also pushed these elites to oppose a Soviet alliance because they feared that the coalition would provide the Soviets greater resources and legitimacy, thereby augmenting their subversive capacity. These worries were on clear display during the 1935–36 negotiations concerning a possible loan

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to the USSR. This proposal, as explained, was the only significant proSoviet policy that was considered by the government from 1935 to the spring of 1939. Despite the potential strategic advantages that could have resulted from the loan (improved relations with the Soviet Union as a first step toward establishing security cooperation against Germany), the British rejected it by a wide margin. Fears that British territories in the empire were suscep­ tible to ongoing Soviet-backed subversion were central to conservative elites’ reasoning. According to Keith Neilson, “while secretary of state for India [from 1931 to 1935, Samuel] Hoare had been vociferous about the sub­ versive communist threat in India. It was not surprising, then, that at his first meeting as foreign secretary with [Soviet ambassador to Britain] Maisky [in June 1935], Hoare warned . . . that ‘it would be extremely diffi­ cult to persuade the Conservatives in this country to accept a pro-Russian policy if the Soviet Government failed to eliminate the source of trouble that had often poisoned relations in the past’”—that is, subversive activities in the empire.106 Eden supported this view, as recorded in a note from a November 1935 cabinet meeting (one month before he became foreign sec­ retary), stating that British “goodwill [with the Soviet Union] depends on [the Soviet] Govt’s good behavior; i.e. keep their noses & fingers out of our domestic politics.”107 Concerns over the empire’s vulnerability to subver­ sion made Eden reluctant to even take the loan proposal to the cabinet. He stated in January 1936 that he “could do so with more conviction were I not troubled with the suspicion that some at least of this money will find its way into communist propaganda in the Empire.”108 One of the joint parlia­ mentary undersecretaries of state for foreign affairs, Lord Stanhope, ex­ pressed similar fears and hostility in January 1936: “I cannot say that I look with much enthusiasm on being friends with Russia or Germany or Japan— I mistrust them all, but I mistrust Russia most of the three. . . . I share with [Eden] the suspicion that a good deal of this money [from the loan] is likely to be used for the break-up of the greatest bulwark against Bolshevism viz. the British Empire.”109 Conservatives’ conviction that the Soviets were attempting to export communism and consequent fears of regime vulnerability helped prevent alliance with the Soviet Union until the end of the decade. As discussed, the primary reason for the British cabinet’s renewed ambivalence in the sum­ mer of 1939 about creating an alliance with the Soviet Union was the Sovi­ ets’ insistence that an alliance be triggered not only by external attacks but also “internal aggression” and adverse domestic developments in other countries. To the conservative government in Britain, this demand indi­ cated that a primary objective of the Soviets remained to interfere in others’ domestic politics to spread communism. As Halifax explained at a July 1939 meeting of the Committee on Foreign Policy, “by encouraging Soviet Russia in the matter of internal interference we should be doing

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incalculable damage to our interests both at home and throughout the world.”110 Approving the doctrine of indirect aggression to finalize an alli­ ance, Halifax and other conservatives feared, would facilitate the spread of communism both in Europe and the empire. This cost created by allying with the Soviet Union was one most conservatives were unwilling to pay, despite the large and escalating German threat.111 a n id eolo gica l co n fi gu rati o n o f d i v i d e d t hreats a nd t h e redu ced n eed to a lly w i t h t he sovi et u ni o n The second condition that impedes the creation of frenemy coalitions, par­ ticular configurations of ideological distances among potential frenemy al­ lies and their shared material threat, was also critical in preventing Britain and France from allying with the Soviet Union in the 1930s. Virtually all British and French leaders agreed that Germany was the greatest material danger to their states’ interests. Most conservative and Radical leaders were clear, however, that communist Russia was the greatest ideological threat. To these Western elites, communism was the antithesis of their beliefs, and it was against this ideology that they defined and defended their own. De­ spite conservatives’ and Radicals’ major ideological differences with Nazi Germany, these officials did share an important area of ideological agree­ ment with this state: intense anticommunism. The result was that most members of the British and French Right and Center viewed Germany as a lesser ideological enemy in comparison to the USSR. This divergence be­ tween greatest material and ideological dangers is the core dynamic of a configuration of divided threats. This ideological configuration impedes the creation of frenemy alliances for two primary reasons. First, because in this configuration the greatest power and ideological dangers confronting a state do not coincide, there is likely to be significant uncertainty among elites as to which of these threats constitutes the greatest overall peril to their country. Is it the state with the greatest capabilities but some shared principles or the one that is likely per­ ceived to have the most hostile intentions due to a dedication to particu­ larly disparate ideological beliefs but in possession of less offensive power? The greater the uncertainty over the relative dangers posed by other states, the less likely leaders will incur the costs and risks created by allying with ideological enemies. The second way in which a configuration of divided threats decreases the likelihood of frenemy alliances is by creating opportunities for the material threat to adopt successful ideological wedging policies. These policies en­ deavor to amplify the effects of the potential frenemy allies’ ideological dis­ putes to inhibit cooperation among them. As discussed in chapter 1, the most successful ideological wedging policies are based on the processes of

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argumentation and strategic framing. By framing negotiations and public diplomacy in ways that emphasize the ideological disputes between the potential frenemy allies, the material threat can help increase the saliency of these disputes, thereby helping to wedge the ideological enemies apart. Strategic framing as a wedge strategy has a good chance of succeeding in an ideological configuration of divided threats because in this situation the material threat (the wedging state) possesses some degree of ideological overlap with one of the potential frenemy allies. Leaders in the material threat can appeal to this ideological agreement and mutual ideological en­ mity with the remaining country to reduce the likelihood of hostile crossideological coalitions forming. Both pathways that connect a configuration of divided threats to a decreased need for frenemy alliances played impor­ tant roles in preventing British and French conservatives and French Radi­ cals from allying with the Soviet Union in the 1930s. An Ideological Configuration of Divided Threats and the Masking of the Ger­ man Danger. It is difficult to exaggerate the intensity of British conserva­ tives’ animosity toward the Soviet Union that resulted from the effects of ideological enmity. These elites had viewed the Soviet Union as an intense ideological rival since the USSR’s founding, and time had not altered this position. Leaders of the British Right in the 1930s consistently assumed the worst about Soviet intentions because of very high ideological differences with this state. As Shaw explains after an extensive study of governmental and private documents from the 1930s when conservatives dominated poli­ cymaking, “a detailed examination of Cabinet and Foreign Policy Commit­ tee minutes, Foreign Office reports and the private papers of the decision makers reveals the existence of deep-seated suspicion and hostility toward the Soviet Union among ministers and officials that derived ultimately from ideological differences.”112 The most frequent charge conservatives made against Soviet leaders was that they were trying to provoke a war among Britain, France, and Ger­ many to weaken their ideological enemies and perhaps even stimulate communist revolutions in these states. Leaders of the British Right inter­ preted even offers of dialogue and cooperation from the Soviets in the worst possible light. After the Soviets proposed in March 1938 to convene a four-power conference among Britain, France, the United States, and USSR that would address Germany’s recent incorporation of Austria (which was done under the threat of force and added nine divisions to Germany’s army), Chamberlain indicated that the Soviet Union—and not Germany— was the most dangerous provocateur on the continent. He wrote to his sis­ ter Ida that the USSR was “stealthily and cunningly pulling all the strings behind the scenes to get us involved in a war with Germany.”113 Even after Germany’s invasion of Czechoslovakia in March 1939—when the material threat from Germany was reaching extremely high levels—key

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conservatives continued to emphasize their intense suspicions of the Soviets due to the effects of ideological enmity. D. W. Lascelles, the first secretary of the Northern Department, wrote privately in March of the “completely unreliable character of the Soviet government” and its “hostil­ ity towards the greatest of the capitalist and imperialist powers.”114 The fol­ lowing month, Chamberlain wrote his other sister Hilda, “Our chief trouble is with Russia [and thus not with Germany]. I confess to being deeply sus­ picious of her. I cannot believe that she has the same aims and objects as we have or any sympathy with democracy as such. . . . She is thoroughly mis­ trusted by every one else except our fatuous opposition.”115 British conservatives’ deep-seated mistrust of the Soviet Union due to the effects of ideological enmity created major barriers to an alliance de­ spite a rapidly deteriorating security environment. A November 1937 se­ cret memorandum on defense expenditures written by the director of plans for the British Admiralty summarized how high the ideological bar­ riers to an alliance with the Soviet Union were, incredibly indicating that it might be better for Britain to lose a war without Soviet help than win one while allied with the Soviets. The memo stated that an alliance with the Soviet Union would result in Britain being “faced with the absurd situa­ tion . . . of relying on an ally whose victory might well cost us more dearly than our own defeat.”116 Lascelles minuted in January 1939 that “much as we need fresh ideas for coping with the German menace, I cannot help thinking that this particular scheme [allying with the Soviet Union] is fore­ doomed to failure. .  .  . Essentially, these relations [with the Soviets] are based on a mutual and inevitable antipathy.”117 Oliver Harvey, the private secretary to the foreign secretary, summarized in his diary after a May 1939 Foreign Office meeting the ongoing problem inhibiting the creation of an Anglo-Soviet coalition: “It is a question of mutual trust. It is difficult for a British Conservative Government to negotiate an agreement with a Rus­ sian Communist one.”118 The barriers to alliance created by British conservatives’ tendency to as­ sume the worst about Soviet intentions are ones that frequently occur among ideological enemies. What made these barriers substantially higher was that these elites’ ideological relationships with the Soviet Union and Germany took place within an ideological configuration of divided threats, in which Germany was widely perceived to be a lesser ideological threat compared to the Soviet Union based on a shared commitment to anticom­ munism. Alec Douglas-Home, Chamberlain’s private parliamentary secre­ tary, explained, “The main thing to grasp is that Chamberlain, like many others, saw Communism as the major long-term danger. He hated Hitler and German Fascism, but he felt that Europe in general and Britain in par­ ticular were in even greater danger from Communism. Hitler was an evil man but in the short term one should—and possible could—do a deal with him.”119 As important as conservatives’ ideological enmity toward the

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Soviet Union was to these elites’ views of this state, if this enmity had taken place within a different ideological context in relation to Germany— specifically configurations of double threat or being an ideological outsider—the disincentives to allying with the Soviet Union against Ger­ many would have been much lower even if all other variables were the same. (For support of this claim, see the analysis at the end of the chapter of socialists’ perceptions of Germany in relation to the Soviet Union, which were an example of an ideological configuration of double threat.) Conservatives’ judgment that Germany was a lesser ideological danger than the Soviet Union lowered the perceived need to ally with the USSR by increasing the uncertainty over which of these countries was the greater overall menace to their state. This statement does not mean that British con­ servatives trusted the Nazis or that they did not view Germany as a poten­ tial massive threat. These were clearly not the case. Yet without the clarity of threats that exists when states’ greatest power and ideological dangers coincide (as is the case in a configuration of double threat), the magnitude of the German danger compared to the Soviet Union was obscured. It was not as stark or as pressing as it would have been in different ideological configurations. As worried as conservatives were about Germany’s mili­ tary resurgence, many leading members of this ideological group did not view the material threat posed by Germany—when viewed in the context of the ideological danger posed by the Soviet Union—to be sufficiently great to in­ cur the costs and risks created by allying with the Soviets. Expressed differently, whenever the potential danger posed by Nazi Ger­ many was interpreted in the light of the threat posed by communist Soviet Union—which was a frequent exercise—British elites tended to judge Ger­ many to be less menacing than an analysis based on either material vari­ ables or bilateral ideological relationships (liberalism versus fascism) would indicate. Duff Cooper (first lord of the Admiralty and a leading antiappeaser who resigned after Munich) criticized fellow conservatives for this tendency in a December 1938 private letter: “If in the face of the real and terrible German danger all our efforts are to be analyzed by the .  .  . bolshevist bogey . . . I feel inclined to despair.”120 Frequent fixation on the greatest ideological threat in the system helped to mask the danger posed by a lesser one, thereby reducing the perceived need to form a frenemy alli­ ance with the Soviet Union against Germany. Illustrative of the uncertainty of dangers that exists when states’ greatest power and ideological threats diverge in a situation of divided threats was a debate in the British Foreign Ministry between 1937 and 1939, according to a summary by Zara Steiner, “over the relative dangers of the Fascist and Communist threats to the western democracies.” One faction argued that the Soviet Union—chiefly because of its particularly disparate ideological beliefs—was the greater threat. The other argued that Germany was the chief danger due primarily to its greater extant capabilities. Critically, “no

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consensus emerged [out of this debate], making it difficult to arrive at a settled policy,” especially whether to try to ally with the Soviet Union.121 Carley summarizes these and related arguments: “Who was ‘Enemy No. 1,’ who was the paramount threat to European peace: Germany or the Soviet Union? Politicians and statesmen asked this question regularly in the years between the wars,” with no definitive answer to it.122 British conservatives’ views of Germany as a lesser ideological danger compared to the Soviet Union also obscured the extent of the Nazi menace by pushing these elites to believe that shared anticommunism created im­ portant common interests between Britain and Germany. The most signifi­ cant of these interests was preventing the spread of communism. This shared interest, in turn, increased the estimated probability of a peaceful resolution of disputes between the two countries. Secretary to the Cabinet Maurice Hankey indicated in an October 1936 letter to Eric Phipps, the mil­ itary attaché in Paris, for example, that Germany’s leaders were likely to opt for peaceful relations because in a war between Britain and Germany both countries would be “so exhausted by the end that we should probably become prey to Bolshevism—the very thing Hitler most fears.” Thus, Hankey “never despaired of coming to terms with Germany one day.”123 To this perspective, mutual hostility to the same ideological danger created a foun­ dation for cooperation with the material threat. Chamberlain was particularly clear that shared anticommunism created a basis for peaceful relations and even cooperation with Germany. Less than two weeks before the prime minister flew to Munich in September 1938, he wrote to Walter Runciman (whom Chamberlain had sent the previ­ ous month to Czechoslovakia to help mediate the Sudetenland dispute) that the prospect of making “Germany and England the twin pillars of Eu­ ropean peace and barriers against Communism” increased the probability that the appeasement of Germany would be successful and that Hitler would opt for peaceful relations with Britain.124 Chamberlain used identical language of hopes for cooperation with Germany in a letter to King George VI the following day, stating that his government had “sketched out the prospect of Germany and England as the two pillars of European peace and buttresses against communism.”125 The more conservative leaders believed that shared anticommunism increased the likelihood of peace with Ger­ many, the lower the need to commit to a balancing alliance with the Soviet Union. Another important dimension of the shared interests that British conser­ vatives believed they possessed with Germany based on mutual hostility to communism was the conviction that Germany would not ally with the So­ viet Union. Many of these leaders were convinced that the Nazis’ fierce anticommunism would preclude cooperation between the two totalitarian powers, which would have created an extremely high threat to British in­ terests. Halifax, for example, asserted in a letter to Phipps in November

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1938 that “Soviet Russia .  .  . can scarcely become the ally of Germany so long as Hitler lives.”126 If security cooperation between Germany and the Soviet Union was unlikely due to these countries’ ideological antipathy, then Britain need not be proactive in reaching out to the Soviets to keep the illiberal powers divided. An ideological configuration of divided threats in relation to Germany and the Soviet Union had similar effects on French conservatives’ and Rad­ icals’ alliance policies toward the Soviet Union as it did for British conser­ vatives. These effects, though, had a major impact on policy primarily in the context of high fears of communist revolution in France that existed after 1935. Radicals and especially conservatives had viewed the Soviet Union since its creation as the greatest ideological rival in the system, and the rise of fascism in the 1920s and 1930s did not alter this judgment.127 These groups’ ideological hostility to the USSR did not, however, prevent most from pursuing an alliance against Germany in 1934 and 1935. These efforts culminated with the signing of the Franco-Soviet Treaty of Mutual Assistance. The significant increase in the power of the French Communist Party be­ ginning in 1935 dramatically changed conservatives’ and Radicals’ alliance policies. I argued above that this development significantly increased the costs of allying with the Soviet Union because leaders of the Right and Cen­ ter believed that the alliance enhanced the likelihood of domestic revolu­ tion. The growing power of French communists also reduced the perceived need to commit to a frenemy alliance with the Soviet Union by making the international ideological relationships that define an ideological configura­ tion of divided threats highly salient to decision-making. After 1935, the anticommunist dimension of conservatives’ and Radicals’ ideology became the touchstone of their policies, both domestic and international. (As Peter J. Larmour puts it for the latter group, by 1936 “anti-Communism had rallied a considerable number of Radical deputies; and by 1938, it had swept aside all other issues within the party.”)128 The result was that these officials fo­ cused more on the ideological danger posed by the Soviet Union than the material threat posed by Germany, thereby reducing the need to balance Germany, especially by forming a Franco-Soviet alliance. The French case supports John Owen’s finding that domestic vulnerability and high threat of revolution often trigger leaders’ ideological identities. The more elites’ core ideological beliefs are under threat, the more salient they are likely to be to policymaking.129 Conservative and Radical leaders after 1935 expressed such mistrust of Soviet intentions that an alliance became difficult to conceive. Conservative general Victor-Henri Schweisguth, for example, asserted in a widely circu­ lated and cited 1936 report that the Soviet Union could not be trusted as an ally because its leaders were trying to “promote a war in the west” between

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France and Germany in order to “leave the USSR . . . the arbiter of a drained and exhausted Europe.”130 This report, according to Robert Young, “was held up as the new testament on French policy toward Stalin’s Russia” by conservative and Radical politicians and military leaders.131 Daladier, one of the leaders of the Radical Party and at the time minister of war, provided a covering letter to the report in which he endorsed the report’s conclusions and used them to advise against military talks with the Soviet Union.132 At the end of March 1939, Phipps, the British military attaché in Paris, reported that Gen. Maurice Gauche, the chief of the French army’s Office of Intelli­ gence, “was convinced that the democracies could expect nothing in the way of military assistance from Russia. It was to Stalin’s interest now as al­ ways that the democracies and totalitarian states should cut one another’s throats, which would pave the way for bolshevism and effectively safe­ guard Russian territory.”133 The effects created by an ideological configuration of divided threats in­ tensified the barriers to alliance with the Soviet Union that resulted from ideology-based mistrust alone. As Adamthwaite explains, although the French “governing elite” in the second half of the 1930s (chiefly Radical politicians and conservatives in the military) feared the material threat posed by Germany, they also “dreaded Communism more than National Socialism.”134 This divergence between greatest material and ideological dangers reduced the likelihood of a Franco-Soviet alliance by increasing the uncertainty over which state, Germany or the USSR, was the greatest over­ all menace. The result was a reduced need to ally with the Soviet Union despite Germany’s increasing capabilities. Deputy de Kérillis, speaking on behalf of fellow conservatives, expressed well this uncertainty in February 1936: “At the same time that she [the Soviet Union] offers us a guarantee against the German danger, she threatens us with the Soviet danger. And between the danger of Hitler and the danger of Stalin we do not wish to choose.”135 This thinking contributed to conservatives’ widespread opposi­ tion after 1935 to the ratification of the treaty of mutual assistance that I discussed above. The same uncertainty over threats affected Radical leaders at critical times, including during the Munich Crisis. To France’s key policymakers, as Robert Young explains, the main security “questions all remained unanswered—whether fascism or communism was the greater evil, whether alliance with one was more perilous than the enmity of the other, whether peace was best assured through deterrence or conciliation, whether Czechoslovakia was really worth the price of another Franco-German war. Ambivalent about everything except the stakes at play, the majority of [Prime Minister] Daladier’s ministers were torn between the confident if contradictory forecasts of the left and right-wing press and their own reluc­ tance to predict either the likelihood of confrontation with Germany or its probably outcome.”136

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When French conservatives after 1935 did decide between the material threat posed by Germany and the ideological danger posed by the Soviet Union as the primary peril, they frequently chose the Soviet Union. Hence the popularity after 1935 among the French Right of the slogans “Better Hitler than Blum” and “Better Hitler than Stalin.” This thinking made an alliance with the Soviet Union unlikely. Indeed, French conservatives, ac­ cording to William Irvine, “became so transfixed by the specter of Com­ munism [in the second half of the 1930s] that at times they allowed Hitler to drop into the background. French politician Jacques Debû-Bridel re­ called that by the time of the annual congress of the Republican Federation [France’s largest conservative party] of the Rhône in early 1938, “one would have thought, to hear the speakers, that France was really being threatened by Russia and that a raid on Paris by Cossacks was imminent.”137 Chief of the General Staff Gamelin explicitly referred to the obscuring of the German threat due to many leaders’ fixation on communism. Gamelin wrote after the war that the Popular Front’s victory in 1936 “made many of us lose sight of the dangers of Hitlerism and fascism at our doorstep be­ cause behind the ‘Popular Front’ one saw the specter of Bolshevism. Therein lies the origins of the slogans that disfigured the soul of the nation: ‘Better Hitler than Stalin’ and ‘Why die for Danzig?’”138 Just as for the British Right, French conservatives’ and Radicals’ belief that Germany was a lesser ideological enemy than the Soviet Union also helped mask the extent of the German threat by helping to convince many of these elites that a peaceful resolution of disputes between France and Germany was likely. Key leaders appealed to common interests rooted in mutual aversion and shared vulnerability to communism as critical reasons to avoid war. Prime Minister Daladier told the German chargé d’affaires in Paris in September 1938 that following great-power conflict, “revolution, irrespective of victors or vanquished, was as certain in France as in Ger­ many and Italy. Soviet Russia would not let the opportunity pass of bring­ ing world revolution to our lands.”139 Foreign Minister Bonnet similarly told the German ambassador in Paris the preceding April that in a war be­ tween the great powers, “all Europe would perish, and both victor and van­ quished would fall victims to world Communism.”140 The implication of these statements was clear. Despite major conflicts of interest and their own ideological disputes, Germany and France confronted powerful incentives to cooperate and avoid war due to their mutual interest in preventing the spread of communism. The more peaceful Franco-German relations were likely to be due to the effects of shared anticommunism, the lower the need to balance Germany by allying with the USSR. Hitler’s Ideological Wedging Policies. The second way in which the effects created by an ideological configuration of divided threats played a major

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role in preventing Britain and France from allying with the Soviet Union against Germany was by increasing Nazi leaders’ ability to adopt success­ ful ideological wedging policies. Hitler and fellow Nazis used shared anti­ communism with British and French conservatives and French Radicals, and thus their position as a lesser ideological enemy compared to the USSR, to weaken the perceived need for the Western democracies to ally with the Soviets. German leaders constantly referred to anticommunism as the key ani­ mating force of their foreign policies.141 They did so both publicly and in private meetings with British and French elites. Much of the motivation for these anticommunist statements reflected true belief. There was, however, an important strategic motive for this rhetoric as well. By making anticom­ munism the foundation of their foreign policies, the Germans increased the likelihood that British and French leaders would focus on potential shared interests with Germany rather than divergent ones. This outcome, in turn, reduced the probability that Western elites would try to balance Germany with all available means, especially by allying with the Soviet Union. “The propaganda onslaught against Bolshevism,” Lorna Waddington explains, “ranks as perhaps the most consistent strain of Nazi pre-war propaganda.” The goal of this campaign was “to ostracize and isolate the Soviet Union.”142 Hitler clearly recognized that his anticommunist rhetoric could have strategic benefits, including helping to wedge apart the Western democra­ cies from the Soviet Union. During the early months of the Spanish Civil War, for example, he told Italy’s foreign minister, Galeazzo Ciano, that the anticommunist foundation of Germany’s foreign policies created the op­ portunity for “the gradual formation of a group of powers which are will­ ing to make common front with Germany and Italy under the banner of anti-Bolshevism.” Mutual hostility to communism, Hitler believed, would lead “Great Britain to come to terms with German and Italian expansion” rather than allying with the Soviet Union to try to prevent this outcome.143 Thomas Jones, the deputy secretary to the British cabinet, described in his diary shortly before the outbreak of the war in Spain the emphasis that Nazi leaders in discussions with British officials placed on shared anticom­ munism. After an April 1936 meeting with Joachim von Ribbentrop, who was appointed Germany’s ambassador to Britain in August, Jones wrote that the Nazis “share the dread of Russia. Communism is the enemy which Germany cannot resist alone and successfully without the help of Gt. Brit­ ain.”144 The Nazis’ framing of their foreign policies was not without effect. The next month Jones wrote in a private letter to an American friend that “we have to choose between Russia and Germany and choose soon. . . . Hit­ ler feels quite unequal to standing up alone to Russia. . . . He is therefore asking for an alliance with us to form a bulwark against the spread of

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Communism. Our P.M. [Baldwin] is not indisposed to attempt this as a fi­ nal effort before he resigns.”145 The Nazis used similar rhetoric in their interactions with French leaders. In a May 1935 meeting with Foreign Minister Pierre Laval in Warsaw, Her­ mann Göring (commander in chief of the Luftwaffe and Reichstag presi­ dent) argued that France should not ally with the Soviet Union because the Soviets would “seek to utilize the system of pacts to unleash a war against Germany, in order better to be able ultimately to bolshevise the peoples ex­ hausted by this struggle.”146 In a parallel effort, the German military attaché in Paris constantly “preached anti-Bolshevism to Gamelin’s staff.”147 Hitler personally raised doubts about the reliability of French troops in an era in which communism held potential appeal among the masses, asking André François-Poncet, France’s ambassador to Germany, in September 1936 if France still had “the clear sightedness and energy necessary to stand up to Communism? How would its army behave if it had to intervene? The offi­ cers would bravely and honestly do their duty, like the Spanish officers. But the troops, would they fire on revolutionary masses?”148 Charles A. Micaud aptly summarizes how the Nazis’ anticommunist rhetoric reinforced many Western policymakers’ belief that the primary axis of conflict in the era was the anticommunist-communist one. The more these beliefs dominated in decision-making circles, the less likely it was that Britain and France would ally with the Soviet Union despite Germa­ ny’s power rise. According to Micaud, with regard to French conservatives during the Spanish Civil War, “in the eyes of the Right, Spain was the bat­ tlefield between two ideologies represented by two groups of nations. This struggle, however, was not between fascism and democracy, but between anti-Communist and pro-Communist forces. There can be little doubt that the sympathy of the French bourgeoisie had been gained by the crusade against communism organized by Germany. ‘M. Hitler has presented him­ self as the champion of order against disorder,’ Paul Reynaud [a conserva­ tive anti-appeaser] told the Chamber. ‘This propaganda, Gentlemen, has succeeded. It has succeeded among others, and to a large degree, among ourselves.’”149 As Reynaud’s statement indicates, antiappeasers recognized that Hit­ ler’s ability to appeal to shared anticommunist beliefs was successfully wedging apart the Western democracies and the USSR to the detriment of their countries’ security. After the Anschluss, Prime Minister Blum told the French parliament that Germany and Italy had succeeded “in transform­ ing the old antinomy that we know: democracies versus dictators, or pacific powers against warlike powers, into that of Communist and antiCommunist powers.” It was contrary to France’s interests, he argued, to continue to “see everything in relation to this criterion, make it a rule for judgments, for discriminations, for actions.”150 Another leader of French socialists, Jean Zyromski, pleaded that France not be duped into

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“accepting [Hitler’s] sinister design, a coalition of capitalist states directed against Soviet Russia.”151 In a December 1936 memorandum, Vansittart described Germany’s anti-Bolshevik rhetoric as “one of the best-staged feints in history” because it helped inhibit Anglo-Soviet cooperation despite the two countries’ growing mutual material interests.152 The former permanent undersecre­ tary at the Foreign Office was particularly scathing on this issue in his memoirs, writing that a key source of the failures of British foreign policies in the 1930s was the fact that many conservatives had been seduced by Hitler’s anticommunist language: “Germany played many a tune [to Brit­ ain] .  .  . and all the dupes fell a-dancing. They ended by even taking German thuggery for the ‘bulwark against Bolshevism’; but they were completely dizzy . . . and ready to condemn anything and anybody that Germany told them to condemn. The brain reels at the performance.”153 The Nazis’ repeated appeals to anticommunism as the motivation for their foreign policies did not create widespread anticommunist sentiments in Britain and France, but they certainly resonated with these beliefs. The Nazis’ rhetoric reinforced many Western leaders’ opinion that the primary ideological struggle of the era was against communism. Germany’s posi­ tion as a lesser ideological enemy compared to the Soviet Union in an ideo­ logical configuration of divided threats created a major opportunity for the Nazis to adopt ideological wedging policies that they skillfully exploited. By stressing the ideological commonalities that existed among British, French, and German leaders against a shared ideological enemy, the Ger­ mans validated and strengthened the British and French Right and Cen­ ter’s existing aversion to allying with the Soviet Union.

British and French Socialists’ Pro-Soviet Policies The preceding analysis documents the central role that ideological vari­ ables played in British and French conservatives’ and French Radicals’ aversion to allying with the Soviet Union after 1935 despite the clear and present material danger posed by Germany. This conclusion is powerfully reinforced by the fact that most British and French socialists rejected these other groups’ policies and pushed hard for an alliance with the Soviet Union against Germany for most of the 1930s. When different ideological groups in the same country at the same time possess opposing foreign pol­ icy preferences, the effects of ideological calculations are the most likely source of this variation. For socialists, the values of the two ideological vari­ ables that affect the probability of frenemies allying were the reverse of con­ servatives’ and Radicals’. These variables, as a result, added to the material incentives pushing for an alliance with the Soviet Union rather than coun­ tering these incentives as was the case for the Right and Center.

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Socialists’ levels of regime vulnerability in relation to the USSR were low, which reduced the domestic costs created by close interactions with this state. Indeed, socialists’ domestic interests were in important ways ad­ vanced by allying with the Soviet Union, which created an additional set of reasons for alliance. Socialists’ configuration of ideological distances in rela­ tion to Germany and the Soviet Union was one of double threat, which oc­ curs when a state is being pushed for material reasons to ally with a lesser ideological enemy (the Soviet Union) against a greater one (Germany). In this situation, the material threat (Germany) is doubly dangerous because it is the greatest material and ideological threat in the system. When states’ greatest ideological and material threats coincide, the perceived danger will be extremely high: the state with the greatest capabilities to harm will also likely be viewed as particularly hostile and aggressive. The greater the threat, the greater the need to aggressively balance it, including by forming frenemy alliances with lesser ideological enemies. s o ci a lists’ calls fo r a n a lli a n ce wit h t h e sovi et u ni o n Socialist leaders advocated closer security cooperation with the Soviet Union soon after Hitler came to power, and their demands for an alliance intensified as the decade progressed. Most of these elites believed that strong deterrent policies, including a Soviet alliance, provided the best chance of preventing war with Germany. Key socialists in France identified early on that the Nazis’ rearmament policies were a major threat to peace and that countervailing power provided the most effective means of block­ ing German aggression. Although Blum and his supporters in his party had long rejected military alliances and arms races as provocative, they reversed course in the face of Nazi Germany’s rise. As Blum asserted in a June 1935 speech at a congress of the socialist party, when war “seems to be drawing close, presenting a serious threat, casting a shadow over the world . . . it is no longer enough for a party . . . to say only, ‘Everything in the world to prevent war!’”154 When war approached, power, and not rhetoric, was nec­ essary to deter aggression. Hence Blum’s support beginning in 1935 of the ratification and strengthening of the Franco-Soviet Treaty of Mutual Assis­ tance. Julian Jackson summarizes Blum’s transformation within two years of Hitler’s assumption of power regarding the need for alliances: “Having as late as 1934 rejected any return to the alliance system which had divided Europe into rival camps before 1914, [Blum] came to believe by 1935 that German aggression could only be contained by an entente between France, Britain and Russia.”155 Jean Zyromski, who led much of the powerful left wing of France’s so­ cialist party, seconded Blum’s views.156 As early as 1935, Zyromski asserted that the “union and close solidarity” of France, the Soviet Union, and

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Britain were necessary to deter fascist aggression. According to him, “only the fear of such a coalition could intimidate Hitlerian Germany and cause it to renounce war.”157 French socialists’ view that an alliance with the Soviet Union was critical to deterring Germany only intensified as the decade progressed, including when Blum was prime minister from June 1936 to June 1937 and March to April 1938. The foreign policy of Blum’s government was officially summa­ rized in a declaration read to the Senate by Blum in June 1936, which was days after he became prime minister. The need for an alliance with the So­ viet Union was central to this vision. According to the statement, to main­ tain France’s security in the face of the German threat, France needed to rely on “the unreserved support of Great Britain, the cordial sympathy of the United States .  .  . and the powerful cooperation of the USSR.”158 To Blum’s government, according to Joel Colton, “Russia played a key role in the ‘grand design’ which [Blum] envisaged in order to counterbalance the weight of Germany and Italy. . . . The end result he contemplated was a tri­ ple partnership—‘a combination reproducing the Triple Entente of the years before 1914.’”159 As Blum asserted in a June 1938 speech during the socialist party’s annual congress, in order “to avoid war one must at certain moments agree to run the risk of war.” Given this need, he stated that “the most important diplomatic task for France is, as in 1914, to medi­ ate between London and Moscow” and recreate the Triple Entente.160 These statements were not just rhetoric. Blum’s government beginning in the spring of 1937 covertly allied with the Soviet Union during the Spanish Civil War when it organized the surreptitious provision of arms to the Spanish republicans.161 More important than this covert aid, Blum worked for a significant deepening of direct Franco-Soviet security cooperation. The prime minister promised Soviet foreign minister Maxim Litvinov in October 1936 that he was prepared to “unify [France’s] obligations to the USSR, Poland, and the Petite Entente [France’s alliances with Czechoslova­ kia, Romania, and Yugoslavia] in some kind of pact of mutual guarantee; and to embark on military conversations with Russia.”162 The next month, Blum ordered the initiation of secret talks with the Soviet military attaché in Paris. The objective of these talks was to lay the groundwork for General Staff negotiations, which Blum ordered in May 1937 to begin.163 Blum at this time instructed the French ambassador to the Soviet Union to tell Mos­ cow that “the Franco-Soviet pact [of mutual assistance] maintains all of its value for us, that staff conversations constitute its normal accompaniment, and that the French and Soviet staffs can be authorized to engage in them.”164 Blum expressed these views at a time when conservatives and Radicals, as documented above, were repudiating the pact and refusing to develop it. Simultaneous with this order for General Staff talks were discussions with the Soviets and Czechs about creating a triple alliance. Blum and his

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minister of air, Pierre Cot, were convinced “that only an air accord with the Soviets would permit France to confront German forces.” The two therefore decided in the spring of 1937 “that Cot would discreetly build a bridge to the Soviets via the Czechs.” During their talks, Cot and Czech leaders agreed that existing treaties between Czechoslovakia and both France and the Soviet Union “could be adjusted to serve as a base for Franco-CzechSoviet collaboration.”165 (France and the Soviet Union had bilateral alliance agreements with Czechoslovakia; Cot and Blum hoped to use this com­ monality to forge a multilateral alliance that included direct obligations and military coordination between France and the USSR.) In this period, Cot and his team provided technical information on French aircraft to the Soviets, and the air force deputy chief of staff was sent to Moscow to begin planning coalitional warfare with the Soviet Union.166 Although Blum was prime minister, his efforts to forge an alliance with the USSR were handicapped by the fact that Radicals controlled key posi­ tions in his cabinet (Daladier was minister of national defense and war, and Delbos was minister of foreign affairs) and conservatives continued to dominate the military. The result was that Blum, on the subject of forging an alliance with the Soviet Union, “confronted not only opposition from the military, but his Foreign Minister and Minister of Defense as well.”167 Blum claimed that his efforts to deepen security cooperation with the USSR were being “sabotaged” by the leaders of the General Staff and Daladier as they consistently opposed military staff talks with the Soviet Union, tried to hide from Blum favorable reports of Soviet military capabilities, and blocked So­ viet orders for war matériel.168 Blum became prime minister for the second time the day after the An­ schluss, which occurred on March 12, 1938. (His premiership lasted until April 10, 1938.) In response to Germany’s incorporation of Austria, the prime minister promised to “maintain and to refashion our alliances.” Blum reaffirmed in particular France’s commitment to Czechoslovakia, stating that France would defend it with force if threatened, and that the Soviet Union could be trusted to join in the war. The Soviets, Blum asserted, “would be found in the same camp as France.”169 Blum’s fervent advocacy for forming an alliance with the Soviet Union reached its high point in the months before and after the Munich Crisis, though he was no longer prime minister. In the summer of 1938, according to Nathanael Greene, Blum “spelled out his position with unprecedented clarity. In a flood of articles . . . he declared repeatedly that only the close cooperation of Britain and France with the Soviet Union could thwart the designs of the German dictator.” Blum in these months again unequivo­ cally demanded that France honor its commitment to Czechoslovakia and defend it against Germany’s threats. Moreover, at a time when the British and French governments deliberately excluded the Soviet Union from ne­ gotiations over Czechoslovakia, “Blum described the Franco-Soviet Pact as

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an essential ingredient in European stability, and warned that abandon­ ment of Czechoslovakia to Hitler would place the fate of all of Europe in question.”170 According to the former prime minister, what was at stake during the Munich negotiations was “the fate of Europe, the fate of the free­ dom of Europe, Great Britain and France included.” The massive threat cre­ ated by Germany made allying with the Soviet Union of “the first rank of importance.”171 As with French socialists, British Labour leaders made security coopera­ tion with the Soviet Union—either within the structure of the League of Nations or a more traditional alliance—a centerpiece of their foreign poli­ cies. At the same time that British conservatives expressed intense suspi­ cion of Soviet intentions and reliability, most Labourites took Soviet overtures toward creating a collective security system against the fascist states at face value, viewing the USSR as a critical support for peace.172 (French socialists concurred; Blum argued in June 1939 that “no one can doubt reasonably what the position of Soviet Russia would be if an armed conflict were to erupt in Europe. . . . We are impatiently waiting for her in­ tegration into the defensive front of peaceful peoples.”)173 Labour Party leaders, according to a summary by the scholar William Tucker, argued as early as 1934 that the Soviet Union lacked “aggressive designs toward other states,” thus making it “a natural ally of the forces of peace” against the fascist states.174 The result of these views was that there “was no question upon which Labour opinion was more united than the necessity of an [alli­ ance] agreement with the Soviet Union.”175 Labour’s push for an alliance with the Soviet Union became particularly intense at the time of the Munich Crisis and lasted until the outbreak of war. Before Chamberlain met with Hitler in Munich, the Labour Party is­ sued a declaration that urged uncompromising resistance to the use of force by Germany, stating that “the time has come for a positive and un­ mistakable lead for collective defense against aggression. . . . Whatever the risks involved, Great Britain must make its stand against aggression.”176 Cooperation with the Soviet Union was central to this “stand.” Labour Party leaders wanted to assure Czechoslovakia that if it were attacked by Germany, Britain—allied with France and the Soviet Union—would inter­ vene to protect it.177 On September 8, the Labour Party’s national executive committee issued a statement demanding that the “British Gov­ ernment must leave no doubt in the mind of the German Government that they will unite with the French and Soviet Governments to resist any at­ tack on Czechoslovakia.”178 Labour Party elites were highly critical of the government’s decision to exclude the Soviet Union from the Munich negotiations.179 Labour Party leaders continued to push hard for an alliance with the So­ viet Union in the spring and summer of 1939 because, as John Naylor sum­ marizes, “their entire foreign policy demanded such an arrangement.”180

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Clement Attlee (leader of the Labour Party and the Opposition) argued in parliament in May that “the best hope of preventing war is to get a firm union between Britain, France, and the USSR as the nucleus of a world alli­ ance against aggression.”181 Hugh Dalton, former chairman of the Labour Party and frequent spokesman for it in foreign affairs, described an alliance with the Soviet Union as “surely a most dazzling prize to be seized in­ stantly, with both hands, and triumphantly displayed to the world.”182 In June, the chairman of the party, George Dallas, told the Labour Party con­ ference that “Moscow is the custodian of peace,” thus making alliance with it imperative.183 British socialists’ intense interest in allying with the USSR aggravated conservatives. Chamberlain wrote in an April 1939 private let­ ter to his sister Ida, “I regard Russia as very unreliable . . . with an enor­ mous irritative power on others. Unhappily we have to strive against the almost hysterical passion of the Opposition . . . who have a pathetic belief that in Russia is the key to our salvation.”184 British and French socialists’ willingness to ally with the Soviet Union supports my argument. For socialists, the values of both of the ideological variables that are central to the likelihood of frenemy alliances forming in­ centivized rather than impeded allying with the USSR. an id eolo gica l co n fi gu rati o n o f d o u b l e t hr e at an d th e clari ty o f th e germa n da n g e r As with British and French conservatives and French Radicals, virtually all British and French socialists viewed Nazi Germany as the greatest material threat to their states’ interests. Unlike the other ideological groups, though, most socialists also believed Germany to be the greatest ideological threat in the system, viewing it as their ideological antithesis. “Fascism,” accord­ ing to the policy statement issued by the Socialist League (an organization within the British Labour Party) in May 1934 was “reaction writ large.”185 The majority of British socialists, as Tucker summarizes, “tended to empha­ size the barbarities of the Nazi regime. . . . The violent repression of German Social Democracy, the persecution of trade union and Labour leaders, the organized campaign of violence against racial elements within Germany and the substitution of the rule of force for political democracy were bit­ terly denounced.” To Labour Party politicians, “fascism and war were held to be . . . inextricably interwoven.”186 French socialists emphatically agreed with these assessments. From the time Hitler acquired power, Blum, for example, remained “thoroughly ap­ palled by the brutality and racist overtones of the new German regime.”187 To the future prime minister, peaceful relations were not possible with re­ gimes like Germany’s that were founded upon such intense “brutality and duplicity.”188 This intense antipathy toward fascism was shared throughout the party.

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The Soviet Union was for British and French socialists a lesser ideological danger compared to Germany. Despite major ideological differences with the USSR, Western socialists shared with Soviet leaders similar socioeco­ nomic objectives, most notably a dedication to workers’ rights and support for state-led economic policies.189 The Labour-supporting Daily Herald sum­ marized socialists’ relationship with fascism and communism—and by im­ plication the relationships with fascist and communist countries—in a 1927 editorial: “There is a world of difference between bolshevism and fas­ cism. . . . [Bolshevism, for all its faults is] based on a theory not of capital­ ism, private property, competition, but of Communism and cooperation.”190 Labourites, as Tucker summarizes, regarded the authoritarian communist regime in the Soviet Union “as a perversion of socialism and the Party lead­ ership lost no occasion to emphasize its repudiation of the principle of dic­ tatorship, whether of the Left or of the Right. There could be no doubt, however, that Labour’s distaste for the fascist dictatorship overshadowed the doctrinal hostility toward communism.”191 Most French socialists concurred with these views. Although Blum de­ scribed both the Soviet Union and Germany as dictatorships, there was no question in his mind that the fascist dictatorship in Germany was qualita­ tively more dangerous than the one in the Soviet Union.192 Zyromski was particularly emphatic on the relative ideological superiority of the Soviet Union in relation to Germany. In a 1935 pamphlet that Zyromski coau­ thored with three other socialists, the leader of the left wing of the party asserted that Nazism was the mortal enemy of socialism and communist Russia a key ally for it. Because “victory by Hitler Germany would deliver all of Europe to the domination of the most brutal form of fascism,” the pamphlet stated, “the welfare of the international proletariat demands the defeat of Germany. The welfare of the international proletariat demands the defense of the Soviet Union.”193 British and French socialists’ views of Germany as both the greatest ma­ terial and ideological threat in the system and the Soviet Union as a lesser ideological danger compared to it created for these elites an ideological configuration of double threat. This situation, in turn, made committing to a frenemy alliance with the Soviet Union much more likely than it was for British and French conservatives and French Radicals. For leaders of the British and French Right and Center, the divergence between the greatest ideological and material dangers in a configuration of divided threats helped mask the extent of the German menace while creating opportunities for the Nazis to adopt successful ideological wedging policies. For social­ ists, in contrast, the coincidence of the greatest material and ideological threats in an ideological configuration of double threat made the perceived danger posed by Germany extremely high. Socialist leaders were convinced that the Nazis’ ideology would inevitably mean that Germany’s rapidly in­ creasing power would be used for conquest. Ernest Bevin, a Labour and

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union leader, asserted in February 1938, for example, that “I have never believed from the first day when Hitler came to office but that he intended at the right moment and when he was strong enough, to wage war in the world. Neither do I believe, with that kind of philosophy, that there is any possibility to arrive at agreements with Hitler and Mussolini.”194 Blum ex­ pressed the same idea more succinctly in 1935 when he stated that “fascism is war.” Successful negotiation or cooperation with Germany was thus, ac­ cording to Blum, an “illusion.”195 “Blum’s international policy,” as Greene summarizes, “was rooted in the belief that the inherently aggressive char­ acter of the German and Italian regimes constituted an imminent danger to the peace of Europe.”196 Given the extremely high level of threat created by the coincidence of socialists’ greatest material and ideological dangers, the forces pushing for proactive balancing policies—including allying with a lesser ideological enemy, the Soviet Union, to counter this menace—were correspondingly great. British and French socialists’ understanding of the relative dangers posed by fascism and communism also meant that Hitler’s ideological wedging policies based on anticommunism were highly unlikely to succeed for these elites. In order for these types of wedging policies to achieve their objective, the principles to which the wedging state appeals must resonate with the target. This prerequisite was, however, not met for Western socialists. Most of these elites’ belief that communism was a lesser ideological threat than fascism meant that the Nazis use of anticommunism as a rallying cry for cooperation carried little weight. If anything, the Nazis’ anticommunist statements reinforced socialists’ hostility to Germany because this rhetoric confirmed socialists’ belief in Hitler’s intense enmity to working-class parties. Finally, British and French socialists’ belief that they possessed impor­ tant ideological similarities with the Soviet Union despite major differ­ ences helped facilitate an alliance by reducing the level of ideology-based animosity to the USSR. These elites did not possess nearly the level of mistrust toward the Soviet Union as Western conservatives did. To the contrary, socialist leaders in the 1930s, as described above, frequently as­ serted that the Soviets could be trusted to honor their alliance commitments. l o w fears o f r egi me vu ln era bi li ty and c o operati o n wi th th e u ssr a s ben efic i a l t o s o cia lists’ do mesti c i n terests British and French socialists’ fears of regime vulnerability in relation to the Soviet Union were relatively low. Indeed, many socialists in the Western powers viewed cooperation with the Soviet Union as more often an aid to their domestic objectives rather than a massive threat to them, as

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conservatives and Radicals believed. Domestic-ideological calculations thus added to the other incentives pushing socialists to commit to an alliance. The domestic benefits created by allying with the Soviet Union were par­ ticularly important for French socialists. This does not mean that these elites had no concerns about the spread of communism at home. To the contrary, many socialist politicians, including Blum, were fearful that French communists would use the turmoil of the 1930s to undermine the SFIO and increase communists’ power. Some French socialists also agreed with conservatives that communists were an ideological fifth column in service of the Soviet Union, which made these elites skeptical of commu­ nists’ ultimate intentions.197 Despite these misgivings, the majority of French socialists understood the domestic threat posed by communists to be significantly lower than the domestic danger posed by fascism. This was especially true when commu­ nists in 1934 agreed to join with socialists in a “united front” (the founda­ tion of the Popular Front) against fascism. Most socialists insisted that “the inclusion of the Communists among the ranks of the Republic’s defenders was both essential and desirable.”198 To most French socialists, French com­ munists by the mid-1930s were more of a solution than a cause of regime vulnerability. An analogous view applied to the Soviet Union. To French socialists, al­ lying with French communists was essential to defeating the domestic threat posed by fascism, and cooperating with the Soviet Union was nec­ essary to assure French communists’ continued assistance in this en­ deavor.199 Socialist leaders feared that if France did not ally with the Soviet Union, French communists would withdraw from the Popular Front, which would allow rightist parties and fascist sympathizers to come to power. Failure to ally with the Soviet Union, socialists also worried, would result in supporters of French working-class parties becoming disillu­ sioned with their government and therefore less willing to mobilize in defense of the republic. When, for example, violent clashes between rightwing groups and supporters of the Popular Front erupted in Paris in March 1937, Blum intensified his efforts to ally with the USSR. The prime minister emphasized not only the international security benefits to be gained by the alliance but the domestic ones as well. Blum, as Nicole Jordan summarizes, “stressed the effect on internal politics of driving the Soviets into the German camp [which might occur if France failed to ally with the Soviet Union]. Blum was particularly anxious to maintain the loyalty of the working class to the cause of defense of the republic” against both international and domestic enemies.200 The other key leader of French socialists, Jean Zyromski, was even more consistently emphatic than Blum regarding the domestic benefits to be had by allying with the Soviet Union, believing that the USSR’s existence and

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success created demonstration effects for the advancement of socialism abroad. As Donald Baker explains, Zyromski’s “thought always began, from the late 1920s forward, with how [French] Socialist tactics related to the interests of the Soviet Union, the only socialist state in the world. For him, the Soviet Union was the first breach in the bourgeois dike, an exam­ ple to the proletariat everywhere, a threat to the bourgeoisie. If the Russian revolution were not protected [including by France allying with the Soviet Union], he believed, then the first breach would have to be made again, at further enormous cost and for no real gain.”201 British socialists also believed that cooperating with the Soviet Union created important benefits for their domestic interests. This belief was a product of the ideological overlap between the two groups and the an­ ticipated impact of demonstration effects. Ideology-based “admiration for the Soviet Union” in the 1920s and 1930s, as Bill Jones summarizes, “permeated the [Labour] party; it was all things to all kinds of socialists. Trade unionists could look to it as the country of the seven-hour day, no bosses and equal pay; to socialist planners it was the home of planned economic growth; to feminists it seemed the home of birth control and female emancipation. .  .  . Each group tended to perceive [in the Soviet Union] the fulfillment of its objectives.”202 Labour Party politicians’ praise of the Soviet Union’s economic policies became particularly great after the onset of the Great Depression, and the phrase “economic plan­ ning” after the Soviet model became increasingly popular in socialists’ vocabularies.203 Given this ideology-based admiration, it is not surprising that Labour Party leaders wanted key dimensions of the Soviet experiment to suc­ ceed in order to benefit their domestic interests. The more the policies that both Soviet and Labour leaders championed succeeded in the USSR, the more likely that the appeal of these policies would receive a boost in Britain. As Michael R. Gordon summarizes with regard to British La­ bourites during the interwar years, Labour “felt that if its own cause at home was henceforth to be salvaged, it had to champion the Soviet cause as well.”204 This perceived interdependence of domestic fortunes goes far in explain­ ing why members of the British Left were consistent champions of aiding the Soviet Union throughout the interwar period by such policies as politi­ cal recognition, guaranteed loans, and favorable trade agreements. The same belief in the interconnectedness of domestic interests also made it easy to act on the material incentives to ally with the Soviet Union that de­ veloped over the course of the 1930s. For socialist elites, allying with the Soviets aided both the security of their state and much of the ideological order they championed at home, thus making this coalition of very high utility.

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AN UNREALIZED FRENEMY ALLIANCE

Alternative Explanations for Alliance Failure

There are three prominent explanations in the literature that can potentially account for British and French conservatives’ and French Radicals’ intense reluctance to ally with the Soviet Union in the 1930s that do not rely on the effects of ideological variables. All of these alternative accounts are based on insights of realist theories.205 All three, though, confront major puzzles that cannot be solved without focusing on ideologies’ effects. r e ali st bu ck-pa ssi n g a rgu men ts The first of the alternative explanations for Britain and France’s failure to ally with the Soviet Union against Germany in the 1930s is based on realist buck-passing arguments. These analyses examine the effects of Europe’s multipolar structure combined with widespread perceptions of defense dominance.206 To these accounts, power multipolarity reduced the incen­ tives for Britain and France to ally with the Soviet Union by providing the hope that the USSR would bear the costs of containing Germany while the Western democracies remained outside the fray. Perceptions of defense dominance were a key factor that pushed British and French leaders to act on these incentives because they increased their states’ security from ag­ gression. The more secure a state is based solely on its own defenses, the lower the need to seek international allies. There are two major problems with this explanation of alliance failure. First, British and especially French leaders were in no way sufficiently con­ fident in the power of defensive weapons and the ability to free-ride on the balancing efforts of others to the point where they believed allies were un­ necessary to their security. To the contrary, French elites throughout the 1930s were intensely interested in forming alliances because they believed that France’s defenses, on their own and without the aid of other coun­ tries, were inadequate against German aggression. Nor were they suffi­ ciently confident that other states would be able to contain Germany while France sat on the sidelines. If Germany did aggress, geography dictated that it would attack in the west first, just as it did in World War I. France was therefore more likely to be a “buck catcher” than a successful buck passer, which made the need for allies vital. So critical were alliances to French leaders’ war planning, according to Barry Posen, that in some ways they placed greater emphasis on external rather than internal balancing: “French politicians concentrated their balancing efforts abroad, rather than at home . . . because without powerful allies France could not expect to prevail in an attrition war with Germany. . . . The defense might have the advantage, but in a one-to-one slugfest Germany’s large population and resource superiority might overwhelm French defenses.”207

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French leaders repeatedly recognized that allies in Eastern Europe— including the Soviet Union—that could force Germany to fight a two-front war were especially important to France’s safety.208 They recognized this need even in the early 1930s, when France’s relative power in relation to Germany was at its highest. In January 1934, which was less than one year after Hitler assumed dictatorial powers, army chief of staff General Game­ lin issued a lengthy overview of France’s changing security environment that was created by Germany’s likely power rise. He warned that minor powers in Eastern Europe (France was allied to Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Yugoslavia) were incapable of countering a resurgent Ger­ many. Forming new alliances with great powers, including with the Soviet Union, were thus “a priority.” Because the Soviet Union had the world’s largest army and air force, cooperation with it, according to Gamelin, would have considerable value as a deterrent to Germany and would be the key to creating a viable second front if war arose.209 Gamelin used this logic to convince Gen. Maxime Weygand (the army’s inspector general) in 1934 to support Foreign Minister Barthou’s efforts to try to forge an alliance with the Soviets, stating that the Soviet Union “represented the only great counterweight vis-à-vis Germany.” Secretary-General of the Foreign Minis­ try Léger told the British ambassador in June 1934 that “it was impossible to exaggerate the importance to France of being able to draw on Russia’s vast industrial resources. In aeroplane construction alone, to mention only one instance, the French government realized that France could not com­ pete unaided with Germany if it ever came to war.” Gen. Lucien Loizeau agreed: “The command judged that, in the state of her effectives and her armaments, France . . . had need of a powerful ally capable of creating im­ mediately a serious second front against Germany.” The Soviet Union, ac­ cording to Loizeau, was the only country in Eastern Europe capable of achieving this outcome.210 Many of the same elites who recognized the ma­ terial need to ally with the Soviet Union, though, also ultimately rejected committing to the coalition. The British for most of the 1930s were not nearly as interested in forming alliances against Germany as were the French. Realist buck-passing logic accounts for this in part. The fact that Britain was separated from Germany by both the English Channel and the French army, and the enhanced de­ fense created by these realities, played an important role in this set of preferences. In March 1936, however, Britain renewed its commitment to defend France (and Belgium) if attacked. This commitment over the subse­ quent three years was accompanied by the sharing of military intelligence, the initiation of military staff talks, and the coordination of targets to strike in Germany and Italy.211 British leaders also became increasingly dubious over the course of the 1930s that French defenses—on their own—were sufficiently powerful to withstand a German onslaught.212 Because the independence of France was

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AN UNREALIZED FRENEMY ALLIANCE

a vital British interest and because France was unlikely to withstand a Ger­ man attack without forcing Germany to fight on two fronts, Britain had a major interest in not only supporting France but also countries to Germa­ ny’s east to create a viable second front. In March and April 1939, London made alliance commitments to Poland, Romania, and Greece.213 By April, the chiefs of staff were convinced that the defense of Eastern Europe against German aggression “required active Soviet cooperation.”214 Chamberlain’s government, though, only halfheartedly acted on this conviction. The dominant reason British and French leaders gave for not allying with the Soviet Union in the 1930s was not a belief in the potency of defen­ sive weapons and systems and confidence in the ability to free-ride on the balancing efforts of others. This decision was instead repeatedly and ex­ plicitly attributed to ideologies’ effects, especially a profound mistrust of Soviet intentions coupled with the fear of the spread of communist revolutions. The second major puzzle for realist buck-passing explanations of Brit­ ain’s and France’s failure to ally with the Soviet Union is the fact that Brit­ ish and French leaders’ alliance preferences consistently varied with party/ideological affiliation. This variation means that the key to under­ standing why Britain and France failed to form an alliance with the Soviet Union against Germany is not discerning why these states’ leaders, in gen­ eral, opposed this coalition but why most conservatives and Radicals made this choice while most socialists strongly advocated allying with the Soviet Union. Realist buck-passing arguments cannot explain this varia­ tion. Because these arguments’ causal variables—including power polar­ ity, power distributions, geography, and the offense/defense balance—are identical for all members of the same state, they cannot explain systematic variation in security policies by different ideological groups within a country. The only major exception to the partisan variation in alliance policies toward the Soviet Union before 1939 occurred in France in 1934 and 1935, but even this outlier is puzzling for realist buck-passing arguments. French conservatives and Radicals in these years endeavored to ally with the So­ viet Union, not buck-pass to it. They opted for this choice even though France’s power in these years in relation to Germany was at its most ad­ vantageous point in the decade. If realist buck-passing arguments offer the best explanation of France’s Soviet policies, we would expect French policymakers to have been the most prone to free-ride on the balancing efforts of others when France’s relative power position in relation to Ger­ many was at its highest level. Conservatives and Radicals then switched from balancing to buck-passing when French relative power experienced deep decline. This, again, is contrary to realist predictions. States should be less, not more, likely to buck-pass as material threats to their interests increase.

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e f forts to avo i d acti vati n g th e secu r i t y d i l e m m a A second potential realist explanation for British and French leaders’ aver­ sion to allying with the Soviet Union is based on the insights of the security dilemma. If elites believe that forming alliances is more likely to provoke than prevent international conflict, they confront powerful security-based incentives not to increase their capabilities through external balancing. Many British and French officials believed the 1930s to be an era of defense dominance, which is a key variable that facilitates states escaping the spiral model of conflict, as I discuss in chapter 1. In support of this explanation of alliance failure is the fact that Western leaders (almost always conservatives and Radicals) attributed, at least some of the time, their opposition to allying with the USSR to a fear of unneces­ sarily antagonizing Germany by surrounding it with enemies. Foreign Sec­ retary Halifax, for example, stated in a cabinet meeting three days after the Anschluss, “The more closely we associated ourselves with . . . Russia the more we produced on German minds the impression that we were plotting to encircle Germany and the more difficult it would be to make any real settlement with Germany.”215 There are two main problems with attributing alliance failure to the ef­ fects of the security dilemma. First, British and French leaders’ desire to avoid provoking a war with Germany was rarely free of ideological calcula­ tions. Instead, these elites consistently asserted that they wanted to avoid provoking a war not only because of the horrors of armed hostilities and unnecessary conflict but also because they were convinced that war would result in widespread communist revolutions. This outcome, many Western officials believed, was a preeminent Soviet objective.216 Security dilemma explanations of alliance failure in the 1930s case must therefore, at a mini­ mum, be combined with the effects of ideological variables to fully account for leaders’ policies. A second and more damaging problem for security dilemma explana­ tions of British and French alliance policies is once again the existence of systematic partisan variation in balancing preferences. Not all Western leaders believed that allying with the Soviet Union was more likely to pro­ voke than prevent conflict. In fact, most British and French socialists consis­ tently believed the opposite: that allying with the Soviet Union provided the best opportunity of deterring Germany from aggressing. As William Tucker summarizes with regard to British socialists, “the only possible de­ terrent [of German aggression], Labour argued, was the certainty that force would be met with force.” An alliance with the Soviet Union was to social­ ists critical to creating this deterrent.217 Members of the French Left agreed. Prime Minister Blum stated in a July 1936 speech that “it is necessary to accept the eventuality of war to save the peace,” and thus France must pre­ pare for war by allying with the Soviet Union.218 Zyromski, likely the

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second most powerful French socialist, emphatically concurred, arguing in 1935 that “only the fear of [an Anglo-Franco-Soviet] coalition could intimi­ date Hitlerian Germany and cause it to renounce war.”219 The consistent variation along party lines indicates that conservatives’ and Radicals’ aversion to allying with the Soviet Union due to fears of acti­ vating the security dilemma was most likely not independent of ideological calculations but a product of them. When different ideological groups in the same country at the same time have vastly different international per­ ceptions and preferences, their opposing ideologies are the most likely source of this variation. To my argument, because socialists’ ideological configuration in relation to Germany was one of double threat, these elites tended to be much more suspicious of Germany’s intentions than were con­ servatives and Radicals. This conviction demanded active balancing to de­ ter anticipated German aggression. wa s the sovi et u n i o n a u sefu l a lly? A final realist explanation for British and French leaders’ aversion to allying with the Soviet Union claims a lack of utility in the alliance. Unlike before World War I, the Soviet Union in the 1930s did not share a border with Ger­ many. Consequently, its ability to project power against Germany was more limited than it was two decades earlier. To attack the Nazi regime, the Sovi­ ets would have had either to acquire permission from an Eastern European country that allowed Soviet forces to cross its territory—and most of these states were reluctant to do this because of intense mistrust of the USSR—or the Soviets would have had to force their way across Eastern Europe. Ana­ lysts have also questioned the effectiveness of the Soviet military in the wake of Stalin’s purges beginning in 1937 of roughly two-thirds of the highranking officers.220 This mass expulsion reduced the Soviet Union’s military effectiveness, at least in the short run. If the Soviet military could not reach Germany, or fight effectively if it did, the Soviet Union’s usefulness of an ally was greatly reduced. The Soviet Union’s lack of a border with Germany and the weakening of its military during the purges were not, however, the key determinants of British and French leaders’ alliance policies. If they were, why did most British and French socialists, as well as conservative antiappeasers, push hard for an alliance with this state? These groups continued to advocate al­ lying with the Soviet Union despite knowledge of the purges and geogra­ phy. Indeed, reduced Soviet power after the purges may very well have increased the incentives for an alliance if leaving the Soviet Union alone to confront Germany was likely to result in a relatively quick defeat, after which Germany could turn on Britain and France without worries of a sec­ ond front. Socialists and conservative antiappeasers (as well as French con­ servatives and Radicals before 1936) also believed that accommodations on

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the border issue could have been made that would have allowed the Soviet Union to project power against Germany, either by pressuring the Polish and/or Romanian governments to allow passage of Soviet forces to the German border or by the Soviets using their air force against Germany without consent of the Eastern European countries.221 Moreover, although British assessments of the Soviet Union’s warfighting ability fluctuated considerably over the course of the decade, dif­ ferent groups of British leaders’ willingness to ally with it did not. This lack of covariation indicates that perceptions of Soviet military power were not the key determinant of alliance preferences. British elites (mostly conserva­ tives) who were disinclined to ally with the Soviet Union maintained their preferences even when assessments of Soviet military power were the most favorable (before 1938 and the summer of 1939). Those officials, in contrast, who advocated allying with the Soviets (most socialists, as well as conser­ vative antiappeasers) did so even when estimates of Soviet power were at their low point during the decade (in 1938).222 As Keith Neilson asserts with regard to Britain’s failure to ally with the USSR in the summer of 1939 when British estimates of Soviet capabilities were high, “failure to find a suitable formula for a full-scale alliance did not reflect any British belief that Soviet military strength was negligible. Instead, the failure was the result of the sharply differing political [i.e., ideological] nature of the two states and their inability to find common ground.”223 Similar analysis applies to France, where estimates of Soviet war-fighting capabilities were highly politicized. Different elites tended to praise or den­ igrate Soviet power depending on their willingness to cooperate with it. Opponents of closer ties with the Soviet Union provided negative estimates of Soviet power and tried to hide positive assessments from their superiors lest these policymakers use the reports to justify alliance.224 Most British and French leaders who opposed alliance with the Soviet Union did not primarily cite Soviet weakness as the key to their aversion but Soviet untrustworthiness. This untrustworthiness was primarily a product of intense ideological antipathy to communism. If ever there was a time for calculations based on the logic of realpolitik to dominate leaders’ alliance policies, Britain and France’s relations with the Soviet Union in the 1930s was it. The material incentives pushing for the creation of an Anglo-French-Soviet alliance against Germany were clear and compelling. The key reason why Britain and France did not commit to an alliance with the Soviet Union was not due to the effects of ideological enmity alone. The central cause of alliance failure was instead the existence for conserva­ tive and Radical leaders of the two additional ideological variables that make the effects of ideological enmity especially salient to frenemy rela­ tionships: high levels of regime vulnerability, which significantly increased

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the anticipated domestic costs of allying with the Soviet Union, and an ide­ ological configuration of divided threats, which lowered the perceived need to commit to the coalition. If these conditions had not been at work— as was the case for Western socialists—Britain and France in all likelihood would have allied with the Soviet Union. Indeed, for socialists, a perceived interdependence of domestic interests with the USSR and the effects cre­ ated by ideological configuration of double threat added to the material reasons for alliance, thereby making the creation of an Anglo-French-Soviet frenemy coalition even more likely for these elites than realist analyses indicated.

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chapter 3

A Tipping-Point Frenemy Alliance The Delay in the Formation of the Sino-American Alliance against the Soviet Union, 1972–79

One of the most stunning transformations in great-power relations in the twentieth century occurred between the United States and the People’s Re­ public of China (PRC) over the course of the 1970s. The two countries had been bitter enemies since the creation of the communist regime in China in 1949. This relationship, however, changed radically in the 1970s. In May 1971, the Chinese government, in a communication through Pakistan, stated that Mao Zedong (chairman of the Chinese Communist Party [CCP] and the most powerful leader, by far, in China) welcomed direct conversa­ tions with President Richard Nixon in Beijing for the purpose of improving relations.1 Nixon’s summit in China in February 1972 resulted in the sign­ ing of the “Shanghai Communiqué,” in which the two countries agreed that “neither should seek hegemony in the Asia-Pacific region and each was opposed to efforts by any other country or group of countries to estab­ lish such hegemony.” This statement referred to mutual opposition to Soviet expansion. High-ranking Chinese and US officials met on a regular basis for the re­ mainder of the decade. After one such meeting in June 1972, National Secu­ rity Adviser Henry Kissinger made an amazing assertion to Nixon, stating that “the Chinese have moved . . . from an adversary posture to one which can only be described as tacit ally.” The following March, Kissinger was even more glowing in his assessment of the Sino-American security relation­ ship, telling the president that “despite different world outlooks,” China and America “have now become tacit allies.” In fact, “we are now in the ex­ traordinary situation that, with the exception of the United Kingdom, the PRC might well be the closest to us in its global perceptions.”2 In a private conver­ sation with US leaders in December 1975 in which President Gerald Ford relayed his insights from his recent summit in Beijing, Kissinger, then secre­ tary of state, said that the Chinese “are one of our best NATO [sic] allies.”3 Analysts frequently attribute this remarkable transformation in SinoAmerican relations to the effects of material variables and the insights of

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realist theories. The ideological disputes between liberal, capitalist America and totalitarian, communist China continued to be extreme. Beginning in the late 1960s, though, both Chinese and American leaders came to view the Soviet Union as the primary and pressing threat to their security. The escalation of the Soviet threat to China in this period was particularly dra­ matic, as I detail below. This shared danger, according to a dominant inter­ pretation in the literature, pushed both groups of decision makers to set aside their ideological enmity with the other and increase security coopera­ tion based on the cold logic of realpolitik.4 Although realist balance-of-threat calculations were critical to the im­ provement in Sino-American relations beginning in the Nixon presidency, the extent of this improvement should not be exaggerated. Most important, descriptions of a Sino-American “alliance,” tacit or otherwise, during either the Nixon or Ford presidencies are massively overblown.5 It is true, in other words, that mutual enmity with the Soviet Union pushed China’s leaders in the 1970s to establish a much more cooperative relationship with the United States than the two countries had experienced throughout the Cold War. It is also true that the Sino-American rapprochement had major impli­ cations for geopolitics. Fears of military cooperation between China and the United States contributed to the Soviet buildup of military forces in Asia while facilitating Washington transferring resources from Asia to Europe to better contain the Soviet Union in the latter theater. Reduced hostilities between China and the United States and the possi­ bility of security cooperation between them do not, however, constitute an alliance. An alliance is a relationship of military cooperation and coordina­ tion that is based on some level of mutual commitment and exchange of benefits for all parties. Sino-American relations for almost the entire decade of the 1970s fell well short of these requirements, especially from the Chi­ nese side. The Chinese throughout the Nixon and Ford presidencies made no security commitments to the United States, while refusing such guaran­ tees from Washington, denied US requests for security collaboration, re­ fused offers of military aid, and explicitly rejected the idea that the two countries should ally. The result, as Robert Ross summarizes, was that China and the United States for almost the entirety of the 1970s possessed only “the illusion of military relations.”6 Despite the massive material threat posed by the Soviet Union throughout the 1970s, it was not until 1979 that the two states significantly expanded their security cooperation to the point of alliance based on extensive two-way intelligence sharing, security coordination against the Soviet Union, and technology transfer, including military equipment. Ideological calculations explain this delay in the formation of the alli­ ance. The effects of the argument’s independent variables on the antici­ pated costs of and need for a frenemy alliance with the United States ex­ plain both why Chinese elites resisted for an extended period committing

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to the alliance and why they finally agreed to it. For Mao, who dominated policymaking until his death in September 1976, the values of the indepen­ dent variables combined to make a Sino-American frenemy coalition un­ likely. Mao’s fears of regime vulnerability remained high in the 1970s, which increased the domestic costs of allying with the United States. More specifically, high levels of regime vulnerability enhanced the opportunity costs created by this alliance. Because Mao used continued hostility toward the United States to help mobilize ideological radicals for the purposes of defending and advancing his preferred domestic ideological order, allying with the United States would have meant forgoing this major benefit. Chinese elites’ configuration of ideological distances in relation to the superpowers for most of the 1970s added to these barriers to creating a cross-ideological coalition. This configuration until Mao’s death was one of ideological equidistance, which occurs when an initiating state (China) confronts two roughly equally divergent ideological enemies, the material threat (the Soviet Union) and potential frenemy ally (the United States), which are themselves intense ideological rivals. This ideological configu­ ration encourages buck-passing rather than the creation of a frenemy alli­ ance because leaders are hopeful that their international ideological ene­ mies will contain one another. Chinese leaders for most of the 1970s were convinced that the ideological disputes between the superpowers would push these states to focus their enmity on one another rather than on China, which reduced the perceived need to ally with the United States. When the domestic costs associated with committing to a frenemy alliance are high and the perceived need to do so are low, the likelihood of this co­ alition forming is low. The values of the argument’s independent variables changed, however, by the end of the 1970s. Due to major ideological developments in China after Mao’s death, Chinese leaders’ fears of regime vulnerability in rela­ tion to the United States lowered considerably, which reduced the domes­ tic costs created by allying with it. Indeed, in a complete reversal from Mao’s era, Chinese leaders at the end of the 1970s believed that their do­ mestic interests would be advanced—not harmed—by allying with the United States. China’s modernization campaign initiated at the end of the decade incentivized cooperation with the United States based on China’s need to learn from US economic successes. These domestic calculations significantly added to the material incentives pushing for the creation of the alliance. The major ideological changes initiated by China’s leaders at the end of the 1970s also changed the nature of China’s ideological configuration with the superpowers, from one of ideological equidistance to that of double threat, which I define as a situation in which the initiating state (China) confronts another (the Soviet Union) that is both the greatest material and ideological danger in the system. The potential frenemy ally (the United

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States) is a lesser ideological danger because of the existence of some im­ portant ideological commonalities. A condition of double threat increases the likelihood of frenemy alliances forming. When a country’s greatest material and ideological dangers coin­ cide, the threat posed by this state will be particularly clear and compelling, which will make the need for active balancing—including allying with lesser ideological enemies—high. It is also easier for lesser ideological ene­ mies to form a frenemy alliance against their shared ideological rival because the ideological overlap that exists between them lowers the ideol­ ogy-based barriers to cooperation. When the domestic costs associated with committing to a frenemy alliance are low and the perceived need to do so high, the likelihood of this coalition forming is high. (See table 3.1 for a summary of the values of the argument’s independent variables for Chi­ nese leaders at various points in the 1970s and their predicted effects on alliance preferences toward the United States.) In analyzing Sino-American security relations in the 1970s, I focus on the Chinese side of the relationship because Chinese elites, especially Mao, were primarily responsible for the delay in the creation of the SinoAmerican alliance. This is the principal puzzle to be explained from the Table 3.1. Predictions for Chinese leaders’ alliance policies toward the United States in the 1970s Domestic costs of frenemy alliance created by level of regime vulnerability Low costs

Ideology-based “need” to commit to frenemy alliance based on configuration of ideological distancesa High need

Low need

Group: Chinese leaders after 1978 Prediction: Frenemy alliance with USA likely Outcome: Pursued an alliance with USA

High costs

Group: Chinese leaders (especially Mao) until 1978 Prediction: Frenemy alliance unlikely Outcome: Opposed an alliance with USA

a

Chinese leaders’ configuration of ideological distances in relation to the United States and the Soviet Union until Mao’s death was one of ideological equidistance. Chinese leaders’ configuration of ideological distances in relation to the Soviet Union and the United States at the end of the 1970s was one of double threat.

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period. I concentrate on Mao’s policies and the motives for them because he was by far the most powerful leader in the country. Importantly, the chairman took special care to guard policymaking in the ideological and foreign policy domains.7 In focusing on Mao’s preferences and policies, I recognize that they were often not representative of many other leaders within the CCP. Mao, for example, was much more obsessed with the power of “capitalist roaders” in the party and the possibility of capitalist restoration than were many Chinese elites. These facts, though, do not invalidate my argument. In highly authoritarian regimes like China, a very small number of individu­ als determine political outcomes. Thus, if the argument helps explain Mao’s US policies, even if other Chinese elites with different values for the inde­ pendent variables would have behaved differently (as was the case at the end of the 1970s after Mao’s death), the predictions are supported. My analysis proceeds in five principal steps. I first explore the nature of the massive Soviet material threat to China in the 1970s and the latter’s lim­ ited ability to counter it. The second section examines the Sino-American rapprochement beginning in 1972 and why these improved ties, as impor­ tant as they were, fell well short of an alliance until 1979. The third section examines how the effects of the two ideological variables that inform my argument played the key roles in delaying China from allying with the United States. I discuss in the fourth section how major ideological changes in China in the late 1970s shifted the values of the argument’s independent variables, which facilitated the two countries finally allying. I follow this discussion with an analysis of alternative explanations for the delay in the Sino-American alliance and their problems.

The Escalation of the Soviet Material Threat to China Beginning in 1968 The material threat that the Soviet Union posed to China’s security begin­ ning in 1968 based on the defining components of balance-of-threat the­ ory—power distributions, offensive capabilities, geographical proximity, and aggressiveness—was very large. Although Sino-Soviet relations had deteriorated in the 1960s from a close alliance in the previous decade to high levels of animosity—especially at the polemical level—this relation­ ship underwent a qualitative leap in hostility beginning in 1968. Events in this and subsequent years, according to one analyst of the period, “took China and Russia to the brink of war and had a profound impact on Chi­ nese perceptions of the Soviet Union.”8 The Soviet Union’s power advantage over China in the 1970s was huge. Its economy in 1973 in terms of gross domestic product (GDP) was over twice as large as China’s, and its GDP per capita was over seven times

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A TIPPING-POINT FRENEMY ALLIANCE

greater.9 Soviet military expenditures were over three times larger than China’s in 1970 and four and a half times greater in 1975.10 The two coun­ tries also shared a border over twenty-five hundred miles long that was increasingly militarized with offensive weaponry. Soviet troops deployed to the border from 1969 to early 1973 more than doubled, increasing from twenty-one divisions to forty-five (this number increased to fifty-two by 1978). This increase in the early 1970s included two powerful armored di­ visions. (In comparison, the Soviets deployed only one armored division to East Germany). In the same period, the Soviets increased the tactical aircraft deployed in East Asia from two hundred to twelve hundred and increased in both quantity and quality the number of missiles placed in the region.11 Most alarming from China’s perspective, Soviet leaders beginning in the late 1960s and intensifying in the 1970s engaged in a number of aggressive actions that threatened China’s core interests. As early as November 1967, Soviet and Chinese border forces began to skirmish, with the Chinese suf­ fering their first fatalities in January 1968. These conflicts escalated in March 1969, when conflicts on March 2 and 15 on Zhenbao Island, which is on the border of northeastern China and Siberia, left scores of soldiers dead. Military incidents along the border continued in the spring and sum­ mer, and on August 13 the two militaries engaged in another major clash in Xinjiang (a region in western China that bordered the Soviet Union). These hostilities resulted in the destruction of an entire Chinese unit of over thirty soldiers.12 Tensions between the Soviet Union and China increased even more after Soviet leaders threatened to widen the border conflict to Chinese popula­ tion centers and military facilities. In March 1969, Moscow radio indicated that the USSR might even use nuclear weapons against China, stating that “if Mao’s provocations against the Soviet Union continued . . . millions of Chinese might die. . . . The whole world knows that the main weapons of the Soviet armed forces are its rockets . . . carrying nuclear weapons.”13 The Soviets backed up these threats with actions, including by making preparations for an attack. In May 1969, Moscow moved advanced aircraft from Eastern Europe to newly enlarged airfields in Soviet Central Asia. Co­ inciding with this redeployment were simulated air strikes in Kazakhstan on targets that were made to resemble Chinese nuclear facilities. In July, sources in Eastern European countries reported that the Soviets had ap­ proached their allies about waging a “preemptive” strike against China’s nuclear weapons and production facilities. Soviet officials in August 1969 (within a week of the border clash in Xinjiang) also asked US officials what the American response would be to this type of attack. Chinese leaders were aware of these feelers and were fearful that the Soviets would carry through with these threats, warning their Soviet counterparts of the dire consequences of going down this path.14

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Another major development that occurred in the late 1960s that greatly escalated the Soviet threat to China was the USSR’s invasion of Czechoslo­ vakia in August 1968, combined with the Soviet government’s ideologybased justification for the attack. The outcome of the invasion was the overthrow of a reformist communist regime in Prague and its replacement with a regime more in line with Soviet ideological principles. Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev explained the need for the attack in a November 1968 speech to the Fifth Congress of the Polish United Workers’ Party: “When [internal] forces that are hostile to socialism try to turn the development of some socialist country towards capitalism, it becomes not only a problem of the country concerned, but a common problem and concern of all social­ ist countries.”15 The meaning of the “Brezhnev Doctrine” was clear: ideo­ logical developments in other communist countries were of significant concern to the USSR, and Soviet leaders were willing to use force to elimi­ nate what they judged to be deviant ideological principles in these states. Pravda in August 1969 implied that the Brezhnev Doctrine could be ap­ plied to China, asserting that the only way to truly resolve Sino-Soviet ten­ sions was the “restoration of China’s position as a socialist state that bases its activity on the principles of Marxism-Leninism and proletarian interna­ tionalism.”16 Chinese leaders, including Mao, viewed the dangers posed by the Soviet Union after the developments beginning in 1968 to be extremely high. In­ deed, from 1969 until 1971, there was an intense war scare in China that was “unprecedented in the history of the People’s Republic of China.”17 Chinese leaders in these years repeatedly warned privately and publicly of a Soviet attack, and they took a number of precautions to deal with this possibility. These actions included, at various times, ordering the mobiliza­ tion (in whole or part) of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA); redeploying large numbers of military personnel, equipment, and weapons to forward positions throughout the country; organizing in 1969 a massive evacuation of the population and industries from major cities while also urging citi­ zens to begin digging air raid shelters and stockpiling goods; and having Chinese leaders in October 1969 leave Beijing for different locations throughout the country. The goals of the last were to avoid death or capture by a Soviet attack and to better organize guerrilla warfare if war began.18 The PRC also paid an enormous economic price to prepare for a war with the USSR. The government beginning in the early 1970s uprooted Chinese factories from along the coast and in the northeast to move them to China’s interior, which was less exposed to a Soviet attack.19 Although the intensity of the war scare diminished by 1971, tensions with the Soviet Union remained high. Reports of border skirmishes be­ tween the two countries continued past this year. The Soviets also contin­ ued their large-scale buildup of offensive weaponry and forces near China, as I discussed above. The results of the Soviet Union’s policies toward

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China, as Ross explains, was that throughout the 1970s, “Chinese leaders across the political spectrum were acutely aware that Soviet ‘global expan­ sionism’ continued unabated”20 and that “for Chinese strategists, the Soviet threat [in the 1970s] remained very real and very serious.”21 At the Tenth Party Congress, held in August 1973, the CCP officially described the Soviet Union as China’s “chief and immediate ‘mortal enemy, with whom one cannot live together under the same skies.’” At the Eleventh Party Congress four years later, the CCP continued to assert that the Soviet Union was the primary source of war in the system since it was on “the offensive.”22 China’s ability to cope with the Soviet threat based on its own capabili­ ties was extremely limited. The PRC was deficient in both deterrent and defense capabilities. As David Bachman summarizes, “what is remarkable from later Chinese sources and declassified US intelligence materials is how woefully unprepared China was for conflict with the Soviet Union” in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In the first place, China lacked a secure nu­ clear deterrent. US intelligence analysts estimated that the PRC lacked the ability to deliver a nuclear strike against the Soviet Union until at least 1974, when China deployed roughly fifty medium-range missiles that could carry nuclear weapons. China’s conventional forces and early-warning sys­ tems were also “ill-quipped to deal with a Soviet attack.” The PRC lacked effective radar and air defense systems, its land units lacked mobility and substantial transport capabilities, and its antitank weapons were highly de­ ficient.23 Given the magnitude of the Soviet material threat to China’s core inter­ ests beginning in 1968 and China’s limited ability to counter this danger through internal means, the forces pushing the PRC to ally with the United States to balance the USSR were powerful. The United States was the only country that possessed sufficient capabilities that could help China deter or defeat the Soviet Union in a conflict. Chinese leaders in key ways responded positively to these incentives for cooperation and took important steps to improve relations with the United States. But this rapprochement, as important as it was, fell well short of creating a security alliance until the very end of the 1970s. The next section details the evolution of this relationship.

China’s Security Relations with the United States I divide my analysis of China’s security interactions with the United States from 1972 to the end of the decade into two phases. In the first, which lasted from 1972 to 1978, Chinese and US leaders greatly improved their relation­ ship. They nevertheless failed in these years to create an alliance due to a lack of extensive, two-way military cooperation and coordination. In the second phase, which began in 1979, Chinese policymakers agreed to much

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higher levels of security cooperation, which finally established a frenemy coalition against the Soviet Union. 1 9 7 2 –7 8 : ra pproch emen t bu t n o t a lli anc e The year 1972 is the starting point of my analysis of US-Chinese security relations.24 During Nixon’s historic visit to China in February, the two gov­ ernments agreed to the Shanghai Communiqué. Regular meetings were held between high-ranking US and Chinese officials for the remainder of the decade. In February 1973, the two countries committed to establishing liaison offices in the other’s capital, which was an important step toward the normalization of diplomatic relations. In November 1973, Beijing and Washington extended the key security clause of the Shanghai Communiqué by pledging to refrain from and to oppose hegemony not just in the “AsiaPacific region” but also in “any other part of the world.” These developments were major changes in great-power relations that were to a great extent in keeping with realist prescriptions. The PRC and the United States were moving closer together despite their ideological dif­ ferences due to their mutual fear of the Soviet Union. Even after the significant improvements in Sino-American relations be­ ginning in 1972, however, these relations did not cross the threshold for al­ liance. An alliance is much more than the recognition of common enemies and the articulation of shared interests (both of which US and Chinese lead­ ers did in the Shanghai Communiqué). To forge an alliance, as discussed in chapter 1, leaders must adopt concrete measures to achieve these shared interests based on military assistance and commitments, an exchange of benefits for all parties, and the coordination of security policies. Despite the recognition of shared interests, security cooperation between China and the United States remained limited and one-sided until 1979 (the extension of the Shanghai Communiqué being the last major agreement be­ tween China and the United States under Presidents Nixon and Ford). Al­ most all security guarantees and initiatives before 1979 came from the US side only, and Chinese leaders in private settings explicitly rejected forging extensive security ties with the United States because of their continued intense aversion to allying with it. American leaders made a number of important commitments and offers to the Chinese, all of which went unreciprocated or rejected. Nixon, for ex­ ample, indicated that the United States was prepared to act militarily to de­ fend China in the event of a Soviet attack when he told Premier Zhou Enlai during the 1972 Beijing summit that “it is in the interest of the United States that China be a strong independent country and that China’s neighbors not engage in carving it up.”25 The Chinese, however, did not make a similar statement regarding a Soviet attack on the United States. The Nixon admin­ istration also provided important help to Pakistan in its border dispute with

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India, viewing these hostilities as a proxy conflict between the Soviet Union and China. This provided a boost to China’s closest South Asian ally. (Sup­ porting China was a central motivating factor behind the decision to aid Pakistan.)26 Nixon hoped for reciprocal help from China in achieving a ne­ gotiated end to the Vietnam War. Instead, however, of pressuring the North Vietnamese to compromise, the Chinese “flatly refused to help and went out of their way to establish for the record their support of Hanoi.”27 During their many meetings with Chinese leaders, US officials shared intelligence about Soviet military forces, defense systems, troop move­ ments, and military aid to other countries. The Chinese did not reciprocate these intelligence exchanges and even refused some US requests for this type of assistance. In an October 1975 meeting, Kissinger proposed that China, with US aid, build a seismic and electronic base in western China that could monitor Soviet military force deployments and weapons devel­ opment and then share the intelligence with the United States. Although this monitoring system would have helped provide early warning of a So­ viet attack against China, the Chinese, in “another rejection of the ‘tacit alli­ ance,’” declined the request.28 One area in which Chinese leaders did change to the benefit of US inter­ ests concerned attitudes toward the projection of US power around the globe, especially in Asia. As late as 1971, government-controlled media out­ lets in China publicly lobbied for the peoples of Asia to unite to reduce American power in the region, including evicting US forces from South Ko­ rea and Indochina and breaking America’s alliance with Japan.29 This posi­ tion was reversed by China’s most powerful leaders, beginning in 1972. At this time, “there now appeared to be an explicit recognition in Beijing that it was in the Chinese interest for the United States to maintain its power to counter Soviet pressure internationally. At the June 1972 meetings, Zhou and Marshal Ye Jianying probed Kissinger on the American capacity for continued international containment of the Soviet Union, expressing con­ cern about the likelihood of cuts in the US defense budget . . . and openly praising Defense Secretary Melvin Laird’s call for increasing military ex­ penditure.”30 The need for the continued, if not enhanced, projection of American power would be a key theme raised by Chinese leaders in negotiations throughout 1973. In February, Mao encouraged Kissinger to have the United States solidify its military relations with multiple Asian, Middle Eastern, and European countries to box in the Soviet Union: “We should draw a horizontal line—the US-Japan-Pakistan-Iran-Turkey and Europe.”31 During the same set of meetings, Zhou reinforced a central dimension of these points by encouraging the United States to maintain its alliance with Japan to help contain the Soviet Union.32 Chinese leaders’ newfound interest in the continuation of US power-pro­ jection abilities, including in Asia, was an important development. It was

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also an example of what some have labeled Sino-American “parallelism.” Leaders of the two countries recognized common security interests against the Soviet Union, and the two acted separately, though with knowledge of the other’s actions, to realize them.33 Parallel interests and states acting separately to achieve them do not, however, constitute an alliance. Alliances demand reciprocity, active secu­ rity cooperation, and military coordination for the achievement of shared objectives.34 China’s US policies did not meet these requirements. As Eve­ lyn Goh explains, at the same time that Mao in 1973 was encouraging the United States to expand its alliance commitments and form “a horizontal line” with other countries to contain the Soviet Union, “notably Mao did not include China in this [anti-Soviet] axis, an indication of the way in which Beijing seemed to regard itself more as a source of ‘moral support’ than as a US ally or recipient of US military supplies or aid.” “The docu­ mentary record shows that .  .  . Mao and Zhou did not share Kissinger’s representation of the United States and PRC as tacit allies or partners.”35 Chinese policymakers’ great reluctance to engage in security collabora­ tion with the United States is most vividly revealed by their decisions to rebuff important military aid from the Americans. In his meetings with China’s leaders in 1973, “Kissinger came with proposals designed to fur­ ther the normalization process and give concrete substance to US-China strategic cooperation.” However, “getting beyond broad anti-Soviet per­ spectives” to the point of genuine security collaboration and the formation of an alliance proved impossible.36 The most important of these offers of aid took place in November, when Kissinger “laid down proposals for a secret military alliance with China.”37 To significantly increase China’s warning time in the event of a Soviet attack, the United States, Kissinger explained to Zhou, could utilize “a very good system of satellites which gives us early warning.” To get that information to China “in a matter of minutes,” Kissinger offered to establish satellite links to Beijing. This abil­ ity would be disguised as a “hot line” link for telephone communications only. The satellite links, Kissinger told Zhou, “would enable you to move your bombers and, if possible, you could move your missiles if you knew that an attack was coming.” If the Soviet Union were to attack China, Kiss­ inger offered to supply “equipment and other services,” including radars and technology that would improve communication between Beijing and military bases throughout the country.38 “In sum,” according to Goh, “Kissinger offered to aid the PRC materially in the event of a war and to establish the beginnings of a military supply relationship between the two countries.” China did not have to offer reciprocal commitments to receive any of this support.39 These offers of aid were designed to compensate for China’s limited abil­ ity to deter and defend a Soviet attack. The PRC’s ability to strike the Soviet Union with nuclear weapons in the early 1970s was low because of a small

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number of missiles and bombers as well as a lack of systems capable of warning that a Soviet attack had been launched.40 These deficiencies left China highly vulnerable to a Soviet preventive strike. US offers of support were designed to help offset this danger. Despite the major security benefits resulting from Kissinger’s proposals (Zhou admitted that the satellite/hotline links in particular could provide “intelligence of great assistance”), the Chinese refused the help.41 They did so in this and other instances because their aversion to allying with the United States continued to be intense despite the existence of a common enemy and very high threat perceptions of the USSR. Zhou, for example, was willing to consider Kissinger’s offer to create satellite/hotline links for the provision of intelligence only if it could “be done in a manner so that no one feels we are allies.”42 Evidently, the Chinese felt this requirement could not be met. Mao was particularly vehement in his opposition to allying with the United States. When Alexander Haig, Kissinger’s deputy on the national security staff, met with Zhou in January 1972 to prepare for Nix­ on’s visit the next month, he relayed that Nixon and Kissinger were con­ cerned about China’s security and viability and that maintaining them was a fundamental US interest. Such sentiments are the core beliefs of a security alliance.43 When made aware of the statement, however, Mao exploded: “Why should our viability become America’s concern? . . . If China’s inde­ pendence and viability should be protected by the Americans, it is very dangerous [for us].”44 To Mao, US concern for China’s security was like “the cat weeping over the dead mouse.”45 The chairman was similarly intensely critical in November 1973 of Zhou for even thinking of accepting Kissinger’s offer of aid (the satellite/hotline links). (I discuss this criticism and the reasons for it much more fully later in the chapter.) Mao warned Zhou, “You should be careful of America. .  .  . I am of the opinion that, basically, we should do nothing with them. By this, I mean, we should not form a military alliance with America.”46 When talk­ ing about Kissinger’s offers to help deter a Soviet attack on China, Mao stated, “Someone wants to lend us an umbrella. We don’t want it, a protec­ tive nuclear umbrella.”47 Mao made this statement even though at the time China did not possess an effective nuclear deterrent. Chinese policymakers’ ongoing antipathy to allying with the United States prevented the creation of an alliance that was based on substantive, mutual security ties and commitments. The result was that America and China for most of the 1970s had, in Ross’s phrasing, only a “façade of coop­ eration” and “the illusion of military relations.”48 1 9 7 9 : a llia nce This “façade” or “illusion” of military cooperation between China and the United States did not end until 1979. The two countries throughout the

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1970s had always confronted strong material incentives to ally. At the end of the decade, they finally acted on these inducements. On January 1, 1979, the two countries’ governments normalized rela­ tions: they agreed to formally recognize one another and establish official diplomatic interactions. More important for this book’s purposes, the two states beginning in 1979 also increased their security ties and exchanges to the point, as Thomas Christensen puts it, they became “firmly aligned” (an alignment being often understood as an informal alliance that is not en­ shrined in a treaty).49 Or, as Raymond Garthoff summarizes them, US-PRC relations beginning in the last two years of the Jimmy Carter administra­ tion changed significantly. The countries created an “alignment in confronta­ tion against the Soviet Union. . . . The two moved beyond just normalization to develop . . . intimate relations.”50 The informal alliance was based pri­ marily on four key areas of cooperation: statements of security support against a shared rival, the two-way sharing of intelligence, the coordina­ tion of military policies (including regular military exchanges and meet­ ings), and the transfer of technology, including military equipment and armaments.51 The year 1979 witnessed important developments in all of these areas. When Deng Xiaoping—then China’s key decision maker—traveled to Washington in January 1979 and met with Carter and members of his na­ tional security team, he asserted that China and the United States (along with Japan) “should cooperate closely in resisting expansion by the Soviet Union.”52 Talk of allying was not just for the Americans. Before leaving for Washington, Deng, as the scholar Xiaoming Zhang summarizes, “had told his colleagues in Beijing that his trip to the United States would yield posi­ tive results for a joint alliance” against the Soviet Union. After meeting with US leaders, Deng “sensed that a new strategic relationship between the PRC and the United States was developing on the basis of the two coun­ tries’ shared interest in countering Soviet expansionism.”53 These sentiments were backed by actions as Deng encouraged the cre­ ation of a military relationship with the United States. When, for example, a US Senate delegation visited Beijing in April 1979, Deng “for the first time raised the possibility of overt security cooperation with Washington, in­ cluding naval port visits [and the] purchase of US weaponry (including ad­ vanced fighter aircraft).”54 Deng also reversed Mao’s 1975 decision and agreed in 1979 to build two monitoring stations in Xinjiang, close to the Soviet Union. The stations were designed to acquire information about So­ viet missile and nuclear tests as well as intercept Soviet communications. The observatories were equipped by the Americans and run by US-trained Chinese technicians. The data shared with the United States was particu­ larly useful for determining if the Soviet Union was in compliance with arms-control agreements as well as for providing early warning of a Soviet attack.55

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The confidence level between Chinese and American leaders also took a noticeable advance after 1978. During his visit to the United States in Janu­ ary and February 1979, Deng informed Carter that China had abandoned for the foreseeable future the goal of liberating Taiwan by force, which re­ moved a major obstacle to closer relations with the United States. Deng also informed the Americans of China’s intention to invade Vietnam, which had become more closely allied to the Soviet Union and hostile to the PRC (an invasion that started in February 1979 and lasted for four weeks). Deng was more willing to seek US help in the conflict with Vietnam than Mao was in the much more dangerous conflict with the Soviet Union earlier in the de­ cade. According to Xiaoming Zhang, an important objective that Deng hoped to achieve during his trip to Washington “was to ally the United States with China to counter the Soviet-Vietnamese alliance in East Asia. Deng’s trump card was the Chinese military plan against Vietnam, for which he wanted American support. According to Geng Biao [a senior Chi­ nese official], Deng proposed that the United States dispatch ships to the South China Sea to contain Soviet naval activities while helping China with intelligence on Vietnamese vessels.”56 To support China in the conflict, the United States joined with China at the United Nations (UN) in supporting the Khmer Rouge as Cambodia’s legitimate government and apparently coordinated with China—through Thailand—in providing aid, including light weapons, to this group.57 Sino-American security cooperation that created the alliance intensified in the wake of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979. Deng explained in an interview with the Christian Science Monitor the need for a deepening of the alliance shortly after the war began: “The Soviet challenge can only be coped with if the United States strengthens unity with its allies and unites its strength with all the forces that are resisting the Soviet challenge, including the forces in the Third World. .  .  . We hope that Sino-American relations with not mark time, still less retrogress. This is required by global strategy.”58 Deng told Secretary of Defense Harold Brown during the lat­ ter’s visit to Beijing in January 1980 that their two states should cooperate to “turn Afghanistan into a quagmire for the Soviets.”59 To deepen their cooperation, China’s leaders in January 1980 granted US officials extensive access to Chinese military facilities, with close inspections of the PRC’s mil­ itary equipment, and both Washington and Beijing “agreed to begin regular exchanges of high-level military officials and working-level military dele­ gations.”60 China also partnered with the United States in supplying weap­ ons to the Afghan guerrillas in their war against the Soviets. The Carter administration purchased weapons from China and provided them to the Afghan resistance, and Beijing sent the Afghans Stinger antiaircraft missiles provided by the United States.61 In January 1980, the Carter administration authorized the sale of nonle­ thal military equipment to China. The following May, the US government

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announced approval of export licenses to China for a wide range of com­ bat-support and military equipment, including radars, helicopters, jet en­ gine testing equipment, transport aircraft, and electronic countermeasure devices. The Sino-American alliance established during the last two years of the Carter administration continued after Ronald Reagan became president in 1981, although not without some major strains during the early years of the new administration. These tensions resulted primarily from Reagan’s inter­ est in selling advanced weaponry to Taiwan. Even during the period of strained relations, however, important security cooperation continued. Reagan administration officials were surprised upon learning of the extent of US-Chinese collaboration against the Soviets established by Carter, par­ ticularly in the realm of intelligence sharing and aid to the Afghan resis­ tance, and they were committed to continuing these policies. Reagan in July 1981 increased the transfer to China of dual-use technology and nonlethal military equipment. The administration in 1981 also for the first time made it permissible to export weapons to China.62 Continued differences over Taiwan were less important to the relation­ ship after 1982 and especially after 1983.63 The result was the continuation, as David Shambaugh puts it, of the “tight alignment” between Washington and Beijing.64 In May 1983, US leaders further liberalized policies on tech­ nology transfer to China, placing it in the same category as long-standing allies in Western Europe, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand. In June 1984, the United States granted China eligibility for the US Foreign Military Sales program, which paved the way for higher levels of weaponry sales.65 Al­ though the overall value of arms transfers to China remained small (total­ ing $89 million from 1982 to 1986), the export of technology and licenses for armaments was more substantial, totaling over $520 million from 1982 to 1986.66 The major increase in the level of security cooperation between China and America beginning in 1979 is not only significant in its own right but also further illuminates the dearth of security collaboration before this year. As Ross puts it, it was not until 1979 that the two countries “took the first steps towards military cooperation.” Indeed, “the extent to which Deng committed China to a pro-US tilt [in 1979] is striking. . . . Deng proposed that China, Japan and the United States ‘must further develop the relation­ ship in a deepening way. If we really want to place curbs on the polar bear [the USSR], the only realistic thing is for us to unite.’ No Chinese leader had ever openly suggested such a strong strategic association with Washington.”67 Jonathan D. Pollack expresses similar analysis when he writes that it was not until 1979 that Chinese policymakers “for the first time raised the possi­ bility of overt security cooperation with Washington.”68 Chinese and US leaders were finally able to ally beginning in 1979, as Gong Li expresses it, “by focusing not on ideology but on interests.”69 But

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why did it take so long for this to be the case when the material incentives pushing the two countries together had been extremely strong for over a decade? Why, in other words, were Chinese elites willing to act on the strong material incentives for alliance after 1978 but not before? The next section answers this central question.

Ideology-Based Barriers to the Creation of the Sino-American Alliance The values of the argument’s independent variables worked together to prevent China from allying with the United States before 1979. High regime vulnerability for China’s key leaders made the anticipated costs of alliance high while an ideological configuration with the superpowers of ideologi­ cal equidistance significantly reduced the perceived need to commit the co­ alition. p o w erfu l id eolo gi ca l fi fth co lu mn s a nd t he c r eatio n o f hi gh levels o f regi me vu l ne r a b i l i t y The level of regime vulnerability in the 1960s and 1970s for Mao was high. This outcome resulted from his belief in the existence of the most important source of this variable: powerful ideological fifth columns at the elite level. Mao repeatedly asserted that ideological “revisionists” (i.e., individuals who advocated the brand of socialism as practiced in the Soviet Union after Stalin’s death) and capitalist sympathizers had infiltrated the CCP. The re­ sult was an obsession with the possibility that these ideological rivals pos­ sessed or would possess sufficient power to move China in the wrong ideo­ logical direction, with the ultimate result being “counterrevolution” and “capitalist restoration.”70 High levels of regime vulnerability led Mao to believe that proactive pol­ icies would be frequently—if not perennially—necessary to preserve and advance socialism in China. A potential alliance with the United States in the 1970s fell victim to these policies that were designed to protect the re­ gime. Most notably, Mao used sustained hostility to the United States to mobilize supporters of his vision of socialism against domestic ideological enemies.71 Mao’s fears for the long-run viability socialism in China started to be­ come great in the late 1950s and especially by the early 1960s. These worries resulted from the belief that the victory of the CCP had not eliminated internal class enemies. Instead, capitalist sympathizers continued to hold substantial power to the point where they threatened counterrevolution. Indeed, Mao asserted a dialectical relationship between the advancement of socialism and the threat of counterrevolution. As he explained in a

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November 1957 meeting of communist parties in Moscow, every society, including a socialist one, “teems” with contradictions, including oppos­ ing ideological forces. “One divides into two,” Mao asserted (e.g., the advance of socialism created its own opposition). “This is a universal phe­ nomenon, and this is dialectics.”72 To this thinking, the more progress China made toward establishing a socialist state, the greater the internal resistance to this outcome that would be created by ideological enemies. Lorenz Lüthi summarizes Mao’s dialectical understanding of ideological enemies’ power as follows: “The more developed socialism, the more acute the class strug­ gle.”73 Or, as Andrew Walder explains, central and enduring ideas of Mao’s political philosophy were the beliefs that “class struggle exists under social­ ism; that it becomes more intense as the final push to socialism approaches; and that different ideas about economic policy and the pace of socialist transformation are expressions of class conflict. . . . Because class struggle becomes more intense as the victory of socialism approaches, the great leader must be vigilant in rooting out bourgeois tendencies in the leader­ ship of the party at large.”74 As this last sentence indicates, the continued existence of powerful class enemies despite the victory of the CCP meant that the likelihood of counterrevolution and thus regime vulnerability re­ mained high unless ideological vigilance was maintained and appropriate countermeasures taken. Mao believed that the key source of regime vulnerability was “capital­ ists” within the CCP, or what I have labeled an ideological fifth column at the elite level. He explained to a Central Committee working conference in June 1964, “Class enemies of all descriptions will be at large everywhere, but our cadres [in the CCP] still totally ignore them. Many of us, not know­ ing the distinction between enemies and friends, will cooperate with the enemy or be corrupted by the enemy. . . . If things go on like this, it won’t be long, a few years to ten years at the least and several decades at the most, [before reactionaries] inevitably succeed in their nationwide counterrevolu­ tionary restoration. The Marxist party will be turned into a revisionist party and a fascist party, and the whole country will change color.”75 Mao’s worries about the vulnerability of the regime to counterrevolution due to the power of ideological fifth columns were highly consequential. The beliefs in the continued importance of the class struggle and the exis­ tence of revisionists and capitalist sympathizers within the CCP were the most important factors behind his decision to launch the Cultural Revolu­ tion in 1966, a central purpose of which was to ideologically purify the party. Simply put, if capitalist sympathizers remained a powerful faction within the party, the party had to be smashed for the sake of socialism. As the Central Committee asserted in a 1966 statement that justified the need for the Cultural Revolution, the main targets for reform and struggle were “those within the Party who are in authority and are taking the capitalist road.”76 Or, as the scholar of Chinese politics Harry Harding explains, Mao believed that “the restoration of capitalism could occur if ‘revisionists’ 138

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usurped power within the ruling Communist Party. To prevent this, it would be necessary to wage continuing class struggle against those ‘Party persons in authority’ who might attempt to follow the capitalist road.”77 The extent of the purges of “class enemies” during the Cultural Revolu­ tion indicates how high regime vulnerability and fears of ideological subversion were. Although the exact numbers of those purged remain un­ known, the percentages from party and governmental positions were extremely high. According to one estimate, the rate of political purges reached 70 to 80 percent at the regional and provincial levels and 60 to 70 percent for the central institutions of the party (the Politburo, Central Com­ mittee, secretariat, and cabinet ministers).78 The most radical phase of the Cultural Revolution came to a close by the spring of 1969, after Mao had ordered the restoration of the power of the party over mass political movements, including the infamous Red Guards (paramilitary units of young people whose objective was to purge Chinese politics and society of “revisionist” elements, frequently by brute force). After this time, Mao wanted to avoid the excesses that had dominated the first years of the Cultural Revolution in favor of the creation and maintenance of political “stability and unity,” which became key themes in the 1970s.79 Mao in the 1970s also became more critical of radical politicians, including his wife, Jiang Qing, who remained committed to the extremist policies of 1966 to 1968.80 Although domestic stability and party unity became more prominent goals after 1968, the Cultural Revolution nevertheless continued into the 1970s, which is the critical period for this chapter’s purposes. Indeed, through the end of Mao’s life, “the Cultural Revolution continued to be the central issue of elite politics.”81 This point of emphasis is to be expected because the key beliefs that led to the origins of the Cultural Revolution remained. Until his death in September 1976, Mao and official pronounce­ ments and documents issued by the CCP continued to emphasize fears about the ideological vulnerability of the regime due to the existence of powerful ideological fifth columns in the party and the need to take active measures against them.82 The political report issued at the Ninth Party Con­ gress in April 1969, for example, asserted the continuing relevance of a statement made by Mao seven years earlier: “Socialist society covers a con­ siderably long historical period. In the historical period of socialism, there are still classes, class contradictions and class struggle, there is the struggle between the socialist road and the capitalist road, and there is the danger of capitalist restoration. .  .  . [Without due vigilance] a capitalist restoration will take place. From now on we must remind ourselves of this every year, every month and every day so that we can retain a rather sober under­ standing of this problem and have a Marxist-Leninist line.”83 The report is­ sued at the Tenth Party Congress in 1973 was even clearer about the great danger posed by ideological fifth columns within the CCP: “Enemies at home and abroad all understand that the easiest way to capture a fortress is 139

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from within. It is much more convenient to have the capitalist-roaders in power who have sneaked into the Party do the job of subverting the dicta­ torship of the proletariat than for the landlords and capitalists to come to the fore themselves.”84 In a November 1975 meeting that was organized by the Politburo, thirty leading members from the government and military were read a statement from Mao that asserted an ongoing “struggle between two classes, two roads and two lines [the socialist and capitalist]. It is also a reflection of the wind of Right deviation aimed at reversing the verdict of the CR [Cultural Revolution]. . . . There are some people [in the Party] who are not satisfied with the CR. They want to settle accounts with it and attempt to reverse the verdict.”85 During the last years of his life, Mao may have been particularly worried about the power of ideological fifth columns / capitalist sympathizers in the party due to his expressed concerns that the Cultural Revolution, which he described as one of his two greatest achievements (along with the libera­ tion of China from the Japanese and the subsequent creation of the PRC), might not survive him. In a statement made in the summer of 1976 to his designated successor, Hua Guofeng, Mao described the Cultural Revolu­ tion as a matter in the CCP that “many oppose. . . . But it is not finished and its legacy must be handed down to the next generation. How to do this? If not in peace, then in turmoil.”86 The belief in the continued existence of capitalist sympathizers in the party resulted in the periodic reradicalization of Chinese politics in the 1970s despite continued calls for political stability and unity. The winter of 1972, the fall of 1973 to the summer of 1974, and the fall of 1975 to the sum­ mer of 1976 witnessed resurgences in revolutionary fervor.87 During these times, senior political leaders came under attack for their alleged wrong­ headed ideological beliefs—namely, insufficient dedication to socialism or even outright sympathy for capitalism. Frederick Teiwes and Warren Sun capture nicely the political ambiguities of the 1970s that resulted from the opposing goals of stability and unity on one hand and continued revolu­ tion on the other: “Party leadership was repeatedly endorsed, but Party authorities were often under attack and even paralyzed; old cadres contin­ ued to be liberated, while the recruitment of young rebels who had attacked such veterans increased markedly; social and economic disruption spread, even as directives emphasizing production and banning Cultural Revolu­ tion–type activities were issued; and a broad purist policy critique emerged that even touched on areas where Mao had clearly endorsed moderation.”88 Domestic Reradicalization to Alleviate Regime Vulnerability and Mobilization against the United States. Relations with the United States in the 1970s were caught between the contending forces of moderation and ideological ex­ tremism created by the twists and turns of Chinese domestic politics. The

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result was contradictions and about-faces in policies rather than sustained progress toward alliance.89 Moderate phases in China’s domestic politics created political space for pursuing more pragmatic foreign policies, in­ cluding toward the United States. For most of 1972, for example, “Mao re­ mained passive on the left-right issue” in Chinese domestic politics, as Roderick MacFarquhar and Michael Schoenhals explain. Zhou, as a result, “was able to seize this opportunity to cool the temperature of the Cultural Revolution, most notably in foreign affairs.”90 When, however, China’s politics entered periods of reradicalization that were in large part designed to eliminate the influence of so-called capitalist roaders and ideological fifth columns in the CCP, progress toward en­ hanced security cooperation with the United States was set back. As Kiss­ inger expresses this point, the ideological divisions among China’s leaders “profoundly affect[ed] Sino-U.S. relations. When China’s radicals gained in relative power [when Mao initiated domestic reradicalization campaigns], the U.S.-China relationship cooled.”91 Mao’s obsession with the existence of a powerful ideological fifth column in the party did not increase the costs created by allying with the United States due primarily to fears of empowering this domestic group, as was the case for French conservatives and Radicals in the 1930s. (These groups feared that allying with the Soviet Union would help spread communism in France.) The increased costs for Mao of allying with the United States given the (perceived) existence of a powerful ideological fifth column were instead ones of opportunity. Because Mao frequently used continued hostil­ ity toward the United States to help mobilize ideological radicals against capitalist roaders, allying with the United States would have meant aban­ doning this tactic despite continued need for it. The connection between Mao’s domestic reradicalization campaigns de­ signed to harm ideological fifth columns in the CCP and increased barriers to an alliance with the United States is best revealed by examining the in­ tensely hostile reaction to Zhou’s willingness to merely consider deepening the security relationship with the United States. America’s most extensive offers of security cooperation with the PRC occurred during Kissinger’s meetings with Zhou in November 1973. At this time, Kissinger offered to share intelligence with the Chinese about Soviet military activities through the creation of satellite/hotline links with China and to supply China equipment and other services in the event of a Sino-Soviet war. Zhou’s responses to these offers to enhance China’s safety were noncom­ mittal. Although he recognized that the satellite/hotline links could pro­ vide “intelligence of great assistance,” Zhou nevertheless told the Ameri­ cans that further study and consultation within the CCP were necessary before any commitments were made. Zhou also stressed that security coop­ eration between the two countries, if China accepted the aid, had to be done in a manner “so that no one feels we are allies.”92

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Despite the seeming innocuousness of Zhou’s responses to Kissinger’s offers, they were met with intense opposition in Beijing. Mao labeled Zhou’s interactions with the Americans in November 1973 as examples of “right deviationist errors” and “right capitulation,” and he ordered the con­ vening of a series of enlarged Politburo meetings to criticize them. The attacks at these meetings, as Teiwes and Sun summarize them, “reached extreme heights, with Zhou not only accused of revisionism and capitula­ tionism, but also of . . . betraying the country.” Mao, for example, asserted that “whoever carries out revisionism [Zhou’s willingness to consider ex­ tensive security cooperation with the United States] must be criticized.” Jiang Qing similarly attacked Zhou for engaging in “right-deviationist ca­ pitulationism.”93 It was at this time that Mao warned Zhou that China “should do nothing with them [the Americans]. By this, I mean we should not form a military alliance with America.”94 “Whether Mao really regarded [Zhou] as a ‘capitulationist’ in his dealing with Henry Kissinger,” MacFarquhar and Schoenhals explain, “will proba­ bly never be known.”95 What is known, though, is that these and related charges were very useful politically. At the time that Kissinger made the offers of extensive security cooperation with the PRC was a period of reradicalization of Chinese politics based on a perceived need to push for­ ward socialism’s advance against domestic opponents. Some scholars have even labeled the fall of 1973 to the summer of 1974 China’s “Second Cul­ tural Revolution.”96 The reradicalization phases of Chinese politics in the 1970s, as explained above, were characterized by “the recruitment of young rebels” who at­ tacked more moderate party members. These attacks were often based on “broad purist policy critique[s]” even on subjects “where Mao had clearly endorsed moderation.”97 Hostility toward the United States and opposition to alliance conformed to this pattern. These policies helped mobilize and empower many of the most ideologically radical in the CCP, who then used claims of insufficient animosity toward the United States to denounce and weaken capitalist roaders and ideological moderates. Thus, once Mao boosted the position of ideological radicals by establishing that deepening the security relationship with the United States was an example of revision­ ist thinking and capitulationism, other Chinese leaders who were open to an alliance with the United States were either politically marginalized or forced to conform to “correct” ideological beliefs. These outcomes made extensive security cooperation with the United States untenable. “After such an organized political struggle and criticism of Zhou,” as Yang and Xia explain, “it is hardly difficult to predict China’s perception and attitude toward the United States.”98 Or, as Ross puts it with regard to Deng (who in 1974 had become first vice premier and had taken over Zhou’s duties of head of China’s government, including negotiating with the Americans, af­ ter Zhou had become too ill due to cancer), “given Mao’s reaction to Zhou’s

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conciliatory posture in November 1973, Deng could not even suggest Chi­ nese flexibility” in negotiating with the Americans—despite the massive threat posed to China’s security by the Soviet Union—lest he “risk the charge of ‘capitulation.’”99 The result was that Deng engaged in aggressive and uncompromising discussions when he met with Kissinger in October 1975.100 Similarly, when President Ford visited China the following month, the Chinese, led by Deng, refused to agree to a communiqué and “disposed of business in half an hour, [which] was only extended for appearances’ sake. In sum, Sino-US relations had stalled more or less at the point they had reached following Kissinger’s ill-fated visit (for Zhou) two years ear­ lier.”101 Even these hard-line negotiating tactics with the Americans did not pre­ vent ideology-based attacks on Chinese diplomats and leaders during the reradicalized phases of Chinese politics. According to Teiwes and Sun, “Deng’s performance in the crucial foreign affairs area did not stay Mao’s hand as the Chairman increasingly focused on domestic issues” and the need to protect the Cultural Revolution from revisionist thinking.102 The month after Deng’s uncompromising talks with Kissinger in October 1975, members of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs launched a campaign denounc­ ing the “rightist wind” of China’s US policies, and in the following spring Deng was stripped of all his posts and condemned for being a “die-hard capitalist roader.”103 Also in the fall of 1975, members of Foreign Minister Qiao Guanhua’s own agency criticized him for his talks with Kissinger at the UN in September and October 1975, even though these negotiations, like Deng’s, were unaccommodating. Qiao was attacked for “carrying out a rightist line that continued Zhou Enlai’s foreign policy, and which was sup­ ported by Deng.”104 High levels of regime vulnerability created by Mao’s belief in a powerful ideological fifth column in the CCP, in summary, made the costs and barri­ ers of committing to a frenemy alliance with the United States high despite very strong material incentives pushing for this outcome. As long as Mao continued to believe that the existence of capitalist roaders in the party made the frequent reradicalization of Chinese politics necessary, rapproche­ ment with the United States remained tenuous. These periods of reradical­ ization incentivized continued hostility with the United States as Mao used animosity toward an ideological enemy abroad to mobilize against ideo­ logical rivals at home. c h ina’ s id eolo gi ca lly eq u i d i sta n t c o nf i g u r at i o n w i t h t h e superpo w ers a n d i n cen ti ves to b u c k - pa s s A second ideological variable that made China’s leaders less likely to com­ mit to a frenemy alliance with the United States despite the threat posed by the Soviet Union was the configuration of ideological distances that existed

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among China and the superpowers. This configuration for most of the 1970s was one of ideological equidistance, and it created powerful incen­ tives pushing China’s leaders not to ally with the United States but instead buck-pass to it. Two conditions create a configuration of ideological equidistance. First, a country’s leaders must view the other key actors—the potential frenemy ally and their shared material threat—as roughly equally divergent ideo­ logical enemies. Second, the potential frenemy ally and the material threat must themselves be intense ideological rivals. These two conditions ap­ plied to China’s relationships with the superpowers in the 1970s, and both impeded the formation of an alliance with the United States. The fact that Chinese elites continued to view the United States (along with the Soviet Union) as a fierce ideological enemy impeded the formation of an alliance by pushing them to be highly mistrustful of US officials’ intentions. Most notably, Chinese leaders repeatedly accused their US counterparts of en­ deavoring to push the Soviet Union to attack China. The fact that Chinese elites understood the United States and Soviet Union to be intense ideo­ logical enemies of not only China but also one another impeded the cre­ ation of a Sino-American alliance by convincing these leaders that the superpowers would focus their hostilities on one another. This belief reduced the perceived need to ally with the United States by increasing the anticipated likelihood that buck-passing policies and the deflecting to oth­ ers the costs of balancing would succeed. China’s Intense Ideological Hostility toward Both the Soviet Union and the United States. Chinese elites in the 1970s viewed both the United States and Soviet Union as fierce ideological enemies of the PRC. Chinese leaders had always understood the United States as an “imperialist” power that was the ideological antithesis of their regime and with which China possessed no ideological commonalities. Neither time nor the rise of the massive threat posed by the Soviet Union changed these perspectives, as I docu­ ment below. The Chinese beginning in the 1960s and especially after 1968 also viewed the Soviet Union as a major ideological rival.105 In this decade, Mao for the first time asserted that he no longer viewed the Soviet Union as a socialist country.106 China’s ideological hostility toward the Soviet Union greatly in­ tensified after the latter’s invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968. After this event, China’s leaders described the USSR as a “social-imperialist” state, meaning a socialist country in words but an imperialist state in deeds. Chinese elites throughout the Nixon and Ford presidencies repeatedly tarred the United States and Soviet Union with similar ideological brushes. To these elites, both superpowers were dedicated to ideologies that op­ posed China’s, which made these states highly aggressive and unreliable. This equivalency existed even for those who argued that China should

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improve relations with the United States to counter a more immediate foe. Zhou explained to the CCP’s Tenth Congress in August 1973, for example, that although the Soviet Union was currently the greater threat because of its aggressive behavior, this did not mean that the United States was not also an enemy. Indeed, Zhou asserted that the United States, just like the Soviet Union, wanted to “devour China” and that “the US imperialists are the number one enemy of the people of the world and of the Chinese peo­ ple.”107 Earlier in the year, a confidential document issued by the army’s political department in Yunnan Province labeled both US imperialism and Soviet revisionism “arch enemies” and called for “resolutely combating the hegemonism and power politics of the two superpowers.”108 The most definitive example of China’s leaders lumping the United States and Soviet Union together ideologically was Mao’s “Theory of the Three Worlds,” which had been developed by Mao by 1973 and presented to the world by Deng in an April 1974 address to the UN.109 This argument asserted a clear moral equivalence between “imperialist” United States and “social-imperialist” Soviet Union despite the greater immediacy of the So­ viet threat to China. As Deng explained in his UN speech, “the two super­ powers are the biggest international exploiters and oppressors of today. They are the source of a new world war. . . . They both keep subjecting other countries to their control, subversion, interference or aggression. They both exploit other countries economically, plundering their wealth and grabbing their resources.”110 The views expressed in Deng’s speech were not just for public consump­ tion. Mao had developed the Theory of the Three Worlds, and he defended its conclusions in private discussions.111 Government documents and re­ ports also incorporated the theory’s core ideas. Zhou’s State Council report delivered to the Fourth National People’s Congress in January 1975, for ex­ ample, reiterated the key themes of Deng’s speech, stating that “the two superpowers, the United States and Soviet Union, are the biggest interna­ tional oppressors and exploiters today, and they are the source of a new world war.”112 Chinese leaders’ intense hostility to the principles of both the imperialist United States and social-imperialist Soviet Union reduced the likelihood of a Sino-American alliance despite the growing material danger posed by the USSR. Although China and the United States in the period shared a com­ mon enemy, they did not share common values. There were no ideological commonalities of any significance between the two countries that rein­ forced and complemented the material reasons for creating an alliance. The opposite was instead the case as Chinese elites’ ideological hostility toward the United States resulted in high levels of mistrust of US intentions. Spe­ cifically, China’s leaders repeatedly accused their US counterparts of actively trying to get the Soviet Union and China embroiled in open hostili­ ties, after which the United States would sit on the sidelines and watch both

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of its enemies weaken one another. During Zhou’s February 1973 meetings with Kissinger, for example, China’s premier accused the Americans and their European allies of attempting to “push the ill waters of the Soviet Union . . . eastward.” The Western states, according to Zhou, were thus re­ peating a strategy used in the 1930s of trying to push Nazi Germany to the east against the USSR.113 Six months later, the political report issued at the Tenth Party Congress asserted that “the West always wants to urge the So­ viet revisionists eastward to divert the peril towards China.”114 Mao was particularly suspicious of US intentions. The chairman told Kissinger in February 1973 that the United States was likely to “help them [the Soviets] in doing business, saying whatever you need we will help against China” to get the Soviet military “bogged down in China.” Then the United States could “poke [its] finger at the Soviet back” after the USSR was militarily exhausted. When a frustrated Kissinger emphatically asserted that the United States “will never knowingly cooperate in an attack on China,” Mao interjected, “No, that’s not so. Your aim in doing that would be to bring the Soviet Union down.”115 The more Chinese elites believed that the ultimate objective of US leaders was to provoke hostilities between China and the Soviet Union, the more wary they were that US offers of security cooperation were at root designed to stimulate Soviet aggression against China rather than deter it. Mao ex­ pressed these fears in February 1973 when he accused the United States (according to Kissinger’s summary of the exchange) of encouraging “a So­ viet attack on a China with which we were ostensibly seeking to improve relations.” To Mao, it was plausible that US leaders were endeavoring to build up China in order “to get rid of Communism once and for all by em­ broiling the two Communist giants with each other and then turning on the victor.”116 As the scholar of Chinese politics Ronald Keith summarizes this point, “when Mao personally warned Kissinger against ‘standing on Chi­ na’s shoulders to reach Moscow’ . . . [he] seemed anxious lest the Ameri­ cans were using normalization [with China] as a ‘tactical maneuver’ so that Washington and Moscow would then divide the world between them [into spheres of influence] and the Soviets would surprise attack China.”117 The more these suspicions dominated Chinese leaders’ worldview, the greater the barriers to committing to a frenemy alliance with the United States. Fierce Ideological Contention between the Superpowers and Consequent Incen­ tives for China to Buck-pass. China’s leaders viewed the level of ideologybased enmity to be high not only between their country and each of the superpowers but between the latter as well, which is the second factor that creates a configuration of ideological equidistance. Indeed, the intensity of the superpowers’ rivalry was so great, according to Chinese elites, that the United States and the Soviet Union would be forced to focus their hostilities on one another despite enmity with China. To this view, US leaders’ efforts

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to deflect Soviet aggression against China would not succeed because hos­ tilities between the superpowers took precedence. The more Chinese lead­ ers were convinced of the primacy of US-Soviet enmity (despite the era of superpower détente in the 1970s), the more likely that a buck-passing strat­ egy would succeed in advancing China’s interests. The claim that different forms of “imperialism” were bound to conflict was a key theme expressed by Chinese leaders in both public and private settings for most of the period under investigation. According, for example, to an influential report submitted to the Central Committee by military leaders in July 1969, “China represents the fundamental interests of the world proletariat class. . . . The US imperialists and the Soviet revisionists are two ‘brands’ of representatives of the international bourgeoisie class. On the one hand, they both take China as the enemy; on the other they take each other as the enemy.” Although the superpowers’ hostilities to China were great, “the real threat is the one existing between themselves. .  .  . [Their ideological] contradictions [and thus] their hostilities toward each other are more fierce than ever before.”118 In the summer of 1973, Zhou led a meeting of Foreign Ministry officials that was dedicated to understanding the nature of the superpowers’ rela­ tionship. The report issued from the meeting stressed that “the U.S.-Soviet collusion is superficial while the rivalry is the essence, and the collusion is only for even more fierce contention.”119 Zhou repeated these themes in his speech at the Tenth Party Congress held in August, stating that the super­ powers’ “purpose is to contend for world hegemony. They contend as well as collude with each other. Their collusion serves the purpose of more in­ tensified contention. Contention is absolute and protracted, whereas collu­ sion is relative and temporary.”120 One of the clearest expressions of the beliefs in the highly hostile nature of the relationship between the United States and Soviet Union and the ide­ ological foundations of that hostility came in the Theory of the Three Worlds. According to Deng in his April 1974 address to the UN, “since the two superpowers are contending for world hegemony, the contradiction between them is irreconcilable; one either overpowers the other, or is over­ powered. Their compromise and collusion can only be partial, temporary and relative, while their contention is all-embracing, permanent and abso­ lute. . . . The contention between the superpowers extends over the entire globe.” This inevitable hostility was due to ideologies’ effects: “So long as imperialism and social-imperialism exist, there definitely will be no tran­ quility in the world, nor will there be ‘lasting peace.’ Either they will fight each other, or the people will rise in [socialist] revolution.”121 The anticipation of US-Soviet enmity was not inevitable but was instead a product of changing ideological relationships. Before 1969, the dominant view asserted by the CCP was that the two superpowers were much more likely to “collude” than conflict. The primary objectives of superpower

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cooperation, according to the PRC, were to prevent the proliferation of nu­ clear weapons, to block the emergence of rival countries (the containment of China was particularly important), and to divide the world into spheres of influence.122 The key event that pushed the Chinese to change this position was the Soviet Union’s invasion of Czechoslovakia. This development convinced Chinese leaders that the Soviet Union was a “social-imperialist” country. Once this change took hold, belief in the inevitability of superpower conflict based on a clash of contending imperialisms dominated Chinese ana­ lytics.123 Although elements of the “collusion” charge continued into the 1970s with accusations that détente between the superpowers would come at the expense of China’s interests, the Chinese were unequivocal in their assertions that the forces for superpower contention were superior to those for collusion. This second defining attribute of China’s ideologically equidistant con­ figuration with the superpowers was highly consequential for Chinese leaders’ security policies because it significantly increased the incentives pushing for the adoption of buck-passing policies rather than the formation of a balancing alliance with the United States. Buck-passing policies were very risky from a realist point of view, for reasons I analyze in greater detail below. The PRC in the 1970s was under a very high threat from the Soviet Union, was more immediately threatened than was the United States, and was poorly prepared to counter this danger by its own means. These factors pushed strongly for the adoption of balancing rather than buck-passing policies. Chinese leaders’ ideology-based conviction that the United States and Soviet Union were bound to focus their hostilities on one another, however, reduced the risks of buck-passing, thereby making it a much more attrac­ tive option than it would have been in a different configuration of ideologi­ cal distances. Chinese elites’ confidence in the primacy of the US-Soviet rivalry created the expectation that China’s two most powerful rivals would bear the costs of containing one another even if China refrained from making security commitments to either side. To key policymakers, as Pollack summarizes, China was “largely outside the sphere of great power compe­ tition, and hence effectively immune to external pressures and threats.”124 The more China’s leaders believed that buck-passing policies would suc­ ceed, the lower the perceived need to ally with the United States despite the pressing material danger posed by the USSR. Internal documents from the PRC reveal that Chinese leaders’ primary objective of improving relations with the United States was not to set the stage for the creation of a balancing coalition but to take advantage of and amplify Soviet-American enmity so that the two superpowers would bal­ ance one another while China remained free from costly commitments. A May 1971 Politburo report stated that if the rapprochement with the United

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States succeeded, this would “intensify the rivalry between the two super­ powers so that we will enhance combat preparedness.”125 A March 7, 1972, Central Committee document provided a detailed explanation of the strate­ gic thinking behind the recently signed Shanghai Communiqué and Chi­ na’s new policies toward the United States. The document indicated that the primary purpose of the Nixon summit and improved relations with the United States was not to ally with it but “utilizing contradictions [between the superpowers], dividing up enemies, and enhancing ourselves.”126 In April of the next year, a confidential report issued by the army’s political department in Yunnan Province recommended “using one enemy against another (without, however, allying with either), to ‘aggravate the contra­ dictions between the United States and the Soviet Union.’”127 Mao’s China, as Kissinger summarizes, “did not share our [US leaders’] . . . doctrine of collective security; it was [instead] applying the traditional maxim of ‘using barbarians against barbarians’ in order to achieve a divided periphery.” Consistent with my argument, Kissinger claims that it was “Mao’s Three Worlds concept,” which reflected an ideologically equidistant configuration, that “enable[d] China to navigate between the superpowers” as opposed to allying with the United States.128 If Chinese policymakers had not been convinced that the ideologies of imperialism and social-imperialism were bound to lead the superpowers to concentrate their enmity on one another, buck-passing policies would have been considerably less appealing, given the immediacy of the Soviet threat to China and China’s substantial vulnerabilities to it. Without, in other words, the effects of China’s ideologically equidistant configuration with the superpowers, the likelihood of China eschewing buck-passing in favor of committing to a frenemy alliance with the United States would have increased significantly.

Ideological Changes in China at the End of the 1970s and the Formation of the Sino-American Alliance The preceding section demonstrated that Mao opted not to ally with the United States due to the effects created by high levels of regime vulnerabil­ ity and the particular ideological configuration, one of ideological equidis­ tance, that existed among China, the United States, and the Soviet Union. The argument would be further supported if these variables had altered at the time the Americans and Chinese finally allied beginning in 1979. This was indeed the case. China’s leaders initiated major ideological changes over the course of the late 1970s that resulted, as MacFarquhar expresses it, in “the end of Maoism.”129 As a result of these developments, Chinese elites’ fears of regime vulnerability shrunk, which significantly lowered the do­ mestic costs created by allying with the United States. These ideological

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changes also created for the first time important areas of ideological over­ lap with the United States, which resulted in a shift in China’s configura­ tion of ideological distances with the superpowers from one of ideological equidistance to one of double threat. The latter was based on Chinese lead­ ers’ views of the Soviet Union as the greatest ideological (and material) danger in the system, the United States a lesser one. This change both en­ hanced the clarity of the ideological threat posed by the USSR compared to that of the United States and created more shared interests with the United States, both of which facilitated the creation of the Sino-American alliance by augmenting the perceived need to commit to it. Although the primary purpose of the chapter is to explore the reasons for the delay in the creation of a Sino-American alliance (this is the principal puzzle from the period), the following analysis of the factors that allowed this coalition to finally form provides an important control and confirmation for my conclusions. id eolo gica l develo pmen ts i n th e p rc after m ao’s d eath It was not immediately obvious that Mao’s death would result in substan­ tial ideological shifts. Mao in February 1976 designated Hua Guofeng to be his successor. After assuming power, Hua based his legitimacy on his dedi­ cation to Maoist thought and the continuation of the chairman’s domestic and international policies. This dependency was officially articulated in the “Two Whatevers” mantra, expressed in a People’s Daily editorial on Febru­ ary 7, 1977: “We shall resolutely defend whatever policy Chairman Mao de­ cided upon; steadfastly abide by whatever decisions Chairman Mao made.”130 Mao’s doctrine of “self-reliance” was a particularly important one in the wake of his death, with some Chinese leaders regarding it as an “absolute virtue.” In January 1977, the People’s Daily declared that China must always insist on self-reliance and thus “never depend on or have blind faith in foreign technology, never act like the Soviet Union in allowing foreign capitalists to exploit the country’s natural resources, and never ac­ cept foreign loans.”131 The Two Whatevers and the principle of self-reliance promised stasis in all the key ideological and policy issues that were described above, includ­ ing relations with the United States. As Ross explains regarding coopera­ tion with the United States as a potential balancing force against the Soviet Union, “there may have been relatively conciliatory tones in [Hua’s US] policy, but the shift was incremental, reflecting a marginal change within established policy, rather than the adoption of a new policy seeking a differ­ ent US role in the Sino-Soviet conflict.”132 This situation began to change over the course of 1977 and radically so in 1978. In these years, the PRC experienced major ideological changes. In May 1978, the People’s Daily printed an article that criticized the Two

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Whatevers and thus blind loyalty to Mao’s thought and policies. In a November 1978 Central Committee meeting, the Two Whatevers doctrine was discarded as the litmus test for decision-making, and those who had supported it were criticized.133 The following month, the Third Plenum of the Eleventh Central Committee (December 18–22) adopted policies that “represented a radical turn from the previous decade.”134 The plenum repu­ diated one of Mao’s core ideological assertions by declaring that “the massive class struggle” in China to be over.135 Mao’s belief in the continuation of the class struggle, especially within the CCP, had created the need for the Cul­ tural Revolution. The Central Committee’s December 1978 announcement essentially declared the end of this need.136 Ideological changes in the economic realm, both domestically and inter­ nationally, were also remarkable. Although Hua had declared his loyalty to Maoist beliefs—including that of self-reliance—with the articulation of the Two Whatevers doctrine, his views on these issues shifted over time. Begin­ ning in 1977 and accelerating in 1978, Hua moved away from Mao’s doctrine of self-reliance and pushed for the importation of advanced tech­ nology and capital, while advocating that China learn from foreigners. Hua encouraged numerous visits by Chinese leaders to other states, including to capitalist countries.137 Deng Xiaoping’s rise to power accelerated and deepened these trends. Deng had been purged for a second time by Mao in the spring of 1976. Over the course of 1977 and 1978, though, he adroitly maneuvered within Chi­ na’s political system to restore his power and that of his allies.138 By the end of the year, Deng was China’s preeminent leader, even though Hua retained the title of premier until September 1980. PRC elites led by the increasingly powerful Deng over the course of 1978 argued for the adoption of major liberalizing reforms that became known as the “Four Modernizations,” which targeted greater efficiencies and pro­ duction in agriculture, industry, science and technology, and national de­ fense. These domestic reforms, which were officially launched at the Third Plenum in December 1978, were based on the ideas of “market economics, decentralized decision making, and opening to the outside world—all un­ precedented changes.”139 These reforms also resulted in a substantial re­ duction in the ideological differences with the Western powers despite the continuation of major ideological disputes. Instead of implacable ideologi­ cal enmity with capitalist countries, “the official position” of the PRC beginning in 1978, according to Julian Gewirtz, “produced tremendous— though never unconditional—receptivity to incorporating market elements into China’s socialist system. . . . China’s opening [to Western ideas] trig­ gered an enormous transmission of knowledge and expertise to Chinese economists and policy makers—new ideas that permeated the entire intel­ lectual environment and played a major role in the evolution of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) ideology and policy.”140 Deng told Vice Premier

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Gu Mu before embarking on a tour of European states in May and June 1978 that “we ought to study the successful experiences of capitalist countries and bring them back to China.” By November 1979, Deng was advocating a hybrid ideology in which China would “develop a market economy under socialism.”141 r e ducti o ns i n regi me vu ln era bi li ty a nd a s hi f t t o a n id eo logi ca l c o n fi gu rati o n o f d o u bl e t hr e at The major ideological changes initiated by Chinese leaders in the late 1970s, especially declaring the class struggle to be over in China and the imple­ mentation of the modernization agenda, significantly increased the incen­ tives for China to ally with the United States. As discussed at length above, the primary reason why Mao’s concerns about the threat of capitalist resto­ ration were acute was the belief that the class struggle within the CCP re­ mained intense. Because (perceived) powerful ideological fifth columns in the party endangered the future of socialism in China by making the re­ gime susceptible to counterrevolution, the government’s domestic and in­ ternational policies had to be designed in such a way to reduce this threat. These policies included using ongoing hostility to the United States to help mobilize against domestic ideological rivals during the reradicalization phases of Chinese politics in the 1970s. The PRC’s policies beginning in 1978 reversed these calculations. The dec­ laration in December 1978 that the class struggle was over meant that China’s key policymakers did not share Mao’s conviction that capitalist sympathizers of significant numbers existed within the CCP. In the absence of the belief in the existence of a powerful ideological fifth column, the need to maintain high levels of hostility to the United States for domestic reasons was lowered. The major ideological changes initiated in China in the late 1970s did much more, however, than reduce the domestic costs of and barriers to a frenemy alliance with the United States. These changes reversed these do­ mestic calculations by creating domestic advantages from a Sino-American alliance. The modernization agenda and the resulting interest, in Deng’s phrase, in bringing to China “the successful experiences of capitalist coun­ tries” based on extensive interactions and learning from these states, meant that close ties with the West were to be encouraged not shunned.142 In a re­ versal from Mao’s era, cooperation with Western countries by the end of the 1970s benefited China’s domestic interests rather than endangering them. Li Jie describes well this remarkable turnabout: “At the initiative of Deng Xiaoping, the Communist Party of China reached an understanding: to achieve modernization, Beijing had to adopt a policy of reform and open­ ing up, and it must learn from the West and introduce its advanced tech­ nologies and modern management methods to China. The United States was clearly the main source of advanced ideas and technology. . . . Normal­ ization of Sino-US relations was now necessary not only for maintaining 152

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national security in the cold war but also for implementing the strategy of reform and opening up.”143 The goal of modernization meant that China’s regime was now threatened by not cooperating with the United States. The more Chinese leaders’ domestic interests were advanced by close interac­ tions with the United States, the easier it was for them to act on the material incentives pushing for alliance. The ideological changes associated with China’s modernization program also facilitated allying with the United States by altering the nature of Chi­ na’s configuration of ideological distances with the superpowers. The PRC’s policies of reform and modernization that were based on extensive learning from capitalist countries meant that the ideological differences di­ viding Chinese leaders from their counterparts in the United States had narrowed substantially. Indeed, China’s modernization program meant that the two countries for the first time possessed important ideological commonalities. Deng explained in November 1979, “We do not want capi­ talism, but neither do we want to be poor under socialism. What we want is socialism in which the productive forces are developed and the country is prosperous and powerful.” To achieve these goals, a new hybrid ideology that combined capitalist and socialist principles and created a “market economy under socialism” was necessary.144 As capitalist principles grew in importance to the realization of Chinese elites’ domestic objectives, so, too, did ideological agreement with the United States. At the same time that Chinese leaders were moving ideologically closer to the United States based on the incorporation of capitalist ideas into their core domestic objectives, they were also reducing the ideology-based dis­ putes with the Soviet Union. After Mao’s death and the end of the Cultural Revolution, the need to criticize Soviet ideological “revisionism” weak­ ened. The result was a diminishment in the number and ferocity of the at­ tacks on Soviet domestic politics.145 Although the intensity of the ideological disputes between China and the Soviet Union lessened in the 1970s, improvements in this area were not nearly as substantial or important as those in relation to the United States. Chinese elites were committed to learning extensively from capitalist coun­ tries as the key precondition for successful modernization. Analogous ex­ pressions of affinity and utility were not made in relation to the Soviet Union. The result was a shift to an ideological configuration of double threat, which occurs when a state is being pushed for realist reasons to ally with a lesser ideological enemy (the potential frenemy ally) against a greater one (the material threat). Although Chinese leaders, from an objec­ tive perspective, may have had more in common ideologically with the So­ viet Union than with the United States, these elites consistently stressed in the period the greater saliency of the ideological overlap with the United States. Chinese elites’ modernization agenda led them to view the newly created ideological similarities with the United States as more important than any ideological ties with the Soviet Union. 153

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The change to a configuration of double threat that resulted from impor­ tant ideological similarities with the United States facilitated the creation of the Sino-American alliance by increasing the need to commit to the coali­ tion. The configuration of double threat enhanced the clarity of the ideo­ logical danger posed by the Soviet Union compared to that of the United States while creating more common interests with the United States. To Deng, the Soviet Union’s ideology meant continued economic backward­ ness while the United States’ ideology was the key to successful modern­ ization. These views pulled China toward the United States and against the Soviet Union. Sergey Radchenko summarizes the ideological relationships between China and the superpowers after Deng’s rise to power and how these relationships increased the incentives pushing China to ally with the United States: “Deng thought in terms of modernization of China, some­ thing that required closer relations with the West. .  .  . Deng’s China .  .  . needed to make the leap to the first world and, as Deng realized very well, this could only be done by leaning to one side—the American side. This decision—every bit as ideological as Mao’s 1949 promise to lean to the side of the Soviet Union—goes a long way to explain Deng’s [continued] hostility toward the USSR. Soviet hopes of normalization [after Mao’s death] were pinned to the hope that China would . . . return to the warm embrace of the socialist world. For Deng, this was a world of poverty and backwardness that could never rival what the West had to offer.”146 Or, as Vladislav Zubok asserts, Deng’s grand strategy required allying with the United States against the Soviet Union because “only the United States, and not the Soviets, held the keys, such as the know-how and technologies China needed to modernize itself.” Chinese elites’ “reformist aspirations . . . pulled them towards the US-led global capitalist system” that was directed against the Soviet Union.147 Chinese leaders throughout the 1970s, in summary, had always been pushed to cooperate with the United States due to the material threat posed by the Soviet Union. Alliance occurred, though, only when this threat was combined with a significant overlap in ideological objectives with the United States.148 Deng himself reportedly told his assistants after returning from his visit to the United States in early 1979, “If we look back, we find that all those [developing states] that were on the side of the United States have been successful [in modernizing], whereas all of these that were against the United States have not been successful. [Because we desire modernization], we shall be on the side of the United States.”149

Alternative Explanations for the Delay in the Creation of the Sino-American Alliance There are two main explanations besides my own that can potentially account for the delay in the establishment of the Sino-American alliance. 154

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Realist analyses that examine how incentives to buck-pass reduce the likeli­ hood of effective balancing policies provide one of these accounts. Because countries have an interest in passing the costs of containing shared threats to others, the likelihood of alliance formation is often much lower than would otherwise be expected. The biggest problem with realist buck-passing arguments in explaining the evolution of Sino-American relations in the 1970s is that outcomes were in important ways the opposite of their predictions. Realists claim that the greater the threat confronting a country, the more likely its leaders will pre­ fer balancing over buck-passing policies to protect their security. Based on the factors that determine threat according to realist balance-of-threat the­ ory, as I detailed above, the danger posed by the Soviet Union to China in the 1970s was very high—hence the intense war scare experienced by Chi­ nese elites in the early years of the decade. The PRC was also poorly prepared to deter or defend a Soviet attack by its own capabilities. As Ross explains, “China lacked the ability to improve its security by mobilizing internal resources. Changes in Chinese defense spending could not even begin to offset Soviet military power aimed at China.”150 The more inade­ quate internal balancing is against international threats, the more appealing external balancing and the formation of alliances should become. Based on realist insights, the high level of danger posed by the Soviet Union should have pushed the Chinese to be more interested in allying with the United States rather than trying to buck-pass to it, as was the case for other states in East Asia and most countries in Central and Western Europe. Adding to these incentives pushing for active external balancing policies is the fact that China was more immediately threatened by Soviet actions in Asia in the late 1960s and early 1970s than was the United States, as evi­ denced by the existence of a war scare in China but not the United States. Once again according to Ross: “China’s relative weakness vis-à-vis both su­ perpowers, including its limited ability to improve its military capability, and the correspondingly greater threat of Soviet power to China made the PRC more dependent on U.S.-PRC security cooperation than the United States.”151 Yet Chinese leaders for most of the 1970s continued to be more reluctant to ally with the United States than the reverse, including rejecting US offers of aid that did not require reciprocation. This last choice is par­ ticularly puzzling for realist buck-passing arguments. It is one thing not to incur extra costs in opting for buck-passing over balancing policies. It is quite another to refuse aid when no reciprocal commitments are necessary to receive it. A final puzzle for realist buck-passing arguments is created by the fact that the Soviet threat to China was in important ways lower at the end of the 1970s when the PRC allied with the United States than at the begin­ ning. This is not to say that China did not confront substantial threats to its security at the end of the 1970s. The Soviet Union in the late 1970s contin­ ued to deploy offensive weaponry to its border with China, including a 155

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growing arsenal of SS-20 ballistic missiles. From 1974 to 1978, Moscow sent an additional seven infantry divisions to the border, increasing the total from forty-five to fifty-two.152 Major tensions with Vietnam, which resulted from Vietnam’s expanding military ties with the Soviet Union and frequent border clashes with China, also contributed to a threatening secu­ rity environment. Sino-Vietnamese hostilities reached a boiling point in December 1978 when Vietnam invaded and occupied Cambodia and over­ threw the Khmer Rouge regime, which was supported by the PRC. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979 intensified the Soviet threat, though China and the United States had started to ally before this event. (The Soviet invasion thus deepened the Sino-American alliance; it did not create it.) As threatening as China’s security environment was in the early months of 1979 when the Sino-American alliance began to form, it was not as dan­ gerous as it was in the beginning of the decade. The accuracy of this state­ ment is indicated, once again, by the fact that there was an intense, sus­ tained war scare in Beijing in the early but not late 1970s. This greater level of fear in the early 1970s was a reasonable response to China’s security situation because the direct military challenge from the Soviet Union was more acute in these years. Soviet and Chinese forces had clashed in multi­ ple skirmishes in 1969, resulting in hundreds of fatalities. The Soviets had also repeatedly threatened through a number of channels to wage a “pre­ emptive” war against China, including with nuclear weapons, and they actively prepared for such an attack. The overall military balance was also more in the Soviet Union’s favor early in the decade. Most important, China did not possess a secure nuclear deterrent until 1974. The develop­ ment of Chinese nuclear forces over the remainder of the decade, which included for the first time an ability to reliably strike western Soviet cities, including Moscow, greatly reducing the likelihood of a Soviet attack. Chi­ na’s conventional weaponry also made significant advances over the course of the decade as the production of armaments and military equip­ ment increased in quality and efficiency after Mao’s death in 1976.153 Due to these developments, the PRC was in better position at the end of the decade to protect its core interests through its own power and without the aid of allies. Yet it was at this time that China’s leaders shifted from buckpassing to supporting an alliance with the United States. The logic of buck-passing did play a key role in China’s policies toward the United States for most of the 1970s, as I argue above. The foundational motives for these policies were, however, ideologically based, and therefore outside of realist analytical frameworks. A second potential alternative explanation for the delay in the formation of the Sino-American alliance involves the dispute over Taiwan and na­ tionalistic opposition to close cooperation with the United States. To this

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account, Chinese leaders’ preeminent foreign policy interest was the incor­ poration of Taiwan into mainland China’s political system. As long as the United States was instrumental in thwarting this goal, PRC leaders would not ally with the United States. However, once the Carter administration in 1978 authorized the acceptance of the PRC’s three conditions for the normalization of state relations—the end of US diplomatic relations with Taiwan, the withdrawal of all US military personnel from the island, and the abrogation of the US security treaty with Taiwan—an alliance shortly followed. There is no doubt that Chinese policymakers viewed Taiwan as a core interest. This issue was not rooted in ideology but nationalism. The over­ whelming majority of Chinese leaders and citizens, regardless of ideologi­ cal beliefs, believed that Taiwan was part of China and should be recog­ nized as such. Differences between China and the United States over Taiwan had been critical to the evolution of Sino-American relations since the PRC’s found­ ing. These differences had resulted in periodic militarized disputes, most notably the First and Second Taiwan Straits Crises that began in 1954 and 1958. The Taiwan issue was also a centerpiece of negotiations between US and Chinese leaders throughout the 1970s, and failure to resolve it was the primary reason for the delay in normalization. PRC elites were adamant that they would not have formal diplomatic relations with the United States until the Taiwan dispute was ended to their satisfaction. The key question is whether the Taiwan issue was sufficiently impor­ tant to prevent not only normalization between China and the United States but also alliance against the pressing threat posed by the Soviet Union. The dispute over the island was clearly not an absolute barrier to improvements in Sino-American relations. Over the course of the 1970s, mutual enmity toward the Soviet Union had led the Chinese to agree to high-level visits from US leaders, public summitry, the creation of liaison offices that were “closely equivalent to Embassies in everything but name,” and the issuing of public statements expressing common interests (the most important of these being the Shanghai Communiqué).154 All these developments occurred before the PRC’s most important demands on Taiwan were met. If the Taiwan dispute did not prevent the rapprochement between China and the United States that created a public “illusion” of military cooperation, why would it prevent the creation of an actual military alliance? The decisions not to accept US offers of aid, not to make some security guarantees to the United States in exchange for ones from the Ameri­ cans, and not to help with intelligence gathering against the Soviet Union (a key request from the United States) are especially puzzling because these developments could have been done much more privately than the

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core dimensions of the rapprochement. An actual military relationship based on the preceding developments was thus less likely to offend na­ tionalist sentiments over the Taiwan dispute than was the very public il­ lusion of military cooperation. As important as the Taiwan issue was to China’s leaders, it was not as important as protecting the mainland from a Soviet attack. Fear of the Soviet Union created powerful incentives pushing China to prioritize coun­ tering the USSR over resolving the Taiwan dispute. Chinese elites repeat­ edly recognized the accuracy of this assertion. As Kissinger recounts, in no meeting with Mao did China’s key decision maker “indicate any impa­ tience over Taiwan, set any time limits, make any threats, or treat it as the touchstone of our relationship. ‘We can do without them for the time being, and let it come after 100 years.’ ‘Why such great haste?’ ‘This issue [Taiwan] is not an important one. The issue of the international situation is an impor­ tant one.’ ‘The small issue is Taiwan, the big issue is the world.’ These were Mao’s thoughts on Taiwan as expressed to us on many visits. (These were also the views of Chou En-lai and Teng Hsiao-p’ing [Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping]).”155 Deng told Ford in their December 1975 summit, “We have told [Kissinger] many times that we are very patient. And in our relations [with the United States] we have always put the international aspect first and the Taiwan issue second.”156 Chinese leaders, in sum, explicitly recog­ nized that countering the clear and present danger posed by the Soviet Union was a more pressing interest than resolving the Taiwan dispute. Why these elites would not commit to an alliance with the United States— which offered a clear path to addressing the Soviet threat—because of Tai­ wan is therefore puzzling. All US leaders in the 1970s recognized the profound ideological differences that divided China and the United States. The most powerful of these elites, however, believed that these differences would not be determinative of China’s security policies, especially given the need to balance the shared Soviet threat. As Kissinger asserted in his memoirs, “ideological slogans were a façade for considerations of balance of power. Each side [China and the United States] would be expected to insist on its principles; but each had an obligation not to let them interfere with the imperatives of national interest.”157 Kissinger is correct that material interests can and do supersede the ef­ fects of ideological differences in the formation of alliances. The probability of this happening, though, varies considerably under different ideological conditions. US elites failed to take into account the fact that the key vari­ ables that amplify the ideology-based barriers to alliance—high levels of regime vulnerability and an ideological configuration of ideological equidistance—were in play for China’s most powerful leaders, especially Mao, for most of the 1970s. The result was that the belief that ideologies

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would matter little to the evolution of Chinese alliance policies remained mistaken for almost the entire decade. Only when Chinese leaders’ levels of regime vulnerability lowered and their ideological configuration with the Soviet Union shifted to one of double threat were they willing to act on the material incentives for cooperation and ally with the United States against their common foe.

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A Breaking-Point Frenemy Alliance The Ending of the Turkish-Israeli Alliance, 2009–10

This chapter examines the rupture of the Turkish-Israeli alliance at the end of the 2000s. Turkey and Israel in the middle of the 1990s formed a close security relationship that involved extensive security cooperation in a num­ ber of areas, including joint military exercises and training, the sharing of intelligence, arms transfers, and the coordinated deterrence of common en­ emies, especially Syria and Iran. At the time the Turkish-Israeli alliance formed, it was not a frenemy one based on the views of the alliance’s architects. This was particularly true from Turkish leaders’ perspective. Those Turkish leaders who spearheaded creating the alliance were members of a staunchly secular ideological group known as Kemalists (named after Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, founder of re­ publican Turkey and its first president). This group in the 1990s dominated the military, the foreign policy bureaucracy, the courts, and the Republican People’s Party (CHP in Turkish), which was one of Turkey’s largest parties. Kemalists viewed Israel as an ideologically similar state based on a mutual commitment to secular democracy. They repeatedly asserted that these similarities created a key pillar to the alliance by giving the two countries common enemies, most notably political Islamists. The nature of Turkey’s ideological relationship with Israel changed be­ ginning in November 2002 with the election of the recently created Justice and Development Party (AKP in Turkish). The AKP’s defining identity was a unique hybrid that was dedicated to both political liberalization and the advancement of Islamic ideology and interests. Although this synthesis cre­ ated an important area of ideological overlap with Israel based on a mutual commitment to democracy, AKP elites more frequently described Israel as an ideological rival because of its oppression of Muslims. AKP leaders on multiple occasions accused Israel of being a “terrorist” state akin to Nazi Germany, the leaders of which should be tried for war crimes. These views transformed the Turkish-Israeli relationship into a frenemy one. Neverthe­ less, AKP officials during their first six years in power supported preserving

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the alliance that Kemalists had created. Turkey and Israel from 2002 to 2008 continued to engage in extensive intelligence sharing, routine joint military exercises and training, and large-scale arms transfers. Over the course of 2009 and 2010, however, AKP leaders terminated all these dimensions of security cooperation. These policymakers made this choice even though the material incentives pushing Turkey and Israel together, particularly the threat posed by Iran, were in important ways stronger at the end of the 2000s than when the AKP first came to power. My argument explains why AKP leaders ended the Israeli alliance. Be­ ginning in 2007, Kemalist elites engaged in a sustained campaign to oust the AKP from power by a combination of military and judicial pressure. These efforts nearly succeeded, most notably when a July 2008 ruling by the Constitutional Court came within one vote of banning the party. These developments triggered major changes in the argument’s independent variables, which, in turn, created powerful incentives pushing Turkey’s leaders to end the frenemy alliance with Israel. Most obviously, secularists’ efforts to remove the AKP from power and even ban it resulted in a massive increase in regime vulnerability for the party that significantly increased the domestic costs of preserving the alliance. In response to the clear and present danger to their domestic interests, AKP elites beginning in 2008 en­ gaged in an Islamic mobilization campaign against their secular rivals, and anti-Israeli statements and policies were central to this campaign. Preserv­ ing the Israeli alliance after 2007 would have created major opportunity costs for AKP officials as this would have meant forgoing a key means of mobilizing supporters against a pressing domestic threat. Kemalists’ attacks on the AKP because of its Islamic ideology also re­ sulted in an important shift in AKP leaders’ configuration of ideological distances with Turkey’s neighbors. Before 2008, AKP officials’ ideological configuration with Israel and Muslim-majority states is best described as one of ideological equidistance, which occurs when one state confronts two others that are roughly the same ideological distance from the first but are themselves dedicated to rival ideological beliefs. AKP leaders’ commitment to Islamic ideology and interests, especially when combined with Israel’s harsh policies toward Muslims in the Palestinian conflicts and the 2006 war in Lebanon, resulted in these elites openly questioning the legitimacy and moral standing of Israel. The liberalizing dimension of AKP elites’ ideol­ ogy, though, resulted in similar views of authoritarian regimes in Muslimmajority countries. AKP officials, especially during their first six years in power, asserted that illiberal values and institutions in Muslim-majority countries were a key source of international threats and aggression, and they frequently called for the replacement of authoritarian regimes with democratic ones on the Turkish model. Kemalists’ efforts beginning in 2007 to oust the AKP from power through a combination of military and judicial pressure changed the nature of

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Turkey’s ideological configuration with its neighbors. The more Kemalists attacked AKP elites because of their Islamic ideology, the more important this dimension of their beliefs became. The increasing power of policy­ makers dedicated to Pan-Islamic ideas both reflected and intensified this shift. The consequence of these developments was that AKP leaders after 2007 began to identify much more closely with other Muslim-majority countries. Turkey’s configuration of ideological distances with Israel and Muslim-majority countries after 2007 as a result shifted to one of ideo­ logical betrayal, which occurs when leaders are pushed for realist rea­ sons to ally with an ideological enemy (the “Zionist” regime in Israel, as Islamists described it) against states that are in their ideological commu­ nity (other Muslim-majority countries). An ideological configuration of ideological betrayal reduces the ideology-based need to commit to a frenemy coalition because of the feelings of trust and low threat that often exist among members of the ideological community. The more AKP leaders trusted their counterparts in Muslim-majority countries, the lower the perceived need to ally with Israel, even though material calcu­ lations continued to incentivize this outcome. Importantly, this trust applied even to Iran, despite the sectarian differences between Sunnidominated Turkey and Shia-dominated Iran. Turkish Islamists had long been inspired by the Iranian Revolution, arguing that its example could help create an Islamic regime in Turkey. To these individuals, including leaders of the AKP, common interests created by a shared commitment to Islamist ideology were more important than frictions created by sec­ tarian differences. For AKP officials by 2008, in summary, the domestic costs associated with preserving the Israeli alliance were high, and the ideology-based need to do so low. These forces made the continuation of the frenemy alliance unlikely. Kemalist elites, in contrast, continued to support an alliance with Israel against Iran, and ideological similarities with Israel remained central to this preference. My argument does not explain, however, AKP leaders’ decision to pre­ serve the Israeli alliance for their first six years in power. The level of regime vulnerability for these elites was high in these years (though not nearly as high as it would become by 2008) due to Kemalists’ substantial political power and their clear ideology-based antipathy to the AKP. I predict that a combination of high regime vulnerability and an ideo­ logical configuration of ideological equidistance will tend to prevent or break apart frenemy alliances. This prediction was not confirmed. The particular dynamics of Turkish politics created incentives that worked against the argument’s causal logic. (See table 4.1 for a summary of the values of the argument’s independent variables for AKP leaders at vari­ ous points in the 2000s and their predicted effects on alliance preferences toward Israel.)

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Table 4.1. Predictions for AKP leaders’ alliance policies toward Israel, 2002–2010 Domestic costs of frenemy alliance created by level of regime vulnerability

Ideology-based “need” to commit to frenemy alliance based on configuration of ideological distances High need

Low costs High costs

Low need

Group: AKP leaders from 2002 to 2010a Prediction: Frenemy alliance unlikely Outcomes: Supported the alliance with Israel until 2008; ended it after this year

a

AKP leaders’ configuration of ideological distances in relation to Israel and Iran from 2002 to 2007 was one of ideological equidistance. After 2007, it was one of ideological betrayal. I did not place Kemalist leaders on this table because their relationship with Israel was not a frenemy one. These elites advocated allying with Israel in the period examined, and ideological similarities were an important support of this preference.

In what follows, I describe the origins of the Turkish-Israeli alliance, its destruction despite substantial material incentives pushing for its continu­ ation, and various alternative explanations for this outcome and their prob­ lems. The heart of my analysis explores how major increases in regime vulnerability and changes in configurations of ideological distances begin­ ning in 2007 from Turkish leaders’ perspective significantly enhanced the ideology-based barriers to cooperation to the point where the frenemy alliance for AKP elites became unsustainable. This section is preceded by a briefer one that explores why AKP officials during their first six years in power chose to preserve the alliance despite strong ideological incentives to break it. Because Turkish leaders were primarily responsible for the end of the alliance, I concentrate on their decision-making processes.

The Origins of the Turkish-Israeli Alliance Turkey and Israel in the 1990s shared major security interests that brought them into alliance. The most important of these interests were mutual en­ mity to Iran, Syria, and Iraq and a shared concern about terrorism. From Turkish leaders’ perspective, enmity toward these three neighbors re­ sulted from various calculations, including the fact that all three (and par­ ticularly Syria and Iran) had supported the Marxist Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK (a designated terrorist organization dedicated to Kurdish independence); territorial and water-rights disputes with Syria and Iraq; and Iran’s efforts to export its Islamist revolution to Turkey and to de­ velop nuclear weapons and missiles. Turkey’s relations with Iran and

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Syria were particularly tense in the 1990s, with a high probability of mili­ tary hostilities with one or both.1 These security threats and conflicts, combined with Israel’s power, geo­ graphical position, ability to effectively lobby the United States on Tur­ key’s behalf, and mutual enmity to all these countries, created strong incentives pushing Turkey into an alliance. One Turkish officer explained in 1996, “We are surrounded on all sides by trouble. We are in the hot seat. It is critical for us to jump outside this circle of chaos and find friends in the region. Israel was the perfect choice.” Chief of the General Staff İsmail Hakkı Karadayı used similar language during a February 1997 visit to Is­ rael, explaining that the alliance resulted from the fact that Turkey had “fire on its three sides.”2 The Turkish-Israeli alliance became formalized in 1996 when Turkish and Israeli officials signed two military agreements in February and August.3 These accords committed the two states to joint military training, exchanges of military personnel, military staff-to-staff coordination, visits to one an­ other’s military bases, cooperation against terrorist groups, intelligence gathering and sharing, and the sale of weaponry. Regarding the last, Israel and Turkey over the course of the 1990s and 2000s concluded deals for mil­ itary equipment totaling over two billion dollars. Among the items Israel provided were combat aircraft radars that modernized Turkey’s F-4 Phan­ tom fighters, cruise missiles, unmanned aerial vehicles, and upgrades for Turkey’s tanks.4 Beginning in 1998, the two countries, along with the United States, also participated in recurring naval military exercises, named Reli­ ant Mermaid, in the eastern Mediterranean. Three years later, the air forces from these three states began participating in recurring training exercises, named Anatolian Eagle, over Turkish airspace.5 The coercive value of the alliance for Turkey was clearly on display in 1998 when Syria, under coordinated threat from both Turkey and Israel, expelled PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan and committed to end support for this group. Former Turkish deputy chief of the General Staff Çevik Bir (who was one of the chief architects of the alliance) summarized the ongoing de­ terrent benefits of the coalition in a 2002 coauthored article. Although Turk­ ish and Israeli leaders did not publicly express a commitment to defend each other from attack (which indicates the strongest form of alliance), their other extensive military cooperation meant that foes had to account for this strong possibility. According to Bir, Turkish-Israeli security cooperation is “a relationship between two ‘status quo powers,’ pooling resources to ward off common threats. . . . Israeli-Turkish military cooperation has undoubt­ edly enhanced the deterrence postures of both parties and so reduced the chances of violence being instigated against either one of them. States con­ sidering the use of force against either Turkey or Israel must take into con­ sideration their combined might. The relationship raises the potential

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stakes for any would-be adversary.”6 Iran for much of the 2000s was the primary object of the two states’ shared security fears, as I discuss below. The Turkish-Israeli alliance until the election of the AKP in 2002 was not a frenemy one, especially from Turkey’s perspective.7 To the contrary, the primary creators of the alliance—Kemalists in the military and CHP— viewed Israel as an ideologically similar regime based on a shared commit­ ment to secular democracy. These ideological similarities added to the material incentives for alliance by helping to create shared threat percep­ tions. As the scholar Philip Robins explains, “the Turkish foreign policy elite [Kemalists] had long viewed Israel as being ‘like us.’ Elites on both sides shared political values of secularism and democracy, they shared a common identification with Europe and the West, and they shared a com­ mon set of threat perceptions, from problematic neighbors to terrorism.”8 Deputy Chief of the General Staff Bir stressed that the mutual “commit­ ment to democracy” provided a key foundation for the alliance because it was common democratic principles that gave the two countries shared threats, including political Islam and Islamist-based terrorism. These com­ mon dangers created “the need for greater cooperation between Turkey and the region’s other democracy, Israel.”9

The Rise of the AKP and the Shift to a Frenemy Alliance with Israel The AKP has governed Turkey since 2002, winning parliamentary elections in 2002, 2007, 2011, 2015, and 2018. This party’s ideological hostility to Is­ rael created a frenemy relationship with this state. The AKP was established by former members of Islamist parties (Welfare and Virtue) that had been banned from political activity by Turkey’s Con­ stitutional Court in 1998 and 2001, respectively. AKP leaders asserted that their ideological beliefs were best described as ones of “conservative de­ mocracy.”10 Two sets of principles defined this ideology. The first was a dedication to Islamic identity and interests. According to M. Hakan Yavuz, “most ministers, advisors and parliamentarians of the AKP stress Islam as their core identity and define national interests within an Islamic frame­ work. . . . The leadership of the AKP believes that Turkey in general and the AKP in particular represent Islamic civilization.”11 AKP elites stressed the importance of religion in defining the values people should possess and believed that Islam should hold a central role in shaping Turkish society. While AKP politicians were socially religious, they were politically lib­ eral. The promotion of liberal institutions and values constitutes the second set of principles that defined the AKP’s ideology of “conservative democ­ racy.” The religiosity and liberalism of the AKP were closely connected. Party leaders claimed that the only way that religion could flourish in

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Turkey was if basic political rights—including religious freedom—were better protected. These politicians—especially during their first term in of­ fice from 2002 to 2007—thus came to be some of the most forceful advocates of political liberalization in Turkey’s history. AKP policymakers, for exam­ ple, adopted the UN Charter of Human Rights and the European Charter for the Protection of Human Rights and Basic Liberties as core ideological references for the party.12 This was not just rhetoric. AKP politicians passed major liberalizing reforms after coming to power, including laws that better protected minority rights and freedoms of expression, association, assem­ bly, and religion.13 Many of these liberalizing reforms were designed to change Turkish domestic politics to meet the criteria necessary for Turkey to join the European Union (EU). The European Commission recommended in December 2004 that because of Turkey’s recent advancement in political liberalization, accession negotiations to the EU should begin the following year. These negotiations began in October 2005. The AKP’s hybrid ideology that stressed both Islamic identity and po­ litical liberalization created forces for attraction and repulsion with other Middle Eastern countries, including Israel.14 AKP leaders’ commitment to liberalization in Turkey meant that there was some ideological affinity with Israel, the Middle East’s other democracy. In a 2004 speech delivered in the United States, for example, Foreign Minister Abdullah Gül stated that he wanted to “underscore the importance we attach to our relation­ ship with Israel. Our ties with Israel are traditional, special, and strong. Indeed, cooperation between Turkey and Israel, the two democracies in the region, has important implications for the peace and stability of the entire region.”15 AKP leaders, however, stressed much more frequently ideological differ­ ences with Israel due to the importance they placed on protecting Islamic identity than they did ideological similarities based on a shared commit­ ment to democracy. This emphasis occurred from the time the AKP came to power in 2002 and remained throughout the decade, even when security cooperation with Israel continued. It is for this reason that I judge the alli­ ance after the AKP came to power to be a frenemy one. AKP leaders were highly critical of Israel for its oppression of Muslims, often ascribing to it a hostile core identity because of its actions. In April 2002, future prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan stated that because of the Second Intifada (a Palestinian uprising against Israel that lasted from 2000 to 2005) and Israel’s toughening policies toward Palestinians, “the [Ariel] Sharon government is in fact moving in the direction of state terror­ ism.” In the same month, Bülent Arınç (who became speaker of the parlia­ ment in November) asserted that “recent developments [in Israel due to the Intifada] have revealed there to be no difference between Adolf Hitler and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.” In May 2004, Prime Minister Erdoğan accused Israel of engaging in “state terror” and also asked, “What is the

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difference between a terrorist who kills civilians and Israel, which kills ci­ vilians?” The next month, Erdoğan compared Israel to Spain during the Inquisition and claimed that it was engaging in “individual, institutional and state terrorism.”16 Many of these sentiments were repeated in response to Israel’s attack on Hezbollah in Lebanon beginning in July 2006. Erdoğan described Israel’s actions as “inhuman.” Mehmet Elkatmış, an AKP leader and chairman of the Parliament Human Rights Inquiry Commission and frequent spokes­ man for the government on the war, accused Israel of committing “crimes against humanity” and “state terrorism” and “oppressing people of the re­ gion unmercifully.” For its actions, Elkatmış asserted Israel “should be judged in [an] International War Crimes Tribunal.”17 Descriptions of Israel at multiple times in the 2000s as a terrorist state on par with Spain of the In­ quisition, that committed crimes against humanity, and whose leaders were similar to Hitler clearly describe an ideological enemy, regardless of simi­ larities based on shared democratic institutions. Despite AKP leaders’ frequent denunciations of the moral standing of the Israeli regime due to its oppression of Muslims, the alliance was main­ tained, at least for roughly the first six years of the AKP’s time in power. Sales of weapons from Israel to Turkey continued in the 2000s, as did in­ telligence sharing and the highly visible Anatolian Eagle and Reliant Mer­ maid military exercises.18 The two countries participated in the Anatolian Eagle exercises five times after the AKP assumed power, the first three of which occurred while the Second Intifada was taking place. The allies also participated in the Reliant Mermaid operations every year the AKP was in power through 2009. The Reliant Mermaid exercises took place not only during the Second Intifada but also after Israel invaded Lebanon in July 2006.

The End of the Alliance and Potential (Nonideological) Explanations for It Turkish leaders ended the alliance with Israel over the course of 2009 and 2010. These officials in these years not only terminated the security cooper­ ation that defined the alliance but also at times treated Israel as an enemy, including threatening it with military force. There were two major events that preceded this reversal. The first was Israel’s three-week invasion of Gaza in December 2008 and January 2009 that resulted in the deaths of over fourteen hundred Palestinians. The sec­ ond was Israel’s raid on May 31, 2010, on a six-ship flotilla off the shores of Gaza. The flotilla had set sail from Istanbul with the purpose of breaking Israel’s blockade of Gaza. The attack on the lead ship, the Turkish vessel Mavi Marmara, resulted in the deaths of eight Turkish citizens.

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The most powerful leaders in the AKP forcefully condemned Israel after these developments. In January 2009, Turkey’s justice minister, Mehmet Ali Şahin, described Israel as “the biggest provocateur of global terrorism.”19 During the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in the same month, Erdoğan walked out of a debate that included Israeli Prime Minis­ ter Shimon Peres, after accusing him of knowing “very well how to kill. I know well how you hit and kill children on beaches.”20 Two months later, Erdoğan stated that Israel was a “cursed” state and a “stain on humanity” for killing “children and defenseless women.”21 After the flotilla incident, Erdoğan equated Zionism and Nazism, stating that “some saw the Star of David and Nazi swastika in the same light.”22 Erdoğan described Israel’s actions at this time as “state terrorism” and Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu labeled them as examples of “barbarism.”23 These denunciations of Israel were obviously intense. They were, how­ ever, not new in 2009 (though they did become more frequent beginning in this year). These criticisms were instead similar, and often identical, to the ones AKP elites had used in the past to describe Israel during the Second Intifada and 2006 war in Lebanon. What was new in 2009 was that these verbal attacks were accompanied by the termination of the most important cooperation that defined the Turkish-Israeli alliance. Instead of trying to patch up relations with Israel after condemning it—as was the case before 2009—AKP elites beginning in this year openly questioned the sustainability of close ties.24 In October 2009, for example, Foreign Minister Davutoğlu asserted that “Turkey can­ not be seen as having military relations with Israel at such a sensitive time, when there are no peace efforts [with the Palestinians], when peace has not gained momentum.”25 Ankara acted on these views by excluding Israel from participating in the Anatolian Eagle military exercises that were held in October 2009. The ex­ change of military intelligence between the two countries was also greatly curtailed. Indeed, in December 2009, Erdoğan threatened Israel if it used Turkish airspace to acquire intelligence on Iran. (This had been one of the main benefits for Israel since the alliance’s creation.) Turkey’s prime minis­ ter declared that “in case Israel uses the Turkish airspace for intelligence gathering on Iran, then Turkey’s response will be like an earthquake.”26 This was not the first time Turkey’s leaders had threatened Israel. The pre­ vious April, Erdoğan referred to Israel on Turkish state television as the main threat in the region and declared that “Turkey would not remain with its arms folded in the face of another attack by Israel against Gaza.”27 After Israel’s attack on the flotilla in May 2010, Turkey recalled its ambas­ sador and demanded as conditions for restoring full relations that Israel apologize for the loss of life, provide reparations to the victims’ families, and end the blockade of Gaza. Ankara also canceled indefinitely military operations (including withdrawing from the Reliant Mermaid exercises

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that would have taken place in the next month) and closed its airspace and military airports to the use of Israeli military aircraft.28 Erdoğan declared after the attack that Israel’s leaders “have once again showed to the world that they know how good they are at killing people,” and he made a vague threat, warning Israel that “Turkey’s hostility is as strong as its friendship is valuable.”29 The two countries also began in 2009 to significantly curtail their weap­ ons and military equipment deals, which had been a central benefit of the alliance for Turkey. From 2009 to 2011, overall arms transfers between the two countries plummeted. In 2009, Israel was Turkey’s second largest sup­ plier of military armaments (after the United States). Over the next two years, Israeli arms transfers to Turkey shrank by over 93 percent as Turkey led the way in canceling or freezing hundreds of millions of dollars of mili­ tary contracts. By 2012, these transfers had been reduced to almost zero.30 The frozen or canceled projects included ones to upgrade Turkey’s tanks, combat aircraft, missiles, missile-warning systems, and sophisticated airsurveillance equipment.31 The result of the preceding developments was that by 2011, none of the hallmarks of the alliance established in the 1990s and continued by AKP leaders throughout the 2000s—intelligence gather­ ing and sharing, military exchanges and training, sales of weaponry, and military coordination to enhance international deterrence—were in effect to a significant degree. Because of the close timing between the Gaza War and the Mavi Marmara incident on one hand and the end of the Turkish-Israeli alliance on the other, it is plausible that these events, on their own, were the key cause of the rupture.32 Such explanations of the end of the alliance confront, however, a number of major puzzles. To begin with, if outrage over Israel’s killing of Muslims after 2008 was sufficient to push AKP leaders to end secu­ rity cooperation, why did not these elites make this choice in response to similar behavior earlier in the decade? The results of the Gaza War were not qualitatively different from previous Israeli conflicts that happened just a few years earlier. During the three-week war in December 2008 and Janu­ ary 2009, Israeli security forces killed roughly fourteen hundred Palestin­ ians. This number was comparable, in terms of number of casualties and the rate of killing, to the July and August 2006 war in Lebanon. That conflict lasted thirty-four days and resulted in the deaths of over eleven hundred Lebanese, many of which, according to Human Rights Watch, were due to Israel’s “indiscriminate” attacks on civilians. Although the rate of casual­ ties during the Second Intifada was not nearly as high as it was in the Gaza or Lebanon Wars, the absolute number of casualties was much greater. From 2000 to 2005, over three thousand Palestinians were killed in the up­ rising. The years that witnessed the greatest numbers of deaths occurred when the AKP held power. (In 2002, over one thousand Palestinians died in the conflict; in 2004, roughly eight hundred died; and in 2003, this number

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was roughly six hundred.)33 Although AKP leaders often condemned the killings during the Second Intifada and war in Lebanon with equal vigor as they did those that occurred during the Gaza War, they nevertheless sup­ ported preserving security cooperation with Israel. Why did mass casual­ ties during the 2008–9 conflict push AKP elites to end the alliance with Israel when a similar number of deaths during conflicts a few years earlier had not? Israel’s attack on the flotilla potentially provides a more convincing expla­ nation for the end of the alliance with Israel because this could be seen as qualitatively different than other crises with Israel (though much of the se­ curity cooperation between the two countries had already ended before this event). The flotilla incident involved foreign soldiers killing Turkish citizens, which was both highly provocative and a first in the history of the republic. The biggest problem with explanations that attribute the end of the TurkishIsraeli alliance to the Mavi Marmara incident is the fact that different ideo­ logical groups in Turkey responded very differently to the tragedy. The same was true for the war in Gaza. Leaders of Turkey’s parties from across the political spectrum agreed that some of Israel’s actions during the Gaza War and flotilla tragedy, especially those that resulted in civilian casualties, should be condemned. On the subject of continuing the alliance, however, there was substantial partisan variation in preferences that largely followed the Islamist-secular ideological fault line. Parties for whom Islamic ideol­ ogy was a core legitimating principle (which, as I discuss below, included not only the AKP but also the Felicity, National Action, and Democratic Society Parties) pushed for the end of the alliance with Israel after 2008, whereas most Kemalists in the military, the CHP, and foreign policy estab­ lishment argued for its continuation. Kemalists in the military were particularly vocal about maintaining the alliance with Israel despite the crisis caused by the 2009 Gaza War. Military leaders maintained that violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict should not result in the dissolution of the Turkish-Israeli alliance because main­ taining the coalition protected Turkey’s core interests, which were Ankara’s ultimate concern. To this realist perspective on international relations, ma­ terial calculations should trump humanitarian objectives and the protection of Muslims abroad. Thus, when AKP leaders were taking actions during the Gaza War that significantly weakened the Israeli alliance, members of the military and professional bureaucracy continued to be, according to a February 2009 summary in the Jerusalem Post, “deeply and publicly com­ mitted to the relationship with Israel.” Members of these Kemalist­ dominated institutions remained “occupied primarily with defending the relationship with Israel. Erdogan’s attacks have been consistently followed by public statements issued by the country’s military and [professional] foreign policy officials in which they attempt to douse fears of a major rift between the two allies—assuring, for example, that multi-million-dollar purchases of Israeli military equipment will not be cancelled.”34 170

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Civilian leaders in the CHP had a similar reaction as Kemalists in the military. After Erdoğan attacked his Israeli counterpart at Davos, the CHP issued a report in which party spokesman Mustafa Özyürek stated, “It is natural for the prime minister to react [to Israel’s policies], but his reaction was exaggerated. . . . The prime minister seeks to take advantage of this re­ action in domestic politics. It is very dangerous to use foreign policy issues as instruments in domestic politics. It will create difficulties for Turkey’s interests.”35 The same pattern continued after the flotilla incident. Kemalists in the CHP were particularly critical of the AKP’s Israeli policies in the wake of this tragedy. Although CHP leaders condemned Israel for the loss of life during the raid, they also indicated that the AKP bore significant responsi­ bility for the event because it had allowed the flotilla to sail.36 The chairman of the CHP, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, was highly critical of Erdoğan for the lat­ ter’s hostility toward Israel in the wake of the incident, saying in June 2010 that the prime minister had foolishly “declared war against Israel.”37 A col­ umnist for the Turkish daily Milliyet summarized Kılıçdaroğlu’s views based on a July 2010 interview: “The CHP holds the government party re­ sponsible [for the flotilla crisis]. . . . Kılıçdaroğlu claims some dark forces [in Turkey] were involved in the crisis and the AKP aimed to change [the] po­ litical agenda in the country.”38 Regarding this last charge, Kılıçdaroğlu and other CHP leaders condemned the AKP’s responses to the flotilla incident as policies not dictated by Turkey’s interests but by a nakedly partisan ob­ jective of engaging in provocative actions to energize the AKP’s Islamist base.39 To the CHP, maintaining the alliance with Israel created a number of major benefits for Turkey, including helping to balance Iran. In September 2012, for example, Kılıçdaroğlu condemned the AKP for “allowing rela­ tions with Israel to deteriorate.” The result was that “we lost a very impor­ tant advantage we had once had vis-à-vis Iran.”40 As always, the more elites’ foreign policy preferences vary along partisan ideological lines, the less likely it is that variables that are shared by all members of the same country—including other states’ actions, such as Is­ rael’s attack on the flotilla and the Gaza War—are the key determinants of outcomes. When different ideological groups in the same country have vastly different foreign policy preferences, the ideological differences that separate them are most likely the primary cause of the variation. The key question thus becomes why were ideological calculations and the effects of ideological enmity much more determinative of AKP elites’ policies toward Israel at the end of the decade than before?

Material Incentives to Preserve the Alliance Adding to the puzzles surrounding the end of the Turkish-Israeli alliance is that the strength of the material incentives pushing Turkey to continue the 171

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coalition after 2008 remained high. The most important of these incentives resulted from the shared threat posed by Iran. Mutual enmity with Iran had been one of the key factors that led Turkey and Israel to ally in the 1990s. The danger posed by Iran to Turkey based on the defining variables of balance-of-threat theory was in important ways greater at the time AKP leaders splintered the coalition than during the years when they opted to preserve it. Israel, as many Turkish elites recognized, remained particularly valuable in countering this threat. The relationship between the intensity of the material reasons for alliance and AKP leaders’ policies was therefore the opposite of what balance-of-threat theory predicts, thus making these elites’ decision perplexing. Turkey’s 2005 National Security Policy Document, which summarizes the country’s strategic threats, described Iran as Turkey’s primary security danger.41 This judgment is not surprising based on the insights of balanceof-threat theory. Iran’s aggregate power and offensive capabilities increased considerably over the course of the 2000s, it shares a border with Turkey that is over three hundred miles long, and it had demonstrated a willing­ ness to project force in other countries via proxy groups and asymmetrical warfare, most notably in Iraq and Lebanon. Major increases in Iran’s aggregate power and offensive capabilities throughout the 2000s created many of the strongest incentives for the con­ tinuation of the Turkish-Israeli alliance. By most indexes of power, Turkey and Iran were two of the strongest states in the Middle East in this period, with Turkey at the beginning of the decade clearly superior to Iran. This dominance, however, eroded over the course of the AKP’s time in power. Turkey’s military expenditures in 2002 were nearly two and a half times that of Iran’s. By 2010, this gap had closed considerably, with Turkey’s ex­ penditures in these years exceeding Iran’s by roughly 5 percent.42 Another commonly used measure of material power that combines military, eco­ nomic, and demographic data, the Correlates of War project’s Composite Index of National Capabilities (CINC), reveals a similar finding. From 2002 to 2011, Iran’s share of global power increased by 15 percent to 0.015, which matched Turkey’s.43 Iran’s power in the 2000s advanced in three key areas: major improve­ ments in the development of nuclear and ballistic missile technologies and an enhanced ability to wage asymmetrical warfare abroad. These changes resulted in a significant leap forward in Iran’s offensive capacity, which cre­ ated, according to weapon experts Alexander Wilner and Anthony Cordes­ man, “a powerful capability to intimidate its neighbors. . . . Iran’s asymmet­ ric capabilities interact with its nuclear weapons development efforts to compensate for the limitations to its conventional forces. Going nuclear provides a level of intimidation that Iran can use as both a form of terrorism and to deter conventional responses to its use of asymmetric warfare.”44 Turkey was not insulated from this increasingly threatening environment.

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“A nuclear Iran,” as Henri Barkey explains, “would be likely to upset the regional balance of power. .  .  . Because Iran is a revisionist power, some Turks fear that its acquisition of nuclear weapons would be likely to make it far more self-confident and, therefore, adventurous in regional rela­ tions.”45 Iranian nuclear technology and others’ awareness of these developments increased steadily over the 2000s. In 2002, it became publicly known that Iran had invested billions of dollars to build two previously unaccountedfor nuclear facilities that could potentially help manufacture nuclear weap­ ons, as a report issued by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) concluded. This discovery set off alarm bells around the world, including for AKP leaders. These elites consistently asserted that although Iran had the right to develop nuclear energy, the militarization of the program was unacceptable.46 From 2002 to 2005, Iran’s government, led by President Mohammed Khatami, committed to international agreements that attempted to reassure others about the peaceful nature of Iranian intentions. These agreements included ones that committed to a temporary suspension of uranium en­ richment and allowed for short-notice international inspections of nuclear sites.47 These conciliatory efforts, though, largely ended after the election of the hard-liner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the presidency in 2005. Within two days of his inauguration, Ahmadinejad announced that uranium enrich­ ment would resume. This change combined with (in the words of IAEA director Mohamed ElBaradei) Iran’s “less than full and prompt transpar­ ency” led the IAEA Board of Governors in February 2006 to refer Iran to the UN Security Council to begin discussions on imposing economic sanc­ tions.48 Fear of Iranian intentions over the nuclear issue led the Security Council to impose sanctions on Iran in December 2006, March 2007, and March 2008.49 Turkey’s leaders shared these fears. In November 2005, For­ eign Minister Gül, speaking about Iran, stated that “Turkey regards the presence of nuclear weapons and their proliferation as a serious security threat.” To allay Turkish leaders’ fears, Gül continued, “the Iranian leader­ ship must openly show its goodwill and convince the international com­ munity” that it is not pursuing a nuclear weapons program.50 Erdoğan also expressed Turkey’s growing concern over Iranian power in January 2006 when he called on Iran to develop more “moderate and amenable” negotia­ tions over its nuclear program. Six months later, Gül asserted that Iran’s nuclear program “disturbs Turkey” and created “suspicions about Iran’s intentions.” AKP leaders repeatedly called for Iran to satisfy international worries over its nuclear program, including by increasing transparency.51 The progress Iran achieved in its ballistic missile program in the 2000s was even more clearly on display than the development of nuclear technol­ ogy, as Tehran both tested and deployed missiles throughout the decade.

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In July 2003, Tehran announced that it was distributing the Shahab-3 mis­ sile to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and variants of these missiles continued to be developed and tested over the course of the decade. In December 2008, Western intelligence agencies reported that Iran over the previous year had more than tripled the number of operational Shahab-3 missiles, with over one hundred delivered to the IRGC. Many of Iran’s missiles had a range of over one thousand miles, which put most of Turkey’s territory in harm’s way.52 Iran’s growing missile capacity, on its own, increased the country’s abil­ ity to intimidate its neighbors. If Iran’s leaders armed the missiles with chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear warheads, it would, according to Wilner and Cordesman, “dramatically upset the regional balance [of power]. Such action would provide Iran with a solid deterrent, and a greater capability to exercise a bolder and more aggressive regional foreign policy.”53 Turkey’s leaders recognized that they did not possess the capacity to counter Iranian missile and nuclear capabilities, which enhanced their feel­ ings of insecurity while making Turkey increasingly reliant on allies to pro­ vide a deterrent. The United States—as a treaty ally of Turkey in NATO— was one such provider. It is, however, noteworthy that Turkey’s leaders over the course of the 2000s had “begun to question the effectiveness of the NATO/US security umbrella” due to “the waning of American power” and will in the Middle East.54 The more Turkish elites questioned the reliability of US security commitments, the more attractive the alliance with Israel should have become. Given Israel’s intense interest in containing Iran, if Iran were to aggress against Turkey, Israel was highly likely to come to Tur­ key’s defense. Iran’s ability to wage asymmetrical and proxy warfare, which involve largely offensive tactics, also grew considerably in the 2000s due to the en­ hanced political power and resources dedicated to the IRGC and Quds Force. The IRGC is a highly ideological branch of the armed forces dedi­ cated to preserving the Islamic nature of the regime. It possessed in the 2000s over 125,000 members and could draw on a pool of over one million in the Basij Resistance Force, which is a volunteer paramilitary organization under control of the IRGC.55 The Quds Force is a specialized branch of the IRGC that is dedicated to unconventional warfare, often working with other state and nonstate actors. Tehran demonstrated its ability to project power abroad and the effectiveness of the IRGC and Quds Force in waging asymmetrical warfare over the course of the 2000s with the successful sup­ port of Shia militias against US forces in Iraq and of Hezbollah against the Israeli military during the 2006 war in Lebanon. Iran’s increasing and demonstrated capacity to wage asymmetrical and proxy warfare had the ability to exploit a key vulnerability in Turkey that resulted from Ankara’s ongoing struggle with Kurdish secessionist

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movements, especially the PKK. Iran in the 1980s and 1990s had been one of the main supporters of this group (as well as of Turkish Hezbollah). This aid largely ended after the 2003 war in Iraq as Iranian leaders became more worried about the drive for independence by their own Kurdish popula­ tion. (Turkey and Iran even shared intelligence on Kurdish guerrillas oper­ ating in northern Iraq to facilitate attacks against these groups.)56 Neverthe­ less, the point remains that Iran’s ability to exploit Turkey’s vulnerability on this issue was greater at the end of the 2000s that at the beginning due to its enhanced ability to wage asymmetrical warfare. If, as many realists advocate, leaders tend to judge others by their capabilities and not their intentions, the perceived threat posed by Iran in this area should have been increasing over the course of the decade.57 Other important regional developments also contributed to Iran’s rela­ tive power rise—and thus a growing danger to Turkey from a realist bal­ ance-of-threat perspective. The United States from 2001 to 2003 removed from power two bitter enemies to the east and west of Iran: the Taliban government in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq. The re­ sult was that Turkey was less able to rely on other regional actors to contain Iran. The US invasion of Iraq was particularly beneficial for Iran’s geopo­ litical position. As a result of the invasion and its aftermath, not only was a fierce rival and a longtime barrier to Iran’s expansion removed, but it was also replaced with a Shia-dominated government in Baghdad that was much more cooperative with Iran. The regime change in Iraq also created new conflicts of interest between Turkey and Iran as both countries com­ peted for influence in Baghdad, including by supporting opposing political parties.58 America’s projection of power in the Iraq War also resulted in a renewal of the Syrian-Iranian alliance as the two countries, in Fred Lawson’s judg­ ment, became by 2006 “more closely tied to one another than at any time since the late 1980s.” (Turkey’s 2005 National Security Policy Document also listed Syria as a strategic threat.)59 Syria and Iran committed to a “stra­ tegic cooperation” agreement in 2004 and a mutual defense treaty in 2006. Another agreement signed in March 2007 further enhanced military coop­ eration, including increasing missile sales to Syria, providing enhanced training of Syrian forces, and augmenting intelligence cooperation.60 Iran and Syria also cooperated extensively to support Hezbollah’s largely suc­ cessful guerrilla war against Israeli forces in the 2006 conflict in Lebanon. Due to developments in Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq over the course of the 2000s, Iran had alliances or friendly relations with the countries along Tur­ key’s entire southern flank. Iran, in summary, in 2009 compared to 2002 possessed significantly more offensive capabilities, confronted fewer enemies, and had more allies. Yet at the very same time that the Iranian material threat was expanding, Tur­ key’s decision makers were also ending the alliance with Israel. They made

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this choice even though (1) Turkey’s leaders, as recounted above, expressed significant concern about Iran’s increasing capabilities and (2) Israel contin­ ued to offer substantial advantages in balancing Iran, including potentially providing a deterrent to Iranian missile and nuclear capabilities (if the lat­ ter were acquired) and access for Turkey to advanced weaponry. Israeli leaders were also highly motivated to contain Iran, making commitments to come to aid Turkey credible.61 If the material incentives resulting from a rising Iran that were pushing AKP elites to preserve the alliance with Israel were greater at the end of the decade than at the beginning, why did these policymakers choose to end the alliance beginning in 2009 when they had preserved it for six years? My argument explains why the rupture occurred. Massive increases in regime vulnerability in the late 2000s and shifts in AKP leaders’ configuration of ideological distances with Israel and Muslim-majority states, including Iran, significantly increased the costs for these elites of maintaining the alli­ ance while reducing the perceived need to do so. My argument does not explain, however, AKP leaders’ decision to preserve the frenemy alliance with Israel for their first six years in power. These elites made this decision even though the values of the argument’s independent variables incentiv­ ized breaking the alliance earlier in the decade. The following sections de­ velop these key points.

The Decision to Preserve the Alliance Before detailing how ideological calculations were the key cause of the end of the Turkish-Israeli alliance, I apply my argument to relations between the two countries from 2002 to 2007. Turkey’s leaders in these years chose to preserve the alliance even though ideological variables were pushing them to end it. This analysis not only demonstrates that the argument can be falsified but also helps us understand when exceptions to the core pre­ dictions are likely to occur. r e gim e vu lnera bi li ty fo r th e a kp fro m 2 0 0 2 t o 2 0 0 7 Based on the sources of regime vulnerability that I identify in chapter 1, the level of this variable for AKP leaders during their first term in power (2002 to 2007) was high. These elites throughout the period had good reason to be fearful about both their political survival and the future of the ideological order they advocated. These fears resulted from Kemalists’ substantial po­ litical power and their intense ideological animosity to the AKP. Kemalists remained deeply opposed to those AKP preferences that allowed greater expressions and support of religiosity, many of which, such as the wearing of headscarves, Kemalists viewed as subversive. Although AKP leaders

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emphasized that they were not political Islamists but “conservative demo­ crats,” many Kemalists doubted these claims, viewing AKP elites as Is­ lamist wolves in conservative-democratic clothing who would push for the Islamization of the Turkish state when they possessed sufficient power.62 When the AKP won its first election in 2002, Kemalists continued to domi­ nate the military, courts, and presidency, as well as the second largest party in parliament, the CHP. At a minimum, this power allowed Kemalists the ability to block some of the AKP’s initiatives. At a maximum, it created the possibility of removing the party from office and solidifying the country’s dedication to a strict understanding of state secularism. Events from the past compounded the potential domestic threat to the AKP from their Kemalist rivals. Kemalists in the military and Constitu­ tional Court had repeatedly ousted and/or banned Islamist parties. The court outlawed the National Order Party in 1971, the Welfare Party in 1998, and the Virtue Party in 2001, and military leaders removed from power the National Salvation Party in 1980. Individual members of these parties had also been prohibited from participating in political activities. This was the case, for example, for the future prime minister and leader of the AKP, Erdoğan, who in 1998 was convicted for inciting religious hatred after recit­ ing a poem that compared mosques to barracks, minarets to bayonets, and religious believers to soldiers. Erdoğan was forced to resign as mayor of Istanbul and served four months in prison in 1999.63 AKP officials also had good reason to view the alliance with Israel as something that exacerbated the regime vulnerability created by Kemalists’ political power. Turkish military leaders had championed the alliance with Israel, established close links with its civilian and military elites, and openly viewed Israel as an ideological ally against Turkish Islamist groups. The military had also in the past used cooperation with Israel to harm domestic ideological enemies, most notably the AKP’s political forerunner, the Is­ lamist Welfare Party, when it led the government in 1996 and 1997. The leaders of the Welfare Party, including Necmettin Erbakan, were deeply hostile to Israel because of ideological differences, and Erbakan promised to end security cooperation with Israel once he led the government. (Erbakan was prime minister from June 1996 to June 1997.) The Turkish military believed that by preventing Erbakan from achieving this goal, they would demonstrate the Welfare Party’s impotence, thereby likely costing it votes in future elections. Thus, one of the reasons why military leaders chose to deepen the alliance with Israel over the course of 1996 was to em­ barrass the Welfare Party and demonstrate its political weakness.64 By solidifying the alliance with Israel when the Welfare Party led the govern­ ment, “the Kemalist elite,” as Robert Olson explains, “hoped to demonstrate their commitment to secularism and their strong opposition to Islamic fun­ damentalism.”65 The ideological links and close cooperation between Ke­ malists and Israel made these leaders, from Turkish Islamists’ perspective,

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a powerful ideological fifth column for Israel at the elite level, which is the most important source of high levels of regime vulnerability. This fact, to my argument, should have created strong incentives pushing AKP leaders to end the Israeli alliance. t h e a kp’ s co nfi gu rati o n o f i d eo lo gic a l d i s ta nc e s wi th isra el an d mu sli m- ma j o ri ty stat e s , 2 0 0 2 – 7 AKP leaders’ configuration of ideological distances with Israel and Muslimmajority states, including Iran, from 2002 to 2007 is best described as one of ideological equidistance. I define this configuration as one in which one state confronts two others that are roughly the same ideological distance from the first but are themselves dedicated to rival ideological beliefs. As explained, two sets of principles lay at the heart of AKP leaders’ ideol­ ogy after their ascension to power in 2002: a dedication to Islamic identity and interests on one hand and political liberalization on the other. This combination created some ideology-based forces of attraction with both Is­ rael (based on shared democratic institutions) and fellow Muslim-majority countries (based on their shared religion). AKP leaders during their first term in office, however, much more frequently stressed their ideological differences from both groups of states than their ideological commonalities. These elites questioned the legitimacy and moral standing of Israel because of its policies toward Muslims in the Palestinian conflicts and war in Leba­ non. They did the same toward Muslim-majority states because of their au­ thoritarianism. AKP officials repeatedly stressed that the illiberal nature of other Muslim-majority states was an important source of international threat and that the spread of democratic institutions on the Turkish model to these countries was an effective means of countering it.66 Turkey’s most powerful leaders, including Prime Minister Erdoğan and Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Gül, forcefully championed these last themes from 2002 to 2007. As Philip Robins explains, AKP elites during their first term in office committed themselves to be “proselytizers of de­ mocratization among the membership” of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC).”67 In a May 2003 speech at the OIC’s Thirtieth Term For­ eign Ministers Meeting in Tehran, Foreign Minister Gül stated that other Muslim-majority countries “have to act with a fresh and new vision. This should be a vision where better management and transparency prevail, ba­ sic rights, freedom and gender equality are regarded as superior values and rude and rhetoric slogans don’t have place.” Implementing these liberaliz­ ing domestic policies, Gül believed, would help avoid “destructive wars” in the region.68 In 2004, Erdoğan asserted that democratization in the Mid­ dle East was “the real issue in this era” and that “gender equality, suprem­ acy of law, political participation, civil society, and transparency are among the indispensable elements that are the imperatives of democratization. All

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these principles must be embraced and developed [in the Middle East] in order to support democratization.”69 Daniela Huber summarizes AKP leaders’ questioning of the legitimacy of authoritarian Muslim-majority states during their first term in office: “The AKP’s foreign policy practice of presenting Turkey as a model, exam­ ple, or inspiration for other countries in the Muslim world implies that these countries are backward and inferior to Turkey. . . . [This perception] perpetuates the same idea Kemalist reformers had in the 1920s except that the AKP has pursued an activist approach of changing the other rather than turning away from it.”70 Gül in 2002 highlighted the ideological differences with Iran in particular, stating that unlike “Iran’s regime . . . [the AKP] was a tolerant party, seeking equality and representation of all its citizens; it did not want to restrict the rights of anyone.”71 AKP officials’ repeated questioning of the legitimacy of both Israel and authoritarian regimes in Muslim-majority states leads me to judge these leaders’ ideological configuration with these countries during their first term in office to be one of ideological equidistance.72 These elites’ imagery used during their first term in power to describe their relations with both groups of countries supports this judgment. The metaphor these policy­ makers frequently used to describe these ideological relationships was that of a “bridge” that connected Western states, including Israel, to Islamic ones.73 The bridge metaphor highlighted Turkey’s distinctiveness in rela­ tion to its neighbors. A bridge is also no closer to either side; it is equidistant to its ends. As Meliha Altunisik and Esra Cuhadar summarize, “Turkish [AKP] policymakers liked using the ‘bridge’ metaphor which not only granted ‘uniqueness’ and ‘exceptionalism’ to Turkish identity, but also le­ gitimized a ‘go-between’ position between different worlds or civilizations. . . . The bridge metaphor provided a suitable framework for third party ac­ tivities as well, which encompassed notions like ‘impartiality,’ ‘in-between­ ness,’ and reaching out to ‘all sides.’”74 t h e d ecisi o n to co n ti n u e th e a lli a n c e w i t h i s r a e l despite i d eolo gi ca l i n cen ti ves n o t t o d o s o Given high levels of regime vulnerability and an ideological configuration of ideological equidistance in relation to the frenemy ally (Israel) and mate­ rial threat (Iran), my argument would predict that AKP elites would end the Israeli alliance. High levels of regime vulnerability tend to increase the costs associated with cross-ideological coalitions, while an ideological con­ figuration of ideological equidistance tends to reduce the perceived need to commit to these alliances. This configuration increases the incentives for buck-passing policies based on the hope that multiple international ideo­ logical rivals will contain one another. The argument’s prediction was not supported.

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AKP officials’ unusual relationship with the Kemalist ideological fifth column, the leaders of which wanted to preserve the alliance with Israel, goes far in explaining why AKP elites did not do more to weaken the alli­ ance before 2008. Two factors were particularly important leading to this choice. First, the Kemalist fifth column in key ways possessed greater po­ litical power than the AKP, which is unusual compared to the other exam­ ples of fifth columns I have examined. (In the other examples I examine, the ideological group that was deciding whether or not to commit to a frenemy alliance had greater power than the rival ideological fifth column that sup­ ported this coalition.) Although the AKP during its first term in power held the office of prime minister, the ability of the Kemalist “deep state” to re­ move it from power remained high due to Kemalists’ continued control of the military and courts. (A deep state exists when unelected bodies are suf­ ficiently powerful to consistently thwart the wishes of elected leaders.) Sec­ ond, although Kemalist officials on multiple occasions in the past had ousted Islamist parties from office, and although they likely continued to possess sufficient power to remove the AKP, these elites before 2007 were fairly restrained in their criticisms of the AKP. Indeed, many Kemalists ac­ quiesced to—and even at times supported—many of the AKP’s policies be­ cause the party during its first term championed joining the EU, which had been a long-standing objective of Kemalists (especially in the military).75 Kemalists from 2002 to 2007, in sum, likely possessed the power to re­ move the AKP from power, but they were not threatening to take advan­ tage of this capacity. As long as these conditions held, it made sense for AKP leaders to avoid antagonizing Kemalist groups and instead bide their time while endeavoring to enhance their domestic position. Breaking the alliance with Israel, as the Welfare Party found out in 1996 and 1997, was a red line for Kemalists that was highly likely to result in a significant back­ lash. I argue that high levels of regime vulnerability created by ideological fifth columns tend to incentivize leaders not to commit to frenemy alliances out of concern for their domestic power. In the Turkish case, high levels of regime vulnerability, combined with Kemalists’ greater power yet shortrun acceptance of the AKP’s rule, incentivized AKP elites to preserve the frenemy alliance with Israel to best protect their domestic interests. Main­ taining this alliance avoided antagonizing a particularly powerful ideologi­ cal fifth column while the AKP increased in strength.

Ideological Calculations and the End of the Alliance Although the effects of the argument’s independent variables were not suf­ ficiently strong to induce AKP leaders to end the frenemy alliance with Israel during their first term in office, this would not be the case in their

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second. Major increases in regime vulnerability created by Kemalists’ ef­ forts to remove the AKP from power significantly increased the costs of preserving the alliance. A shift to a configuration of ideological distances of ideological betrayal, created by AKP elites’ growing affinity with Muslimmajority countries, greatly reduced the need to continue the alliance. To­ gether, these developments made a rupture in the coalition likely. ma jo r in creases i n regi me vu ln era b i l i t y a nd t he akp’ s i sla m ic mo bi li zati o n ca mpa i gn, 2 0 0 7 – 1 0 Although the level of regime vulnerability for the AKP was substantial throughout the 2000s, the intensity of this variable grew considerably to­ ward the end of the decade when the threat posed by Kemalists to AKP leaders’ core domestic interests shifted from a potential danger to a clear and present one. Kemalists beginning in late 2006 and intensifying in 2007 shifted from acquiescing to AKP rule to actively opposing AKP policies and eventually threatening to oust the party through military and judicial means.76 These last threats became particularly powerful in June 2008 when the Constitutional Court came within one vote of banning the party. In the aftermath of the major increases in regime vulnerability, AKP leaders be­ came convinced that preserving the frenemy alliance with Israel was more costly to their domestic interests than was breaking it. In response to Ke­ malists’ aggressiveness, AKP officials needed to boost their domestic power, and breaking the alliance with Israel provided a key means of doing so. These leaders beginning in 2007 engaged in an Islamic mobilization cam­ paign against their secular rivals. Because anti-Israeli rhetoric and policies were central to these efforts, preserving the Israeli alliance would have cre­ ated major opportunity costs for AKP elites as this would have meant for­ going a key means of energizing supporters against a pressing domestic threat. Six months after the substantial increase in regime vulnerability that resulted from the AKP’s near removal by the Constitutional Court, the alliance with Israel entered its terminal phase. The timing between a major increase in regime vulnerability and the beginning of the end of the TurkishIsraeli alliance provides strong evidence of a causal relationship. Kemalists’ Efforts to Oust the AKP. Beginning in 2007, Turkey, as Ergun Özbudun summarizes, entered a period of “acute” “constitutional crisis.”77 Not only did relations among Turkish elites at this time become much more polarized along a secular-religious axis than they were during the AKP’s first five years in power, but Kemalists’ statements and actions also repre­ sented a pressing danger to the very existence of the party. Kemalists’ ag­ gressiveness beginning in 2007 revealed that AKP leaders’ efforts to appease the powerful deep state—efforts that included preserving the Israeli alliance—had not succeeded. After this change, high levels of regime

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vulnerability created by the Kemalist ideological fifth column led AKP of­ ficials to break the alliance to protect their domestic interests, as the argu­ ment predicts. Relations between Kemalist and AKP leaders entered a sustained period of crisis beginning in April 2007 when Prime Minister Erdoğan announced that the party was nominating Foreign Minister Gül to be the next presi­ dent. Kemalists intensely opposed the nomination, as Ioannis Grigoriadis explains, “on the grounds that it prepared for the abolition of secularism and the very principles of the Republic.”78 The key reason for this fear re­ sulted from the fact that Gül would be replacing Ahmet Necdet Sezer, a staunch secularist who as president had the power to veto legislation that he deemed violated this principle. Kemalists thus believed that Gül’s presi­ dency would remove an important potential check against their ideological enemies. On April 27, parliament voted Gül president, with the CHP boycotting the proceeding. The decision to boycott was not just a symbolic one but also strategic. After the vote, the CHP petitioned the Constitutional Court to overturn the election, arguing that it was illegal because less than twothirds of parliamentary members were present for it. The Turkish constitu­ tion required that in the first two rounds of a presidential election, two-thirds of deputies must vote for a candidate to be elected. The CHP argued that this meant that a quorum of two-thirds was necessary for an election to be valid. The Constitutional Court, in a highly contentious rul­ ing issued on May 1, agreed, thereby nullifying Gül’s election.79 On the same day that the CHP filed its petition with the Constitutional Court, the military’s General Staff posted on its website a memorandum that threatened the AKP in the name of defending state secularism. The memo stated that “there is part of society that is in an ongoing struggle to undermine the basic values of the Turkish Republic, secularism being at the forefront, and those activities have increased in the recent period. . . . In re­ cent days, the outstanding problem in the Presidential elections has been the discussion of secularism. This situation is observed with concern by the Turkish Armed Forces. It should not be forgotten that the Turkish Armed Forces is not neutral in these discussions and is the absolute defender of secularism.”80 The memorandum was a clear threat to the AKP, with some labeling it an attempted “e-coup.”81 The AKP responded forcefully to this period of crisis, most directly by calling for early parliamentary elections, which were held in July. The party did well in them, winning almost 47 percent of the vote. Many be­ lieved this victory was in part a rebuke of the military’s threat to inter­ fere in politics, thus indicating a boost to the AKP’s staying power beyond the sheer numbers of electoral support. The elections also resolved the crisis over Gül’s nomination for president. The elections resulted in

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the AKP possessing a sufficient number of votes to elect Gül president regardless of another CHP boycott.82 Although the July 2007 elections resolved the crisis over Gül’s nomina­ tion for president, the overall hostility level between Kemalists and the AKP did not abate. To the contrary, hostilities between the two groups con­ tinued to intensify. In January 2008, the government arrested thirty-one in­ dividuals in what became known as the Ergenekon investigation, in which nearly three hundred people over the next four years, including active and retired military officers, were accused of plots to overthrow the govern­ ment.83 The investigations and convictions that followed were “unprece­ dented in Turkish history because, for the first time, high-ranking officers, including a former chief of the General Staff and commanders of the armed forces, were sentenced to life imprisonment for allegedly plotting coups to topple an elected civilian government.”84 The Ergenekon investigation con­ tributed to the rapidly increasing ideological polarization in Turkey along the secular-Islamic divide. Survey data indicates that secularists tended to view the investigation as a government-sponsored witch hunt that was de­ signed to harm the AKP’s ideological enemies.85 Tensions between the AKP and Kemalists reached a boiling point in Feb­ ruary 2008 when the AKP passed two constitutional amendments to lift the headscarf ban in universities.86 Given the high symbolic value of the cover­ ing, these proposals exacerbated Kemalists’ fears that AKP leaders wanted to overthrow state secularism and replace it with an Islamist system. Kemalist elites went to great lengths to defeat this ideological threat. Be­ fore the amendments were voted on in parliament, the chief public prose­ cutor of the High Court of Appeals, Abdurrahman Yalçınkaya, warned the AKP that “political parties cannot aim at changing the Republic’s principle of secularism and they cannot initiate activities and make statements as such.” When AKP members did not heed this warning and instead pro­ ceeded with the votes, the CHP in February asked the Constitutional Court to annul the amendments, and the following month Yalçınkaya petitioned the Constitutional Court to dissolve the AKP on the grounds that it had become “the center of anti-secular activities” that threatened to overthrow the core ideological principles of the republic.87 The appeals court also asked the high court to ban for five years seventy-one AKP members, in­ cluding President Gül, from serving in an elected office.88 The Constitutional Court issued rulings on these indictments in June and July. These decisions not only thwarted the AKP’s legislative agenda but also threatened to outlaw the AKP. On June 5, the Court annulled the two amendments regarding the wearing of headscarves on the grounds that the measures violated the unamendable articles of the Constitution, specifically that Turkey was a “democratic, secular and social state gov­ erned by the rule of law.” The ruling indicated a major expansion of the

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court’s power. Turkey’s Constitution granted no explicit authority to judge the compatibility of proposed amendments with the unamendable articles of the Constitution, and the court had explicitly refused such competency in the past. Because the unamendable articles were very broad, almost any legislation could have been conceived to be related to them. The ability to annul amendments for contradicting the unamendable articles of the con­ stitution thus created a major expansion of the court’s power and a corre­ spondingly great ability to block AKP-sponsored legislation.89 The threat to the AKP from the Constitutional Court became even greater the following month. On July 30, the court ruled on the request to have the party banned for its alleged antisecular behavior. Ten out of eleven of the judges agreed that the AKP had indeed become a focus of antisecular activities, and they voted to deprive it of half of its previous level of financial assistance from the state.90 Most alarmingly from the AKP’s perspective, the court came within one vote of the necessary seven of banning the party. By this point in time, the degree of ideological polarization in the coun­ try was extraordinarily high, as was the level of regime vulnerability for the AKP: the very existence of the party and the ideological objectives it embodied were in grave jeopardy. The Constitutional Court’s July 2008 ruling hung like the Sword of Damocles over the party. Due to this judg­ ment, as Ersin Kalaycioğlu summarizes, the AKP “was branded as a po­ litical party with dubious secular credentials and constitutional legiti­ macy.” The inevitable result was movement “toward a deepening political legitimacy crisis.”91 Although the party had narrowly escaped being out­ lawed, ten out of eleven judges had agreed that it was a center of antisecular activities. Key reasons why five of these judges nevertheless voted against banning the AKP were that its leaders had not resorted to vio­ lence and that they were attempting to gain for Turkey admission to the EU.92 If these tactics and preferences changed—and they could—the court would very likely have the votes necessary to ban the party in a new clo­ sure case. The AKP’s Response: An Islamic Mobilization Campaign, including Increas­ ing Hostility toward Israel . Kemalists’ attacks on AKP elites because of the latter ’s Islamic ideology significantly intensified the ideological polarization of the country along a secular-Islamic axis. The more Kemalists attacked AKP elites because of the latter’s Islamic identity, the more important Islam became to their policies. As is often the case, threatening a particular identity only served to increase its political saliency.93 Thus, the greater the threat from their secular rivals that resulted in high levels of regime vulnerability, the more AKP officials appealed to Islam to rally their supporters against ideological ene­ mies. The result was that AKP leaders responded to the political crisis

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that began in 2007 and culminated with the party’s near closure in July of 2008 with, as Banu Eligür puts it, an “Islamist mobilization against the secular-democratic state.”94 Kalaycioğlu expresses similar analysis, writ­ ing that after the series of political crises in Turkey beginning in 2007 that threatened a military or judicial coup, it was clear that “Turkish political elites had become deeply divided around the secular-religious fault line.” A core political objective of AKP leaders after these crises began, and espe­ cially after the near banning of their party, was “to undermine the secular elites and their alien ideas” by mobilizing against the Kemalist (deep) “state—i.e., the military, bureaucrats and judges.”95 A key outcome of this Islamic mobilization campaign was that AKP offi­ cials after 2007 stressed much more the Islamic dimension of their ideology than the liberal one. As Feride Acar and Gülbanu Altunok explain, “while the AKP has always defined its major identity axis as ‘conservative,’ be­ tween 2002 and 2007, it emphasized its strong commitment to Western dem­ ocratic values and liberal economic principles, spearheading Turkey’s goal of joining the European Union. . . . However, particularly since 2007, patriar­ chal and moral notions and values, often framed by religion, have increas­ ingly become dominant in the party’s rhetoric regarding the regulation of social and cultural domains, and even political and international relations.”96 The increasing centrality of Islamic ideology to AKP leaders after 2007 was evident in both domestic and international politics. The most impor­ tant change in terms of domestic politics was AKP elites’ growing stress on traditional gender roles (e.g., women as mothers and caregivers) at the ex­ pense of gender equality. Beginning in 2008, for example, Erdoğan fre­ quently called on women to have at least three children, and he announced that his government was considering providing financial incentives for births. The AKP after 2007 also passed laws that incentivized through cash transfers women caring for the elderly and disabled while creating en­ hanced barriers to employment.97 The AKP’s increasing emphasis on tradi­ tional gender roles during its second term in power made sense from an electoral perspective. Because “historically, at the center of the Islamist movements’ identity is promotion of traditional familial and societal roles for women,” AKP officials’ increased targeting of this issue stood a good chance of energizing supporters.98 Anti-Israeli rhetoric and policies were the other cornerstone of AKP lead­ ers’ growing emphasis after 2007 on Islamic ideology as part of a mobiliza­ tion campaign that aimed to alleviate very high levels of regime vulnerabil­ ity. These actions also made sense for the AKP’s electoral interests. Taking an aggressive stance toward Israel over its violations of Palestinian rights and thus appearing as a protector of fellow Muslims from Jewish oppres­ sors tied into core legitimating principles of the AKP. Such actions, as a re­ sult, were likely not only to rally the party’s base but also potentially attract supporters from other groups that also privileged Islamic ideology.99

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Scholar of Turkish politics Lisel Hintz concurs with these claims. Accord­ ing to her analysis, “as Ottoman Islamism [the name Hintz gives to the AKP’s ideology] prescribes a view of Israelis as oppressors of fellow Muslim Palestinians, Erdoğan’s [anti-Israeli statements beginning in 2009 were] . . . met with jubilation by supporters. . . . Erdoğan rhetorically wields his criti­ cism of Israel on visits throughout the Muslim world .  .  . which, in turn, increases his legitimacy as defender of Turkey’s Muslim brothers back home.”100 AKP officials’ efforts to use anti-Israeli statements and actions for Islamic mobilization purposes began in response to Israel’s invasion of Gaza in De­ cember 2008, with Erdoğan asserting in mid-January 2009 that he was adopting a “Muslim approach” to the crisis.101 As part of this approach, AKP leaders organized massive anti-Israel rallies, some with hundreds of thousands of participants and with the frequent involvement of Islamist civil society associations. These rallies, which were frequently based on ex­ plicit pro-Islamic and/or anti-Jewish slogans, were the very definition of an Islamic mobilization effort. As Eligür recounts, the “rhetoric of mass dem­ onstrations was designed to evoke Islamist sentiments; slogans of hundreds of thousands were the same: ‘Damn Israel,’ [and] ‘Jews are cursed.’ .  .  . Demonstrations were successful in creating anti-Jewish sentiments among the Turkish public. For the first time, the Turkish Jewish community issued a public statement expressing their concern regarding its physical safety.”102 Leaders of Jewish organizations in Turkey explicitly connected their feel­ ings of growing vulnerability to the AKP’s Islamic mobilization campaign. These individuals, according to Malike Bileydi Koç’s summary of inter­ views and statements, believed that Turkey’s relations with Israel were “be­ ing sacrificed for the [AKP’s] domestic party base” in order “to mobilize radical factions in the society.”103 Because high levels of regime vulnerability for the AKP continued throughout 2009 and beyond, the domestic forces pushing party elites to adopt increasingly hostile policies toward Israel remained. The possibility of the Constitutional Court banning the AKP remained the greatest danger to the party’s core interests, and there were rumors circulated in the Turkish media in 2009 about a potential new appeal by the public prosecutor to the Supreme Court demanding the AKP’s closure.104 The results from the March 2009 local elections created additional major concerns for the AKP. The party had steadily increased its vote share in previous elections, from 34 percent in the 2002 general elections, to nearly 42 percent in the 2004 lo­ cal elections, to nearly 47 percent in the 2007 general elections. In 2009, however, the party received nearly one million fewer votes than in 2007 and only 38 percent of the total. The AKP’s “lost” votes were spread pri­ marily across four parties, which increased their vote shares compared to the 2007 election by a total of 10.4 percentage points (the vote share of the AKP declined by roughly 9 percentage points). These parties were the secular

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CHP (whose vote share increased by 2.2 percentage points), the hard-line Islamist Felicity Party (whose vote share increased by 2.9 percentage points), the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (whose vote share in­ creased by 3.6 percentage points), and the nationalist National Action Party (whose vote share increased by 1.7 percentage points).105 Although the AKP in the 2009 elections continued to receive significantly more votes than any other party, the trend was not encouraging. The more it continued, the more vulnerable the party would become to its rivals. The AKP’s Islamic mobilization campaign in early 2009—including in­ creased hostility toward Israel—was, ironically, central to these electoral results. This campaign in important ways resulted in the worst of two worlds for the party in the March 2009 elections: the AKP paid electoral costs created by its Islamic mobilization policies, but other parties reaped much of the electoral benefits. To begin with, the more the AKP emphasized Islamic ideology, the more the party repulsed voters who did not share this interest. The AKP’s Islamic mobilization efforts thus galvanized traditional secular supporters of the CHP and pushed some liberals who had voted for the AKP in the past to defect to this rival party. As Eligür explains in a study of the 2009 elections, “the AKP’s mobilization of the Islamist social move­ ment against the secular-democratic state . . . seems to have alienated the secular segment of the electorate from the party while further increasing the CHP’s attractiveness for this segment of the electorate.”106 The CHP’s performance in the 2009 elections indicated that the power of secularists in elected bodies was growing at the same time that the threat to the AKP from Kemalists in unelected institutions, especially the courts, was already very high. The good news for AKP elites was that there were many voters both be­ fore and after the 2009 elections for whom an increasing stress on Islamic ideology was appealing. The bad news for the AKP was that it was often outflanked on this issue by other parties that also privileged Islamic issues, especially the more hard-line Islamist Felicity Party (SP in Turkish), the na­ tionalist National Action Party (MHP in Turkish), and the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP in Turkish). The AKP lost ground to these competitors to an important extent because their supporters believed that the AKP’s Islamic mobilization efforts—including increasing criticisms of Israel—did not go far enough. All these other parties engaged in their own Islamic mobilization campaigns in the wake of the Gaza War, including or­ ganizing mass rallies that revolved around Islamic themes and condemna­ tions of Israel.107 The DTP’s electoral campaign, for example, revealed that although Kurd­ ish identity and autonomy were the most important elements of the party’s platform, “the Islamist movement’s salience among the Kurds in the East­ ern and Southeastern Anatolian regions should [also] be emphasized.” Nu­ merous mass rallies organized by the DTP revolved around Islamic themes,

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including hostility to Israel. One such rally protesting the invasion of Gaza drew fifty thousand people, many of whom burned Israeli flags and carried pictures of the founders of Hamas.108 US analysts stationed in Ankara wrote to their superiors in Washington that DTP leaders had demanded “Erdogan . . . cancel all relations with Israel.” The analysts also relayed that DTP elites (as well as those in the MHP) had “pulled out all the stops [in criticizing the AKP for not doing enough to hurt Israel], doing their best to hit AKP hard amongst its core voters, a bloc vulnerable to inroads by both MHP and DTP.”109 As this last quotation indicates, Islamic identity was also important to the ideology of the MHP (its elites called for the forceful defense of Turkish identity—including Islam—against domestic and international rivals), which made it, according to US analysts, another “party that [could] pull votes from AKP on the Gaza issue.”110 MHP deputy and former foreign policy adviser Deniz Bölükbaşi criticized Erdoğan’s rebuke of Israel at Da­ vos for not going far enough. Instead of verbal condemnations, Bölükbaşi publicly advocated the immediate end of the alliance, stating that “Tur­ key’s honor cannot be saved by walking out of panels.” Erdoğan had to go beyond rhetoric and symbolism and “shelve the military relations [with Israel]. . . . Otherwise, he is nothing but a cheap hero and a paper tiger.”111 MHP chairman Devlet Bahçeli similarly indicated in January 2009 that Turkey should “punish Israel for its actions.”112 He was critical of Erdoğan because the prime minister only “winks at Hamas but does not abandon Israel.”113 The Felicity Party was also very aggressive in trying to outflank the AKP on hostility toward Israel. The leader of the party and former prime minister, Necmettin Erbakan, condemned the AKP for allying with “racist, imperialist countries” like Israel. Moreover, “during its [2009] election cam­ paign,” according to Eligür, “the SP successfully framed the Israeli military operation in Gaza in December 2008 in order to evoke Islamist sentiments, thus mobilizing the conservative/Islamic and Islamist electorate to vote for the party. For example, in January 2009 the SP organized a gathering in Is­ tanbul that drew 200,000 people who protested Israel’s Gaza operation and burned Israeli and US flags by shouting slogans of ‘Damn Israel’ and ‘Sa­ lute to Hamas, continuation to the resistance.’ The SP’s continuation of at­ tracting the AKP’s ideologically motivated Islamist electorate may [have increased the likelihood of] the SP’s emergence as a crucial . . . representa­ tive of the Islamist social movement in Turkey.”114 AKP leaders’ efforts in 2009 to reduce very high levels of regime vulner­ ability by using anti-Israeli rhetoric and policies to mobilize voters thus failed not because this rhetoric did not resonate with many citizens but be­ cause AKP officials had been outflanked on this issue by other parties for which Islamic ideology was also a core principle. The more success the Fe­ licity, Democratic Society, and National Action Parties had in attracting

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votes based on their anti-Israeli positions, the stronger the incentives push­ ing AKP politicians to be even more aggressive in this area in order protect their core interests from the continued high domestic threat posed by Ke­ malist-dominated institutions and parties. Because of these incentives, it is not surprising that when the crisis with Israel that resulted from the Mavi Marmara incident in May 2010 created another major opportunity for Islamic mobilization, AKP leaders doubled down on and intensified their anti-Israeli policies to try to alleviate their regime vulnerability. AKP elites responded to the flotilla tragedy in ways that were clearly designed to tap into and activate Islamist sentiments. (CHP leaders subscribed to this interpretation of events; within days of the incident, opposition leaders alleged “that Erdogan hope[d] to capitalize on the dispute with Israel to galvanize strong Islamist support.”)115 After the Turkish citizens were killed, the government approved demonstrations that combined protests of Israel with the widespread use of Islamic symbols and phrases. Thousands of people, for example, greeted participants in the flotilla with a hero’s welcome upon returning to Turkey, and among the first to do so was Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç. Shouts of “Damn Israel” and “Allahu akbar” (“God is great”) were frequently heard at the rally, and many participants were draped in the flags of Palestine or Hamas.116 After the flotilla tragedy, Erdoğan also repeatedly used harsh anti-Israeli rhetoric to rouse party supporters, and the latter frequently re­ sponded with chants of “Mujahid Premier,” the first word meaning “Is­ lamic holy warrior.”117 The prime minister backed these statements with actions by canceling indefinitely military operations with Israel, freezing many of the arms deals Turkey had with Israel, and closing down its air­ space and military airports to the use of Israeli military aircraft. Erdoğan also publicly threatened Israel for its behavior. By this point in time, the Turkish-Israeli alliance was effectively over. When asked in December 2010 whether friendship between Turkey and Israel had ended, President Gül responded, “Absolutely. Israel has lost the friendship of Turkey and of Turkish citizens.”118 High levels of regime vulnerability created by the powerful Kemalist ideological fifth column, in summary, were not always sufficient to push AKP leaders to break the frenemy alliance with Israel. During the AKP’s first term in office, the great (and likely superior) power of the Kemalist deep state, combined with Kemalists’ short-run acquiescence to AKP rule, convinced AKP officials that their domestic interests were best served by appeasing their domestic ideological rivals, including by preserving the Israeli alliance. Once, however, Kemalist groups endeavored to remove the AKP from office by a combination of military and judicial pressure, appeas­ ing the fifth column no longer made sense. This shift significantly increased the domestic costs of maintaining the frenemy alliance with Israel. For AKP leaders, these costs were ones of opportunity. Because anti-Israeli policies

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were central to their Islamic mobilization efforts, preserving the alliance would have meant forgoing a key means of energizing supporters and thus protecting their core domestic interests at a time when these interests were in mortal peril.119 An Islamic, Not a Nationalist, Mobilization Campaign. It is important to stress that AKP leaders’ increasingly anti-Israeli rhetoric and policies after 2008 were part of an Islamic mobilization campaign that emphasized ideo­ logical differences with Israel. These policies were not, as is sometimes asserted, at heart a general mobilization effort that was designed to rally pub­ lic support based on nationalist sentiments that were independent of voters’ ideological beliefs.120 Claims of a general mobilization campaign misunder­ stand the nature of politics in an ideologically polarized society. It is true that many Turks from across the political spectrum viewed Israel unfavor­ ably and that some of the AKP’s condemnations of Israel for its policies against Palestinians were generally supported, at least for a short time. Nevertheless, the anti-Israeli policies of the AKP after 2008 did not for the most part tie into a general antipathy to Israel. They instead primarily tar­ geted those individuals for whom Islamic ideology was a core legitimating principle—hence the explicit and consistent use of pro-Islamic and antiJewish slogans and symbols at party-sponsored anti-Israel rallies to gener­ ate support.121 This strategy made sense. In a polarized society, issues that determine how individuals understand events and where they are most likely to dedi­ cate their resources (including votes) are those that reflect the sources of polarization. Increased support for fellow Muslims against Jews tied into a central legitimating principle of Turkish Islamists. Hostility to Israel was therefore likely to help galvanize support from members of this ideological group. For those in the secular camp, however, Israel’s oppression of Pales­ tinians did not touch on a core issue related to the sources of polarization. The AKP’s increasing hostility toward Israel was, as a result, unlikely to be a sufficiently important issue to induce secularists to vote for the party. The evidence supports these claims. I have already documented the par­ tisan variation in preferences toward Israel that existed at the elite level even in the aftermath of the Gaza War and the Mavi Marmara incident. Most notably, leaders of the CHP, the military, and the foreign policy establish­ ment were critical of Erdoğan’s actions after 2008 that led to the end of se­ curity cooperation with Israel. This same variation existed at the societal level, with some short-lived exceptions. Survey data indicates that there was a significant bump in Erdoğan’s popularity in response to his growing criticism of Israel during the Gaza War, culminating in the rebuke at Davos. In a poll taken days after the Davos incident, 78 percent of respondents indicated approval of Erdoğan’s actions toward Israel.122

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A BREAKING-POINT FRENEMY ALLIANCE

Widespread support for the AKP’s Israeli policies was, however, shortlived. Despite the initial boost in Erdoğan’s popularity after the Davos af­ fair, his government’s Israeli policies were soon filtered through partisan ideological beliefs. In a statistical analysis of survey data after the Davos incident in 2009, scholar of Turkish politics Emre Erdoğan finds that “parti­ san affiliations [were] the most important determinants of citizens’ support [of the AKP’s Israeli policies. There was] a significant difference between AKP and CHP voters in terms of support towards the behavior of the Prime Minister, after controlling for all other variables. Party affiliation .  .  . also affect[ed] expectations about the outcome of [the Davos-created] crisis.”123 The data indicates, in other words, that in short order most Turks responded to the Davos incident in an ideological and not a nationalist manner. Is­ lamist supporters of the AKP tended to view growing tensions with Israel in a positive light that would benefit Turkey, whereas most secularist sup­ porters of the CHP were of the opposite opinions. The same pattern existed after the Mavi Marmara incident. If any event was likely to stimulate a nationalist backlash against Israel that resulted in increased support for anti-Israeli policies, the killing of Turks would be it. This, however, was not the case. Survey data indicates that the AKP re­ ceived virtually no boost in support resulting from its escalating hostility toward Israel in the wake of the raid. Surveys taken within two months of the event show that support for the party was nearly identical to that which existed just before the killings occurred. The result was that by July 2010 “any ‘flotilla bump’ [for the AKP] appears to have vanished.”124 Once again, anti-Israeli policies in Turkey simply did not translate into an effective na­ tional mobilization campaign. Because of the partisan variation in preferences toward Israel, AKP leaders’ anti-Israeli policies after 2008 were likely to result in a significant domestic boost primarily only from those individuals for whom Islamic ideology was a core ideological principle. By weakening ties with an ideological en­ emy abroad, the AKP could reasonably hope to counter high levels of re­ gime vulnerability by mobilizing those individuals who were the most ideologically sympathetic to the party. a shi ft to an i d eo lo gi ca l co n fi gu rat i o n o f id eolo gica l b etraya l, 2007–10 At the same time that AKP elites were experiencing a major change in regime vulnerability, their configuration of ideological distances with Israel in com­ parison to Muslim-majority countries, including Iran, was also shifting— from a configuration of ideological equidistance to that of ideological betrayal. The latter occurs when leaders are being pushed for realist rea­ sons to ally with an ideological enemy (Israel) against a member of their ideological community (Iran). Once this shift occurred, the perceived need

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to preserve the frenemy alliance with Israel was greatly reduced despite the continued existence of material variables pushing for this outcome. As explained above, AKP leaders’ ideological configuration with Israel and Muslim-majority states during their first term in office was one of ideo­ logical equidistance because their dual emphasis on liberal institutions and Islamic identity created important forces of ideological attraction and re­ pulsion with these countries. AKP officials viewed themselves as an ideo­ logical “bridge” that connected Western and Muslim-majority countries while remaining distinct from (and superior to) both. These elites’ ideology, though, experienced major changes after 2007: the Islamic dimension of their ideology was enhanced while the commitment to liberalism weak­ ened. The result was a much closer identification with Muslim-majority countries, including Iran, than was the case during the AKP’s first term in power. Personnel changes both reflected and intensified this ideological shift. During the AKP’s second term in office (2007 to 2011), the political influ­ ence of individuals who were highly likely to identify closely with fellow Muslim-majority states and against Israel grew considerably. This develop­ ment was not surprising. The more Turkish politics became polarized along the Islamic-secular divide, the more likely it was that people with more hard-line Islamist views would be empowered within the AKP, which would intensify the level of polarization, and so on. As Eligür explains, af­ ter the March 2009 local elections there was “a significant change in the AKP government. Prime Minister Erdoğan replaced a number of liberaloriented AKP ministers with [Islamic] hardliners . . . like Bülent Arınç, who became deputy prime minister and state minister. It seems that with this cabinet change the AKP aimed at regaining its ideologically motivated Islamist electorate, who voted for the SP in the 2009 local elections.”125 The most important of these appointments was the promotion of Ahmet Davutoğlu to foreign minister in May 2009, which was five months after the Gaza War began.126 Davutoğlu subscribed to a “Neo-Ottoman,” PanIslamist worldview, the core ideas of which created an ideological configu­ ration of ideological betrayal regarding Turkey’s frenemy alliance with Israel against Iran. Pan-Islamic ideas had long been a core component of Turkish Islamists’ ideology.127 These ideas applied even to Iran, regardless of the sectarian dif­ ferences dividing Sunni-dominated Turkey and Shia-dominated Iran. The legacy of the Ottoman Empire that unified much of the Islamic world meant to Turkish Islamists that what Muslims had in common was more impor­ tant than what divided them, including ethnic and sectarian differences. Consistent with this perspective, Turkish Islamists had been inspired by the Iranian Revolution, arguing that its example could help create and preserve an Islamic regime in Turkey.128 The common interest with Iran in the spread of Islamic governments and the foundation for cooperation created by a

192

A BREAKING-POINT FRENEMY ALLIANCE

shared religion were more salient than frictions created by the Sunni-Shia split. According to Alessio Calabrò, the dominant view of Turkish Islamist parties “was to consider Turkish and Iranian Islamists as part of a single transnational and Pan-Islamic movement, whose success in Iran had to be seen as a success of the entire umma and a step towards other successes in other parts of the Muslim world.”129 Or, as Akin Ünver explains, “Turkish Islamists favored close relations with Iran, arguing that both countries’ Islamization would be beneficial for the Middle East by blunting the chronic Sunni-Shia divide, thereby creating a monolithic pan-Islamist unity.”130 Consistent with these views, Welfare Party leader Necmettin Erbakan, when prime minister in 1996 and 1997, called for the creation of a “new Muslim world order” based on extensive cooperation between Muslimmajority states regardless of sectarian identity. This new order was to consist of an Islamic UN, an Islamic equivalent of NATO,131 an Islamic equivalent of the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund, a common Islamic currency, and an Islamic Common Market. When in office, Erbakan successfully created the last with Iran and six other Muslim-majority coun­ tries (Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nigeria, and Pakistan). Er­ bakan throughout the 2000s continued to “fully support Iran’s quest for nuclear power and weaponry” to help empower the Islamic world in its conflicts with non-Islamic countries.132 Davutoğlu’s worldview was consistent with Turkish Islamists’ long­ standing belief in the importance of a shared religion as a basis for exten­ sive cooperation among Muslim-majority countries. The Middle East, ac­ cording to Davutoğlu, possessed an “integrity founded around the Islamic religion and the common historical heritage of the Ottomans.”133 This integ­ rity existed regardless of sectarian differences and thus applied to Iran. To Davutoğlu, “the unified Islamic community-wide ummah is central to Islamic thought.” Islamic states, as a result, “should unite as a civilization” and “work tirelessly to end the sectarian Sunni-Shia rift.”134 Turkey’s AKPled government at the end of the 2000s, according to Barkey, considered the Sunni-Shia sectarian “division dangerous for the security and stability of the region as a whole, and aim[ed] to bridge the gap between Sunni Arab states and Iran.”135 The conception that the Middle East was a “geo-cultural” entity unified by Islam also led Davutoğlu to conclude that non-Muslim majority states in the region, including Israel, were cultural outsiders.136 As Behlül Ozkan ex­ plains, because Davutoğlu “sees the core values of the Middle East as being the unity furnished by Islam and the legacy of the Ottoman Empire . . . he regards Lebanon and Israel as artificial countries because they were estab­ lished after Ottoman rule and their politics have been dominated by their Christian and Jewish communities. Davutoglu even defines Israel as a ‘geo­ political tumor’ .  .  . ‘a state that is politically foreign to that geography’” and an “outgrowth of Western colonialism in the East.”137

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At the same time that the importance of the Islamic dimension of AKP leaders’ ideology was growing, their commitment to liberalism was becom­ ing weak. Turkey during the AKP’s second term in power moved backward in multiple liberal rankings, thereby reversing the trend during the first term. From 2006 to 2009, for example, Turkey steadily fell in various key international indexes related to gender equality and core civil liberties. In the UN Gender Empowerment Measure, Turkey fell from 72nd in 2006 to 101st in 2009. In the Global Gender Gap Index of the World Economic Fo­ rum, Turkey moved from 105th in 2006 to 129th in 2009.138 In 2006, Turkey ranked 100th out of 168 countries in the World Press Freedom Index issued by the Paris-based advocacy group Reporters Without Borders. By 2009, this ranking had fallen to 138th out of 178.139 The decreased importance of the liberalizing dimension of AKP lead­ ers’ ideology affected not only their domestic policies but also their inter­ national relations. Most directly, as these elites’ commitment to domestic liberalization diminished, so, too, did their interest in promoting democ­ racy abroad, which had been important throughout their first term in power. Altunişik and Martin observe that a “significant change between the first and the second AKP governments in regard to the Middle East has been in democracy promotion. The first AKP government was very engaged in promoting political and economic reform in the Middle East. Prime Minister Erdoğan and then Foreign Minister Gül raised the issues of the necessity of reform in different forums in and outside the region. . . . However, the second AKP government largely dropped this discourse.”140 If, as I argue above, AKP leaders’ interest in democracy promotion in the Middle East during their first term in power revealed a significant ideologi­ cal gap with Muslim-majority countries, their lack of interest in this objec­ tive after 2007 removed this divide. After 2007, the key source of ideological difference between AKP leaders and Islamic states—and one of the pillars that established an ideological configuration of ideological equidistance with Turkey’s neighbors—was minimized. This change allowed for a much closer identification with Muslim-majority countries. The high importance after 2007 of the neo-Ottoman/Pan-Islamic dimen­ sion of AKP leaders’ ideology, combined with the minimization of the lib­ eral dimension, leads me to conclude that these policymakers’ configura­ tion of ideological distances in relation to Iran (the material threat) and Israel (the frenemy ally) was one of ideological betrayal. To AKP officials, Muslim-majority states—regardless of sectarian differences—were part of Turkey’s ideological community, and Israel was not.141 An ideological configuration of ideological betrayal significantly reduces the likelihood of frenemy coalitions for two main reasons. First, because leaders tend to trust states within their ideological community, the per­ ceived need to form balancing coalitions against these countries is much

194

A BREAKING-POINT FRENEMY ALLIANCE

lower than an analysis based on the effects of material variables indicate. Second, leaders operating in a configuration of ideological betrayal are sus­ ceptible to ideological wedging policies because others can appeal to ideo­ logical solidarity as a reason not to be rivals. Both sets of dynamics were at work for AKP policymakers after 2007. To begin with, AKP elites during their second term in power exhibited a re­ markable diminishment of threat toward Iran. This development occurred despite adverse material trends from Turkey’s perspective. The result, ac­ cording to Svante Cornell and M. K. Kaya, was that instead of perceiving “Iran as an adversary or rival . . . Erdoğan and Davutoğlu viewed Iran as a partner that should be brought on board with Turkey’s efforts to build Is­ lamic solidarity and reshape the Middle East.”142 The most surprising display of enhanced trust at the end of the 2000s oc­ curred regarding Iran’s nuclear program, about which AKP policymakers had previously been suspicious. These leaders during their first term in power, as discussed above, had voiced significant concern about Iranian intentions in this area, and they repeatedly called for Iran to increase trans­ parency to allay fears. These expressed concerns for the most part ended after 2007. Davutoğlu asserted in 2009 that his government believed that “Iran is not a threat to us. We do not feel threatened by the Iranian missiles either.”143 Prime Minister Erdoğan made similar comments, including re­ garding Iran’s nuclear capabilities. When a journalist asked Erdoğan at the Munich Security Conference in February 2008 why Turkey did not seem to be worried about Iran’s nuclear program, the prime minister responded that he simply took at face value the claims made by the Iranians “that they want nuclear energy for peaceful purposes . . . not for weapons.”144 In an­ other expression of trust explicitly attributed to membership in a common transnational community, Erdoğan in October 2009 stated that he was con­ vinced that “Iran is only developing nuclear energy, not nuclear weapons” because “in our religion, countervalue weapons [that target civilians] are forbidden. . . . We will evaluate this issue [with the Iranians] in a brother­ hood environment.”145 In October 2009, Erdoğan also argued that on the nuclear issue “the gov­ ernment in Tehran is being treated unfairly,” and he asserted that the West­ ern powers, including Israel, should give up their nuclear weapons before threatening Iran with sanctions over its nuclear program.146 Erdoğan de­ clared at this time that “those who . . . want these arrogant sanctions [against Iran], need to first give these [weapons] up. We shared this opinion with our Iranian friends, our brothers.”147 The previous month, Erdoğan indi­ cated that Israel, not Iran, was the real threat in the region because it had already used in the Gaza War “a weapon of mass destruction” (by which he expanded that term’s definition to include phosphorous bombs), and he challenged the international community “to act honestly” in dealing with these positions.148 In 2010, Turkey was one of two countries in the UN

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Security Council that voted against the imposition of sanctions on Iran for the continued development of its nuclear weapons program. Turkey’s 2005 National Security Policy Document listed Iran as the main threat to Turkey’s security primarily because of its nuclear and missile pro­ grams.149 The 2010 version of this document, however, removed Iran from this list of countries that posed a security danger (and added Israel).150 This change occurred despite the fact that Iran’s nuclear and missile programs were more advanced in 2010 than 2005. Iran’s capabilities and AKP leaders’ views of them were thus moving in opposite directions at the end of the 2000s. As Kibaroglu and Caglar explain, if Iran had “displayed similar am­ bitions [in the 1990s when Kemalists dominated policymaking] to develop elaborate nuclear capabilities, it would have been confronted with much more negative reactions” from Turkey’s government. In the late 2000s, though, there was “a substantially different attitude toward Iran, even though its nuclear-weapons capability, if developed, [was] likely to pose a much more serious threat” to Turkey.151 The more AKP leaders trusted Ira­ nian intentions and downplayed the Iranian threat, the lower the need to remain allied with Israel. The growing importance of Islamic ideology to AKP officials during their second term in office and the creation of an ideological configuration of ideological betrayal also opened up new opportunities for Iran to adopt successful ideological wedging policies toward Turkey regarding its alli­ ance with Israel. When states possess a high degree of ideological over­ lap, leaders can appeal to these commonalities as a way of emphasizing shared interests and minimizing divergent ones. Iranian leaders were quick to take advantage of these opportunities at the end of the 2000s, thereby further reducing the likelihood that Turkey would remain allied to Israel. Iranian elites beginning in 2009 repeatedly praised their Turkish counterparts for their defense of Muslims abroad in conflicts with Israel and appealed to Pan-Islamic solidarity as a basis for admiration and co­ operation between their two countries. After Erdoğan criticized Israel in Davos in January 2009, the Tehran municipality named him an “honorary fellow” of the city. Grand Ayatollah Makarem Shirazi suggested that Erdoğan should receive the Nobel Peace Prize for his policies that sup­ ported Palestinians and isolated Israel. Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi used Pan-Islamic sentiments as a basis for lauding Turkey after it ex­ cluded Israel from the October 2009 Anatolian Eagle military exercises, stating that “it would not be acceptable for planes that bombarded the Gaza Strip to participate in a military exercise in a Muslim country.” Ira­ nian president Ahmadinejad used similar language to praise Erdoğan at this time, telling the Turkish prime minister that “your clear stance to­ ward the Zionist regime had a positive effect in the world, especially the Islamic world, and I am sure that everyone was satisfied.”152

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A BREAKING-POINT FRENEMY ALLIANCE

The purpose of “Iran’s praise of the AKP’s Islamist foreign policy toward the Middle East” and especially toward Israel, as Eligür summarizes, was to try to convince AKP leaders that “Iran does not regard Sunni Turkey as a competitor, but as an ally to increase its sphere of influence in the region.”153 The Iranians, in other words, were using the dynamics that exist in an ideo­ logical configuration of ideological betrayal—specifically a shared ideology and the common interests it creates—to convince Turkish policymakers that Iran was not particularly threatening to Turkey, despite its increasing capabilities. The ideological changes in Turkey after 2007 that emphasized the importance of Pan-Islamic ideas allowed these appeals and ideological wedging tactics to resonate, thereby further weakening the forces pushing for the continuation of Turkey’s alliance with Israel. Turkish-Israeli relations in the 2000s, in summary, illustrate how the effects of ideological variables can break apart a frenemy alliance even if the mate­ rial forces that created the coalition remain strong. High levels of regime vulnerability were particularly consequential for AKP elites at the end of the decade. Kemalists’ efforts to oust the AKP from power beginning in 2007 and intensifying in 2008 resulted in a double blow to the Israeli alli­ ance. The extreme levels of regime vulnerability created by these attacks pushed AKP elites to adopt anti-Israeli policies as a centerpiece of an Islamic mobilization campaign. Increasing hostility to Israel after 2008 helped preserve the AKP’s core domestic interests when they were in grave jeopardy. The growing importance of Islamic ideology to AKP leaders in the wake of Kemalists’ efforts to oust the party also had major effects on these elites’ configurations of ideological distances, which were critical to threat percep­ tions. The high saliency of Islamic ideology to AKP officials after 2007 created a configuration of ideological betrayal in relation to Iran, which sig­ nificantly reduced the perceived danger posed by this state. Iranian leaders recognized this reality and tried to enhance it by appealing to Pan-Islamic sentiments and praising the Turks for their defense of Muslims abroad. These ideological developments that increased the domestic benefits of breaking the alliance with Israel while reducing the perceived need to pre­ serve it made a rupture in the coalition likely, despite the continued growth in Iran’s military capabilities and regional influence.

197

Conclusion

I began this book by arguing that although it is critical for states’ interests that leaders be able to predict the likelihood and composition of interna­ tional alliances, achieving this objective for cross-ideological, or frenemy, coalitions has frequently proven elusive. Failure in this area is not surprising. Potential frenemy allies are perpetu­ ally torn by powerful competing forces for and against cooperation that make it difficult to anticipate outcomes. Material incentives for alliance push these states together while the effects of ideological disputes pull them apart. Each of these forces at different times has trumped the other. International relations theories, led by realist and existing ideological argu­ ments, have difficulty explaining this variation because each concentrates on only one of the defining features of frenemy relationships while provid­ ing insufficient insight as to when each is likely to dominate the effects of the other. This book fills this hole in the literature. I argue that the values of two ideological variables in addition to ideological enmity—the level of regime vulnerability for a country’s key leaders and the nature of the con­ figurations of ideological distances among potential frenemy allies and their shared material threat—provide the key to understanding when ei­ ther the common-interest or rivalry dimension of frenemy relationships is likely to determine leaders’ alliance policies. The evidence from the case studies supports these claims. Not only did outcomes match predictions in almost all cases, but leaders also possessed the preferences they did for reasons consistent with the causal logic. Elites both privately and publicly stressed the importance of the argument’s in­ dependent variables and their effects to their decisions. In this concluding chapter, I summarize the book’s major findings from the case studies and discuss the main contributions to the development of international relations theory and policymaking. Prominent in this last analysis is an

198

CONCLUSION

examination of how the argument can help predict the United States’ abil­ ity to form a broad balancing coalition in Asia to counter the potential hege­ monic threat posed by China.

Summary of Findings The case studies provide substantial support for my predictions. As ex­ pected, high levels of regime vulnerability increased the domestic costs associated with frenemy coalitions while ideological configurations of ide­ ological betrayal, divided threats, and ideological equidistance reduced the perceived need to commit to these alliances. When these conditions com­ bined, the likelihood of frenemy alliances was low despite strong material incentives pushing for these outcomes. These combined conditions played the key roles in preventing Britain and France from allying with the Soviet Union in the 1930s, in delaying China from allying with the United States from 1972 to 1979, and in ending Turkey’s alliance with Israel beginning in 2009. (For a summary of predictions and outcomes from the case studies, see table C.1).1 In the 1930s case, French conservatives and Radicals were willing to ally with the Soviet Union to balance Germany only when fears of regime vul­ nerability to the spread of communism were low, which was the case in 1934 and 1935. The Popular Front coalition’s electoral victory in 1936 (which included communists as a partner), the coalition’s adoption of left-wing policies, and the spread after the election of large-scale strikes throughout France revealed the existence of powerful communist ideological fifth col­ umns at both the elite and societal levels. The result was high levels of re­ gime vulnerability. This change created major barriers to allying with the Soviet Union despite France’s rapidly deteriorating security environment. An alliance with the Soviet Union in a condition of high regime vulnerabil­ ity, conservative and Radical leaders believed, would have increased the security of their state while endangering the domestic ideological order they championed. This was a domestic cost most were unwilling to pay. Similar dynamics existed in Britain throughout the 1930s. British conser­ vatives were convinced that allying with the Soviet Union would facilitate communist revolutions in the empire, which to conservatives formed an integral part of Britain’s core identity and institutions. These fears signifi­ cantly increased the anticipated costs of committing to an alliance with the Soviets. An ideological configuration of divided threats—which was created by British and French conservatives’ and French Radicals’ views of Germany as the greatest material danger and the Soviet Union as the greatest ideo­ logical threat—reduced the need to ally with the Soviet Union. This diver­ gence of threats created significant uncertainty as to which of the totalitarian

199

Israel

Israel

AKP leaders, 2002–7

AKP leaders, 2008–10

Soviet Union

USA

Iran

Iran

Soviet Union

Germany

Soviet Union

USA

Germany

Soviet Union

Chinese leaders, 1978–79

Germany

Soviet Union

British conservatives, 1933–39; French conservatives and Radicals, 1936–39 French conservatives and Radicals, 1934–35 British and French socialists, 1935–39 Chinese leaders (especially Mao), 1972–77

Material threat

Potential frenemy ally

Initiating state/ leadership groups

Table C.1 Summary of key findings from cases studies

High (high cost)

High (high cost)

Low (low cost)

High (high cost)

Low (low cost)

Low (low cost)

High (high cost)

Regime vulnerability in relation to frenemy ally’s ideology (costs of alliance)

Divided threats (low need) Double threat (high need) Ideological equidistance (low need) Double threat (high need) Ideological equidistance (low need) Ideological betrayal (low need)

Divided threats (low need)

Configuration of ideological distances (need for alliance)

Oppose alliance

Support alliance Oppose alliance

Hedging policies Support alliance Oppose alliance

Oppose alliance

Predicted preference

Pre­ served alliance Ended alliance

Allied

Pursued alliance Pursued alliance Opposed alliance

Opposed alliance

Outcome

CONCLUSION

powers was the greater overall menace to the Western democracies. This uncertainty inhibited active balancing. High levels of regime vulnerability also resulted in powerful barriers and high costs to frenemy coalitions in the Sino-American and Turkish-Israeli cases. The key linkage between these variables was, however, different than it was for British and French conservatives and French Radicals in the 1930s, who concentrated on the subversive effects of frenemy alliances. To British and French elites, allying with an ideological enemy abroad (the So­ viet Union) would help empower advocates of this state’s ideology (com­ munism) at home. For Chinese officials in the 1970s and Turkish leaders in the 2000s, in con­ trast, the chief domestic costs of frenemy coalitions created by high levels of regime vulnerability were ones of opportunity. Committing to frenemy alli­ ances would have denied these leaders a powerful means of mobilizing their political bases against a pressing domestic threat from ideological ri­ vals. Mao Zedong used hostility toward the United States as a means of mobilizing support for the reradicalization phases of Chinese politics dur­ ing the 1970s, just as the leaders of the AKP in Turkey used increasing hos­ tility toward Israel as a central means of rallying their Islamist base against secular opponents after the latter had tried to oust the AKP by a combina­ tion of judicial and military pressure. In both cases, configurations of ideological distances added to the barri­ ers to frenemy coalitions. For Chinese leaders until Mao’s death, this con­ figuration was one of ideological equidistance, which occurs when one state confronts two roughly equally divergent ideological enemies that are themselves intense ideological rivals. Chinese elites were convinced that the ideological enmity between the United States and Soviet Union would push these states to concentrate their hostilities on one another. This con­ viction reduced the need to ally with the United States despite the clear and present danger the Soviet Union posed to China’s security and even though China was poorly prepared to counter this threat on its own. Confidence in the primacy of the US-Soviet rivalry created the hope that China’s two most powerful rivals would bear the costs of containing one another while China refrained from making security commitments. For Turkish leaders in the late 2000s, the key ideological configuration was one of ideological betrayal, which occurs when one country is being pushed by realist forces to ally with an ideological enemy (in this case Is­ rael) against ideologically similar states (in this case Muslim-majority coun­ tries, including Iran). AKP elites’ emphasis on Islamic ideology resulted in a notable diminishment of the threat from Iran despite significant increases in Iranian capabilities and geopolitical position. The lower the Iranian threat, the lower the need for Turkey to preserve its alliance with Israel. The incentives created by a combination of low levels of regime vulnera­ bility and an ideological configuration of double threat made frenemy

201

CONCLUSION

alliances likely. When leaders are not particularly concerned about the po­ tential spread in their state of a frenemy ally’s ideology (low regime vulner­ ability), the domestic costs associated with these types of coalitions tend to be low. This fact makes it much easier politically for leaders to act on the material incentives for alliance. These dynamics were at work for British and French socialists in relation to the Soviet Union in the 1930s and Chinese leaders in relation to the United States at the end of the 1970s. Indeed, leaders in both cases viewed the alliances as potentially benefiting their do­ mestic interests rather than only threatening them. French socialists believed that allying with the Soviet Union would help in the battle against fascism at home. British socialists deemed that supporting the Soviet Union would help advance those ideological objectives that they held in common. Chi­ nese elites at the end of the 1970s believed that increased cooperation with the United States was crucial to the success of their domestic modernization agenda. These domestic incentives for alliance added to material ones, thereby making the coalitions even more desirable. The effects of an ideological configuration of double threat, which occurs when a state’s greatest material and ideological dangers coincide, further facilitated support for frenemy alliances for Western socialists in the 1930s and Chinese leaders at the end of the 1970s. To British and French socialists, Germany was the greatest material and ideological danger in the system, which made the perceived threat—and with it the incentives to balance against Germany by all available means, including forming alliances with lesser ideological dangers such as the Soviet Union—extremely high. For Chinese elites, the ideological overlap with the United States that existed for the first time at the end of the 1970s that resulted from these leaders’ modernization objectives facilitated alliance by enhancing the clarity of the ideological danger posed by the Soviet Union compared to that posed by the United States. To Deng Xiaoping, the Soviet Union’s ideology meant continued economic backwardness while the United States’ ideology was the key to successful modernization. These calculations helped ensure con­ tinued hostility toward the Soviet Union while creating more common in­ terests with the United States. AKP leaders’ decision to preserve their state’s alliance with Israel during their first six year in power was the biggest exception to my argument’s predictions. These elites’ regime vulnerability in relation to their secular Ke­ malist rivals was high, and their configuration of ideological distances in relation to Israel (the frenemy ally) and Iran (the material threat) was one of ideological equidistance. (AKP leaders in this period claimed that Turkey was an ideological “bridge” that connected ideologically disparate regimes, including Israel and Iran.) The values of these variables make frenemy alli­ ances unlikely. Yet AKP officials preserved the alliance with Israel until 2009. The key to this exception, I argue, is found in the nature of AKP lead­ ers’ regime vulnerability. Kemalists in this period likely possessed sufficient

202

CONCLUSION

power to remove the AKP from office, but they were not acting on this abil­ ity before 2007. As long as these conditions were met, it made sense for AKP officials to avoid antagonizing Kemalists—including by not breaking the alliance with Israel—and bide their time while increasing their domes­ tic power. This alliance policy in response to high levels of regime vulnera­ bility is, however, the opposite of my predictions.

Implications for International Relations Theory The book makes three main sets of contributions to the development of in­ ternational relations theory. First, it adds to the literature on alliances by explaining an important category of coalitions that has heretofore not re­ ceived systematic attention. As I have emphasized, this lack of attention is particularly surprising given the facts that leaders frequently misjudge the likelihood of frenemy alliances, often with very costly consequences, and that the number of possible frenemy coalitions in the contemporary era is substantial, given the high levels of ideological heterogeneity of many of the world’s regions. Second, the argument contributes to important literatures that explore the international security effects of domestic variables. The book adds to the literature on ideologies and international relations by demonstrating the centrality of ideological variables to states’ core security policies even in the least likely of circumstances: periods of high material dangers. In fact, when leaders’ fears of regime vulnerability are high and they operate in ideological configurations of ideological betrayal, divided threats, or ide­ ological equidistance, ideologies are doubly important to potential crossideological alliances. At these times, particular ideological conditions make the effects of ideological enmity especially salient to decision-making. These conditions amplify the effects of ideological disputes, making the barriers to frenemy coalitions particularly powerful. Even when ideological enemies do ally, ideological variables often play major roles in shaping outcomes. Low levels of regime vulnerability help create a permissive environment that increases the saliency of material in­ centives pushing for cross-ideological alliance. Low levels of regime vul­ nerability, in other words, help create sufficient political space for elites to commit to extensive security cooperation with ideological enemies. At these times, leaders are unlikely to believe that they have to choose between the security of their state and the durability of their regime, which makes the decision to ally with ideological enemies much easier. Ideological configu­ rations of double threat and being an ideological outsider amplify these ef­ fects. These configurations create, paradoxically, ideology-based incentives for alliances among ideological enemies, thereby augmenting the material calculations pushing frenemies to cooperate. When the initiating state’s

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CONCLUSION

greatest ideological and material dangers coincide (double threat), the need for proactive balancing policies will be particularly powerful. When the ini­ tiating state’s material threat and potential frenemy ally are ideologically similar (ideological outsider), its leaders will frequently need to be espe­ cially aggressive in pursuing a frenemy alliance to ensure that the ideologi­ cally similar states stay divided. The argument also contributes to the literature that demonstrates the im­ portance of leaders’ domestic security to their international balancing poli­ cies.2 My analysis of regime vulnerability indicates that leaders’ alliance policies will frequently hinge on the state of domestic affairs and the likeli­ hood that international ideological threats will create or augment domestic ones. The analysis thus points to an important “security dilemma” that re­ alist analyses miss. In conditions of high regime vulnerability, a key means by which a country can increase its external security (allying with an inter­ national ideological enemy) is likely to undermine its internal security. Fail­ ure to take into account the implications of this dilemma will result in an exaggeration of the likelihood of effective international balancing. Third, the argument creates a framework for integrating the insights of realist and ideological theories on the study of alliances. The analysis com­ bines the effects created by material and ideological variables and then identifies the conditions when either set of factors is likely to be more deter­ minative of alliance policies. The argument, as a result, can explain why the same states, and even the same leaders, can pursue highly ideological foreign policies in some instances and ones that conform with realist pre­ scriptions in others.3 In the 1930s, for example, French conservatives and Radicals at first reacted to Germany’s rise in ways consistent with realist balancing prescriptions, including pushing for their government to ally with the Soviet Union. However, after a massive increase in regime vulner­ ability that was created by the Popular Front’s electoral victory in 1936, conservatives and Radicals reversed course and their ideological antipathy to the Soviet Union dominated their alliance policies. In the same period, French socialists, chiefly because their regime vulnerability in relation to the Soviet Union was low and their configuration of ideological distances with Germany and the Soviet Union was one of double threat, rejected con­ servatives’ and Radicals’ policies in the second half of the 1930s and pushed hard for a balancing coalition with the Soviets. Socialists’ policies were the opposite of conservatives’ and Radicals’ even though international material variables were identical for all groups. Changes in levels of regime vulner­ ability and the configurations of ideological distances, in sum, determine if the effects of ideologies work against or reinforce those of material vari­ ables. These outcomes, in turn, will critically shape alliance policies even in highly dangerous security environments. The relationship between my argument and realist theories can be ex­ pressed in a different way. In some cases—such as when a country is under

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attack—an analysis based on the effects of material variables alone will typically be sufficient to determine which state is another’s primary enemy and which policies (active balancing, including allying with ideological enemies) best counter this danger. In many cases, though, ideological vari­ ables combine with material ones to determine primary enemies and ap­ propriate responses to them. I have concentrated on one set of responses to international threats: when leaders are and are not likely to ally with ideo­ logical enemies against common material dangers. The implications of the analysis, though, are even broader. The argument indicates not only when leaders are likely to ally to balance a material threat but also when they are likely to bandwagon with this state (in an ideological configuration of ideo­ logical betrayal) and when they are likely to buck-pass to other countries the costs of balancing (primarily in configurations of divided threats and ideological equidistance). At its broadest level, then, the argument seeks to explain when states engage in a range of security policies when taking ide­ ological variables into account.

Implications for Policymaking The US National Intelligence Council issues every four years a Global Trends document, which is a “strategic assessment of how key trends and uncertainties might shape the world over the next 20 years to help senior US leaders think and plan for the longer term.”4 One of the “key looming challenges” identified by the authors of the December 2012 report was to better understand how ideologies were likely to shape international rela­ tions. The report asserted that because ideologies were likely to have ma­ jor effects on global affairs, it was imperative that analysts pay “greater attention” to this variable in forming strategic assessments. This goal, however, would not easily be accomplished because, according to the re­ port, it was difficult to understand how and when ideologies shaped inter­ national affairs.5 This book has addressed these issues in the specific case of crossideological alliances. It recognizes the profound effects that ideologies can have on states’ alliance policies, discusses how ideologies are likely to affect these outcomes, and, most important, details the conditions under which ideological enemies are and are not likely to ally to counter com­ mon threats. As I explained in chapter 1, in judging in the case studies the values of the independent variables, I relied largely on information that was publicly available during the periods under investigation (though I confirmed these assessments by analyzing private documents subsequently released). The fact that alliance outcomes matched predictions that were based primarily on contemporaneous, publicly available information is important because

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it increases confidence that the argument can be used to make predictions about the future of various frenemy coalitions. This knowledge, in turn, can guide policymaking. In the following, I detail the most important policy prescriptions resulting from the book’s argument and findings. p o li cy prescri pti o n #1: i n a ssessi n g t he l i k e l i ho o d o f c ross- i d eolo g i ca l coa li ti o n s, fo cu s o n b o t h m at e r i a l and id eolo gica l va ri a bles When elites are assessing the likelihood of a frenemy alliance, they must in­ corporate into their analysis not only the effects created by shared material threats but also the effects created by regime vulnerability and configura­ tions of ideological distances. Leaders all too often over- and underestimate the likelihood of cross-ideological coalitions, frequently with disastrous re­ sults. Following this first policy prescription will aid greatly in avoiding both types of costly errors. Frenemy Alliances and Countering China’s Power Rise. The prescription to focus on both material and ideological variables in predicting the likeli­ hood of frenemy alliances will likely prove very valuable in coming de­ cades. Unquestionably, one of the most important international security developments in the twenty-first century is the power rise of China. From the United States’ point of view, a critical issue associated with this devel­ opment is whether or not international balancing will be sufficiently robust to prevent China from becoming a regional hegemon. Alliances between the United States and Asian countries, many of which would be frenemy ones, will likely be central to these balancing efforts. Although many realists point to the importance of alliances to the suc­ cessful balancing of China, they do not take into account ideological cal­ culations in assessing the likelihood of coalition formation. They instead assert that the massive material power possessed by China, combined with Asian countries’ close proximity to China and China’s aggressiveness to­ ward many of its neighbors, will in most cases be sufficient to induce these countries to ally with the United States. John Mearsheimer, for ex­ ample, predicts that Asia’s great and minor powers will seek to “join an American-led balancing coalition to check China’s rise.” This preference will benefit the United States because its leaders, Mearsheimer continues, will undoubtedly “seek to form a balancing coalition with as many of China’s neighbors as possible. The ultimate aim would be to build an alli­ ance structure along the lines of NATO” during the Cold War.6 My argument recognizes that material variables will create powerful in­ centives pushing Asian countries to ally with the United States against China. It also asserts, however, that the incentives created by ideological variables will also be critical to alliance outcomes. Ideological variables will

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create important opportunities and challenges for US efforts to balance China that realist arguments miss. In some cases, ideologies will reinforce the incentives created by material variables, thereby making alliances against a rising China even more likely than realist analyses predict. In other instances, however, ideological variables will offset the effects created by material factors, thereby making alliances much less likely.7 An ideology-based understanding of alliances generates two big predic­ tions regarding the balancing of China. First, liberal states are highly likely to ally with the United States to contain China. For leaders of liberal states, major ideological differences with China will intensify the incentives to bal­ ance that are created by material variables. Most important, these ideologi­ cal differences will push liberal policymakers to be highly suspicious of China’s intentions. At the same time, ideological agreement with the United States based on a mutual commitment to liberalism is likely to enhance feel­ ings of affinity and shared interests, thereby augmenting the desirability of the United States as an ally. Second, illiberal leaders in Asia are likely to commit to frenemy alliances with the United States primarily only when the ideological conditions I identify are in place. We should, as a consequence, expect illiberal states to ally with the United States against China much less frequently (and less extensively) than liberal ones. The evidence thus far largely supports these predictions that are based on the combined effects of material and ideological variables. According to an aggregate of the views of five regional experts, Aaron Connelly, Bon­ nie S. Glaser, Jennifer Lind, Tanvi Madan, and Mira Rapp-Hooper (pub­ lished in 2018), seven Asian states in the Indo-Pacific region are balancing China and tightening security cooperation with the United States: Austra­ lia, Bhutan, India, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Vietnam. Seven countries are allied with China or shifting toward doing so (Bangladesh, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka), and five are hedging between the United States and China (Indonesia, Myanmar, North Korea, Philippines, and Thailand).8 David Shambaugh observes similar variation among Southeast Asian countries (also writing in 2018). Of the ten states he examines (Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malay­ sia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam), two, Sin­ gapore and Vietnam, have “anchor[ed] their defense relations on the United States.” All the rest have allied with China or are tilting in that direction. (Indonesia is the exception to the preceding; it, according to Shambaugh, has pursued a position independent of both China and the United States.)9 These assessments point to the high importance of ideologies to alliance formation, with major implications for US interests. The good news for the United States is that all the key liberal states in Asia—Australia, India, Ja­ pan, South Korea, and Taiwan—have been balancing China and increasing

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security cooperation with the United States as part of this effort. The bad news is that only three illiberal countries—Bhutan, Singapore, and Vietnam— have been deepening security cooperation with the United States to contain China. The other illiberal states identified in the assessments provided above (plus Russia) have either allied with China, are moving in this direc­ tion, or are hedging between the United States and China.10 (Table C.2 summarizes the US and Chinese alliance systems along the liberal-illiberal ideological divide.) The liberal states that have deepened security cooperation with the United States against China are much more powerful than most of the il­ liberal countries that have not. There are some illiberal countries, however, that would make valuable allies. The problem for the United States is that preliminary analysis indicates that the ideological conditions that make the ideological barriers to frenemy alliances particularly strong—high levels of regime vulnerability and/or ideological configurations of ideological be­ trayal, divided threats, or ideological equidistance—exist in key potential allies of the United States. If US leaders anticipate the creation of frenemy alliances in Asia based primarily on the effects of material variables with­ out incorporating the centrifugal effects created by ideologies, they are likely to overestimate the magnitude of the balancing response against China from illiberal states. Table C.2 Asian alliances categorized by the liberal-illiberal divide Liberal allies of USA

Illiberal allies of USA

Liberal allies of China

Illiberal allies of China

Liberal hedgers

Australia, India, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan

Bhutan, Singapore, Vietnam

None

Bangladesh, Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Nepal, Pakistan, Russia, Sri Lanka

None

Illiberal hedgers Indonesia, Myanmar, North Korea, Philippines, Thailanda

Note: Alliance policies are based on the collective judgments of Aaron Connelly, Bonnie S. Glaser, Jennifer Lind, Tanvi Madan, and Mira Rapp-Hooper in Max Fisher and Audrey Carlsen, “How China Is Challenging American Dominance in Asia,” New York Times, March 9, 2018, and David Shambaugh in “U.S.-China Rivalry in Southeast Asia: Power Shift or Competitive Coexistence?,” International Security 42, no. 4 (2018): 100–103. I add Russia to these assessments. States’ ideologi­ cal categories are based on Freedom House rankings in 2019, which covers the time period analyzed in the preceding sources. Freedom House, Democracy in Retreat: Freedom in the World, 2019 (Washington, DC: Freedom House, 2019), 14, Feb2019_FH_FITW_2019_Report_ForWeb­ compressed.pdf (freedomhouse.org). The lists of allies include states that have already allied with the United States or China or are moving toward doing so. a

Connelly, Glaser, Lind, Madan, and Rapp-Hooper collectively judge Myanmar, the Philippines, and Thailand to be security hedgers between China and the United States. Shambaugh judges these states’ defense relations to be closer to China.

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In the following sections, I apply my argument to two potential frenemy allies of the United States that would be of high utility in countering a ris­ ing China: the Philippines and Russia. Although both states confront major material incentives to cooperate with the United States against China, ideo­ logical variables are likely to prevent or weaken alliances (assuming no ma­ jor ideological changes occur in these countries). My goal is not to explore these cases in great detail. Instead, I endeavor to show how contemporane­ ous and publicly available information can allow for judgments about the values of the book’s independent variables, which then allow for predic­ tions about the likelihood of frenemy coalitions. The predictions for the two cases I identify oppose those of alternative theories, including realist balance-of-power and balance-of-threat arguments. My argument explains why both Philippine and Russian leaders are much less likely to commit to an alliance with the United States than an analysis based on material vari­ ables indicates. The US-Philippine Alliance. The Philippines is a long-standing treaty ally of the United States that has high strategic value because of its location; the United States’ use of Philippine bases has greatly facilitated the projec­ tion of US air and naval power into the South China Sea. The alliance is also critical to US strategy to contain China. As James Holmes explains, “U.S. maritime strategy envisions threatening to blockade China’s navy and mer­ chant fleet within Asia’s ‘first island chain’ in order to deter Chinese misbe­ havior. The Philippine archipelago occupies prime real estate, comprising the eastern rim of the South China Sea as well as the southeasterly arc of the first island chain. If U.S. forces cannot operate from Philippine bases, it’s hard to see how they can mount a standing presence in the South China Sea or along the island chain. . . . Deterrence vis-à-vis Beijing would collapse along with the defensive line’s integrity.”11 The rise of China has created powerful incentives for a deepening of the US alliance. China possesses a massive power advantage over the Philippines and is geographically close to it. China has also used its of­ fensive capabilities to directly endanger core Philippine territorial and maritime interests. China’s military in 2012 seized control of a reef, known as Scarborough Shoal, that fell within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone (EEZ), which by international law extends two hundred nautical miles from shore. This action was a component of China’s ex­ panding military presence across the South China Sea and Spratly Is­ lands chain. China’s government asserts that much of the Philippines’ EEZ falls within the “nine-dash line,” which demarks China’s claims of maritime control as far as one thousand nautical miles from China’s mainland. A 2016 ruling by the Permanent Court of Arbitration rejected China’s claims and declared its actions unlawful, but China has contin­ ued to control the Scarborough Shoal while significantly expanding its

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military presence in the region. Part of these efforts have included mas­ sive land reclamation projects and the building of artificial islands that have created a network of civilian and military infrastructure throughout the disputed waters. China’s actions have threatened “a potentially de­ structive military confrontation” if the Philippines defends its maritime and territorial possessions.12 Philippine leaders during the presidency of Benigno Aquino III (2010–16) responded to China’s threats in ways consistent with realist balancing theo­ ries, including working hard to tighten the alliance with the United States. The two countries in 2014 signed the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement, which allows the United States to rotate military forces in the Philippines for extended periods while increasing military aid to the Philip­ pines, upgrading joint military exercises, and enhancing logistical and in­ telligence support.13 The result of the agreement and its implementation was that “by the end of the Aquino administration, the Philippines had al­ lied itself tightly with the US in order to counter China’s claims to waters and features within its EEZ.”14 After Rodrigo Duterte became president in 2016, however, Philippine relations with the United States and China underwent a stunning rever­ sal. Instead of continuing with Aquino’s policies of focusing on the mate­ rial threat posed by China and working to deepen the alliance with the United States, Duterte did the opposite. He downplayed the China dan­ ger while reducing security cooperation with the United States. Duterte made these choices despite the facts that China has continued to expand its military capabilities and infringe on the Philippines’ territorial and maritime claims. Shortly after his electoral victory in May 2016, Duterte declared, “I will be chartering [sic] a [new] course [for the Philippines] . . . and will not be dependent on the United States.” The following Septem­ ber at the summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit, he stated that he was not yet “ready to really break ties [with America] but we will open alliances with China and . . . Medvedev [Rus­ sia]” and “I will open up the Philippines for them to do business, alliances of trade and commerce.” While visiting China in October 2016, Duterte bid “goodbye” to the United States and promised strategic “separation” from it.15 These statements were not just talk. During Duterte’s first two years in office, his government “suspended planned joint patrols and major military exercises with Washington in the South China Sea. . . . Duterte also barred Americans from building a weapons depot in Philippine bases and devel­ oping the facilities in the Bautista Airbase in Palawan, which is close to the disputed Spratly chain of islands. The Cooperation Afloat Readiness and Training Exercise (Carat) and the joint US-Philippine Amphibious Landing Exercise (PHIBLEX) were cancelled. . . . America has also been barred from using Philippine bases to launch so-called Freedom of Navigation operations,

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which mostly target China’s maritime claims around artificially augmented land features in the South China Sea.”16 In February 2020, the Philippine government informed the United States that it was terminating the visiting forces agreement (VFA) that has allowed US forces to rotate through the Philippines, to conduct roughly three hundred joint military exercises an­ nually, and to provide training to the Philippine military.17 However, in June 2020, the Duterte administration suspended the decision to cancel the VFA. Thus, although the US-Philippine alliance continues, Duterte has sig­ nificantly weakened it while expressing major doubts about its utility. He has adopted these positions despite a continuing worsening security envi­ ronment from the Philippines’ perspective. My argument can explain this about-face in alliance policies after Duterte became president. Although the Philippines is a democracy (though Free­ dom House classifies it at the time of this writing as only “partly free”), Duterte has repeatedly asserted that he is much closer ideologically to China than to the United States. These views make Duterte’s configuration of ideological distances in relation to China (the material threat) and the United States (the frenemy ally) one of divided threats, which occurs when a state’s most pressing material and ideological dangers diverge. This con­ figuration reduces the likelihood of cross-ideological coalitions by increas­ ing leaders’ uncertainty regarding which of their international rivals is the greater overall danger. Duterte’s level of regime vulnerability in relation to the United States is relatively low (as I discuss at the end of this section), which facilitates frenemy alliances. Nevertheless, as long as the configura­ tion of divided threats continues, we should expect US-Philippine security cooperation to be more shallow and brittle than an analysis based on the effects of material variables indicates. Duterte’s ideology, according to Lisandro Claudio and Patricio Abinales, is “rooted in a form of socialist nationalism that flourished in the 1960s through the leadership of the Maoist Communist Party of the Philip­ pines.”18 Richard Heydarian agrees, writing that Duterte is “a self-described ‘socialist,’ [who] has been historically close to the Philippine communist movement, which vehemently opposes America’s military presence in the Philippines as an ‘imperialist’ anachronism.” Duterte has held these views for decades.19 These ideological views have created a high level of affinity with China in relation to the United States.20 Duterte announced to his hosts in a 2016 visit to China that “I’ve realigned myself in your ideological flow.” He also stated his intent to “go to Russia to talk to [President Vladimir] Putin and tell him that there are three of us against the world—China, Philippines and Russia. It’s the only way.”21 Duterte has proclaimed China to be a “very important ingredient” to the realization of his domestic objectives, and be­ ginning in early 2017 he entered into an agreement with the Chinese Com­ munist Party to help train his party (Philippine Democratic Party–People’s

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Power, or PDP-Laban) so that its members can “learn the ways and ideol­ ogy” of China’s governing party and implement them in the Philippines.22 While asserting an ideological community with China, Duterte’s beliefs and actions have resulted in an increasing ideological gap with the United States. Duterte’s self-proclaimed socialist ideology with communist (Mao­ ist) roots has inclined him to view the United States as an imperialist and racist state. Indeed, “at the core of the message of the Duterte administra­ tion, Foreign Secretary Perfecto Yasay wrote in a widely-read Facebook post dated October 4 [2016], is that the United States had failed the Philip­ pines by holding on to ‘invisible chains’ that reined Manila in ‘towards dependency and submission as little brown brothers not capable of true independence and freedom.’”23 Many of Duterte’s domestic policies since becoming president have wid­ ened the ideological distance with the United States. Duterte stated in a 2015 interview that his administration was “going to be a dictatorship. The police and the military will be the backbone.”24 Duterte has made signifi­ cant progress in making this prediction come true as the Philippines during his presidency has experienced a massive retreat in rights protection in fa­ vor of “authoritarian populist” rule.25 The ideological configuration of divided threats created by the diver­ gence of a country’s greatest material and ideological dangers creates powerful barriers to frenemy alliances. Leaders in this situation tend to be uncertain as to which country, the material threat (China) or potential fren­ emy ally (the United States) is the greater overall danger to their interests. This uncertainty reduces the likelihood of costly balancing policies by low­ ering the perceived need to engage in them. Moreover, the greater Philip­ pine leaders’ ideological overlap with China, the more likely they are to view Chinese officials as largely trustworthy with interdependent domestic interests. These views will further reduce the incentives pushing for active balancing. The evidence supports these claims. Despite China’s continued military buildup in the South China Sea and infringement on the Philippine’s mari­ time and territorial possessions, Duterte has “dismissed the deterrent effect of American forces against . . . China. ‘They do not mean harm,’ he said [in 2020] of China and its military.’”26 Instead of focusing on the security dan­ gers posed by China and the need to counter them, Duterte has consistently privileged economic development and indicated a willingness to move into China’s economic orbit even if this outcome means sacrificing the Philip­ pine’s alliance with the United States.27 Duterte in 2016, for example, de­ clared his intent to be “separated” from the United States and “dependent” on China “for a long time.”28 Addressing China in the same year, Duterte asserted, “[If you] build me a train around Mindanao, build me a train from Manila to Bicol . . . build me a train going to Batangas, for the six years that I’ll be president, I’ll shut up [on the South China Sea disputes].”29 In 2018,

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CONCLUSION

he declared, “I need China [for economic development]. More than any­ body else at this point, I need China. . . . I simply love [China’s president] Xi Jinping. He .  .  . understands my [domestic] problem and is willing to help.”30 In 2021, Duterte stated that the Permanent Court of Arbitration’s 2016 ruling in favor of the Philippines and against China’s expansive mari­ time claims was “just a piece of paper” to be thrown into the trash. He dis­ missed those who pushed for him to take a harder line against China, calling it the Philippines’ friend and “benefactor.”31 Such statements of trust and admiration and the related decision to privilege economic development over physical security would be unlikely without Duterte’s ideological af­ finity with China, which did not exist among Philippine leaders as recently as the Aquino administration. While an ideological configuration of divided threats works against the continuation of the US-Philippine alliance, the value of the argument’s other independent variable, regime vulnerability, facilitates it. Regime vul­ nerability for the Duterte administration is low. Not only has it succeeded in marginalizing domestic opposition within the government, but popular support for the government is also high. (Duterte’s allies, for example, won an emphatic victory in the May 2019 midterm elections.) The result is that powerful revolutionary forces, which are the most important source of re­ gime vulnerability, do not appear to exist. The lower the levels of regime vulnerability, the lower the domestic costs for Duterte to ally with the United States, and thus the easier it is to retain this option. I predict that the combination of an ideological configuration of divided threats and low levels of regime vulnerability will result in hedging policies toward a country’s material threat and potential frenemy ally. Hedging policies involve important cooperation with both countries without deci­ sively allying with one against the other. Duterte’s policies of canceling sig­ nificant security cooperation with the United States and openly casting doubt on the utility and future of the alliance, while maintaining some co­ operation on one hand and “downplaying the country’s territorial disputes [with China] in efforts to establish closer economic and political relations” with it on the other, support this prediction.32 Philippine leaders’ ideological attraction to China and thus the key cause of the weakening of the US alliance may not last long. This attraction did not exist during the Aquino presidency, and it may not outlive Duterte’s administration, which is scheduled to end in 2022. If, however, it survives Duterte’s time in office, the likelihood of a tight frenemy alliance with the United States will be significantly lowered, despite China’s continued power ascent. Although China’s growing power, aggressiveness, and geo­ graphical closeness may ultimately compel Philippine leaders to abandon hedging policies for a return to a tight alliance with the United States, the countervailing pressures created by an ideological configuration of divided threats are likely to delay this outcome much longer than realist balancing

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CONCLUSION

theories would predict. If regime vulnerability by illiberal Philippine lead­ ers to liberal ideology were to increase, so, too, would the barriers to alli­ ance with the United States. A US-Russian Alliance? One of the biggest potential prizes for US ef­ forts to balance China would be forging an alliance with Russia. Russia is not only a great power but is also currently allied with China.33 A switch in allegiance by Russian leaders would therefore be doubly impactful for rela­ tive power calculations; this development would add to the power of the US-led alliance system while subtracting from China’s. Russia allying with the United States makes sense from a realist balanc­ ing perspective. The material incentives pushing for this alliance in many ways mirror those that incentivized China to ally with the United States against the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Indeed, because China’s economy will be much larger relative to that of the United States than the Soviet Union’s ever was, the material factors pushing for a US-Russian alliance in coming years may be even stronger than those that worked for a Sino-American alliance during the Cold War. As Mearsheimer explains, “although Russia is now aligned with China, it is likely to switch sides over time and ally with the United States, simply because an increasingly powerful China is the greater threat to Russia, given their geographical proximity.”34 Analysts who predict that Russia will end its alliance with China to join one with the United States make, however, the same mistake as those who predicted that Mao’s China would ally with the United States against the Soviet Union in the 1970s: they ignore the powerful barriers to extensive security cooperation that often exist among ideological rivals. As I detailed in chapter 3 and summarize above, high levels of regime vulnerability and an ideological configuration of ideological equidistance prevented commu­ nist China from allying with liberal, capitalist United States for as long as Mao lived. The ideological barriers to an alliance between Putin’s authoritarian re­ gime in Russia and the United States are of similar strength as they were for Mao. Russia is an electoral autocracy, meaning that although its leaders are elected, these elections are not free and fair, and the “elected” govern­ ment engages in the widespread suppression of core political and civil lib­ erties. The result, according to Brian Taylor, based on extensive analysis of the statements and writings of Putin and other governmental officials, is that the Putin regime’s “distinct ideological core” is openly hostile to de­ fining principles of Western liberal democracies.35 To Putin, as he explained in a 2019 interview, liberal ideology is “obsolete” and has “outlived its purpose.”36 Not only are the ideological differences separating Putin’s Russia from Western liberal democracies—including the United States—high, but so,

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CONCLUSION

too, are Russian elites’ fears of regime vulnerability. Putin and his team are deeply concerned with the possibility of revolution, likely inspired or insti­ gated by the United States. Indeed, these elites have been so fearful about the threats to the continuation of their preferred domestic ideological order that worries of regime vulnerability have become a defining attribute of their political worldview.37 Claims of domestic vulnerability may seem dubious given the repressive capacity of Putin’s government, but numer­ ous analysts of Russian politics insist these fears are genuine. To Allen Lynch, for example, a “profound fear of disorder” is one of Putin’s defining and enduring character traits.38 Lionel Barber and Henry Foy agree, stating, “A popular uprising in Russia—encouraged by the west—is the stuff of nightmares for Mr. Putin. Having witnessed first hand the collapse of com­ munism in eastern Europe and the fall of the Soviet Union, he has long harboured suspicions of western conspiracies to undermine his regime. The color revolutions in Georgia and Ukraine, as well as the US-led inter­ ventions in Iraq and Libya, have further convinced him of malign inten­ tions” by Western liberal democracies.39 Putin’s fears of regime vulnerability are a product of all three of the main sources of this variable that my argument identifies: attempted ideological exportation by other countries (especially by the United States), revolutions or attempted revolutions in other countries, and the existence of revolu­ tionary forces (ideological fifth columns) in Russia. These three factors are often interconnected in Putin’s mind, with attempted ideological exporta­ tion by the United States the glue that holds them together. Putin and his team have repeatedly accused US leaders of trying to undermine Russia’s ideological order by supporting both revolutions in other countries and ideological fifth columns in Russia. As Taylor explains, “members of the Putinist elite believe [that Russia is] . . . a besieged fortress, with the West in general and the United States in particular working to undermine it, often in league with disloyal Russian citizens.” “What gives the Russia as a ‘be­ sieged fortress’ metaphor its edge,” Taylor continues “is that the threats are seen on both sides of the wall: not only are there external actors like the United States who are trying to batter down its walls but also there are in­ ternal enemies working with the invader to overthrow the regime from within [ideological fifth columns]. . . . A Putinist mentality that is illiberal, anti-American, fearful of appearing weak, and habitually disposed toward unity and order at home lends itself to somewhat of an obsession with threats and enemies,” centered around the United States.40 Putin’s fears of regime vulnerability tend to spike during periods of in­ ternational and domestic foment, most notably during the color revolutions in Eastern Europe in the 2000s, the Arab Spring uprisings beginning in 2010, the 2011–12 mass protests in Moscow against Putin’s authoritarian rule (the largest in Russia since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991), and the Maidan Revolution in Ukraine in 2014. However, because Putin

215

CONCLUSION

and his advisers attribute these developments largely to US policies of ide­ ological exportation and because this US interest (to Putin) is a permanent one, high levels of regime vulnerability have outlived revolutionary eras.41 Ongoing fears of regime vulnerability, especially combined with the be­ lief that the United States is a key source of this threat, significantly increase the costs of security cooperation with the United States despite the very large material threat that China poses to Russia. Russian leaders in these conditions are likely to worry that extensive security cooperation with the United States will increase the opportunities for ideological proselytization and coordination with ideological fifth columns in Russia. These domestic costs created by allying with the United States will to an important degree offset the potential security benefits of an alliance. This high threat will ex­ ist even if the United States becomes more accommodating toward Russia on military issues, such as a US promise not to expand NATO in Eastern Europe. High levels of regime vulnerability and significant ideological differences make the United States a major threat to the ideological order of Putin’s Russia independently of US military commitments in Eastern Europe. The nature of Putin’s configuration of ideological distances in relation to the United States and China strengthens the barriers to an alliance with the United States that are created by high levels of regime vulnerability by en­ hancing levels of thrust and common interests with China. Putin’s ideo­ logical configuration with China (the material threat) and the United States (the potential frenemy ally) is one of divided threats created by Russian leaders’ greater ideological affinity for China than the United States. (As Gilbert Rozman puts it, “Putin and Xi have been relying on very similar ideologies to justify their rule.”)42 Both Putin and Xi are authoritarians who have defined their regime in opposition to liberal values and institutions. Chinese leaders, as with Russian elites, are also fearful about the vulnera­ bility of their regime, and they have joined with their Russian counterparts in repeatedly accusing the United States of endeavoring to topple authori­ tarian regimes around the world, including in China and Russia.43 These ideological similarities uniting Russian and Chinese policymakers have created a number of major common interests that have played an im­ portant role in forging their current alliance. These shared interests include preventing the toppling of authoritarian governments by revolutionary forces; countering ideological promotion by Western governments, includ­ ing by delegitimizing liberal ideological principles; and supporting one another’s systems of government and key domestic interests, including backing one another’s often brutal methods in separatist conflicts (e.g., in Chechnya, Xinjiang, and Tibet).44 A configuration of divided threats will impede the creation of a US-Russian alliance against China by increasing Russian elites’ uncertainty about which of the other countries is a greater overall danger to their interests. In this

216

CONCLUSION

environment, the perceived need to ally with the United States will be much lower than an analysis based on the effects of material variables indi­ cates. Indeed, high levels of regime vulnerability in relation to the United States, combined with major ideological agreement with China in a config­ uration of divided threats, significantly increase the likelihood that Russian officials will continue to ally with China against the United States rather than the reverse. It is worth highlighting that the ideological similarities uniting Russia and China today and the incentives for cooperation they create are very dif­ ferent from the Sino-Soviet ideological relationship in the 1970s. The Soviet Union and China in the 1970s were fierce ideological rivals, which added to the material incentives pushing China to commit to a frenemy alliance with the United States. Even these dual incentives, though, were not sufficient during Mao’s life to overcome the barriers to this coalition that were cre­ ated by high levels of regime vulnerability and an ideological configuration of ideological equidistance. In the current era, in contrast, the effects of ideologies are not pushing Russia to ally with the United States against China. To the contrary, ideo­ logical variables are incentivizing Russian-Chinese cooperation. These facts make a US-Russian alliance against China in the twenty-first century much less likely than a Sino-American alliance against the Soviet Union during Mao’s lifetime. p o li cy prescri pti o n #2: lo o k fo r o ppor t u ni t i e s t o en gage i n id eo lo gi ca l wed gi n g pol i c i e s The book’s findings can help leaders advance their state’s interests by more than helping predict alliance formation and durability. The findings can also help policymakers break apart hostile frenemy alliances (ideological wedging) and boost supportive ones (ideological bolstering). Both sets of policies recognize the important effects that ideologies frequently have in international relations and endeavor to make use of this knowledge to ad­ vantage their country. If leaders fail to recognize the important role that ideologies can have on alliances, they will miss significant opportunities to advance their state’s interests.45 I discuss ideological wedging policies in this section and ideological bolstering ones in the next. The most effective ideological wedging policies, as I discussed in chapter 1, tie into the independent variable of configurations of ideological distances. Leaders in specific ideological configurations can use the logics of strategic framing and communicative action to help reinforce the belief that particu­ lar ideological axes should be central to decision-making. In order for ideological wedging policies based on the targeting of par­ ticular ideological relationships to succeed, two preconditions must be met: (1) leaders must confront a coalition that comprises states dedicated to

217

CONCLUSION

opposing ideological principles (i.e., the alliance must be a frenemy one), and (2) the wedging state must be ideologically closer to one of the frenemy alliance members than they are to one another. (The wedging state, in other words, must be in an ideological configuration of ideological betrayal or divided threats with one of the alliance members.) If these conditions are satisfied, leaders should endeavor to convince elites in the target state of the high saliency of the ideological axes that de­ fine the conditions. Leaders in the wedging state can do this by repeatedly emphasizing both publicly and privately the importance of their ideologi­ cal similarities with the target and these states’ shared ideological differ­ ences with their common ideological enemy. These ideological wedging policies were used with success in the case studies when Hitler and other Nazis stressed their shared hostility to communism to reinforce British and French conservatives’ and French Radicals’ aversion to allying with the Soviet Union. Iranian leaders in the 2000s similarly appealed to a common Islamic identity in opposition to Zionism to help convince Turkish policy­ makers to end their country’s alliance with Israel. My argument, in sum­ mary, explains when and how officials in one state can help amplify the effects of frenemy allies’ ideological differences to weaken cooperation be­ tween them. Returning to US efforts to balance a rising China in the current era, there are at present few opportunities for US leaders to engage in ideological wedging policies to weaken China’s existing frenemy alliances. Because many states in the Indo-Pacific are highly illiberal, the likelihood is great that many will remain ideologically closer to China than they are to the United States. This fact will preclude ideological wedging policies by US leaders in relation to these countries.46 I listed above nine countries that have allied with China or are shifting to doing so (Bangladesh, Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Nepal, Paki­ stan, Russia, and Sri Lanka) and five states that are hedging between China and the United States (Indonesia, Myanmar, North Korea, the Phil­ ippines, and Thailand). Although all of these countries are illiberal (judged by Freedom House to be “not free” or “partly free”), not all share China’s ideology, which potentially opens important ideological gaps with Beijing.47 These countries, though, do not offer a clear example of major ideological differences with China and greater ideological agree­ ment with the United States—which together are the preconditions for ideological wedging policies based on the targeting of states’ ideological relationships. The Philippines perhaps represents the best opportunity in the near fu­ ture for the United States to adopt ideological wedging policies toward China and its allied or friendly states. Although the Philippines is currently governed by a leader, Duterte, who voices ideological admiration for China and ideological hostility toward the United States, this was not the case as

218

CONCLUSION

recently as 2016 and the Benigno Aquino III administration. The Philip­ pines remains a democracy (though an illiberal one). If its leaders return to the ideological relationships that existed before Duterte became president— namely, greater ideological affinity with the United States than China—the preconditions for ideological wedging will be met. US leaders at this time would be wise to stress their ideological agreement with Philippine elites and their shared ideological enmity with China as key reasons to rejuve­ nate their states’ long-standing alliance.48 p oli cy prescri pti o n #3: a d o pt i d eo log i c a l b olsteri n g poli ci es to wa rd su ppo rti v e f renem y a llia n ces Just as leaders can use the logics of strategic framing and communicative action to emphasize particular ideological axes to help wedge apart oppos­ ing frenemy coalitions, elites can also use these logics to help boost sup­ portive cross-ideological alliances in which their state is a member. In order for members of a frenemy alliance to engage in successful ideological bol­ stering policies toward one another, they must be in an ideological configu­ ration of double threat, which occurs when states’ greatest material and ideological dangers coincide. Because members of a frenemy alliance in this ideological configuration are ideologically closer to one another than they are to their shared material danger, leaders of these states can use the logics of communicative action and strategic framing to reinforce the saliency of their ideological commonalities and shared ideological hostility to the ma­ terial threat. The more salient these ideological axes are to decision-making, the tighter the frenemy alliance is likely to be. Leaders can also try to bolster their frenemy alliances by targeting the argument’s other independent variable, regime vulnerability. Because high levels of regime vulnerability tend to weaken cross-ideological coalitions even when confronting major material dangers, policymakers should en­ deavor to increase their frenemy allies’ domestic security to help preserve these coalitions. These policies, at a minimum, would include the disavowal of efforts designed to promote revolutionary change. They could also in­ clude more positive efforts of domestic support, including providing money, weapons, technology, training, and rhetorical legitimation to help the current regime in the allied state stay in power. The more secure the re­ gime, the more likely it is that ideological rivals will base their alliance cal­ culations on the logic of realpolitik. US leaders, as I discussed in chapter 1, used both of these ideological bolstering tactics to solidify the US-Saudi frenemy coalition during the Cold War. They stressed their countries’ mutual hostility to communism as a key reason to ally against the Soviet Union, and they endeavored to reas­ sure Saudi rulers that they did not aim to revolutionize the kingdom.

219

CONCLUSION

Targeting the ideological variables that are central to my argument as part of an ideological bolstering campaign made the US-Saudi alliance much closer than would have occurred from the incentives created by material calculations alone. Although members of frenemy alliances confront incentives not to export their ideology to their partners to reduce fears of regime vulnerability, there are two important caveats to this prescription. First, policies of ideological exportation by other countries are only one of the main sources of regime vulnerability. The others are successful revolutions in other states and the existence of powerful domestic revolutionary groups, the latter of which is the most important source of domestic fragility. One member of a frenemy alliance will have a limited ability to affect these other sources of regime vulnerability for other members of the coalition. When these other sources of regime vulnerability are in play (and especially the existence of powerful domestic revolutionary groups that are dedicated to the frenemy ally’s ideology), we should expect a weakening of cross-ideological alliances even when members of these coalitions are not endeavoring to spread their ideology.49 Second, although members of frenemy coalitions confront incentives not to export their ideology to one another to lower fears of regime vulnerabil­ ity, they also confront incentives to try to spread their principles to place the alliance on a more solid ideological foundation. If ideological enmity be­ tween allies did not exist (if allies were, in other words, ideologically simi­ lar rather than ideologically disparate), they would be much more likely to engage in more timely, deeper, and more stable security cooperation. This last fact creates incentives for members of cross-ideological alliances to try to spread their ideology to their partner. The more leaders can reduce their ideological differences with allies, with the ultimate objective being to transform frenemy coalitions into nonfrenemy ones, the more successful their balancing policies are likely to be. There is no easy way to reconcile these competing imperatives, and pur­ suing each outcome creates important risks. Promoting ideological change risks alienating existing allies; bolstering a frenemy ally’s regime by forsak­ ing policies of ideological promotion risks prolonging a major source of tension between alliance members. Because states’ short-run interests tend to take precedence over long-run ones, especially in the dangerous security environments that are a scope condition for this book, the incentives not to engage in policies of ideological promotion with frenemy allies are likely to weigh heavily on decision-making.50 The longer leaders’ time horizons, the more appealing pushing for ideological change in allies as a means of bol­ stering cooperation is likely to be. The preceding analysis generates multilayered prescriptions for US efforts to balance a rising China. In the short run, US policymakers can forswear policies of regime change toward frenemy allies and security

220

CONCLUSION

partners such as Vietnam and Singapore to try to allay fears of regime vul­ nerability, thereby increasing the likelihood of enhanced cooperation. In the longer term, US leaders can try to repeat a tactic toward frenemy allies adopted by the Ronald Reagan administration, which pushed for gradual liberalization in key authoritarian allies, including South Korea, Taiwan, and the Philippines.51 The incremental, top-down nature of the liberaliza­ tion in these cases helped prevent alienating these regimes, while the ulti­ mate transformation of illiberal states into liberal ones placed the alliances on more durable foundations. Ideological bolstering policies by the United States may also prove valuable in balancing China by helping to preserve and intensify security cooperation among liberal states (i.e., nonfrenemy allies) in the Indo-Pacific—Australia, India, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan—which are among the most power­ ful countries in the region.52 China has a clear interest in wedging these countries from one another and from the United States.53 Ideological bol­ stering policies by US leaders can help thwart these efforts. The more US policymakers can convince their counterparts in other liberal democracies of the high saliency of their ideological similarities and shared ideological enmity with China, the more likely they are to continue and intensify their alliances. US officials have already engaged in these ideological bolstering policies. In a major policy speech in July 2020, Mike Pompeo, secretary of state dur­ ing the Donald J. Trump administration, asserted that “America can no lon­ ger ignore the fundamental political and ideological differences between our countries [China and the United States]. . . . The challenge of China de­ mands exertion, energy from democracies—those in Europe, those in Af­ rica, those in South America, and especially those in the Indo-Pacific region. And if we don’t act now, ultimately the CCP will erode our freedoms and subvert the rules-based order that our societies have worked so hard to build.” A “new alliance of democracies,” Pompeo asserted, was required to address the material and ideological threat posed by China.54 President Joe Biden has expressed similar ideas. In a March 2021 press conference, he as­ serted that there was in the twenty-first century a “battle between the util­ ity of democracies .  .  . and autocracies,” the latter of which were led by China and Russia. To protect US interests, “we have to have democracies working together.” It was therefore Biden’s intent to create “an alliance of democracies” to rebuff the threat from authoritarian states.55 Stressing the importance of the liberal-illiberal ideological divide as part of an ideological bolstering strategy is not without drawbacks. The more important this ideological axis is to international relations, the more likely liberal states will bind themselves to the United States but also the more likely illiberal regimes, including Russia, will gravitate toward China. Such a campaign, in other words, will make it more difficult for the United States to form and preserve frenemy alliances. US leaders would be wise to

221

CONCLUSION

engage in this particular set of ideological bolstering policies only if coop­ eration among liberal states against China starts to flag. The effects of ideological variables in Asia in the coming decades will, in summary, sometimes facilitate US leaders’ efforts to create a broad-based balancing coalition against China and will sometimes hinder this objective. Liberal states in Asia are far more likely to ally with the United States against China than are illiberal ones. Compounding this latter problem for this United States is that the ideological conditions that increase the likelihood of frenemy coalitions forming are currently lacking in key cases, including in Russia and the Philippines. Nevertheless, potential opportuni­ ties either already exist or may arise for US leaders to engage in ideological wedging policies toward China’s frenemy alliances and ideological bolster­ ing policies toward those of the United States. Policy success will depend to a large degree on US officials recognizing these important dynamics and taking advantage of the ideological opportunities to advance US interests while mitigating the ideological challenges to these objectives. For as long as states confront threats to their security, alliances will be of central importance to the evolution of international relations. Potential co­ alitions among ideological enemies against shared material threats are no exception to this reality, though they have heretofore not been systemati­ cally studied. Unfortunately for ease of analysis and prediction, cross-ideological alli­ ances against common dangers defy easy categorization. While ideological rivals sometimes set aside their ideological differences and cooperate in the face of shared material threats, leaders in these situations just as frequently refuse to ally due to the repellent effects created by these differences. The complexities of relations among these states that are perpetually torn by powerful forces for and against cooperation do not, however, mean that these relations are inscrutable. The key to understanding them is found in identifying the conditions that make either set of forces more salient to decision-making at specific times. This book has focused on two of these key variables. Examining levels of regime vulnerability and the configura­ tions of ideological distances among states will help leaders anticipate the nature of frenemy coalitions—both those that oppose their country and those that support it.

222

appendix a

Summary of the Relationships between Configurations of Ideological Distances and the Likelihood of Frenemy Alliances The material incentives in all the configurations are identical. The material threat is pushing the initiating state to ally with a potential frenemy ally. In the figures below, different geometric shapes indicate ideological enmity among states. Identical geometric shapes indicate high ideological similari­ ties. I have included within each set of geometric shapes the names of the initiating state, its potential frenemy ally, and their shared material threat that were used in the highlighted example for each configuration.

Ideological Betrayal: A Frenemy Alliance against an Ideologically Similar State (Inhibits Alliance) Core dynamic: The initiating state is being pushed for realist reasons to ally with an ideological enemy (the potential frenemy ally) against a state (the material threat) that is ideologically similar to the initiating state. Example: Fascist Italy’s (the initiating state’s) relations in the 1930s with liberal France (the potential frenemy ally) against fascist Germany (the shared material threat). Predicted outcome for the initiating state: Decreased preference for fren­ emy alliances. Rationale: In order for the initiating state’s leaders to form a frenemy coali­ tion in this situation, they must set aside two sets of ideology-based in­ centives: the repellent forces created by ideological differences with the potential frenemy ally and the attractive forces created by ideological similarities with the material threat. The initiating state in this configura­ tion is also susceptible to ideological wedging policies by the material threat based on appeals to ideological solidarity and mutual enmity to a shared ideological threat.

223

APPENDIX A

Increasing ideological disputes Figure A.1. A graphic representation of ideological betrayal.

Helps explain: Why Italy did not ally with France against Germany in the 1930s; why Islamist leaders in Turkey in the late 2000s did not preserve the alliance with “Zionist” Israel (the frenemy ally) against Islamist Iran (the material threat) (see chapter 4).

Divided Threats: A Frenemy Alliance against a Lesser Ideological Enemy (Inhibits Alliance) Core dynamic: The initiating state is being pushed for realist reasons to ally with one ideological enemy (the potential frenemy ally) against another ideological enemy (the material threat), but the initiating state has more in common ideologically with the material threat. The material threat is a lesser ideological enemy, the potential frenemy ally a greater one. The initiating state’s greatest material and ideological dangers thus diverge. Example: British and French conservatives’ and French Radicals’ (the initiating states’) relations in the 1930s with communist Soviet Union (the potential frenemy ally and conservatives’ and Radicals’ greatest ideological rival) against Nazi Germany (the material threat but a lesser ideological enemy based on a shared commitment to anticommunism). Predicted outcome for the initiating state: Decreased preference for frenemy alliances. Rationale: When the initiating state’s greatest material and ideological threats diverge, leaders are likely to be uncertain about which rival is the greater 224

SUMMARY OF RELATIONSHIPS

Increasing ideological disputes Figure A.2. A graphic representation of divided threats.

overall danger, which makes buck-passing more likely than balancing. The initiating state in this configuration is also susceptible to ideological wedging policies by the material threat based on appeals to ideological commonalities and mutual enmity to a shared ideological threat. Helps explain: Why British and French conservatives and French Radicals in the 1930s chose to appease Nazi Germany rather than balance against it by allying with the Soviet Union (see chapter 2).

A Frenemy Alliance in a Condition of Ideological Equidistance (Inhibits Alliance) Core dynamic: The initiating state is being pushed for realist reasons to ally with one ideological enemy (the potential frenemy ally) against another equally divergent one (the material threat), and these latter two states are themselves intense ideological rivals.

Potential frenemy ally (United States)

Initiating state (China) Material threat (Soviet Union)

Increasing ideological disputes Figure A.3. A graphic representation of ideological equidistance.

225

APPENDIX A

Example: Communist China’s (the initiating state’s) relations in the 1970s with “imperialist” United States (the potential frenemy ally) and “socialimperialist” Soviet Union (the material threat). Predicted outcome for the initiating state: Decreased preference for frenemy alliances. Rationale: The initiating state’s leaders are likely to anticipate conflict between the material threat and potential frenemy ally because the latter are ideologically opposed. This prediction increases the incentives pushing the initiating state to eschew balancing in favor of buck-passing policies based on the hope that the other rival ideological groups will contain one another while the initiating state sits on the sidelines. Helps explain: Communist China’s decision for most of the 1970s not to ally with the United States to counter the pressing threat posed by the Soviet Union (see chapter 3).

Double Threat: A Frenemy Alliance against a Greater Ideological Enemy (Facilitates Alliance) Core dynamic: The initiating state is being pushed for realist reasons to ally with an ideological enemy (the potential frenemy ally) against a state (the material threat) that is a greater ideological rival than the potential ally. The material threat is a double threat to the initiating state because it is the greater material and ideological danger to the initiating state. Example: British and French socialists’ (the initiating states’) relations in the 1930s with communist Soviet Union (the potential frenemy ally) against Nazi Germany (the material threat and greatest ideological danger). Predicted outcome for the initiating state: Increased preference for frenemy alliances. Rationale: In this configuration, the initiating state’s greatest material and ideological dangers coincide. The result is very high threat levels: the

Initiating state (British/French socialists)

Potential frenemy ally (Soviet Union)

Increasing ideological disputes Figure A.4. A graphic representation of double threat.

226

Material threat (Germany)

SUMMARY OF RELATIONSHIPS

state with the greatest capacity to harm will also likely be viewed as particularly hostile and aggressive. This high threat demands active balancing. Lesser ideological enemies (the potential frenemy allies) also possess some ideological commonalities that reduce the ideological barriers to alliance and create shared interests based on mutual ideological enmity to the other ideological rival (the material threat). Leaders of the frenemy allies can appeal to these ideological relationships as part of “ideological bolstering” policies designed to strengthen their cooperation. Helps explain: British and French socialists’ strong desire to ally with the Soviet Union against Germany in the 1930s (see chapter 2).

An Ideological Outsider: A Frenemy Alliance When Confronting Ideologically Similar Rivals (Facilitates Alliance) Core dynamic: The initiating state is being pushed for realist reasons to ally with one ideological enemy (the potential frenemy ally) against another (the material threat), both of which are dedicated to similar ideological beliefs. Example: Republican France’s (the initiating state’s) relations with monarchical Russia (the potential frenemy ally) and monarchical Germany (the material threat) in the decades before World War I. Predicted outcome for the initiating state: Increased preference for frenemy alliances. Rationale: The initiating state’s leaders have reason to believe that the potential frenemy ally and material threat will cooperate because of their ideological similarities. The initiating state therefore confronts incentives to be particularly aggressive in efforts to ally with the potential frenemy

Potential frenemy ally (Russia) Initiating state (France) Material threat (Germany)

Increasing ideological disputes

Figure A.5. A graphic representation of ideological outsider.

227

APPENDIX A

ally both to balance the material threat and to ensure that the material threat and potential frenemy ally remain divided. Helps explain: Republican France’s alliance with Russia against Germany before World War I. In appendixes B through F, I provide examples of frenemy alliances— both those that formed and those that did not despite significant material incentives to do so. In all of the following tables, I list frenemy alliances or potential frenemy alliances, the allies’ shared threat, the particular configu­ ration of ideological distances among these states, and whether or not the outcome (alliance / no alliance) supports my predictions based on the ef­ fects of ideological configurations. These appendixes have two primary objectives. First, they provide a sense of the frequency of frenemy alliances and how often outcomes corre­ spond with the argument’s predictions. Second, they help with case study selection, as I discussed in chapter 1. Appendix B, “Examples of Realized and Unrealized Frenemy Alliances by Ideological Configuration,” provides examples that I used throughout the book to illustrate, develop, test, and apply the theory. This list comes from my reading and knowledge of history and contemporary events. The danger of compiling examples in this manner is that they may be unrepre­ sentative of the universe of frenemy coalitions. To correct for this problem, I compiled four other tables that reproduce other scholars’ assessments of the universe of frenemy alliances in specific instances. By examining other scholars’ categorizations of the universe of frenemy alliances for specific states in particular time periods and/or re­ gions, I am eliminating the possibility that I am cherry-picking examples to support my argument. These lists, though, do have an important drawback: because they focus on alliances that formed, they do not account for unreal­ ized frenemy coalitions. I know of no scholar, though, who has categorized a universe of unrealized alliances among ideological enemies. Appendix C repeats Evan Resnick’s “Universe of the United States’ Alli­ ances of Convenience” during the Cold War.1 To Resnick, alliances of con­ venience are formal and informal coalitions among ideological enemies against a shared threat. This matches my definition of frenemy alliances. Allies of convenience, to Resnick, also have substantial geopolitical con­ flicts of interest, which is an additional criterion that I do not share. Conse­ quently, although Resnick’s analysis provides an independent assessment of the universe of alliances among ideological enemies for the United States during the Cold War, it also underestimates the total number of these coalitions. To compensate for this problem, appendix D lists the universe of formal frenemy alliances for the United States during the Cold War using the Alliance Treaty Obligations and Provisions Project (ATOP) database, which

228

SUMMARY OF RELATIONSHIPS

categorizes formal alliances only. (The US alliances that Resnick lists are all informal agreements.)2 The United States from 1947 until 1989 committed to twenty-five formal alliances. When one of the (non-US) allies in these al­ liances scored lower than six on the Polity IV regime score in the year the alliance was formed, I judge the alliance to be potentially a frenemy one.3 The United States formally committed to nineteen of these alliances during the Cold War. I removed from this list eight cases, leaving eleven total. Five of the alliances I removed are duplicate commitments involving updates to a particular coalition. (Outcomes in each support my argument.)4 Three in­ volve alliances that did not involve balancing against shared threats. To the ATOP project, alliances can be pacts of defense, offense, neutrality, nonaggression, and consultation. Many of these commitments involve the balancing of shared threats, but they need not, especially commitments of nonaggression, consultation, and neutrality. These types of commitments often aim to reassure principal adversaries rather than endeavor to aggre­ gate capabilities against common enemies. Because the balancing of shared threats is a defining condition of my understanding of alliances, if a partic­ ular formal commitment did not satisfy it (based on an analysis of the his­ torical record), I do not consider this commitment to constitute a frenemy alliance. Two of the commitments I removed from my list of US alliances included obligations to the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union and United States were the focus of one another’s enmity and not balancing allies against a shared threat. The United States’ 1977 commitment to Panama defined US rights to defend the Panama Canal. It was not directed against a specific threat and was accepted reluctantly by Panamanian leaders. I there­ fore do not judge it a balancing alliance against a shared external danger. Appendix E repeats the last process for the Soviet Union during the same period. According to the ATOP dataset, the Soviet Union from 1947 to 1989 committed to thirty-four formal alliances. Twelve of these involved commitments to noncommunist countries, which I judge to be potential frenemy ones. I removed from this list of twelve seven cases involving con­ sultation and nonaggression pacts that were not directed against a common enemy and thus did not involve balancing shared threats. Two of these alli­ ances that I removed involved commitments with the United States and one each with West Germany, France, Canada, Denmark, and Malta. Appendix F reproduces Stephen Walt’s list of mostly informal alliances between either the United States or the Soviet Union and a Middle Eastern country from 1955 to 1979. Walt lists fourteen such alliances. When Walt judges the “ideological solidarity” of the alliances to be “nil,” “low,” or “moderate,” I deem the coalitions to be frenemy ones. Ten of the superpow­ ers’ alliances meet this set of criteria.5 The data in appendixes C, D, E, and F are revealing. First, outcomes largely support my argument’s predictions. The sources used in these appendixes identify thirty-eight frenemy alliances.6 Twenty-eight of these

229

APPENDIX A

coalitions support the argument’s predictions based on configurations of ideological distances, and ten do not. Second, an ideological configuration of double threat (which facilitates alliances) was by far the most common one that existed in the compiled lists of frenemy alliances. This configuration existed in twenty-eight of the thirty-eight cases. This finding reflects the facts that the United States’ fren­ emy alliances were almost always with right-wing authoritarian regimes, whereas a majority of the Soviet Union’s were with left-wing dictatorships. Both types of dictatorships possessed major ideological differences with their superpower ally. Leaders of these regimes, though, were clear that they were ideologically closer to their ally than their shared threat. The prevalence of the configuration of double threat was important in my case study selection, as I discussed in chapter 1. Ideological betrayal (inhibits alliance) existed in six cases identified in the appendixes, ideological equi­ distance (inhibits alliance) in three, ideological outsider (facilitates alliance) in one, and divided threats (inhibits alliance) in one.

230

appendix b

Examples of Realized and Unrealized Frenemy Alliances by Ideological Configuration

231

Constitutional France

Republican France

Liberal France

“Zionist” Israel

Communist USSR

Liberal USA

Liberal USA

“Imperialist” USA

Liberal USA

Monarchical Russia, pre-WWI

Fascist Italy, pre-WWII

Islamist AKP leaders in Turkey, 2008–10

British and French Right and Center, 1936–39

Authoritarian Russia under Putin

Illiberal democratic Philippines under Duterte

Chinese leaders (especially Mao), 1972–77

Islamist Iran, 1980–88

Potential frenemy ally

Monarchical Russia, 1830–48

Initiating state and decision perioda

Communist USSR

“Social-imperialist” USSR

Communist/ authoritarian China

Communist/ authoritarian China

Fascist Germany

Islamist Iran

Fascist Germany

Monarchical Germany

Monarchical Austria

Shared material threat

Ideological equidistance (viewed both superpowers as “Satanic”)b

Ideological equidistance (fierce ideological enmity between China and superpowers and between superpowers)

Divided threats (China the greatest material danger but a lesser ideological enemy than USA)

Divided threats (China the greatest material danger but a lesser ideological enemy than USA)

Divided threats (Germany the greatest material danger, USSR the greatest ideological danger)

Ideological betrayal in relation to fellow Muslim-majority country, Iran

Ideological betrayal in relation to fellow fascist state, Germany

Ideological betrayal in relation to fellow monarchy, Germany

Ideological betrayal in relation to fellow monarchy, Austria

Ideological configuration from initiating states’ perspective

Yes

Yes

No frenemy alliance

No frenemy alliance

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

No

Yes

Does the outcome support the argument?

Weakened frenemy alliance

No frenemy alliance

No frenemy alliance

Ended frenemy alliance

No frenemy alliance

Formed frenemy alliance

No frenemy alliance

Outcome

Communist USSR

Liberal, capitalist USA

Liberal USA

Monarchical Russia

Fascist Italy

“Capitalist” France, Britain

British and French socialists in the 1930s

Reformist Chinese leaders, 1978–79

“Theo-monarchical” Saudi Arabia (1950–91)

Republican France, pre-WWI

Liberal Britain, France, pre-WWII

Communist USSR, pre-WWII

“Capitalist” Germany

Fascist Germany

Monarchical Germany

Communist USSR

Communist USSR

Fascist Germany

Islamist Iran

Ideological outsider in relation to all “capitalist” powers

Ideological outsider in relation to fascist powers

Pursued frenemy alliance

Pursued frenemy alliance

Formed frenemy alliance

Formed frenemy alliance

Double threat in relation to USSR (USSR greatest material and ideological threat) Ideological outsider in relation to monarchical Russia and Germany

Formed frenemy alliance

Supported frenemy alliance

Preserved frenemy alliance

Double threat in relation to USSR (USSR greatest material danger; USA a lesser ideological threat compared to USSR)

Double threat in relation to Germany (greatest material and ideological danger)

Ideological equidistance (AKP leaders saw Turkey as an ideological “bridge” connecting Western and Muslim-majority countries)

Yes

Mixedc

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

No

By “decision period,” I am referring to the period of time when leaders in the initiating state committed to a frenemy alliance, refused to do so despite strong

material incentives to do so, or broke an existing frenemy coalition.

b See Stephen M. Walt, Revolution and War (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996), 230 and 231n63.

c British and French conservatives pursued an alliance with fascist Italy to wedge it from fascist Germany; socialists did not.

a

Notes: Total number of frenemy alliances or potential alliances: sixteen. Number of outcomes that support the argument’s predictions: thirteen. Number of

outcomes that do not support the argument’s predictions: two. Number of outcomes that offer mixed support for the argument’s predictions: one.

“Zionist” Israel

Islamist AKP leaders in Turkey, 2002–7

appendix c

Frenemy Allies of the United States, 1946–90

Frenemy ally and alliance yearsa

Shared threat

Ideological configurationb

Does the alliance support the argument?

Spain (1947–76)

USSR

USSR a double threat (Spanish right-wing dictatorship viewed communist USSR as a greater ideological threat than liberal USA)

Yes

Saudi Arabia (1950–91)

USSR

USSR a double threat (Saudi monarchy viewed communist USSR as a greater ideological threat than liberal USA)

Yes

Yugoslavia (1951–58)

USSR

Yugoslavia’s configuration with superpow­ ers was one of ideological equidistance (intense ideological disputes with both the Soviet Union and USA and between superpowers)

No

Saudi Arabia (1962–67)

Egypt

Egypt a double threat (Saudi monarchy viewed Nasser’s Egypt as a greater ideological threat than liberal USA)

Yes

China (1971–89)

USSR

USSR a double threat after 1978 (China viewed Soviet Union as a greater ideologi­ cal threat than USA)

Yesc

Zaire (1974–91)

USSR/ Angola

USSR/Angola double threats (Zairean dictatorship viewed communist USSR and Angola as greater ideological threats than liberal USA)

Yes

Ethiopia (1976–77)

USSR/ Somalia

Ethiopia’s configuration with Somalia and USSR one of ideological betrayal (all were communist regimes)

No

Somalia (1978–89)

USSR/ Ethiopia

Somalia’s configuration with Ethiopia and USSR one of ideological betrayal (all were all communist regimes)

No

(continued)

235

Frenemy ally and alliance yearsa

Shared threat

Ideological configurationb

Does the alliance support the argument?

Romania (1979–89)

USSR

Romania’s configuration with USSR one of ideological betrayal (both were communist regimes)

No

Pakistan (1981–88)

USSR

USSR a double threat (Pakistani dictatorship viewed communist USSR as a greater ideological threat than liberal USA)

Yes

South Africa (1981–86)

USSR

USSR a double threat (South African government viewed communist USSR as a greater ideological threat than liberal USA)

Yes

Saudi Arabia (1981–88)

Iran

Iran a double threat (Saudi monarchy viewed Islamism as championed by Iran as a greater ideological threat than liberal USA)

Yes

Iraq (1982–88)

Iran

Iraq’s configuration with Iran and USA was one of ideological equidistance (Iraq a left-wing dictatorship, Iran an Islamist theocracy, USA a liberal democracy)

No

Saudi Arabia (1990–2003)

Iraq

Iraq a double threat (Saudi monarchy viewed Baathist Iraq as a greater ideologi­ cal threat than liberal USA)

Yes

Syria (1990–91)

Iraq

Syria’s configuration with Iraq one of ideological betrayal (Syria and Iraq were fellow left-wing dictatorships)

No

Notes: Total number of frenemy alliances: fifteen. Number of alliances that support the argument’s predictions: nine. Number of alliances that do not support the argument’s predictions: six. a Source: Evan N. Resnick, Allies of Convenience: A Theory of Bargaining in U.S. Foreign Policy (New York: Columbia University Press, 2019), 22. b All configurations of ideological distances are from the perspective of the illiberal ally of the United States (the initiating state) in relation to their shared threat. For sources for determining ideological configurations, see Resnick, Allies of Convenience; David F. Schmitz, The United States and Right-Wing Dictatorships, 1965–1989 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); David F. Schmitz, Thank God They’re on Our Side: The United States and Right-Wing Dictatorships, 1921–1965 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999); Adam Garfinkle and Daniel Pipes, eds., Friendly Tyrants: An American Dilemma (Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan, 1991); Ernest R. May and Philip D. Zelikow, eds., Dealing with Dictators: Dilemmas of US Diplomacy and Intelligence Analysis, 1945–1990 (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2007); and Stephen M. Walt, The Origins of Alliances (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1987). c Resnick asserts that the Sino-American alliance began in 1971; I assert in chapter 3 that it began in 1979. Before the alliance formed, China’s ideological configuration with the superpowers was one of ideological equidistance, which supports the argument.

a ppendix d

Formal Frenemy Allies of the United States, 1947–89

Frenemy allies and alliance origination yeara

Shared threat

Ideological configurationb

Does the alliance support the argument?

Illiberal allies in the OAS (1947)c

USSR

USSR a double threat (almost all Latin American leaders in the OAS viewed communist USSR as a greater ideological threat than liberal USA)

Yes

Illiberal NATO allies (1949)d

USSR

USSR a double threat (leaders in Portugal, Greece, and Turkey viewed communist USSR as a greater ideological threat than liberal USA)

Yes

Philippines (1951)

USSR

USSR a double threat (Philippine leaders viewed communist USSR as a greater ideological threat than liberal USA)

Yes

South Korea (1953)

USSR, China, North Korea

USSR, China, North Korea double threats (South Korean leaders viewed communist USSR, China, North Korea as greater ideological threats than liberal USA)

Yes

Illiberal allies in SEATO (1954)e

USSR, Vietnam, China

USSR, Vietnam, China double threats (leaders in Philippines, Thailand, and Pakistan viewed communist USSR, Vietnam, China as greater ideological threats than liberal USA)

Yes

Taiwan (1954)

USSR, China

USSR, China double threats (Taiwanese leaders viewed communist USSR, China as greater ideological threats than liberal USA)

Yes

Pakistan an ideological outsider in relation to democratic India and USA; the USSR a double threat (Pakistani leaders viewed communist USSR as a greater ideological threat than liberal USA)

Yes

Pakistan (1959) India, USSR

(continued)

237

Frenemy allies and alliance origination yeara

Shared threat

Turkey (1959)

USSR

USSR a double threat (Turkish leaders viewed communist USSR as a greater ideological threat than liberal USA)

Yes

Iran (1959)

USSR

USSR a double threat (Iranian leaders viewed communist USSR as a greater ideological threat than liberal USA)

Yes

Liberia (1959)

Ghana, Pan-African Liberation Movement

Ghana and Pan-African Liberation Movement a double threat (Liberian leaders viewed socialism as championed by Ghana and Pan-African Liberation Movement as a greater threat than liberal USA)

Yes

Spain (1963)

USSR

USSR a double threat (Spanish leaders viewed communist USSR as a greater ideological threat than liberal USA)

Yes

Ideological configurationb

Does the alliance support the argument?

Notes: Total number of frenemy alliances: eleven. Number of alliances that support the argu­ ment’s predictions: eleven.

a

Sources: Brett Ashley Leeds, Jeffrey M. Ritter, Sara McLaughlin Mitchell, and Andrew G. Long,

“Alliance Obligation Treaty Obligations and Provisions, 1815–1944,” International Interactions 28,

no. 3 (2002): 237–60; Monty G. Marshall, Ted Robert Gurr, “Polity IV Individual Country Regime

Trends, 1946–2013,” http://www.systemicpeace.org/polity/polity4x.htm.

b All configurations of ideological distances are from the perspective of the illiberal ally of the

United States (the initiating state) in relation to their shared threat. For sources for determining

ideological configurations, see those in appendix C and Roger R. Trask, “The Impact of the Cold

War on United States-Latin American Relations, 1945–1949,” Diplomatic History 1, no. 3 (1977):

271–84; Luca Renise and Fernando Costa, “NATO and Portugal: A Realist Marriage,” Portuguese

Journal of Political Science, no. 5 (2015): 58; Konstantina Maragkou, “Favouritism in NATO’s

Southeastern Flank: The Case of the Greek Colonels, 1967–74,” Cold War History 9, no. 3 (2009):

350–51; Ahmet T. Kuru, “The Rise and Fall of Military Tutelage in Turkey: Fears of Islamism,

Kurdism, and Communism,” Insight Turkey 14, no. 2 (2012): 37–57; Mustafa Aydin, “Determinants

of Turkish Foreign Policy: Changing Patterns and Conjunctures during the Cold War,” Middle

Eastern Studies 36, no. 1 (2000): 113–14; Kwang-Yeong Shin, “The Trajectory of Anti-communism

in South Korea,” Asian Journal of German and European Studies 2, no. 3 (2017), doi: 10.1186/

s40856–017–0015–4; Leszek Buszynski, “SEATO: Why It Survived until 1977 and Why It Was

Abolished,” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 12, no. 2 (1981): 287–96; Victor Cha, Powerplay: The

Origins of the American Alliance System in Asia (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016);

Niels Hahn, Two Centuries of US Military Operations in Liberia Challenges of Resistance and

Compliance (Maxwell AFB, AL: Air University Press, 2020), xv, 50, 56–60; and George J. Lerski,

“The Pakistan-American Alliance: A Reevaluation of the Past Decade,” Asian Survey 8, no. 5

(1968): 400–15.

c Illiberal allies in the OAS were Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Dominican

Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama,

Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela.

d Illiberal allies in NATO over the course of the Cold War were Portugal, Greece, and Turkey.

e Illiberal allies in SEATO at the time of its founding were the Philippines, Thailand, and Pakistan.

a ppendix e

Formal Frenemy Allies of

the Soviet Union, 1947–89

Frenemy allies and alliance origination yeara

Shared threat

Ideological configurationb

Does the alliance support the argument?

Finland (1948)

West Finland’s configuration with West No Germany Germany one of ideological betrayal (both were liberal democracies)

Egypt (1971)

USA

USA a double threat (left-wing Egyptian dictatorship viewed liberal USA as a greater ideologi­ cal threat than communist USSR)

Yes

India (1971)

China

India’s configuration with China and the USSR was one of ideological equidistance (intense ideological disputes with and between the communist powers)

No

Iraq (1972)

USA

USA a double threat (left-wing Iraqi dictatorship viewed liberal USA as a greater ideological threat than communist USSR)

Yes

Syria (1980)

USA

USA a double threat (left-wing Yes Syrian dictatorship viewed liberal USA as a greater ideological threat than communist USSR)

Notes: Total number of frenemy alliances: five. Number of alliances that support the argument’s predictions: three. Number of alliances that do not support the argument’s predictions: two. a

Source: Brett Ashley Leeds, Jeffrey M. Ritter, Sara McLaughlin Mitchell, and Andrew G. Long,

“Alliance Obligation Treaty Obligations and Provisions, 1815–1944,” International Interactions 28,

no. 3 (2002): 237–60.

b All configurations of ideological distances are from the perspective the noncommunist ally of

the Soviet Union (the initiating state) in relation to their shared threat. For sources for determin­ ing ideological configurations for Middle Eastern states, see Stephen M. Walt, The Origins of

Alliances (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1987), 184n5.

239

appendix f

Frenemy Alliances Involving the Superpowers in the Middle East, 1955–79

Frenemy allies and alliance origination yeara

Shared threat

Ideological configurationb

Does the alliance support the argument?

Iraq, Britain, USA (Baghdad Pact) (1955)

Egypt, USSR

Egypt and USSR double threats (Iraqi monarchy viewed Nasserist Egypt and communist USSR as greater ideological threats than liberal USA)

Yes

Egypt, Soviet Union (1955)

USA, Britain, Israel, Iraq

USA, Britain, Israel, Iraq double threats (left-wing Egyptian dictatorship viewed them as greater ideological threats than communist USSR)

Yes

Syria, Soviet Union (1955)

USA, Britain, Israel, Iraq

USA, Britain, Israel, Iraq double threats (left-wing Syrian government viewed them as greater ideological threats than communist USSR)

Yes

Yemen, Soviet Union (1955)

Britain

Yemen, a monarchy, was ideologically closer to Britain than the USSR, which created a configuration of divided threats (Britain was a more pressing material threat but a lesser ideological danger than USSR)

No

Saudi Arabia, USA (1957)

Egypt, USSR

Egypt and USSR double threats (Saudi monarchy viewed Nasserist Egypt and communist USSR as greater ideological threats than liberal USA)

Yes

Lebanon, USA (1957)

Egypt, USSR

Egypt and USSR double threats (illiberal democracy in Lebanon viewed Nasserist Egypt and communist USSR as greater ideological threats than liberal USA)

Yes

(continued)

241

Frenemy allies and alliance origination yeara

Shared threat

Ideological configurationb

Does the alliance support the argument?

Jordan, USA (1957)

Egypt, USSR

Egypt and USSR double threats (Jordanian monarchy viewed Nasserist Egypt and communist USSR as greater ideological threats than liberal USA)

Yes

Iraq, Soviet Union (1958)

Egypt

Iraq, a left-wing dictatorship, was ideologically closer to Egypt (a fellow left-wing dictatorship) than the USSR, which created an ideological configuration of ideological betrayal in relation to Egypt

No

Israel, USA (1962)

USSR and USSR and Arab states double threats Arab states (democratic Israel viewed communist USSR and illiberal Arab states as greater ideological threats than liberal USA)c

Yes

Iraq, Soviet Union (1971)

USA, Iran

Yes

USA, Iran double threats (left-wing Iraqi dictatorship viewed them as greater ideological threats than communist USSR)

Notes: Total number of frenemy alliances: ten. Number of alliances that support the argument’s predictions: eight. Number of alliances that do not support the argument’s predictions: two. a

Source: Stephen M. Walt, The Origins of Alliances (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1987), 154, 287. b All configurations of ideological distances are from the perspective of the frenemy ally of one of the superpowers (the initiating state) in relation to their shared threat. Walt judges left-wing dictatorships (which were dedicated to socialist economic principles and Pan-Arabism) to be ideologically closer to the Soviet Union than the United States, and I agree. See Walt, Origins of Alliances, 184n5. Monarchical countries were clear that they viewed communism and Nasserism (Soviet Union and Egypt) as greater ideological dangers than liberalism (United States). c Walt deems the “ideological solidarity” between Israel and the United States to have been “moderate.” Walt, Origins of Alliances, 287.

Notes

The following abbreviations are used in the notes: DBFP DDF DGFP FRUS PRO SHAT SIPRI

Documents on British Foreign Policy Documents Diplomatiques Français Documents on German Foreign Policy Foreign Relations of the United States Public Record Office Service Historique de l’Armée de Terre Stockholm International Peace Research Institute

Introduction 1. George Monger, The End of Isolation: British Foreign Policy 1900–1907 (London: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1963), 281; see also 282. 2. Quoted in William Evans Scott, Alliance against Hitler: The Origins of the Franco-Soviet Pact (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1962), 239. For similar views in Britain, see Winston S. Churchill, The Gathering Storm (New York: Bantam, 1961), 336. 3. For details, see Martin Malia, Russia under Western Eyes (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uni­ versity Press, 1999), 191 and ch. 2. 4. M. B. Hayne, The French Foreign Office and the Origins of the First World War, 1898–1914 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993), 107–8. Grey made identical arguments. See “Parliamentary Debate, W. Runciman on Behalf of Sir Edward Grey in Response to T. F. Richards,” August 7, 1907, https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1907-08-07/debates/436a1551-173d-4716-a686­ 3ef12bdc3807/RussiaAndGreatBritain. 5. Quoted in Louise Grace Shaw, The British Political Elite and the Soviet Union, 1937–1939 (London: Frank Cass, 2003), 90. 6. France committed to a pact of mutual assistance with the Soviet Union in February 1936, but this agreement did not constitute a functioning alliance, for reasons I develop in detail in chapter 2. Britain and the Soviet Union did not ally until 1941, after both countries were at­ tacked by Germany.

243

NOTES TO PAGES 3–9

7. Chamberlain to Ida, March 26, 1939, Chamberlain Papers, NC 18/1/1091, cited in Mi­ chael Jabara Carley, 1939: The Alliance That Never Was and the Coming of World War II (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1999), 108. 8. Quoted in Nicole Jordan, The Popular Front and Central Europe: The Dilemmas of French Impotence, 1918–1940 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 228. 9. According to Merve Tahiroğlu and Behnam Ben Taleblu, frenemies are states that “are able to straddle the gray area between adversity and alliance, and can concurrently castigate and embrace one another other.” Merve Tahiroğlu and Behnam Ben Taleblu, “Turkey and Iran: The Best of Frenemies,” Turkish Policy Quarterly 14, no. 1 (2015): 127. I largely agree with this definition but apply it to a specific case of relations among ideological enemies that confront strong incentives to ally because of shared material threats. 10. John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: W. W. Norton, 2001), 48. See also Stephen M. Walt, “Why Alliances Endure or Collapse,” Survival 39, no. 1 (1997): 162–63. 11. Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War, vol. 3, The Grand Alliance (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1950), 370–71. Germany had attacked Britain in 1940 and in 1941 the Soviet Union, which is the analogue of hell in Churchill’s quote. 12. This book, in other words, examines those situations when ideological enemies are in a threatening environment created by a shared material danger but are not under attack. In this latter situation, I concede that realist balancing theories regarding the likelihood of ideological enemies allying are likely to be correct. 13. Stephen M. Walt, The Origins of Alliances (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1987), 37–38; Kenneth Waltz, “Reflections on Theory of International Politics: A Response to My Crit­ ics,” in Neorealism and Its Critics, ed. Robert O. Keohane (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), 329. 14. See, for example, Mark L. Haas, The Ideological Origins of Great Power Politics, 1789–1989 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005); John M. Owen, The Clash of Ideas in World Politics: Transnational Networks, States, and Regime Change, 1510–2010 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univer­ sity Press, 2010); and Henry R. Nau, At Home Abroad: Identity and Power in American Foreign Policy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002). 15. For studies that link high ideology-based threats to barriers to alliances, see Mark L. Haas, “Ideology and Alliances: British and French External Balancing Decisions in the 1930s,” Security Studies 12, no. 4 (2003): 34–79; Mark L. Haas, The Clash of Ideologies: Middle Eastern Poli­ tics and American Security (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012); F. Gregory Gause III, “Ideologies, Alignments, and Underbalancing in the New Middle East Cold War,” PS: Political Science and Politics 50, no. 3 (2017): 673–75; and Thomas Risse-Kappen, “Democratic Peace— Warlike Democracies? A Social Constructivist Interpretation of the Liberal Argument,” Euro­ pean Journal of International Relations 1, no. 4 (1995): 507. 16. On the importance of ideological distances to international relations, see Haas, Ideologi­ cal Origins of Great Power Politics; Owen, Clash of Ideas; and Henry R. Nau, Conservative Interna­ tionalism: Armed Diplomacy under Jefferson, Polk, Truman, and Reagan (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015). Configurations of ideological distances develops a concept that I have introduced elsewhere and labeled “ideological polarity.” This variable examines the effects on foreign policies that are created by the number of distinct ideological groupings in a system. See Haas, Clash of Ideologies, and Mark L. Haas, “Ideological Polarity and Balancing in Great Power Politics,” Security Studies 23, no. 4 (2014): 715–53. 17. Georges Michon, The Franco-Russian Alliance, 1891–1917 (New York: Macmillan, 1929), 86–87; see also 73–75, 81. 18. Bandwagoning occurs when states ally with—not against—their primary material threat. Buck-passing policies are ones designed to get other states to pay the costs of containing shared dangers. 19. Evan N. Resnick, “Strange Bedfellows: U.S. Bargaining Behavior with Allies,” Interna­ tional Security 35, no. 3 (2010/11): 144. See also Resnick, Allies of Convenience: A Theory of Bar­ gaining in U.S. Foreign Policy (New York: Columbia University Press, 2019).

244

NOTES TO PAGES 9–11

20. For sources representing these positions, see Suzanne Werner and Douglas Lemke, “Op­ posites Do Not Attract: The Impact of Domestic Institutions, Power, and Prior Commitments on Alignment Choices,” International Studies Quarterly 41, no. 3 (1997): 529–46; Randolph M. Siverson and Harvey Starr, “Regime Change and the Restructuring of Alliances,” American Journal of Political Science 38, no. 1 (1994): 145–61; Michael W. Simon and Erik Gartzke, “Political System Similarity and the Choice of Allies: Do Democracies Flock Together, or Do Opposites Attract?,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 40, no. 4 (1996): 617–35; and Brian Lai and Dan Reiter, “Democracy, Political Similarity, and International Alliances, 1816–1992,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 44, no. 2 (2000): 203–27. 21. Both George Liska and Glenn Snyder, for example, mention ideological differences as a potential handicap to alliance formation, but neither gives the subject systematic attention in terms of detailing how or the conditions under which this variable is likely to impede the creation or stability of alliances. Nor do they provide detailed evidence in support of the “handicap” claim. Glenn H. Snyder, Alliance Politics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997), 44, 46, 384n3; George Liska, Nations in Alliance: The Limits of Interdependence (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1962), 10, 16–18. The book that develops Randall L. Schweller’s theory of “underbalancing,” which examines domestic barriers to effective bal­ ancing, mentions ideology only once (see the entry “ideological divisions” in its index): Ran­ dall L. Schweller, Unanswered Threats: Political Constraints on the Balance of Power (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008). In his analysis of the factors that could make alliances collapse, Stephen Walt pays little attention to the effects of ideological differences on alliance dynamics. He does, though, discuss how ideological similarities in some cases, in particular “an ideology that directs its adherents to form a single centralized movement,” can be a major source of threat and thus an important impediment to alliance formation and durability. Walt, “Why Alliances Endure or Collapse,” 162–63. My analysis in chapter 1 of the conditions when ideological similarities are likely to result in ideological rivalry builds on Walt’s insights in this area. Gregory Gause argues that multiple contending ideological visions in the contem­ porary Middle East have hindered the alliance formation process against Iran. He comes to this conclusion, though, by applying my argument that I presented elsewhere and develop much more thoroughly in this book. See Gause, “Ideologies, Alignments, and Underbalanc­ ing,” and Haas, “Ideological Polarity.” 22. See chapter 1 and the case studies for discussion of these alterative arguments. 23. Halifax to Phipps, November 1, 1938, Phipps Papers, PHPP 1/21, cited in Keith Neilson, Britain, Soviet Russia and the Collapse of the Versailles Order, 1919–1939 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 259. 24. D. Cameron Watt, “An Intelligence Surprise: The Failure of the Foreign Office to Antici­ pate the Nazi-Soviet Pact,” Intelligence and National Security 4, no. 3 (1989): 529. 25. Vitaly Kozyrev, “Soviet Policy toward the United States and China, 1969–1979,” in Nor­ malization of US-China Relations: An International History, ed. William C. Kirby, Robert S. Ross, and Gong Li (Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2005), 269. 26. Other prominent examples of leaders under- and overestimating the likelihood of crossideological alliances with very costly results include German leaders’ erroneous belief in the decades before World War I that czarist Russia was unlikely to ally with republican France; Joseph Stalin’s mistaken view in the early 1940s that Britain and Nazi Germany were likely to unite in an anticommunist crusade; Saddam Hussein’s underestimation of the strength of the alliance formed in 1979 between secular, Arab Syria and Islamist, Persian Iran; US leaders’ er­ roneous prediction that Iranian prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh was going to ally with the Soviet Union despite his opposition to communism; and the mistaken belief by key elites in the George W. Bush administration that Saddam Hussein’s secular authoritarian regime in Iraq had allied with al-Qaeda, a radical Islamist terrorist network. For details on these predictions about the likelihood of cross-ideological alliances, see Snyder, Alliance Politics, 152; Haas, Ideo­ logical Origins of Great Power Politics, 144; Jubin M. Goodarzi, Syria and Iran: Diplomatic Alliance and Power Politics in the Middle East (London: Tauris Academic Studies, 2006), 29, 34–35, 54, 82, 140, 170, 184, 196, 282–83; Andreas Etges, “All That Glitters Is Not Gold: The 1953 Coup against

245

NOTES TO PAGES 11–16

Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran,” in Intelligence and Strategic Culture, ed. Isabelle Duyvesteyn (New York: Routledge, 2013), 66; and David Johnston, “Threats and Responses: Washington; Top U.S. Officials Press Case Linking Iraq to Al Qaeda,” New York Times, February 12, 2003. 27. On the latter ideological category, see Azar Gat, “The Rise of Authoritarian Capitalism,” Foreign Affairs 86, no. 4 (2007): 59–71. 28. On this trend, see Ivan Krastev, “Eastern Europe’s Illiberal Revolution: The Long Road to Democratic Decline,” Foreign Affairs 97, no. 3 (2018): 49–56. 29. On the taxonomy in East Asia, see David Shambaugh, “U.S.-China Rivalry in Southeast Asia: Power Shift of Competitive Coexistence?,” International Security 42, no. 4 (2018): 90–91.

1. Frenemy Alliances 1. Stephen M. Walt, “Why Alliances Endure or Collapse,” Survival 39, no. 1 (1997): 157. My definition of alliances also parallels that of Evan Resnick, who also examines the nature of alli­ ances among ideological enemies. See Evan N. Resnick, Allies of Convenience: A Theory of Bar­ gaining in U.S. Foreign Policy (New York: Columbia University Press, 2019), 5. 2. I provide greater detail on my operationalization of alliances near the end of the chapter. On the preceding points, see John S. Duffield with Cynthia Michota and Sara Ann Miller, “Al­ liances,” in Security Studies: An Introduction, ed. Paul Williams (London: Routledge, 2008), 292–94, and Tricia Bacon, “Is the Enemy of My Enemy My Friend? How Terrorist Groups Select Partners,” Security Studies 27, no. 3 (2018): 348. There are other reasons why states ally other than the balancing of shared security threats, but these are not my focus. Alliances, among other things, can be a means of obtaining or freeing up resources to deal with pressing domes­ tic dangers, can be used as tools of management and influence, and can be a method of ideo­ logical promotion. I am interested in alliances as a means of aggregating capabilities against common dangers. 3. For other studies that define ideology in this way, see Mark L. Haas, The Ideological Origins of Great Power Politics, 1789–1989 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005); John M. Owen, The Clash of Ideas in World Politics: Transnational Networks, States, and Regime Change, 1510–2010 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010); Stephen M. Walt, Revolution and War (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996); Mark L. Haas, The Clash of Ideologies: Middle Eastern Politics and American Security (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012); and Henry R. Nau, At Home Abroad: Identity and Power in American Foreign Policy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002). I concentrate on political elites’ understanding of ideologies because their perceptions are the key to policymaking. If a particular principle or identity is not cen­ tral to leaders’ vision for governing, it is not part of my understanding of ideology. Thus, for example, a population’s ethnicity would not be a component of my understanding of ideol­ ogy unless the protection and advancement of this ethnic group is central to elites’ principles of ruling. 4. On these points, see Stephen M. Walt, The Origins of Alliances (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Uni­ versity Press, 1987), 35–36 (quotation), and F. Gregory Gause III, “Ideologies, Alignments, and Underbalancing in the New Middle East Cold War,” PS: Political Science and Politics 50, no. 3 (2017): 673. As this list of ideologies indicates, even members of highly repressive ideologies, such as absolute monarchism and fascism, can be unifying. The absolute monarchies in Russia, Prussia, and Austria in the nineteenth century, for example, recognized each other’s legitimacy and sovereignty, as did leaders in Nazi Germany and fascist Italy in the 1930s. On the latter, see Robert H. Whealey, “Mussolini’s Ideological Diplomacy,” Journal of Modern History 39, no. 4 (1967): 433–37. 5. Gause, “Ideologies, Alignments, and Underbalancing,” 673. See also Walt, Origins of Alliances, 35–36. 6. On these points, see Haas, Ideological Origins of Great Power Politics, 5–18; Haas, Clash of Ideologies, 7–12; Owen, Clash of Ideas in World Politics, 32–52; Walt, Revolution and War, 32–45; Nau, At Home Abroad, 21–32; and Benjamin Miller, When Opponents Cooperate: Great Power Con­ flict and Collaboration in World Politics (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995), 9–32, 39–42, 89–103, 53–55, 241. The case studies in these works demonstrate the mistrust and

246

NOTES TO PAGES 16–20

hostilities that tend to exist between ideological rivals and the trust and common interests that tend to exist between co-ideologues. 7. Charles A. Duelfer and Stephen Benedict Dyson, “Chronic Misperception and Interna­ tional Conflict: The U.S.-Iraq Experience,” International Security 36, no. 1 (2011): 96. 8. These are central findings of, for example, Henri Tajfel, Human Groups and Social Catego­ ries: Studies in Social Psychology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), and Vamik Volkan, The Need to Have Enemies and Allies: From Clinical Practice to International Relationships (Northvale, NJ: Aronson, 1988). 9. This is a core claim of constructivist research. See, for example, Alexander Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 229, and Alastair Iain Johnston, Social States: Changes in International Institutions, 1980–2000 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008), 199. 10. Thomas Risse-Kappen, “Democratic Peace—Warlike Democracies? A Social Constructiv­ ist Interpretation of the Liberal Argument,” European Journal of International Relations 1, no. 4 (1995): 506. 11. Whenever I claim that ideological agreement is likely to result in low threat perceptions and high levels of cooperation, I am assuming the ideology in question is a unifying one. 12. As John Owen explains, for most of the nineteenth century, “a French monarchist felt more in common with an Austrian monarchist than with a French republican. An Italian re­ publican felt more in common with an American than with an Italian monarchist.” John M. Owen IV, Confronting Political Islam: Six Lessons from the West’s Past (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015), 24. 13. For related predictions, see Risse-Kappen, “Democratic Peace—Warlike Democracies?,” 492, 507. 14. Dwight D. Eisenhower, “Address at the Iowa State Fair at Des Moines,” August 30, 1954, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/address-the-iowa-state-fair-des-moines. 15. Ronald Reagan: 1985, book 2, Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, 1412, https://quod.lib.umich.edu/p/ppotpus/4732359.1985.002/554?rgn=full+text;view=image;q1= implies+enduring. 16. Both quotations from Karim Sadjadpour, Reading Khamenei: The World View of Iran’s Most Powerful Leader (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2008), 15. 17. Quoted in Walt, Revolution and War, 187. 18. Quoted in Walt, Revolution and War, 130. The quotation is from the March 1918 Seventh Congress of the Russian Communist Party. 19. Walt, Revolution and War, 187–89. 20. Quoted in Henry L. Roberts, “Maxim Litvinov,” in The Diplomats, 1919–1939, ed. Gordon A. Craig and Felix Gilbert (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1953), 366. 21. Even in favorable ideological circumstances, leaders when considering allying with an­ other country may worry about being caught in “the alliance security dilemma.” Glenn H. Snyder, “The Security Dilemma in Alliance Politics,” World Politics 36, no. 4 (1984): 461–95. This concept refers to fears of abandonment and entrapment that often exist among allies. Fears of abandonment are based on policymakers’ worries that allies will not honor their commitments and instead leave their state in the lurch. It is often better not to have made an alliance than to make one and expect aid and not receive it when it is most needed. Entrapment occurs when a country is dragged into a conflict over an ally’s interests that the first state does not share. The more divergent allies’ interests, the greater the likelihood of entrapment. The effects of ideo­ logical enmity on leaders’ intentions assessments will fuel both sets of fears. High levels of mistrust will intensify worries of abandonment, and highly divergent interests will in­ crease fears of entrapment. The greater these dual concerns, the lower the likelihood of crossideological coalitions forming and enduring. 22. John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: W. W. Norton, 2001), 156. 23. Walt, Origins of Alliances, 26; see also 17, 32. 24. On these points, see Mearsheimer, Tragedy of Great Power Politics, 269 (quotation), 341–42, 403n3. For similar analysis, see Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (New York: McGraw Hill, 1979), 125–31. 25. Walt, Origins of Alliances, 21–26.

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NOTES TO PAGES 20–26

26. For others who have used this approach, see Walt, Revolution and War, and Randall L. Schweller, “Bandwagoning for Profit: Bringing the Revisionist State Back In,” International Security 19, no. 1 (1994): 83. 27. Walt, Origins of Alliances, 33. 28. Mearsheimer, Tragedy of Great Power Politics, 48. 29. Walt, Origins of Alliances, 37–38. Although not speaking to alliance formation in particular, Kenneth Waltz concurs with the general point, writing that to realists “considerations of power dominate considerations of ideology” in formulating states’ security policies. Kenneth N. Waltz, “Realist Thought and Neorealist Theory,” Journal of International Affairs 44, no. 1 (1990): 31. 30. This assumes that the potential frenemy ally possesses some unique or important value in balancing the shared threat. If there are other means of countering the danger, including allying with more ideologically acceptable states, the likelihood of the ideological rivals ally­ ing against the common danger decreases. I control for this possibility in the case studies by discussing how the frenemy alliance under investigation was critical to effective balancing. Although I treat Walt’s balance-of-threat theory of alliance formation as a competing one, it is important to note that in a later reformulation of the theory, Walt incorporates ideologies into his analysis. This adapted version of balance-of-threat theory claims that ideological differ­ ences among states can be an important determinant of leaders’ assessments of aggressive intentions. Walt, Revolution and War, 33–37. My argument obviously concurs. To understand the relative importance of different sources of alliance formation, it is important to keep the distinction between material/realist and ideological sources of threat as clear as possible. Thus, when coding the shared “material threat” that is pushing two ideological enemies to­ gether in all the cases I study, I examine power distributions, offensive capabilities, and geo­ graphical proximity, and I judge aggressive intent by a displayed willingness to use force to resolve conflicts of interests. I judge ideology-based assessments of malign intent to support my argument. 31. This statement assumes that ideological enemies possess sufficient power to threaten others’ security. Material variables are not unimportant to ideological understandings of inter­ national threats. Material variables determine the universe of groups that possess the capacity to harm others. Ideological variables tend to inform decision makers about which groups within this universe are likely to use their capabilities in a hostile manner. The international ideological enemies I examine all possess sufficient capabilities to harm others’ interests; this is what makes them either material threats or potentially useful allies. 32. I recognized this point in previous scholarship but did not fully develop it. See Haas, Ideological Origins of Great Power Politics, 6–8, 31. 33. Walt, Revolution and War, 12. A revolution can be either societal or elite-led. The latter type is often much less violent than the former. 34. For others who have examined regime vulnerability or insecurity on states’ foreign pol­ icies, see Mingjiang Li, Mao’s China and the Sino-Soviet Split: Ideological Dilemma (New York: Routledge, 2012); F. Gregory Gause III, “Balancing What? Threat Perception and Alliance Choice in the Gulf,” Security Studies 13, no. 2 (Winter 2003–4): 273–305; Owen, Clash of Ideas; Lawrence Rubin, Islam in the Balance: Ideational Threats in Arab Politics (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2014); Randall L. Schweller, Unanswered Threats: Political Constraints on the Balance of Power (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008); and Steven R. David, Choos­ ing Sides: Alignment and Realignment in the Third World (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991). I add to these studies by demonstrating how the threat perceptions created by re­ gime vulnerability are so intense that they frequently offset the incentives for alliance created by shared, substantial material dangers. 35. For related analysis, see Chad E. Nelson, Revolutionary Contagion and International Poli­ tics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2022), and Walt, Revolution and War, 39–41. 36. See Nelson, Revolutionary Contagion, ch. 2. 37. Unless I state to the contrary (see the examination below of “double rebel” ideological groups), my analysis of regime vulnerability assumes that the potential frenemy ally shares the ideology of leaders’ domestic threat. If this condition is not in play, the impediments to fren­ emy alliances created by regime vulnerability will typically be much lower. In the 1930s, for

248

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example, French socialists’ regime vulnerability was high. Because, however, the primary ob­ ject of socialists’ domestic fears was fascism, not communism, the barriers to allying with the Soviet Union created by their regime vulnerability was low. 38. On this claim, see Resnick, Allies of Convenience. According to Walt, “an existing alliance may be jeopardized if influential elites decide that they can improve their internal positions by attacking the alliance itself.  .  .  .  A long-standing alliance commitment can deteriorate even when the level of threat is largely unchanged, if it comes to be seen as a domestic political lia­ bility.” Walt does not, however, point to ideological dynamics as a reason why elites can benefit politically by breaking an alliance. Walt, “Why Alliances Endure or Collapse,” 161–62. 39. For examples of leaders stoking hostilities with ideological enemies abroad as the key component of domestic mobilization campaigns, see Thomas J. Christensen, Useful Adversaries: Grand Strategy, Domestic Mobilization, and Sino-American Conflict, 1947–1958 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996). 40. Steven R. David, “Explaining Third World Alignment,” World Politics 43, no. 2 (1991): 236. 41. Gause’s analysis of Saudi, Syrian, and Jordanian alliance policies from 1971 to 1991 sup­ ports my claim that leaders are much more likely to ally against an international partner of domestic opponents than with it. Gause identifies eighteen instances in which one or more states engaged in “ideological and subversive efforts to destabilize other regimes.” In sixteen of these instances, the threatened government responded by allying against—not with—the international partner of the domestic rival. Gause, “Balancing What?,” 294, 302. 42. Haas, Ideological Origins of Great Power Politics, 8; Nelson, Revolutionary Contagion, ch. 2. 43. Robert Loeffel, The Fifth Column in World War II: Suspected Subversives in the Pacific War and Australia (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). 44. Wade Jacoby, “Inspiration, Coalition and Substitution: External Influences on Postcom­ munist Transformations,” World Politics 58, no. 4 (2006): 645; see also 625–26, 629; Rubin, Islam in the Balance, 23. 45. Resnick lists Iran as an ally of the United States in 2001–2. Resnick, Allies of Convenience, 22. 46. Daniel Brumberg, “Dilemmas of Western Policies towards Iran,” International Spectator 37, no. 3 (2002): 74. For details on the preceding points, see Haas, Clash of Ideologies, 98–106, 110–20. 47. Mohammad Ayatollahi Tabaar, “Causes of the US Hostage Crisis in Iran: The Untold Account of the Communist Threat,” Security Studies 26, no. 4 (2017): 673, 684–85, 696. 48. Tabaar, “Causes of the US Hostage Crisis,” 677–80, 685 (quotation on 679). 49. Tabaar, “Causes of the US Hostage Crisis,” 691, 697. For related analysis, see Lisa Blaydes and Drew A. Linzer, “Elite Competition, Religiosity, and Anti-Americanism in the Islamic World,” American Political Science Review 106, no. 2 (2012): 225–43. 50. Alex Braithwaite, “Resisting Infection: How State Capacity Conditions Conflict Conta­ gion,” Journal of Peace Research 47, no. 3 (2010): 311–19. 51. The last is a central finding of Lester R. Kurtz and Lee A. Smithey, The Paradox of Repres­ sion and Nonviolent Movements (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2018). 52. Nelson, Revolutionary Contagion, ch. 2. 53. See, for example, James M. Lutz, “The Diffusion of Political Phenomena in Sub-Saharan Africa,” Journal of Political and Military Sociology 17, no. 1 (1989): 93–114. 54. Mark R. Beissinger, “Structure and Example in Modular Political Phenomena: The Dif­ fusion of Bulldozer/Rose/Orange/Tulip Revolutions,” Perspectives on Politics 5, no. 2 (2007): 259–76; Samuel Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (Nor­ man: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991), 100–106; Henry E. Hale, “Regime Change Cascades: What We Have Learned from the 1848 Revolutions to the 2011 Arab Uprisings,” Annual Review of Political Science 16, no. 1 (2013): 331–53. 55. For an example of these last dynamics, see M. E. Sarotte, “China’s Fear of Contagion: Tiananmen Square and the Power of the European Example,” International Security 37, no. 2 (2012): 156–82. 56. Seva Gunitsky, “Democratic Waves in Historical Perspective,” Perspectives on Politics 16, no. 3 (2018): 634–51; Colin J. Beck, “The World-Cultural Origins of Revolutionary Waves: Five Centuries of European Contention,” Social Science History 35, no. 2 (2011): 182–83. 57. Owen, Clash of Ideas, 5, 38–42; Huntington, Third Wave, 104–6.

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NOTES TO PAGES 34–43

58. Adolf Hitler expressed this logic, stating in 1941, “The brown shirt [fascist revolution in Germany] probably would not have existed without the black shirt [fascist revolution in Italy]. The march on Rome, in 1922, was one of the turning-points in history. The mere fact that any­ thing of the sort could be attempted, and could succeed, gave us an impetus.” Adolf Hitler, Hitler’s Table Talk, 1941–1944: His Private Conversations, trans. Norman Cameron and R. H. Ste­ vens (New York: Enigma Books, 2000), 10. 59. Owen, Clash of Ideas, 40. 60. On the points made in this and the following paragraph, see Shahram Akbarzadeh, “Uzbekistan and the United States—Friends or Foes?,” Middle East Policy 14, no. 1 (2007): 107–16, quotation from 108; Gregory Gleason, “The Uzbek Expulsion of U.S. Forces and Re­ alignment in Central Asia,” Problems of Post-Communism 53, no. 2 (2006): 49–50. 61. Akbarzadeh, “Uzbekistan and the United States,” 114. 62. Quoted in Douglas Little, “Red Scare, 1936: Anti-Bolshevism and the Origins of British Non-Intervention in the Spanish Civil War,” Journal of Contemporary History 23, no. 2 (1988): 293. 63. Julian Gewirtz, Unlikely Partners: Chinese Reformers, Western Economists, and the Making of Global China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017), 3. 64. Quoted in Sergey Radchenko, “Sino-Soviet Relations in the 1970s and IR Theory,” in Misunderstanding Asia: International Relations Theory and Asian Studies over Half a Century, ed. Gilbert Rozman (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 58. 65. Nelson, Revolutionary Contagion, ch. 6. An alliance between two ideological enemies when they are domestically vulnerable to the same (third) ideology is the one key exception to my claim that high levels of regime vulnerability will reduce the likelihood of frenemy alli­ ances. Even this exception, though, is not inconsistent with my argument. I claim that high vulnerability will result in enhanced barriers to alliances with states that share the ideology of the domestic threat. This condition is not met in the situation just described. 66. By designating an initiating state, I am simply identifying a country that is deciding whether to commit to an alliance. The initiating state is not necessarily the prime mover for the coalition. The point is to examine alliance policies from this country’s perspective. 67. William I. Shorrock, From Ally to Enemy: The Enigma of Fascist Italy in French Diplomacy, 1920–1940 (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1988), 104, 118, 168. 68. Quotations from Robert H. Whealey, “Mussolini’s Ideological Diplomacy,” Journal of Modern History 39, no. 4 (1967): 435–36. 69. On the need for elite consensus regarding the nature of international threats for effective balancing, see Randall L. Schweller, “Unanswered Threats: A Neoclassical Realist Theory of Underbalancing,” International Security 29, no. 2 (2004): 171. 70. Zara Steiner, The Triumph of the Dark: European International History, 1933–1939 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 437–38. 71. Timothy W. Crawford, “Preventing Enemy Coalitions: How Wedge Strategies Shape Power Politics,” International Security 35, no. 4 (2011): 156. 72. Even though others’ ideological enmity is likely to significantly aid states’ wedging strategies, no one, to my knowledge, has examined this relationship in a systematic fashion. For a start, see Mark L. Haas, “Missed Ideological Opportunities and George W. Bush’s Middle Eastern Policies,” Security Studies 21, no. 3 (2012): 426–27, 440–50. 73. See, for example, Thomas Risse, “‘Let’s Argue!’: Communicative Action in World Poli­ tics,” International Organization 54, no. 1 (Winter 2000): 1–39, and Ronald R. Krebs and Patrick Thaddeus Jackson Krebs, “Twisting Tongues and Twisting Arms: The Power of Political Rheto­ ric,” European Journal of International Relations 13, no. 1 (2007): 35–66. 74. Leaders can also attempt to wedge apart allies by “selectively accommodating” one ally while holding firm against another. Crawford, “Preventing Enemy Coalitions,” 156. The logic of selective accommodation as a wedge strategy applies, however, to all varieties of alliances, not just frenemy coalitions. I concentrate on strategic framing and argumentation as the core of ideological wedging policies because they directly aim to activate and enhance the centrifugal effects created by ideological enmity. 75. On these points, see Patricia A. Weitsman, Dangerous Alliances: Proponents of Peace, Weap­ ons of War (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004), 41–48, 50–51, 56–61, 113.

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NOTES TO PAGES 43–51

76. Stacie E. Goddard, “The Rhetoric of Appeasement: Hitler’s Legitimation and British Foreign Policy, 1938–39,” Security Studies 24, no. 1 (2015): 110. 77. Leaders’ policies, not just their rhetoric, can also help prevent or break apart alliances among ideological enemies. Pakistani leaders, for example, have consistently supported hardline Islamist groups in in Afghanistan, including the Taliban, to help prevent an alliance between Afghanistan and Hindu-majority India. (Elites in this case were helping to create an ideological divide between Afghanistan and India, not just amplifying the effects of existing ideological disputes.) Abraham Lincoln’s decision to issue the Emancipation Proclamation was in part designed to block an alliance between liberal Britain and the slaveholding Con­ federacy. See Sahar Khan, “Double Game: Why Pakistan Supports Militants and Resists U.S. Pressure to Stop,” Cato Institute Policy Analysis, no. 849, September 20, 2018, https://www. cato.org/policy-analysis/double-game-why-pakistan-supports-militants-resists-us-pres sure-stop, and Brent J. Steele, “Ontological Security and the Power of Self-Identity: British Neutrality and the American Civil War,” Review of International Studies 31, no. 3 (2005): 519–40. 78. Owen, Clash of Ideas, 99. 79. See Owen, Clash of Ideas, 98–115, and Daniel H. Nexon, The Struggle for Power in Early Modern Europe: Religious Conflict, Dynastic Empires, and International Change (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009), 268–69. 80. The other ideological arguments to which I am referring are those that judge the barriers to alliances between two ideological enemies based on their ideological differences in a bilat­ eral context rather, as I do, on the configuration of ideological distances that exists between these states and their common material danger. 81. On this description of the Saudi regime, see Muhammad al-Atawneh, “Is Saudi Arabia a Theocracy? Religion and Governance in Contemporary Saudi Arabia,” Middle Eastern Studies 45, no. 5 (2009): 721. 82. Rachel Bronson, Thicker than Oil: America’s Uneasy Partnership with Saudi Arabia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 26. 83. Quoted in Bronson, Thicker than Oil, 181. 84. Leaders can also try to bolster their state’s frenemy alliances by targeting the argument’s other independent variable, regime vulnerability. Because high levels of regime vulnerability tend to weaken frenemy alliances even when confronting major material dangers, policymak­ ers could endeavor to increase their allies’ domestic security to help preserve the coalition. These policies, at a minimum, would include the disavowal of efforts designed to promote re­ gime change. US officials also used this tactic to boost the US-Saudi alliance. Administrations from Franklin Roosevelt’s through George H. W. Bush’s adopted actions and statements that were designed to minimize America’s potential subversive impact on the illiberal Saudi re­ gime. For details, see Thomas W. Lippman, “A Most Improbable Alliance: Placing Interests over Ideology,” in Religion and Politics in Saudi Arabia: Wahhabism and the State, ed. Mohammed Ayoob and Hasan Kosebalaban (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2009), 126–30. 85. Georges Michon, The Franco-Russian Alliance, 1891–1917 (New York: Macmillan, 1929), 105; see also 102, 203–4, 260. On French leaders’ fears of a German-Russian alliance due to the effects of ideological similarities and the resulting incentives for France to aggressively support Russian interests, see M. B. Hayne, The French Foreign Office and the Origins of the First World War, 1898–1914 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993), 108, 112, 245. 86. I do not claim that the values of either of the independent variables, either alone or in tandem, are sufficient to determine outcomes. I recognize that the incentives pushing for fren­ emy alliances created by shared material dangers in some cases overwhelm the repellent forces created by the variables I analyze. My argument is instead a probabilistic one. Different values of the independent variables significantly increase or decrease the likelihood that elites will commit to a frenemy coalition to counter their common material threat. 87. Cheng-Chwee Kuik, “How Do Weaker States Hedge? Unpacking ASEAN States’ Align­ ment Behavior towards China,” Journal of Contemporary China 25, no. 100 (2016): 504. See also Darren J. Lim and Zack Cooper, “Reassessing Hedging: The Logic of Alliance in East Asia,” Security Studies 24, no. 4 (2015): 709.

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NOTES TO PAGES 51–56

88. See Paul M. Kennedy, The Rise of the Anglo-German Antagonism, 1860–1914 (Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, 1980), 157–58, 161–65, 188–201. On Germany’s low level of regime vul­ nerability, see Kennedy, Rise of the Anglo-German Antagonism, 186–88, and Owen, Clash of Ideas, 154–56. 89. The quotation is from Kennedy, Rise of the Anglo-German Antagonism, 197. 90. Kennedy, Rise of the Anglo-German Antagonism, 189–90. 91. Because the Soviets defined all the other great powers as “capitalist,” they believed there to be no substantial ideological differences between fascist and democratic states. Geof­ frey Roberts, The Unholy Alliance: Stalin’s Pact with Hitler (London: I. B. Tauris, 1989), 94. This perception of the Soviet Union as an ideological outsider was highly consequential for Soviet foreign policies. Because of it, Soviet elites were fearful that the other powers—due to their ideological similarities—would unite in an anticommunist crusade. This fear, in turn, created powerful incentives pushing the Soviet Union to commit to a frenemy alliance with some of the great powers against others to keep them from uniting. Teddy Uldricks summarizes these points: “There was only one foreign policy line [in the USSR], both before and after 1933 and, for that matter after August 1939. That line included the assumption of hostility from all impe­ rialist powers and, therefore, the need to keep them divided.” Teddy J. Uldricks, “Soviet Secu­ rity Policy in the 1930s,” in Soviet Foreign Policy, 1917–1941, ed. Gabriel Gorodetsky (London: Routledge, 1994), 73. For similar analysis, see Mark L. Haas, “Soviet Grand Strategy in the In­ terwar Years: Ideology as Realpolitik,” in The Challenge of Grand Strategy: The Great Powers and the Broken Balance between the World Wars, ed. Jeff Taliaferro, Norrin Ripsman, and Steve Lobell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 292–94. 92. Quoted in Shorrock, From Ally to Enemy, 183. The optimal outcome for elites operating in cell 3 would be to find a way to avoid paying the trade-off that is the essence of this cell and instead protect both their state and regime without endangering the safety of either. A limited or weak frenemy alliance that is covert or secret could allow elites to square the circle of pro­ tecting a state from external dangers while minimizing domestic threats. Limited security co­ operation, such as intelligence sharing, some weapon transfers, and overflight rights, can help boost the power of an ally without significantly enhancing its opportunities for ideological proselytization or ability to interfere in domestic affairs. Keeping cooperation a secret also re­ duces the potency of harmful demonstration effects. 93. On the preceding points, see Thomas Christensen and Jack Snyder, “Chain Gangs and Passed Bucks: Predicting Alliance Patterns in Multipolarity,” International Organization 44, no. 2 (1990): 140–47; Mearsheimer, Tragedy of Great Power Politics, 338–44; and Waltz, Theory of Inter­ national Politics, ch. 8. 94. Mearsheimer, Tragedy of Great Power Politics, 270–71. 95. Mearsheimer, Tragedy of Great Power Politics, 156; Walt, Origins of Alliances, 17, 26, 32. 96. As Randall Schweller puts it while making a related point, when states respond to “a clear and present danger” in “paltry and imprudent ways,” this behavior “runs directly contrary to the core prediction of structural realist theory, namely that threatened states will balance against dangerous accumulations of power by forming alliances or building arms or both.” Schweller, “Unanswered Threats,” 159–60. 97. Schweller, “Unanswered Threats”; Schweller, Unanswered Threats. 98. Schweller, “Unanswered Threats,” 171. 99. In Schweller’s article “Unanswered Threats,” ideology is mentioned only twice in the development of the theory of underbalancing, both times in passing. See 180–81. The index in the book by the same name lists only one entry for ideology or related terms (in this case, “ideological divisions”). It is also worth highlighting that although Schweller’s theory of un­ derbalancing applies to both internal and external responses to threat, he also states that the argument applies best to military expenditures rather than alliances. According to him, states with high domestic constraints “will be more likely to search for allies than to build arms to counter external threats, because the former is a quick and relatively low-cost method to coun­ terbalance a dangerous threat.” Schweller, “Unanswered Threats,” 175. This last claim is obvi­ ously a major area of disagreement with this book’s argument, which highlights the high costs of alliances, at least with ideological enemies.

252

NOTES TO PAGES 56–64

100. Robert Young, France and the Origins of the Second World War (London: Macmillan, 1996), 96. For a similar example, see the analysis of Turkey’s alliance policies in the 1990s in Haas, Clash of Ideologies, ch. 4. 101. See Robert Jervis, Perceptions and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976), ch. 3. 102. Charles L. Glaser, “The Security Dilemma Revisited,” World Politics 50, no. 1(1997): 171–72. 103. Glaser, “Security Dilemma Revisited,” 171–72. 104. Glaser, “Security Dilemma Revisited,” 192. 105. On this phrase, see Michael Jabara Carley, 1939: The Alliance That Never Was and the Coming of World War II (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1999), xv and throughout. 106. For similar operationalization of states’ efforts to subvert others, see Gause, “Balancing What?,” 283–84. 107. For similar analysis, see Jacoby, “Inspiration, Coalition and Substitution,” 625–26, 629, 645. 108. Peter J. Katzenstein, “Introduction: Alternative Perspectives on National Security,” in The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics, ed. Peter J. Katzenstein (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 24. 109. Notice that in judging ideologies and configurations of ideological distances, I rely largely on publicly available material (leaders’ speeches, domestic policies, etc.), though pri­ vate sources such as government documents and private correspondence are also part of this analysis. The three main sources of regime vulnerability can also be largely determined by public source material. It is important to be able to judge the values of the independent vari­ ables largely by public sources that are available in real time because this ability facilitates prediction and the making of policy recommendations. If we can judge the independent vari­ ables only by accessing private sources, making predictions and recommendations would be much more difficult because many private sources are often available only after outcomes have been decided. Although leaders’ privately held beliefs may not match their publicly expressed ones, the nature of ideologies reduces the likelihood of a major disconnect in this area. Ideolo­ gies express leaders’ preferences for ordering domestic politics: the core political, economic, and social goals that they champion in their state. Ideologies must be publicly expressed as elites endeavor both to legitimize their claim to rule based on the averred superiority of their beliefs and to mobilize co-ideologues against those who share rival visions. Consequently, al­ though elites sometimes publicly obfuscate their ideological beliefs, more often they cannot because these beliefs are central to their public legitimation and mobilization strategies. See Stacie E. Goddard, When Right Makes Might: Rising Powers and World Order (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2018), 12, 21. 110. For related analysis, see Goddard, When Right Makes Might. 111. On this charge, see Ido Oren, “The Subjectivity of the ‘Democratic’ Peace: Changing U.S. Perceptions of Imperial Germany,” International Security 20, no. 2 (1995): 147–84. 112. For other examples of this method, see Haas, Ideological Origins of Great Power Politics, 60–66, 86–88, 98–102, 120–35, 197–202. 113. On this tendency, see Haas, Ideological Origins of Great Power Politics, 90–102, 120–35, 180–94, and Haas, Clash of Ideologies, ch. 2, ch. 4. 114. Glenn H. Snyder, Alliance Politics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997), 4; James D. Morrow, “Alliances: Why Write Them Down?,” Annual Review of Political Science 3, no. 1 (2000): 63. 115. Formal commitments, especially ones of that are commonly labeled pacts of nonag­ gression, consultation, and neutrality, need not result in alliances as I define them. These types of commitments often aim to reassure principal adversaries rather than endeavor to aggregate capabilities against common enemies. If a formal commitment does not involve the balancing of shared threats, I do not consider it an alliance. I revisit this point in appendix A. 116. Walt, “Why Alliances Endure or Collapse,” 157. 117. A pledge to defend another state from attack when part of a formal alliance creates what are frequently called “defense pacts.” The preceding builds on the categories presented in Lim and Cooper, “Reassessing Hedging,” 704.

253

NOTES TO PAGES 65–73

118. On these research methods, see Gary King, Robert O. Keohane, and Sidney Verba, De­ signing Social Inquiry: Scientific Inference in Qualitative Research (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univer­ sity Press, 1994), 85–87, 225–28. 119. On these points, see Christensen and Snyder, “Chain Gangs and Passed Bucks,” 159–65; Waltz, Theory of International Politics, 165; Schweller, Unanswered Threats, 69–84; Mearsheimer, Tragedy of Great Power Politics, 308–13; Robert S. Ross, Negotiating Cooperation: The United States and China, 1969–1989 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995), 4; Raymond L. Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation: American Soviet Relations from Nixon to Reagan (Washing­ ton, DC: Brookings Institution, 1995), 235; Tarik Oğuzlu, “The Changing Dynamics of TurkeyIsrael Relations: A Structural Realist Account,” Mediterranean Politics 15, no. 2 (2010): 273–88; and Kiliç Buğra Kanat, “Evolution of Turkish-Israeli Relations 1992–2008: Causes, Actors and Reactions,” Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies 36, no. 2 (2012): 47–69.

2. An Unrealized Frenemy Alliance 1. See, for example, Keren Yarhi-Milo, Knowing the Adversary: Leaders, Intelligence, and As­ sessment of Intentions in International Relations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014), 59; Gaines Post Jr., Dilemmas of Appeasement, British Deterrence and Defense, 1934–1937 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993), 32; and Peter Jackson, France and the Nazi Menace: Intelli­ gence and Policy Making, 1933–1939 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 63, 103, 112. 2. Williamson Murray, The Change in the European Balance of Power, 1938–1939: The Path to Ruin (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), 287, 305. 3. Jack S. Levy and William R. Thompson, “Hegemonic Threats and Great-Power Balanc­ ing in Europe, 1495–1999,” Security Studies 14, no. 1 (2005): 18. The figures of land power are five-year averages. 4. Karen A. Rasler and William R. Thompson, The Great Powers and Global Struggle, 1490–1990 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1994), 33. 5. Jackson, France and the Nazi Menace, 168, 207 (quotation), 221. See also Zara Steiner, The Triumph of the Dark: European International History, 1933–1939 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 416, and Murray, Change in the European Balance of Power, 163. 6. Jean-Baptiste Duroselle, France and the Nazi Threat: The Collapse of French Diplomacy (New York: Enigma Books, 2004), 268; Murray, Change in the European Balance of Power, 164–65. 7. Anthony Adamthwaite, France and the Coming of the Second World War, 1936–1939 (London: Frank Cass, 1977), 311. See also 160 and Jackson, France and the Nazi Menace, 401. 8. Jackson, France and the Nazi Menace, 214. 9. Adamthwaite, France and the Coming of the Second World War, 161. 10. Vuillemin to Air Minister Guy La Chambre, January 15, 1938, cited in Jackson, France and the Nazi Menace, 222. Vuillemin expressed similar fears throughout the year, including at the time of the Munich Crisis. For details and quotations, see Murray, Change in the European Balance of Power, 211. 11. Yarhi-Milo, Knowing the Adversary, 52. In a January 1936 memorandum, Foreign Secre­ tary Anthony Eden asserted that “we are, in the matter of most armaments and all munitions, already weaker than Germany. Moreover, owing to the late date of starting our own reequipment . . . it is now inevitable that Germany will be ready for aggression long before we and the League [of Nations] can be ready for defense.” Memo by Anthony Eden, “The German Danger,” January 17, 1936, CAB 27/599, cited in Yarhi-Milo, Knowing the Adversary, 95. 12. Yarhi-Milo, Knowing the Adversary, 50. Wesley Wark makes the same observation. See Wesley K. Wark, The Ultimate Enemy: British Intelligence and Nazi Germany, 1933–1939 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985), 93. 13. Robert J. Young, In Command of France: French Foreign Policy and Military Planning, 1933–1940 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978), 163. 14. J. P. D. Dunbabin, “British Rearmament in the 1930s: A Chronology and Review,” Historical Journal 18, no. 3 (1975): 602. 15. Young, In Command of France, 163.

254

NOTES TO PAGES 74–80

16. Wark, Ultimate Enemy, 69. 17. Wark, Ultimate Enemy, quotations from 64, 66, 68, 78, respectively. 18. For details, see Wark, Ultimate Enemy, 97, and Yarhi-Milo, Knowing the Adversary, 53–54. 19. Yarhi-Milo, Knowing the Adversary, 55–56. 20. On the preceding data, see Adamthwaite, France and the Coming of the Second World War, 160–61. 21. Richard Pipes, Russia under the Bolshevik Regime (New York: Vintage, 1994), 63–64. 22. On the preceding, see Keith Neilson, Britain, Soviet Russia and the Collapse of the Versailles Order, 1919–1939 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 164, 218–19, 229–30. 23. Martin Thomas, Britain, France, and Appeasement: Anglo-French Relations in the Popular Front Era (New York: Berg, 1996), 181; Neilson, Britain, Soviet Russia and the Collapse, 131, 135, 257; Adamthwaite, France and the Coming of the Second World War, 51–52. 24. Louise Grace Shaw, The British Political Elite and the Soviet Union, 1937–1939 (London: Frank Cass, 2003), 31. 25. Christopher Hill, Cabinet Decisions on Foreign Policy: The British Experience, October 1938–June 1941 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 31, 39–41. 26. Neilson, Britain, Soviet Russia and the Collapse, 291. 27. Neville Chamberlain, letter to Ida, 23 July 1939, in The Neville Chamberlain Diary Letters: The Downing Street Years, 1934–1940, ed. Robert Self (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2005), 432. 28. CAB 27/625 fols. 100–101, 109, cited in R. A. C. Parker, Chamberlain and Appeasement, British Policy and the Coming of the Second World War (London: Macmillan, 1993), 234. 29. Shaw, British Political Elite, 188. See also the quotations in Neilson, Britain, Soviet Russia and the Collapse, 309; Michael Jabara Carley, “End of the ‘Low, Dishonest Decade’: Failure of the Anglo-Franco-Soviet Alliance in 1939,” Europe-Asia Studies 45, no. 2 (1993): 325; and Adamth­ waite, France and the Coming of the Second World War, 326–27. 30. Quoted in Duroselle, France and the Nazi Threat, 357; see also 360. 31. Jack Dukes, “The Soviet Union and Britain: The Alliance Negotiations of March-August, 1939,” East European Quarterly 19, no. 3 (1985): 312. See also Shaw, British Political Elite, 136–38, and Steiner, The Triumph of the Dark, 895, 901–6. 32. Peter J. Larmour, The French Radical Party in the 1930s (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1964), 63; Francis de Tarr, The French Radical Party: From Herriot to Mendès-France (London: Oxford University Press, 1961), 2, 7, 11. 33. Adamthwaite, France and the Coming of the Second World War, 26. 34. Joel Colton, Léon Blum: Humanist in Politics (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1966), 71–73. 35. Ronald Tiersky, French Communism, 1920–1972 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1974), 24 (first quotation), 25 (second quotation), 35, 45, 53, 85; David A. L. Levy, “The French Popular Front, 1936–37,” in The Popular Front in Europe, ed. Helen Graham and Paul Preston (London: Macmillan, 1987), 61, 66. 36. I exclude from my analysis governments that lasted for less than a month. Fernand Bouisson of the Republican Socialist Party was prime minister from June 1 to June 7, 1935. Socialist leader Léon Blum was prime minister from March 13 to April 10, 1938. 37. Radical Gaston Doumergue led a Center-Right coalition from February to November 1934; the conservative Pierre-Étienne Flandin (Democratic Alliance Party) was prime minister from November 1934 to June 1935; Pierre Laval led a conservative government from June 1935 to January 1936, and Radical Albert Sarraut was prime minister from January 1936 to June 1936. After Blum’s government fell, Radical politicians Camille Chautemps and Édouard Daladier were prime ministers from June 1937 to March 1938 and April 1938 to March 1940, respectively. 38. William Evans Scott, Alliance against Hitler: The Origins of the Franco-Soviet Pact (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1962), 135, 137–38, 189–90, 193–97, 219, 235–36, 239, 244–46, 251–52, 254. 39. Quoted in Scott, Alliance against Hitler, 239. 40. Quotations from Scott, Alliance against Hitler, 179, 194. De Kérillis’s quotations are from October 1934 articles in L’Echo de Paris. 41. Quoted in Scott, Alliance against Hitler, 247.

255

NOTES TO PAGES 81–86

42. Scott, Alliance against Hitler, 264. 43. Duroselle, France and the Nazi Threat, 116. 44. Carley, “End of the ‘Low, Dishonest Decade,’” 306. 45. Scott, Alliance against Hitler, 267. 46. On conservatives’ and Radicals’ interest before 1936 in deepening the pact based on military exchanges and accords, see Scott, Alliance against Hitler, 106, 119–20, 245, 254. 47. John E. Dreifort, “The French Popular Front and the Franco-Soviet Pact, 1936–37: A Di­ lemma in Foreign Policy,” Journal of Contemporary History 11, no. 2–3 (1976): 232n6. 48. Dreifort, “French Popular Front,” 232n15. See also Carley, “End of the ‘Low, Dishonest Decade,’” 307, and Patrice Buffotot, “The French High Command and the Franco-Soviet Alli­ ance, 1933–1939,” Journal of Strategic Studies 5, no. 4 (1983): 556. 49. The Ambassador in France (Bullitt) to the Secretary of State, December 4, 1937, Foreign Relations of the United States (hereafter cited as FRUS), Diplomatic Papers, 1937, vol. 1 (Washing­ ton, DC: Government Printing Office, 1954), https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1937v01/d105. 50. Michael Jabara Carley, “A Soviet Eye on France from the rue de Grenelle in Paris, 1924–1940,” Diplomacy and Statecraft 17, no. 2 (2006): 336; see also 297. 51. Quoted in Carley, “Soviet Eye on France,” 322. 52. Quoted in Adamthwaite, France and the Coming of the Second World War, 73; see also 89. 53. Quoted in Carley, “Soviet Eye on France,” 323. 54. Quoted in Michael Jabara Carley, “Prelude to Defeat: Franco-Soviet Relations, 1919–1939,” Historical Reflections 22, no. 1 (1996): 182–83. 55. Quoted in Carley, “End of the ‘Low, Dishonest Decade,’” 322. 56. Numerous scholars of the period concur with this assessment. Patrice Buffotot writes that the French high command in the 1930s constructed “an alliance system from which the Soviet Union was excluded” (Buffotot, “French High Command,” 556). John Dreifort states that the pact “lacked teeth” and “substance” and was a “dead letter” (Dreifort, “French Popu­ lar Front,” 217, 219). Carley writes that a defining feature of French foreign policies in the 1930s “was the failure to conclude a military alliance with the USSR” (Carley, “Prelude to Defeat,” 187). For an exception, see Scott, Alliance against Hitler. 57. Coulondre to Foreign Minister Georges Bonnet, September 17, 1938, cited in Adamth­ waite, France and the Coming of the Second World War, 204 58. “Situation,” April 9, 1939, 7N2524, Service Historique de l’Armée de Terre (hereafter cited as SHAT), cited in Anthony Adamthwaite, “French Military Intelligence and the Coming of War, 1935–1939,” in Intelligence and International Relations, 1900–1945, ed. Christopher An­ drew and Jeremy Noakes (Exeter: Exeter University Press, 1987), 196; see also 192. 59. Duroselle, France and the Nazi Threat, 250–63; Adamthwaite, France and the Coming of the Second World War, 326–27. 60. Adamthwaite, France and the Coming of the Second World War, 312, 327, 335–36, 354. 61. Quoted in Carley, “End of the ‘Low, Dishonest Decade,’” 326. Quotation is from Dou­ menc, “Souvenirs de la mission en Russie, août 1939,” 11–12, SHAT 7N 3185. 62. Steiner, Triumph of the Dark, 906. See also Carley, “End of the ‘Low, Dishonest Decade,’” 328, 332. 63. Quoted in Duroselle, France and the Nazi Threat, 363. See also Steiner, Triumph of the Dark, 909. 64. Steiner, Triumph of the Dark, 908. 65. Members of the French Right, as William Evans Scott explains, “would accept the Franco-Soviet Pact so long as the French ‘Soviets’ [French communists] were only a nuisance” and not a powerful revolutionary threat. Scott, Alliance against Hitler, 262. 66. Jacques Fauvet, Histoire du Parti Communiste Français I: De la guerre à la guerre 1917–1939 (Paris: Fayard, 1964), 111. 67. Edward Shorter and Charles Tilly, Strikes in France, 1830–1968 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974), 314. See also Scott, Alliance against Hitler, 156. 68. Scott, Alliance against Hitler, 167–68. 69. Daniel R. Brower, The New Jacobins: The French Communist Party and the Popular Front (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1968), 86.

256

NOTES TO PAGES 86–90

70. Larmour, French Radical Party in the 1930s, 152, 172–76. 71. As Carley puts this point, “for the right, which moved into the centre of French politics, the united front [of communists and socialists] .  .  . made matters worse by legitimizing the French communist party.” Carley, “Soviet Eye on France,” 336–37. 72. Levy, “French Popular Front,” 61. 73. Scott, Alliance against Hitler, 264. See also Carley, “Soviet Eye on France,” 315. 74. Quoted in Carley, “Soviet Eye on France,” 319. 75. William D. Irvine, French Conservatism in Crisis: The Republican Federation of France in the 1930s (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1979), 167. See also Charles A. Micaud, The French Right and Nazi Germany, 1933–1939 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1943), 79. 76. Quoted in Micaud, French Right and Nazi Germany, 80 (emphasis added). The quotation is from L’Echo de Paris, February 10, 1936. 77. De Kérillis explicitly indicated that the power of the communist fifth column at the elite level was the key to conservatives’ opposition to a Soviet alliance, when he stated in a June 1936 speech in parliament, “We will accept the Franco-Soviet Pact when there are no longer seventy-two Russian deputies [French communists] on the benches of the French Chamber.” Quoted in Micaud, French Right and Nazi Germany, 111. The quotation is from Journal Officiel, June 23, 1936. See also Irvine, French Conservatism in Crisis, 167–68. 78. The electoral success of the Popular Front and the Communist Party shortly after the rati­ fication of the pact with the Soviet Union is consistent with my argument that claims that alliances with ideological enemies abroad can help boost the fortunes of ideological enemies at home. 79. Tiersky, French Communism, 58; Agnes Cornell, Jorgen Moller, and Svend-Erik Skaaning, Democratic Stability in an Age of Crisis: Reassessing the Interwar Period (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 161. 80. Micaud, French Right and Nazi Germany, 83–110; Irvine, French Conservatism in Crisis, 83–84, 88. 81. Shorter and Tilly, Strikes in France, 314. 82. Levy, “French Popular Front,” 58, 67. There were other large outbreaks of strikes and protests primarily organized by the Communist Party in September 1936, March and May 1937, and November 1938. Levy, “French Popular Front,” 75, 77–78; Adamthwaite, France and the Coming of the Second World War, 73. 83. Jackson, France and the Nazi Menace, 179. See also Irvine, French Conservatism in Crisis, 82, 85. 84. See Larmour, French Radical Party in the 1930s, 177, 213, 218, 245, 253; Julian Jackson, The Popular Front in France: Defending Democracy, 1934–38 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 197, 231, 242, 247; Anthony Adamthwaite, Grandeur and Misery: France’s Bid for Power in Europe, 1914–1940 (London: Arnold, 1995), 172; and Carley, “End of the ‘Low, Dishonest De­ cade,’” 307. 85. Quoted in Carley, “Soviet Eye on France,” 323. 86. Quoted in Carley, “Prelude to Defeat,” 323. 87. Nicole Jordan, The Popular Front and Central Europe: The Dilemmas of French Impotence, 1918–1940 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 228. 88. Dreifort, “French Popular Front,” 226. See also Buffotot, “French High Command,” 556; Martin S. Alexander, The Republic in Danger: General Maurice Gamelin and the Politics of French Defense, 1933–1940 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 296; Young, In Command of France, 237; and Micaud, French Right and Nazi Germany, 82. Delbos in the fall of 1936 instructed Coulondre to tell Litvinov: “I come to tell you [that] if things continue as they are going, before long there will no assistance pact. French public opinion is sick and tired of Comintern med­ dling, which we know . . . is inspired if not also directly operated by the Soviet Government itself. Either Soviet interference shall cease, or the pact will become . . . a dead letter.” John E. Dreifort, Yvon Delbos at the Quai D’Orsay: French Foreign Policy during the Popular Front Era (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1973), 106–7, 109, 117–19, 227n60 (quotation). In the same vein, Foreign Minister Bonnet reportedly stated that because Moscow was using the French Communist Party to provoke strikes and domestic unrest in November 1938 “in order to foment revolution,” the pact of mutual assistance was “dead.” Quoted in Adamthwaite, France and the Coming of the Second World War, 73.

257

NOTES TO PAGES 90–95

89. Jordan, Popular Front and Central Europe, 208. See also Carley, “End of the ‘Low, Dishon­ est Decade,’” 309. 90. Buffotot, “French High Command,” 556. 91. Adamthwaite, France and the Coming of the Second World War, 188. 92. Adamthwaite, France and the Coming of the Second World War, 45. 93. Adamthwaite, Grandeur and Misery, 207. For similar analyses, see Micaud, French Right and Nazi Germany, 81; Jackson, France and the Nazi Menace, 245; Scott, Alliance against Hitler, 265; and Irvine, French Conservatism in Crisis, xx. 94. Quoted in Jordan, Popular Front and Central Europe, 228. 95. Stuart Ball, Portrait of a Party: The Conservative Party in Britain, 1918–1945 (Oxford: Ox­ ford University Press, 2013), 25. 96. Quoted in Ball, Portrait of a Party, 34. 97. Habib Manzer, “British Measures against Indian Communists, 1934–37,” Proceedings of the Indian National Congress 65 (2004): 777 (first quotation), 779 (second quotation). See also Michele Louro, “The Johnstone Affair and Anti-Communism in Interwar India,” Journal of Con­ temporary History 53, no. 1 (2018): 39, 44. 98. Manzer, “British Measures against Indian Communists,” 776, 782; Louro, “Johnstone Affair,” 58–59. 99. Ali Raza, “Separating the Wheat from the Chaff: Meerut and the Creation of ‘Official’ Communism in India,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 33, no. 4 (2013): 318. 100. Quoted in Michele L. Louro and Carolien Stolte, “The Meerut Conspiracy Case in Comparative and International Perspective,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 33, no. 4 (2013): 310–11. 101. Quoted in Carolien Stolte, “Trade Unions on Trial: The Meerut Conspiracy Case and Trade Union Internationalism, 1929–1932,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Mid­ dle East 33, no. 4 (2013): 352. 102. Ball, Portrait of a Party, 52–53. 103. Louro, “Johnstone Affair,” 45n17. 104. Anthony Eden, Facing the Dictators: The Memoirs of Anthony Eden (London: Cassell, 1962), 589. 105. “Soviet Union, Annual Report, 1935,” Chilston, January 31, 1936, N871/871/38, Public Record Office (hereafter cited as PRO) FO 371 20352, cited in Michael Jabara Carley, “‘A Fearful Concatenation of Circumstances’: The Anglo Soviet Rapprochement, 1934–6,” Contemporary European History 5, no. 1 (1996): 63. Notice that Chilston (and Eden and Halifax in quotations below) refer to regime vulnerability in the empire as an “internal,” “domestic,” or “home”­ based threat. 106. Neilson, Britain, Soviet Russia and the Collapse, 146. Hoare’s conversation with Maisky, June 12, 1935, FO 371/19451/N3187/17/38. 107. Note by Eden, November 20, 1935, N5966/17/38, PRO FO 371 19452, cited in Carley, “‘Fearful Concatenation of Circumstances,’” 56. 108. Minutes by Eden, January 15, 1936, and January 10, 1936, N479/20/38, PRO FO 371 20338, cited in Carley, “‘Fearful Concatenation of Circumstances,’” 60. 109. Minutes by Stanhope and Cranborne, January 14, 1936, N479/20/38, PRO FO 371 20338 cited in Carley, “‘Fearful Concatenation of Circumstances,’” 60. 110. Committee on Foreign Policy, July 10, 1939, C9761/3356/18, PRO FO 371 23070, cited in Carley, “End of the ‘Low, Dishonest Decade,’” 325. 111. The remaining main source of regime vulnerability—concerns about the harmful impact of demonstration effects created by revolutions in other countries—was not a major concern for British conservatives in the 1930s. Conservatives were worried that a communist victory in the Spanish Civil War would help communism spread in other countries. This was the main reason why these officials supported a policy of nonintervention that eschewed alliance with the Soviet Union. Conservatives, though, were primarily concerned that commu­ nism in Spain would spread to France and Portugal, not to Britain. For quotations by conserva­ tives expressing these fears, see Douglas Little, “Red Scare, 1936: Anti-Bolshevism and the

258

NOTES TO PAGES 96–100

Origins of British Non-Intervention in the Spanish Civil War,” Journal of Contemporary History 23, no. 2 (1988): 299, 301, 303–4. 112. Shaw, British Political Elite, 18; Steiner, Triumph of the Dark, 414, 443. 113. Chamberlain to Ida, his sister, March 20, 1938, Chamberlain Papers, NC 18/1/1042, cited in Neilson, Britain, Soviet Russia and the Collapse, 238. See also Shaw, British Political Elite, 20. 114. Both quotations from Shaw, British Political Elite, 159. 115. Chamberlain to Hilda, his sister, April 29, 1939, Chamberlain Papers NC 18/1/1096, cited in Neilson, Britain, Soviet Russia and the Collapse, 285. 116. “Notes on Defence Expenditure Papers,” labeled “very secret,” T. Phillips (director of plans), November 10, 1937, Adm 205/80, cited in Neilson, Britain, Soviet Russia and the Collapse, 227. Critics of appeasement were astounded over the logic expressed in this memo and else­ where. Former chairman of the Labour Party Hugh Dalton told Vansittart at the time of the Munich Crisis in September 1938 that “it was amazing how some people, otherwise intelligent, had made a fixation about Russia and seemed almost to prefer that this country should be de­ feated in war without Russian aid rather than win with it.” Hugh Dalton, diary entry, Septem­ ber 17, 1938, 1/19/27, Dalton Papers, cited in Shaw, British Political Elite, 76. 117. Minute by Lascelles, January 3, 1938, FO 371/23677, cited in Shaw, British Political Elite, 160. Orme Sargent and Lancelot Oliphant, both deputy undersecretaries of state, agreed with these views. See Shaw, British Political Elite, 160. 118. Harvey diary entry, May 16, 1939, Harvey Papers, Add MSS 56395, cited in Neilson, Britain, Soviet Russia and the Collapse, 291–92. 119. “The Foreign Secretary Opens Up,” The Observer, September 16, 1962, cited in Margaret George, The Warped Vision, British Foreign Policy 1933–1939 (Pittsburgh: University of Pitts­ burgh Press, 1965), 220. 120. Letter to Phipps from Cooper, December 7, 1938, PHPPS 3/2, Phipps Papers, cited in Shaw, British Political Elite, 40. 121. Steiner, Triumph of the Dark, 437–38. See also Carley, “End of the ‘Low, Dishonest Decade.’” 122. Michael Jabara Carley, 1939: The Alliance That Never Was and the Coming of World War II (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1999), 7 123. Hankey to Phipps, October 9, 1936, Phipps Papers, 3/3, cited in Post, Dilemmas of Appeasement, 255. 124. Chamberlain to Runciman, September 12, 1938, PREM 1/266A, cited in Maurice Cowling, The Impact of Hitler: British Politics and British Policy, 1933–1940 (Cambridge: Cam­ bridge University Press, 1975), 186. 125. Chamberlain to King George VI, September 13, 1938, RAGVI, Conf 235. Cited in Shaw, British Political Elite, 18. 126. Halifax to Phipps, November 1, 1938, Phipps Papers, PHPP 1/21, cited in Neilson, Britain, Soviet Russia and the Collapse, 259. For similar quotations by British and French officials, see Shaw, British Political Elite, 127, 160; Carley, “Prelude to Defeat,” 180; and Jackson, France and the Nazi Menace, 373. The belief that the ideological gulf dividing Germany and the Soviet Union would keep these countries divided was a key reason why the Nazi-Soviet pact of non­ aggression that was signed in August 1939 was such a surprise to Western decision makers and a source of (in Neilson’s phrase) “bewilderment” to many. See Neilson, Britain, Soviet Russia and the Collapse, 314n253, and Murray, Change in the European Balance of Power, 303–4. On the failure to anticipate the Nazi-Soviet pact, see D. Cameron Watt, “An Intelligence Surprise: The Failure of the Foreign Office to Anticipate the Nazi-Soviet Pact,” Intelligence and National Secu­ rity 4, no. 3 (1989): 512–34, and Adamthwaite, “French Military Intelligence and the Coming of War,” 197–98. 127. On French conservatives’ ideological hostility to the Soviet Union from its creation, see Michael Jabara Carley, “Episodes from the Early Cold War: Franco-Soviet Relations, 1917–1927,” Europe-Asia Studies 52, no. 7 (2000): 1275–305. On Radicals’ greater affinity for fascism than communism, see Robert Michael, The Radicals and Nazi Germany: The Revolution in French Attitudes toward Foreign Policy, 1933–1939 (Washington, DC: University Press

259

NOTES TO PAGES 100–104

of America, 1982), 4–6, 15, 17, 28–29, 35; Larmour, French Radical Party in the 1930s, 177, 218–23. Radicals, though, were willing to ally with French communists in the Popular Front when the danger from French fascism appeared noticeably greater. 128. Larmour, French Radical Party in the 1930s, 177. 129. John M. Owen, The Clash of Ideas in World Politics: Transnational Networks, States, and Regime Change, 1510–2010 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010), 40. 130. The report is in Documents Diplomatiques Français (hereafter cited as DDF), 2nd series, vol. 3, no. 343, 510–14, cited in Young, In Command of France, 147. The first quotation is Young’s summary of the report. 131. Young, In Command of France, 145. 132. Adamthwaite, France and the Coming of the Second World War, 49. 133. Phipps to Halifax, no. 373, March 28, 1939, Documents on British Foreign Policy (hereafter cited as DBFP), 3rd series, vol. 4, 535, cited in Carley, 1939, 108. 134. Adamthwaite, France and the Coming of the Second World War, 108. 135. Quoted in Scott, Alliance against Hitler, 264–65. The quotation is from L’Echo de Paris, February 10, 1936. 136. Robert J. Young, France and the Origins of the Second World War (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996), 85–86. 137. Irvine, French Conservatism in Crisis, 177; see also 179. See also Micaud, French Right and Nazi Germany, 166. 138. Quoted in Colton, Léon Blum, 199. The quotation is from Gamelin’s memoirs, Servir, published in 1946. 139. Quoted in Carley, 1939, 48. The quotation is from Kurt Brauer, German chargé d’affaires in Paris, to German Foreign Ministry, no. 433, September 7, 1938, Documents on Ger­ man Foreign Policy (hereafter cited as DGFP), series D (London, 1949–56), vol. 2, 712–14. Dala­ dier made an identical statement the same month to US ambassador Bullitt, asserting that if the great powers, including the Soviet Union, united in an alliance, “Germany would be de­ feated in the war . . . but the only gainers would be the Bolsheviks as there would be social revolution in every country of Europe.” Quoted in Adamthwaite, France and the Coming of the Second World War, 108. 140. DGFP, vol. 2, 254, cited in Andrew Rothstein, The Munich Conspiracy (London: Law­ rence & Wishart, 1958), 256. 141. Most obviously, the Germans named their November 1936 alliance with Japan (and joined by Italy the following year) the “Anti-Comintern Pact,” indicating that the powers were directing their cooperation not only against the Soviet Union but also the Soviet Union’s pri­ mary instrument of communist subversion. 142. Lorna L. Waddington, “The Anti-Komintern and Nazi Anti-Bolshevik Propaganda in the 1930s,” Journal of Contemporary History 42, no. 4 (2007): 573–74. 143. Both quotations from Willard C. Frank Jr., “The Spanish Civil War and the Coming of the Second World War,” International History Review 9, no. 3 (August 1987): 382. The latter quo­ tation is Frank’s summary of Hitler’s wedging strategy. 144. Thomas Jones, A Diary with Letters, 1931–1950 (London: Oxford University Press, 1954), 186. 145. Jones, Diary with Letters, 209. See also George, Warped Vision, 85–88. 146. Quoted in Jordan, Popular Front and Central Europe, 207. Here we see the Nazis engag­ ing in ideological wedging policies by emphasizing fears of regime vulnerability and the So­ viet Union’s subversive intent and capacity. On the Nazis’ emphasis to Western audiences about the subversive ability of the Comintern, see Waddington, “Anti-Komintern and Nazi Anti-Bolshevik Propaganda,” 580–81, 590–91. 147. Jordan, Popular Front and Central Europe, 208. 148. Quoted in Jordan, Popular Front and Central Europe, 208. Quotation from DDF, 2nd se­ ries, 3, no. 334. 149. Quoted in Micaud, French Right and Nazi Germany, 115. The quotation is from Journal Officiel, December 5, 1936. For similar analysis, see Carley, “‘Fearful Concatenation of Circum­ stances,’” 44.

260

NOTES TO PAGES 104–109

150. Quoted in Micaud, French Right and Nazi Germany, 147. 151. Nathanael Greene, Crisis and Decline: The French Socialist Party in the Popular Front Era (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1969), 53. 152. Vansittart, “The World Situation and British Rearmament,” labeled “most secret,” De­ cember 31, 1936, FO 371/20467/W18855/18355/50. See also Minute by Collier, November 24, 1936, W16391/9549/41, PRO FO 371 20586, cited in Little, “Red Scare,” 305. 153. Lord Vansittart, Lessons of My Life (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1943), 145. 154. Quoted in Colton, Léon Blum, 120. The quotation is from a party congress in Mulhouse in June 1935. 155. Jackson, Popular Front in France, 191. See also Greene, Crisis and Decline, 28. 156. John Marcus, French Socialism in the Crisis Years, 1933–1936: Fascism and the French Left (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1958), 124–27. 157. Both quotations in Greene, Crisis and Decline, 53. The first is from Le Populaire, Septem­ ber 3, 1935; the second is from a book Zyromski authored in the same year. 158. Quoted in Colton, Léon Blum, 205. 159. Colton, Léon Blum, 210; see also 211. 160. Quoted in Colton, Léon Blum, 312. The quotation is from the party congress in Royan in June 1938. See also Greene, Crisis and Decline, 222, 259. 161. Colton, Léon Blum, 259–59. Blum’s government officially adopted a policy of noninter­ vention in the Spanish conflict, primarily to avoid civil war in France. It, however, violated this policy in practice. In his efforts to secretly ally with the Soviet Union in Spain, Blum had the full support of Zyromski and the left wing of the socialist party. As Nathanael Greene explains, “the Spanish Civil War stiffened [Zyromski’s] conviction that Nazi Germany must be opposed by a firm military alliance of France, Great Britain, and the USSR, and he pointed with pride to Soviet intervention in Spain, explaining that it was motivated by the desire both to save Span­ ish democracy and to spur London and Paris into action against fascism.” Greene, Crisis and Decline, 132. 162. Jordan, Popular Front and Central Europe, 210. 163. Colton, Léon Blum, 211; Jordan, Popular Front and Central Europe, 272, 313. 164. Quoted in Jordan, Popular Front and Central Europe, 272. Blum’s order was issued May 26, 1937. 165. All of the preceding quotations are in Jordan, Popular Front and Central Europe, 263. Cot was a member of the left wing of the centrist Radical Party but recognized that he was virtually a socialist by ideology. Mildred Schlesinger, “The Development of the Radical Party in the Third Republic,” Journal of Modern History 26, no. 3 (1974), 495. 166. Jackson, France and the Nazi Menace, 236–37. 167. Dreifort, “French Popular Front,” 221; Alexander, Republic in Danger, 298–99. 168. Quoted in Carley, “End of the ‘Low, Dishonest Decade,’” 307; Buffotot, “French High Command,” 551. 169. Both quotations in Greene, Crisis and Decline, 201. See also 202 and Colton, Léon Blum, 299, 314. 170. Greene, Crisis and Decline, 225. 171. Quoted in Colton, Léon Blum, 315, 329. The first quotation is from Le Populaire, Septem­ ber 8, 1938. The second is from a speech to the Chamber of Deputies, October 4, 1938. 172. Andrew J. Williams, Labour and Russia: The Attitude of the Labour Party to the USSR, 1924–1934 (New York: Manchester University Press, 1989), 54, 66, 214, 225; William Rayburn Tucker, The Attitude of the British Labour Party towards European and Collective Security Problems, 1920–1939 (Geneva: Imprimerie du Journal Genève, 1950), 249. 173. Quoted in Greene, Crisis and Decline, 273. The quotation is from Le Populaire, June 1939. 174. Tucker, Attitude of the British Labour Party, 233. 175. Tucker, Attitude of the British Labour Party, 232. See also Michael R. Gordon, Conflict and Consensus in Labour’s Foreign Policy, 1914–1965 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1969), 31, and Williams, Labour and Russia, 214, 239. 176. Quoted in John F. Naylor, Labour’s International Policy: The Labour Party in the 1930s (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1969), 258.

261

NOTES TO PAGES 109–115

177. Tucker, Attitude of the British Labour Party, 220–25, 231; Naylor, Labour’s International Policy, 182–83, 244–46, 250–51, 258, 260; Bill Jones, The Russia Complex: The British Labour Party and the Soviet Union (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1977), 28–29. 178. Quoted in Shaw, British Political Elite, 80 179. For quotations, see Shaw, British Political Elite, 76–77. 180. Naylor, Labour’s International Policy, 297; see also 298–300. 181. Parliamentary Debates, Commons, 5s, CCCXLV 9 April 3, 1939, cols. 2479–780, and CCCXLVII, May 19, 1939, col. 1823, cited in Tucker, Attitude of the British Labour Party, 236. 182. Quoted in Naylor, Labour’s International Policy, 297. 183. Quoted in Gordon, Conflict and Consensus in Labour’s Foreign Policy, 31. 184. Chamberlain to Ida, his sister, April 9, 1939, NC 18/1/1093, Chamberlain papers, cited in Carley, 1939, 126. See also Naylor, Labour’s International Policy, 300. 185. Quoted in Tucker, Attitude of the British Labour Party, 136. 186. Tucker, Attitude of the British Labour Party, 137, 136, respectively. See also Naylor, Labour’s International Policy, 46–49, and Gordon, Conflict and Consensus in Labour’s Foreign Policy, 73–74. 187. Greene, Crisis and Decline, 23. 188. Quoted in Greene, Crisis and Decline, 24–25. The quotation is from Le Populaire, June 14, 1933. 189. Blum referred to the ideological overlap with the Soviet Union despite major ideological disagreements in a 1920 editorial: “[French Socialists] can feel . . . the greatest love for the Russian Revolution [and] be resolved to protect it by all means, without agreeing . . . that Russian revolu­ tionary methods are applicable to French socialism.” Quoted in Colton, Léon Blum, 50; the quota­ tion is from an October 1920 editorial in L’Humanite. Labour Party politicians agreed with these sentiments. One leading Labour politician, Susan Lawrence, described the Soviet Union in 1924 as “a great experiment in socialism; and that is not a fact to be forgotten, however we may rightly deplore the want of liberty.” This was a point, according to Andrew Williams, on which “nearly all the Labour Party were in accord.” Lawrence in an article in the Birmingham Town Crier, Octo­ ber 3, 1924, cited in Williams, Labour and Russia, 71. 190. Quoted in Williams, Labour and Russia, 75. The quotation is from an October 1927 frontpage editorial. See also Tucker, Attitude of the British Labour Party, 233, and Jones, Russia Com­ plex, 14, 26, 28. The fact that socialists expressed ideological affinity for the Soviet Union, both on its own terms and in relation to fascist states, well before the power rise of Germany indi­ cates that these ideological relationships, contra realist arguments, were not being manipu­ lated in response to changes in power distributions. 191. Tucker, Attitude of the British Labour Party, 233. 192. See, for example, Greene, Crisis and Decline, 25. 193. Quoted in Marcus, French Socialism in the Crisis Years, 124–25. See also Greene, Crisis and Decline, 13–30, 49–64, and Donald Noel Baker, “The Politics of Socialist Protest in France: The Left Wing of the Socialist Party, 1921–1939,” Journal of Modern History 43, no. 1 (1971): 3–16. 194. Quoted in Naylor, Labour’s International Policy, 216. 195. Quoted in Greene, Crisis and Decline, 26. The quotation is from Le Populaire, April 11, 1935. 196. Both quotations in Greene, Crisis and Decline, 28–29. 197. Colton, Léon Blum, 101–3. 198. Greene, Crisis and Decline, 17. See also 9–18 and Colton, Léon Blum, 92–95, 99, 102–4. 199. Greene, Crisis and Decline, 25. 200. Jordan, Popular Front and Central Europe, 267. 201. Baker, “Politics of Socialist Protest in France,” 14. 202. Jones, Russia Complex, 22; see also vii, 11–12. For quotations by Labour Party leaders expressing ideology-based admiration for the Soviet Union despite important differences, see Williams, Labour and Russia, 70–71. 203. Williams, Labour and Russia, 18, 135–41, 157, 204–8; F. S. Northedge and Audrey Wells, Britain and Soviet Communism: The Impact of a Revolution (London: Macmillan, 1982), 186; Jones, vii, 6, 11–12, 16, 22. 204. Gordon, Conflict and Consensus in Labour’s Foreign Policy, 28, 27; Jones, Russia Complex, 6, 16, 22; Williams, Labour and Russia, 70. 205. Randall Schweller’s neoclassical realist theory of underbalancing provides another po­ tential explanation of British and French balancing policies in the 1930s. This argument, though,

262

NOTES TO PAGES 115–122

is in important ways complementary to mine. To Schweller, lack of elite consensus in the Western democracies resulted in the failure to adequately balance Germany. In Britain from 1936 to 1939, the “mass of conservatives” wanted to appease Germany, whereas the “mass of Labour” wanted to deter it, largely by forming a grand alliance with France and the Soviet Union. French elites, too, “made different and contradictory assessments about the degree of threat in the external environment,” with most conservatives more hostile to the Soviet Union than Germany. Randall L. Schweller, “Unanswered Threats: A Neoclassical Realist Theory of Underbalancing,” Interna­ tional Security 29, no. 2 (2004): 175, 193, 195. I agree that partisan elite dissensus was critical to British and French balancing policies but explain why ideological variables were the key to creat­ ing this dissensus in the first place. 206. Thomas Christensen and Jack Snyder, “Chain Gangs and Passed Bucks: Predicting Alliance Patterns in Multipolarity,” International Organization 44, no. 2 (1990): 159–65; Ken­ neth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (New York: McGraw Hill, 1979), 165; John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: W. W. Norton, 2001), 308–13. 207. Barry R. Posen, The Sources of Military Doctrine: France, Britain, and Germany between the World Wars (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1984), 123. See also 125 and Young, In Com­ mand of France, 58. 208. Jackson, France and the Nazi Menace, 181; Duroselle, France and the Nazi Threat, 238, 269; Alexander, Republic in Danger, 284; Peter Jackson, “Intelligence and the End of Appeasement,” in French Foreign and Defence Policy, 1918–1940: The Decline and Fall of a Great Power, ed. Robert Boyce (London: Routledge, 1998), 245. 209. Jackson, France and the Nazi Menace, 63–64, quotation from 63. 210. Loizeau indicated that Italy could help create a second front in southern Europe. All quotations from Scott, Alliance against Hitler, 196, 197n82, 197, respectively. 211. Thomas, Britain, France, and Appeasement, 38, 41, 164, 204, 229; Young, In Command of France, 161. 212. Alexander, Republic in Danger, 272. 213. For quotations by British leaders in the spring of 1939 indicating the importance of Eastern Europe to Britain’s security, see Hill, Cabinet Decisions on Foreign Policy, 25. 214. Quoted in Neilson, Britain, Soviet Russia and the Collapse, 291. 215. CAB 27/623 25 meeting, March 15, 1938, cited in Shaw, British Political Elite, 11. For similar quotations by British and French leaders, see Neilson, Britain, Soviet Russia and the Col­ lapse, 130, 132, 158–60, and Irvine, French Conservatism in Crisis, 169. 216. On the widespread belief in the “war-revolution nexus,” at least among conservatives and Radicals, see Irvine, French Conservatism in Crisis, 159–203; Carley, 1939, 22. 217. Tucker, Attitude of the British Labour Party, 221. 218. Quoted in Jackson, Popular Front in France, 191. 219. Quoted in Greene, Crisis and Decline, 53. 220. Neilson, Britain, Soviet Russia and the Collapse, 215. 221. Shaw, British Political Elite, 85–86. For details on how these objectives were plausible, see Shaw, British Political Elite, 14, and Adamthwaite, France and the Coming of the Second World War, 164. 222. For details on these varying assessments of Soviet power, see Keith Neilson, “‘Pursued by a Bear’: British Estimates of Soviet Military Strength and Anglo-Soviet Relations, 1922–1939,” Canadian Journal of History 28, no. 2 (1993): 210–15. 223. Neilson, “‘Pursued by a Bear,’” 219 (emphasis in original). 224. For details on the preceding, see Steiner, Triumph of the Dark, 417; Buffotot, “French High Command,” 550–51; and Carley, “End of the ‘Low, Dishonest Decade,’” 307.

3. A Tipping-Point Frenemy Alliance 1. Henry Kissinger, White House Years (Boston: Little, Brown, 1979), 726–27. 2. Quotations from, respectively, Kissinger to RN, “My Trip to Peking, June 19–23,” June 27, 1972, box 851, National Security Files, Nixon Presidential Materials Staff, 2, and Kissinger to RN, “My Trip to China,” March 2, 1973, box 6, President’s Personal Files, Nixon Presidential

263

NOTES TO PAGES 122–128

Materials Staff, 2–3, both cited in Evelyn Goh, Constructing the U.S. Rapprochement with China, 1961–1974: From “Red Menace” to “Tacit Ally” (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 223 (emphasis in original). 3. Memorandum of conversation, White House, December 10, 1975, http://www.fordli brarymuseum.gov/library/document/0314/1553320.pdf. 4. For a sampling of scholars who support the realpolitik explanation of Sino-American rapprochement, see Robert S. Ross, Negotiating Cooperation: The United States and China, 1969–1989 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995), 4; Raymond L. Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation: American Soviet Relations from Nixon to Reagan (Washington, DC: Brookings Insti­ tution, 1995), 235; and Herbert J. Ellison, “Soviet Chinese Relations: The Experience of Two Decades,” in China, the United States, and the Soviet Union: Tripolarity and Policy Making in the Cold War, ed. Robert S. Ross (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1993), 95. 5. A tacit alliance is often defined as one based on informal commitments as opposed to formal commitments enshrined in a treaty. 6. Ross, Negotiating Cooperation, 88. 7. Frederick C. Teiwes and Warren Sun, The End of the Maoist Era: Chinese Politics during the Twilight of the Cultural Revolution, 1972–1976 (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2007), 10. 8. John W. Garver, China’s Decision for Rapprochement with the United States, 1968–1971 (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1982), 53. 9. Economic data from Angus Maddison, Contours of the World Economy 1–2030 AD: Essays in Macro-Economic History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 379, table A.4. Population data from National Material Capabilities (v5.0) dataset, David J. Singer, Stuart Bremer, and John Stuckey, “Capability Distribution, Uncertainty, and Major Power War, 1820–1965,” in Peace, War, and Numbers, ed. Bruce Russett (Beverly Hills, CA: SAGE, 1972), 19–48. 10. Calculated from National Material Capabilities (v5.0) dataset. The Soviet Union in the 1970s possessed over one-third of the land-based power in the system, which is the point at which historically powers tend to form balancing coalitions. Jack S. Levy and William R. Thompson, “Hegemonic Threats and Great-Power Balancing in Europe, 1495–1999,” Security Studies 14, no. 1 (2005): 18. 11. On the preceding, see Ross, Negotiating Cooperation, 24; Garthoff, Détente and Confronta­ tion, 208; Garver, China’s Decision for Rapprochement, 94–95; Ming-Yen Tsai, From Adversaries to Partners? Chinese and Russian Military Cooperation after the Cold War (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003), 34–35; and M. Taylor Fravel, Strong Borders, Secure Nation: Cooperation and Conflict in China’s Territorial Disputes (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008), 205. 12. On the preceding, see Lorenz M. Lüthi, “Restoring Chaos to History: Sino-SovietAmerican Relations, 1969,” China Quarterly 210 (2012): 382–83; Yang Kuisong, “The Sino-Soviet Border Clash of 1969: From Zhenbao Island to Sino American Rapprochement,” Cold War His­ tory 1, no. 1 (2000): 34; David Bachman, “Mobilizing for War: China’s Limited Ability to Cope with the Soviet Threat,” Issues and Studies 43, no. 4 (2007): 8; and Patrick Tyler, A Great Wall: Six Presidents and China; An Interpretive History (New York: Century Foundation, 1999), 60. 13. Quoted in Garver, China’s Decision for Rapprochement, 69. The first sentence in this quota­ tion is Garver’s summary of part of the broadcast. 14. On the preceding points, see Garver, China’s Decision for Rapprochement, 68–69; Kuisong, “Sino-Soviet Border Clash,” 22, 34–36; Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation, 209; S. Mahmud Ali, U.S.-China Cold War Collaboration (London: Routledge, 2005), 10; and Lüthi, “Restoring Chaos to History,” 390. 15. Quoted in Ella Akerman and Tracey German, “From Soviet Bloc to Democratic Security Building?,” in Security Dynamics in the Former Soviet Bloc, ed. Graeme Herd and Jennifer D. Moroney (New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003), 5. 16. Quoted in Garver, China’s Decision for Rapprochement, 70. 17. Kuisong, “Sino-Soviet Border Clash,” 22. 18. On these developments, see Li Jie, “Changes in China’s Domestic Situation in the 1960s and Sino-US Relations,” in Re-examining the Cold War: U.S.-China Diplomacy, 1954–1973, ed. Robert S. Ross and Jiang Changbin (Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2001), 312; Wang, “From Enmity to Rapprochement,” 45, 411, 452, 455, 470; Kuisong, “Sino-Soviet Border

264

NOTES TO PAGES 128–132

Clash,” 36–37, 40–41, 48; Lüthi, “Restoring Chaos to History,” 391, 393–94; Garver, China’s Decision for Rapprochement, 73; and Wang Zhongchun, “The Soviet Factor in Sino-American Normalization, 1969–1979,” in Normalization of US-China Relations: An International History, ed. William C. Kirby, Robert S. Ross, and Gong Li (Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2005), 151. 19. Barry Naughton, “The Third Front: Defence Industrialization in the Chinese Interior,” China Quarterly 115 (1988): 351–86. 20. Robert S. Ross, “From Lin Biao to Deng Xiaoping: Elite Instability and China’s US Policy,” China Quarterly 118 (June 1989): 277. 21. Ross, Negotiating Cooperation, 69. See also Tyler, Great Wall, 149; Goh, Constructing the U.S. Rapprochement, 224; and Zhongchun, “Soviet Factor in Sino-American Normalization,” 152–53,158. 22. Both quotations from Robert Legvold, “Sino-Soviet Relations: The American Factor,” in Ross, China, the United States, and the Soviet Union, 74–75. For similar quotations of high threat, see Ross, Negotiating Cooperation, 69. 23. Bachman, “Mobilizing for War,” 10 (quotation), 22, 23, 24 (quotation), 27. 24. Although the twists and turns that led to the 1972 summit are important, they are not my focus. I want to understand why China would not commit to an alliance with the United States to balance the Soviet Union after the Rubicon of meeting with a US president and agree­ ing to the Shanghai Communiqué had been crossed. Examining US-Chinese security relations after 1972 also removes for the most part the Vietnam War from Chinese alliance calculations. It would have been difficult for any Chinese leader to cooperate extensively with the United States—despite mutual enmity with the Soviet Union—as long as Washington deployed hun­ dreds of thousands of troops in one of China’s neighbors, was bombing near China’s border, and was killing Chinese soldiers in North Vietnam. US military activity in Vietnam had largely come to an end by 1973, and in March of that year the last US combat forces left the country. 25. Memorandum of conversation, February 23, 1972, FRUS, 1969–1976, vol. 17, China, 1969–72, doc. 197 (Washington: DC, Government Printing Office, 2006), https://history.state. gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v17/d197. 26. For details, see Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation, ch. 8, and Goh, Constructing the U.S. Rapprochement, 185–90. 27. On these points, see Goh, Constructing the U.S. Rapprochement, 180 (quotation), and Ty­ ler, Great Wall, 125–26, 135. 28. Tyler, Great Wall, 206–7. On the other points in this paragraph, see Goh, Constructing the U.S. Rapprochement, 174, 175, 190; Ali, U.S.-China Cold War Collaboration, 64; and Garthoff, Dé­ tente and Confrontation, 232–33. 29. Garver, China’s Decision for Rapprochement, 92–93; John Garver, “Chinese Foreign Policy in 1970: The Tilt toward the Soviet Union,” China Quarterly 82 (1980): 223–24. 30. Goh, Constructing the U.S. Rapprochement, 224. 31. Memorandum of conversation, Beijing, February 17–18, 1973, 11:30 p.m.–1:20 a.m., FRUS, 1969–1976, vol. 17, China, 1969–72, doc. 12, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocu ments/frus1969-76v18/d12. 32. Gong Li, “The Difficult Path to Diplomatic Relations: China’s US Policy, 1972–1978,” in Kirby, Ross, and Li, Normalization of US-China Relations, 122; Michael Schaller, “Détente and the Strategic Triangle: Or, ‘Drinking Your Mao Tai and Having Your Vodka, Too,” in Ross and Changbin, Re-examining the Cold War, 387. 33. Michael B. Yahuda, “The Significance of Tripolarity in China’s Policy toward the United States since 1972,” in Ross, China, the United States, and the Soviet Union, 17. 34. “An alliance,” according to Tricia Bacon, “entails cooperation, in which both groups make adjustments and consciously work together, rather than the simple sharing of interests or engaging in mutually beneficial, but uncoordinated, behavior.” Tricia Bacon, “Is the Enemy of My Enemy My Friend? How Terrorist Groups Select Partners,” Security Studies 27, no. 3 (2018): 348. It is noteworthy that Kissinger in a 2011 book rejects his claim made when a government official that China under Mao had formed a “tacit alliance” with the United States. He instead describes the relationship as “a kind of quasi-alliance” in which “China would not ask for help

265

NOTES TO PAGES 132–134

nor make its cooperation conditional on the cooperation of others. But it was prepared to adopt parallel strategies, especially with the United States.” Henry Kissinger, On China (New York: Penguin, 2011), 276, 281. 35. Quotations from Goh, Constructing the U.S. Rapprochement, 225n13 and 227, respectively. There is a discrepancy in Chinese and US documents as to whether the Chinese included their country as a member of the “horizontal line” against the Soviet Union. Official documents from the United States do not include China in the group. China is, however, mentioned in the Chinese record of talks. In the latter, Mao’s horizontal line included “the US-Japan-China­ Pakistan-Iran-Turkey and Europe.” Quoted in Kuisong Yang and Yafeng Xia, “Vacillating be­ tween Revolution and Détente: Mao’s Changing Psyche and Policy toward the United States, 1969–1976,” Diplomatic History 34, no. 2 (2010): 408. Regardless of whether Mao listed China in the “line” against the Soviet Union, the key point is that the Chinese continued to take actions that prevented creating an actual alliance with the United States, including refusing security guarantees and offers of military aid and turning down security requests from the Americans. Moreover, by early 1974, “the horizontal line concept was abandoned—after only one year” because even it was judged by Chinese leaders to be “too close to traditional alliance con­ cepts.” Kissinger, On China, 303. The Theory of the Three Worlds took its place, which, as we shall see, made buck-passing policies much more likely than allying with the United States. 36. Teiwes and Sun, End of the Maoist Era, 126. 37. Tyler, Great Wall, 170. 38. All preceding quotations from Henry Kissinger, Memorandum of Conversation with Zhou Enlai, Great Hall of the People, November 13, 1973, cited in Tyler, Great Wall, 170–71. For a digital copy, see http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/nsa/publications/DOC_readers/kissinger/item5.htm. 39. Goh, Constructing the U.S. Rapprochement, 242. 40. Bachman, “Mobilizing for War,” 23. 41. Henry Kissinger, Memorandum of Conversation with Zhou Enlai, guesthouse villa, Beijing, November 14, 1973, cited in Tyler, Great Wall, 171. When Kissinger in October 1975 repeated the offer to provide China military aid if war with the Soviet Union occurred, Mao once again demurred, telling the Americans that “the military aspects [of the Sino-American relationship] .  .  . should wait until the war breaks out.” “Kissinger Reports on USSR, China, and Middle East Discussions,” memorandum of conversation, October 21, 1975, FRUS, 1969–1976, vol. 18, China, 1973–76, doc. 124, http://history.state.gov/historicaldocu ments/frus1969-76v18/d124. 42. Kissinger, Memorandum of Conversation with Zhou Enlai, guesthouse villa, Beijing, November 14, 1973. 43. According to Kissinger, Haig “used standard NATO phrasing when he said that the Nixon administration would resist Soviet efforts to encircle China.” Kissinger, On China, 289. 44. Quoted in Chen Jian, Mao’s China and the Cold War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 273. 45. Quoted in Kissinger, On China, 289. 46. Quoted in Li Jie, “China’s Domestic Politics and the Normalization of Sino-U.S. Rela­ tions, 1969–1979,” in Kirby, Ross, and Li, Normalization of US-China Relations, 70. 47. Quoted in Yang and Xia, “Vacillating between Revolution and Détente,” 414. 48. Ross, Negotiating Cooperation, 85, 88. 49. Thomas J. Christensen, Worse than a Monolith: Alliance Politics and Problems of Coercive Diplomacy in Asia (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011), 222. 50. Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation, 690. 51. Jonathan D. Pollack, The Lessons of Coalition Politics: Sino-American Security Relations (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1984), viii. Although I agree with the judgments of Christensen and Garthoff (referenced in the previous notes) that China and the United States in 1979 crossed the threshold for creating an alliance, I disagree on its level of intensity. Based on the criteria de­ scribed in chapter 1, the Sino-American alliance is best described as weak in intensity. 52. Ezra F. Vogel, Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011), 338; see also 339.

266

NOTES TO PAGES 134–138

53. Xiaoming Zhang, Deng Xiaoping’s Long War: The Military Conflict between China and Viet­ nam, 1979–1991 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015), 63. 54. Jonathan D. Pollack, “The Opening to America,” in The Cambridge History of China, vol. 15, The People’s Republic, Part 2: Revolutions within the Chinese Revolution, 1966–1982, ed. Roder­ ick MacFarquhar and John K. Fairbank (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 452. 55. Ali, U.S.-China Cold War Collaboration, 134; Ross, Negotiating Cooperation, 150; Tyler, Great Wall, 278, 284–85. 56. Zhang, Deng Xiaoping’s Long War, 60. 57. On the preceding points, see Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation, 721, 723, 751; Ali, U.S.­ China Cold War Collaboration, 132–33; and Kissinger, On China, 371–72. 58. Quoted in Pollack, Lessons of Coalition Politics, 77. 59. Quoted in Evan N. Resnick, Allies of Convenience: A Theory of Bargaining in U.S. Foreign Policy (New York: Columbia University Press, 2019), 60. 60. Resnick, Allies of Convenience, 60 (quotation); Pollack, Lessons of Coalition Politics, 53. 61. Peter L. Bergen, Holy War, Inc.: Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden (New York: Touchstone Books, 2002), 71; Tyler, Great Wall, 285, 330; Resnick, Allies of Convenience, 60. 62. On the points in the preceding two paragraphs, see Pollack, Lessons of Coalition Politics, 47, 52–53, 63, 65, 71; Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation, 986; Ross, Negotiating Cooperation, 148–50; Kissinger, On China, 373; and Henry J. Kenny, “Underlying Patterns of American Arms Sales to China,” in United States Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, World Military Ex­ penditures and Arms Transfers, 1986 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1987), 62, https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a497047.pdf. 63. Robert S. Ross, “China Learns to Compromise: Change in U.S.-China Relations, 1982–1984,” China Quarterly 128 (1991): 742–73. 64. David Shambaugh, “Patterns of Interaction in Sino-American Relations,” in Chinese Foreign Policy: Theory and Practice, ed. Thomas W. Robinson and David Shambaugh (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994), 203. 65. On the preceding points, see Pollack, Lessons of Coalition Politics, 88, 90, 108, 116–18; Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation, 1039; and Ross, Negotiating Cooperation, 237–38. 66. Kenny, “Underlying Patterns of American Arms Sales,” 63–64. 67. Ross, “From Lin Biao to Deng Xiaoping,” 291–92 (emphasis added). 68. Pollack, “Opening to America,” 452 (emphasis added). 69. Li, “Difficult Path to Diplomatic Relations,” 145. 70. Lorenz M. Lüthi, The Sino-Soviet Split: Cold War in the Communist World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008), 277–79; Wang, “From Enmity to Rapprochement,” 261. 71. Mao used hostility toward the United States to mobilize against domestic threats even though the Soviet Union, not the United States, was most often the more immediate object of his ideological fears. Harry Harding, “The Chinese State in Crisis,” in The Cambridge History of China, ed. MacFarquhar and Fairbank, 124, 133, 140–42. Mao was not worried that ideological rivals in the party would in the short run transform China into a capitalist system on the US model. He instead believed that party members would take the “capitalist road” by emulating the “revisionist” policies of the Soviet Union in the post-Stalin era. In the long run, though, this would prove to be a distinction without a difference if “revisionist” regimes, as Mao asserted, eventually morphed into “imperialist” or “social-imperialist” ones. To this perspective, revi­ sionists, imperialists, and social-imperialists were all part of the same family of ideological dangers. As an influential report submitted to the Central Committee by military leaders in July 1969 put it, “the US imperialists and the Soviet revisionists are two ‘brands’ of representa­ tives of the international bourgeoisie class.” Report by Four Chinese Marshals to the Central Committee, “A Preliminary Evaluation of the War Situation,” July 11, 1969, Cold War Interna­ tional History Project Bulletin, no. 11 (1998): 166. 72. Quoted in Stuart R. Schram, “Mao Tse-tung’s Thought from 1949 to 1976,” in MacFarquhar and Fairbank, Cambridge History of China, 77. 73. Lüthi, Sino-Soviet Split, 72. See also Schram, “Mao Tse-tung’s Thought from 1949 to 1976,” 68–69.

267

NOTES TO PAGES 138–143

74. Andrew Walder, China under Mao: A Revolution Derailed (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015), 337–38. See also Lüthi, Sino-Soviet Split, 242, 278–79. 75. Quoted in Jin Qiu, The Culture of Power: The Lin Biao Incident in the Cultural Revolution (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999), 39; see also 16, 17, 73. See also Roderick MacFar­ quhar, “The Succession to Mao and the End of Maoism,” in MacFarquhar and Fairbank, Cam­ bridge History of China, 205, and Schram, “Mao Tse-tung’s Thought from 1949 to 1976,” 68, 71. 76. “Decision of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party concerning the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution,” CCP Documents of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolu­ tion, 1966–1967 (Hong Kong: Union Research Institute, 1968), 42. See also Lüthi, Sino-Soviet Split, 294–99, and Qiu, Culture of Power, 16, 39, 73. 77. Harding, “Chinese State in Crisis,” 115; see also 142. 78. Harding, “Chinese State in Crisis,” 212. 79. Barbara Barnouin and Yu Changgen, Ten Years of Turbulence: The Chinese Cultural Revo­ lution (London: Kegan Paul International, 1993), 277, 292; Teiwes and Sun, End of the Maoist Era, 186, 199, 246. 80. Barnouin and Changgen, Ten Years of Turbulence, 269, 282. 81. Teiwes and Sun, End of the Maoist Era, 111. 82. Teiwes and Sun, End of the Maoist Era, 84, 157, 388, 398, 401, 414, 448, 455. 83. Lin Biao, “Report to the Ninth National Congress of the Communist Party of China,” delivered on April 1 and adopted on April 14, 1969, https://www.marxists.org/reference/ archive/lin-biao/1969/04/01.htm. 84. Zhou Enlai, “Report to the Tenth National Congress of the Communist Party of China,” delivered on August 24 and adopted on August 28, 1973, https://www.marxists.org/subject/ china/documents/cpc/10th_congress_report.htm. 85. Quoted in Barnouin and Changgen, Ten Years of Turbulence, 286 (see also 281); Teiwes and Sun, End of the Maoist Era, 83–84, 142, 147, 284, 401, 414, 448, 453, 455, 474. 86. Quoted in Walder, China under Mao, 313. 87. Teiwes and Sun, End of the Maoist Era, 27, 84, 110–12, 147, 394, 401, 453–55. 88. Teiwes and Sun, End of the Maoist Era, 156; see also 112, 156, 157, 237–38, 246. Mao’s ambiguous policies in these key areas were by design. He declared that the most extremist policies of the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s were 70 percent correct, 30 percent in error. The objective in the 1970s was to eliminate the worst outcomes of the first years of the Cultural Revolution while continuing with its overall direction. Mao and others explicitly asserted that while periods of consolidation and pragmatism were necessary in the advance of the revolu­ tion, they could never be permanent, as new periods of revolutionary fervor were necessary to continue socialism’s march forward. On these points, see Teiwes and Sun, End of the Maoist Era, 156, 237–38, 246, 264, 274, 336, 401, and Qiu, Culture of Power, 17. 89. On Mao’s oscillation between more pragmatic and ideological policies toward the United States from 1969 to 1976, see Yang and Xia, “Vacillating between Revolution and Détente.” 90. Roderick MacFarquhar and Michael Schoenhals, Mao’s Last Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2006), 347; see also 354. 91. Kissinger, On China, 297. 92. Both quotations from Kissinger, Memorandum of Conversation with Zhou Enlai, guesthouse villa, Beijing, November 14, 1973. 93. Quotations from Teiwes and Sun, End of the Maoist Era, 132, 133, 132, and 130, respec­ tively. See also Kissinger, On China, 300, and Ross, Negotiating Cooperation, 82. 94. Quoted in Li, “China’s Domestic Politics,” 70. 95. MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, Mao’s Last Revolution, 403. 96. Teiwes and Sun, End of the Maoist Era, ch. 2; Walder, China under Mao, 295–302. 97. Teiwes and Sun, End of the Maoist Era, 156. 98. Yang and Xia, “Vacillating between Revolution and Détente,” 415. 99. Ross, Negotiating Cooperation, 78, 82. 100. Kissinger described his talks with Deng as “insolent behavior and self-righteous lack of responsiveness.” Quoted in Teiwes and Sun, End of the Maoist Era, 428; see also 184, 249.

268

NOTES TO PAGES 143–148

101. Teiwes and Sun, End of the Maoist Era, 428. 102. Teiwes and Sun, End of the Maoist Era, 429. 103. Quoted in Barnouin and Changgen, Ten Years of Turbulence, 273. 104. On the preceding points, see Teiwes and Sun, End of the Maoist Era, 386, 427 (first quota­ tion), 429 (second quotation), 433. 105. Mingjiang Li, Mao’s China and the Sino-Soviet Split: Ideological Dilemma (New York: Routledge, 2012); Lüthi, Sino-Soviet Split; Mark L. Haas, The Ideological Origins of Great Power Politics, 1789–1989 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005), ch. 5. The Sino-Soviet case is a prime example of how a “divisive” ideology and competition over leadership of the transnational ideological group can result in intense ideological enmity among co-ideologies. (See chapter 1 for details.) Elites in this situation frequently view one another not as ideologically similar but heretics and apostates. 106. Lüthi, Sino-Soviet Split, 335. 107. The quotations are from Zhou, “Report to the Tenth National Congress,” and “Discus­ sion between Zhou Enlai and Pham Van Dong,” August 16, 1973, CWIHP Working Paper 22, “77 Conversations,” https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/111262. 108. Quoted in Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation, 239. 109. Teiwes and Sun, End of the Maoist Era, 87. The theory divided countries into three groups: the two superpowers, lesser powers, and the exploited states. 110. Deng Xiaoping, Speech by Chairman of the Delegation of the People’s Republic of China, Special Session of the UN General Assembly, delivered April 10, 1974, https://www. marxists.org/reference/archive/deng-xiaoping/1974/04/10.htm (hereafter cited as Deng, “Three Worlds Speech”). China’s draft communiqué for Ford’s summit in China in December 1975 used nearly identical language. Tyler, Great Wall, 213. 111. Teiwes and Sun, End of the Maoist Era, 87–91. 112. Zhou Enlai, “Report on the Work of the Government,” delivered January 13, 1975, to the Fourth National People’s Congress, https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/zhou­ enlai/1975/01/13.htm. 113. Memorandum of Conversation, February 15, 1973, Beijing, 5:57–9:30 p.m., FRUS, 1969–1976, vol. 17, China, 1969–1972, doc. 8, 136, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocu ments/frus1969-76v18/d12. 114. Zhou, “Report to the Tenth National Congress.” For other statements made by Chinese officials and state media at various times in the 1970s that accused the United States of trying to deflect Soviet aggression against China and repeating the 1930s appeasement policies, see Memorandum of Conversation, Beijing, February 17–18, 1973, 11:30 p.m.–1:20 a.m., doc. 12, 126, 136–37, and Memorandum of Conversation, February 17, 1973, Beijing, 10:22–11:10 p.m., FRUS, 1969–1976, vol. 17, China, 1969–1972, doc. 11, 117, https://history.state.gov/historical­ documents/frus1969-76v18/d11; Ross, Negotiating Cooperation, 69, 70, 100; Ali, U.S.-China Cold War Collaboration, 107–8; Pollack, “Opening to America,” 437–38; Tyler, Great Wall, 207, 216; and Goh, Constructing the U.S. Rapprochement, 229. 115. Memorandum of Conversation, Beijing, February 17–18, 1973, 11:30 p.m.–1:20 a.m., doc. 12, 18, 137. See also Goh, Constructing the U.S. Rapprochement, 230, 241, and Kissinger, On China, 291–92. 116. Henry Kissinger, Years of Renewal (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999), 883. 117. Ronald C. Keith, Deng Xiaoping and China’s Foreign Policy (London: Routledge, 2018), 141. 118. All quotations from Report by Four Chinese Marshals to the Central Committee, “A Preliminary Evaluation of the War Situation,” 166. 119. Quoted in Yafeng Xia, “Myth or Reality?: Factional Politics, U.S.-China Relations, and Mao Zedong’s Mentality in His Sunset Years, 1972–1976,” Journal of American-East Asian Rela­ tions 15 (2008): 115. 120. Zhou, “Report to the Tenth National Congress.” 121. Deng, “Three Worlds Speech.” 122. Garver, China’s Decision for Rapprochement, 8, 13, 32, 37, 124–25; Thomas M. Gottlieb, Chinese Foreign Policy Factionalism and the Origins of the Strategic Triangle (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1977), x, 12, 15–16, 18, 42–43, 46–47, 83–86; Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation, 217.

269

NOTES TO PAGES 148–156

123. On these points, see Lin, “Report to the Ninth National Congress”; Gottlieb, Chinese Foreign Policy Factionalism, 85–86; and Legvold, “Sino-Soviet Relations,” 74. 124. Pollack, “Opening to America,” 432. 125. Quoted in Gong Li, “Chinese Decision Making and the Thawing of US-China Rela­ tions,” in Ross and Changbin, Re-examining the Cold War, 347. 126. Quoted in Kissinger, On China, 274. 127. Quoted in Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation, 240. 128. Kissinger, On China, 290, 363. 129. MacFarquhar, “Succession to Mao.” 130. Quoted in Jing Huang, Factionalism in Chinese Communist Politics (Cambridge: Cam­ bridge University Press, 2000), 351 (emphasis in original). 131. Frederick C. Teiwes and Warren Sun, “China’s New Economic Policy under Hua Guofeng: Party Consensus and Party Myths,” China Journal no. 66 (2011): 4. 132. Ross, “From Lin Biao to Deng Xiaoping,” 289. 133. On the preceding, see Huang, Factionalism in Chinese Politics, 357–58, 360–62. 134. MacFarquhar, “Succession to Mao,” 381 135. Quoted in Huang, Factionalism in Chinese Politics, 362; see also 357–58. 136. MacFarquhar, “Succession to Mao,” 381. 137. Teiwes and Sun, “China’s New Economic Policy,” 11–14; Julian Gewirtz, Unlikely Part­ ners: Chinese Reformers, Western Economists, and the Making of Global China (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2017), 28, 32, 38. 138. For details, see Huang, Factionalism in Chinese Politics, 353–56. 139. Kissinger, On China, 298. 140. Gewirtz, Unlikely Partners, 3–4. 141. Quotations from Gewirtz, Unlikely Partners, 3, 61, and Deng Xiaoping, “We Can Develop a Market Economy under Socialism,” November 26, 1979, http://www.china.org.cn/english/ features/dengxiaoping/103388.htm. See also Pollack, “The Opening to America,” 438–39, and Li, “China’s Domestic Politics,” 81. The Carter administration recognized the importance of Deng’s ideological changes to improving relations and supported his modernization policies in both word and deed. These efforts are consistent with ideological bolstering tactics in an ideo­ logical configuration of double threat. See Pete Millwood, “(Mis)perceptions of Domestic Politics in the U.S.-China Rapprochement, 1969–1978,” Diplomatic History 43, no. 5 (2019): 904–913. 142. China’s learning from close interactions with experts from capitalist countries is the key theme of Gewirtz, Unlikely Partners. 143. Li, “China’s Domestic Politics,” 82. 144. Quoted in Gewirtz, Unlikely Partners, 61. 145. Gilbert Rozman, The Chinese Debate about Soviet Socialism, 1978–1985 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987), 69, 71, 75–76, 359. 146. Sergey Radchenko, “Sino-Soviet Relations in the 1970s and IR Theory,” in Misunder­ standing Asia: International Relations Theory and Asian Studies over Half a Century, ed. Gilbert Rozman (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 61 (emphasis added). 147. Vladislav Zubok, “The Soviet Union and China in the 1980s: Reconciliation and Di­ vorce,” Cold War History 17, no. 2 (2017): 125, 123. 148. Ezra Vogel expresses similar analysis: “When Zhou Enlai and Mao had met with Kiss­ inger and Nixon to improve U.S.-China relations, both sides were driven by the Soviet threat. When Deng met [with US leaders], he too was driven by the Soviet threat. [But] Deng was also beginning to consider what was needed for China to modernize. . . . Building a relationship with the United States . . . would enable China” to achieve this objective. Vogel, Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China, 311–12. See also Tyler, Great Wall, 278. 149. Quoted in Radchenko, “Sino-Soviet Relations in the 1970s and IR Theory,” 58. 150. Ross, Negotiating Cooperation, 247. 151. Ross, Negotiating Cooperation, 247. 152. Ross, Negotiating Cooperation, 125; Tsai, From Adversaries to Partners?, 35; Fravel, Strong Borders, Secure Nation, 205. 153. On the preceding, see Bachman, “Mobilizing for War,” 14, 22; Tsai, From Adversaries to Partners?, 35.

270

NOTES TO PAGES 157–166

154. The quotation is from Goh, Constructing the U.S. Rapprochement, 226. 155. Kissinger, White House Years, 1062. 156. Gerald Ford, Memorandum of Conversation with Deng Xiaoping (Secret), guesthouse villa, Beijing, December 3, 1975, 19, cited in Tyler, Great Wall, 219. 157. Henry Kissinger, Years of Upheaval (Boston: Little, Brown, 1982), 67.

4. A Breaking-Point Frenemy Alliance 1. For details on the preceding, see Çevik Bir and Martin Sherman, “Formula for Stability: Turkey Plus Israel,” Middle East Quarterly 9, no. 2 (2002), https://www.meforum.org/511/for mula-for-stability-turkey-plus-israel; Ilan Berman, “Israel, India, and Turkey: Triple Entente?,” Middle East Quarterly 9, no. 2 (2002), https://www.meforum.org/504/israel-india-and-turkey­ triple-entente; Banu Eligür, “Crisis in Turkish-Israeli Relations (December 2008–June 2011), Middle Eastern Studies 48, no. 3 (2012): 430; and Mark L. Haas, The Clash of Ideologies: Middle Eastern Politics and American Security (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 181–94. 2. All quotations from Alı Balci and Tuncay Kardaş, “The Changing Dynamics of Tur­ key’s Relations with Israel: An Analysis of ‘Securitization,’” Insight Turkey 14, no. 2 (2012): 104–5; see also 106. 3. For details, see Robert Olson, Turkey’s Relations with Iran, Syria, Israel and Russia, 1991–2000 (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 2001), 260–63, and Özlem Tür, “Turkey and Is­ rael in the 2000s: From Cooperation to Conflict,” Israel Studies 17, no. 3 (2012): 48. 4. Aaron Stein, “Israel: Turkey’s Former Hi-Tech Weapons Supplier,” November 5, 2012, https://turkeywonk.wordpress.com/2012/11/05/israel-turkeys-former-hi-tech-weapons­ supplier/. 5. Based on these forms of security cooperation and the criteria described in chapter 1, the Turkish-Israeli alliance is best described as moderate in intensity. 6. Bir and Sherman, “Formula for Stability.” For similar quotations by other Turkish civil­ ian and military elites pointing to the major benefits to Turkey created by allying with Israel, see Balci and Kardaş, “Changing Dynamics of Turkey’s Relations,” 105–6. For statements by Syrian, Iranian, and Iraqi leaders expressing fears over the coercive power of the alliance, see Bir and Sherman, “Formula for Stability.” 7. The main exception to this statement occurred when the Islamist Welfare Party, which was deeply hostile ideologically to Israel, held the office of prime minister from June 1996 to June 1997. I discuss Welfare Party leaders’ relations with Israel in more detail below. 8. Philip Robins, Suits and Uniforms: Turkish Foreign Policy since the Cold War (Seattle: Uni­ versity of Washington Press, 2003), 251. The quotation in the passage is from a statement made by a senior Turkish diplomat, Ambassador Zeki Kuneralp, who asserted that “the only country in the Middle East which is ‘like us’ is Israel” (quoted in Yücel Bozdağlioğlu, Turkish Foreign Policy and Turkish Identity: A Constructivist Approach (New York: Routledge, 2003), 152. 9. Both quotations from Alexander Murinson, Turkey’s Entente with Israel and Azerbaijan: State Identity and Security in the Middle East and Caucasus (London: Routledge, 2010), 11. 10. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, “Conservative Democracy and the Globalization of Freedom,” in The Emergence of a New Turkey: Democracy and the AK Parti, ed. M. Hakan Yavuz (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2006), 334. 11. M. Hakan Yavuz, Secularism and Muslim Democracy in Turkey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 209. 12. Metin Heper and Şule Toktaş, “Islam, Modernity, and Democracy in Contemporary Turkey: The Case of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan,” Muslim World 93, no. 2 (2003): 176. 13. For details, see Heper and Toktaş, “Islam, Modernity, and Democracy,” 176, and Wil­ liam Hale and Ergun Özbudun, Islamism, Democracy and Liberalism in Turkey: The Case of the AKP (London: Routledge, 2010), 57–62. 14. On the hybrid nature of the AKP’s ideology in the 2000s, see Sultan Tepe, “A ProIslamic Party? Promises and Limits of Turkey’s Justice and Development Party,” in Yavuz, Emergence of a New Turkey, 121–22, and Yavuz, Secularism and Muslim Democracy in Turkey, 279.

271

NOTES TO PAGES 166–170

15. Quoted in George E. Gruen, “Turkey’s Strategic Mideast Regional Initiatives,” American Foreign Policy Interests 26, no. 6 (2004): 452. 16. All proceeding quotations from Tür, “Turkey and Israel in the 2000s,” 45, 53–54. 17. Quotations from “Turkish Premier Says Israeli Offensive against Lebanon ‘Inadmissi­ ble,’” BBC Monitoring Europe, July 14, 2006; “Turkish MPs to Investigate Israeli Human Rights Violations,” BBC Monitoring Europe, August 4, 2006; and “Turkish Parliamentary Human Rights Committee ‘Strongly’ Condemns Israel,” BBC Monitoring Europe, August 3, 2006. 18. There was, however, a noticeable drop in arms sales from Israel to Turkey after the AKP assumed power. By 2007, though, these figures had rebounded to the levels that existed before the change in governing parties in 2002. Calculated from Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), “Importer/Exporter TIV Tables,” http://armstrade.sipri.org/ armstrade/page/values.php. The tables measure the volume of international transfers of major conventional weapons using a common unit, the trend-indicator value (TIV). 19. Quoted in Eligür, “Crisis in Turkish-Israeli Relations,” 437. 20. Quoted in Sami Moubayed “‘Milking the Male Goat’ and Syrian-Turkish Relations,” in Turkey-Syria Relations: Between Enmity and Amity, ed. Raymond Hinnebusch and Özlem Tür (Surrey, UK: Ashgate, 2013), 71–72. 21. Quotations from Eligür, “Crisis in Turkish-Israeli Relations,” 437, 444. 22. Quoted in Henri Barkey, “The Broken Triangle: How the U.S.-Israeli-Turkish Relation­ ship Got Unglued,” in Troubled Triangle: The United States, Turkey, and Israel in the New Middle East, ed. William B. Quandt (Charlottesville, VA: Just World Publishing, 2011), 97. 23. Quotations from Eligür, “Crisis in Turkish-Israeli Relations,” 447. 24. On AKP leaders’ efforts before 2008 to reconcile with Israel after criticisms of it, see William Hale, “Turkey and the Middle East in the ‘New Era,’” Insight Turkey 11, no. 3 (2009): 149–50, and Tür, “Turkey and Israel in the 2000s,” 54. 25. Quoted in Eligür, “Crisis in Turkish-Israeli Relations,” 444. 26. Quoted in Eligür, “Crisis in Turkish-Israeli Relations,” 445. 27. Quoted in Hasan Kosebalaban, “The Crisis in Turkish-Israeli Relations: What Is Its Strategic Significance?,” Middle East Policy 17, no. 3 (2010): 38. 28. Sebnem Arsu and Jack Healy, “Turkey Barring Israeli Military Flights from Its Air­ space,” New York Times, June 29, 2010; Joel Greenberg, “Turkey Expels Israeli Ambassador,” Washington Post, September 3, 2011. 29. Quoted in Kosebalaban, “Crisis in Turkish-Israeli Relations,” 38. 30. SIPRI measures the volume of arms transfers not by sales prices but by the known unit production costs of the weapons. In 2009, this value of arms transfers from Israel to Turkey was $320 million (in constant 1990 prices). In 2010, it was $69 million, in 2011 it was $22 million, and in 2012 it was $9 million. Calculated from SIPRI, “Importer/Exporter TIV Tables.” 31. “Turkey ‘Freezes Arms Deals with Israel,’” United Press International, June 18, 2010, https://www.upi.com/Defense-News/2010/06/18/Turkey-freezes-arms-deals-with­ Israel/24011276879457/; “Israel-Turkey Relations Sink to Low,” Today’s Zaman, August 28, 2013, http://icmu.nyc.gr/%20Israel--Turkey%20relations-sink-to-low. 32. For scholars who make this claim, see İlker Aytürk, “The Coming of an Ice Age? Turkish-Israeli Relations Since 2002,” Turkish Studies 12, no. 4 (2011): 679, and Umut Uzer, “Turkish-Israeli Relations: Their Rise and Fall,” Middle East Policy 20, no. 1 (2013): 97–110. 33. On the preceding statistics, see United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humani­ tarian Affairs, “Israeli-Palestinian Fatalities since 2000: Key Trends,” https://unispal.un.org/ DPA/DPR/unispal.nsf/0/BE07C80CDA4579468525734800500272, and “Israel Accused over Lebanon War,” BBC News, September 6, 2007 (quotation), http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/ 6981557.stm. 34. Gil Feiler and Edo Harel, “Analysis: The Political Logic of Erdogan’s Attacks on Israel,” Jerusalem Post, February 4, 2009, https://www.jpost.com/international/analysis-the-political­ logic-of-erdogans-attacks-on-israel. The evidence indicates that these efforts to reassure Israel were largely successful. After meeting with Turkish officers in January 2009, Israeli leaders, according to a report in Today’s Zaman, “firmly believe that the Turkish military is a solid anchor for them.” Emrullah Uslu, “Can the ‘Gaza Damage’ to Turkish-Israeli Relations Be

272

NOTES TO PAGES 171–174

Reversed?,” Eurasia Daily Monitor 6, no. 17 (January 27, 2009), https://jamestown.org/pro gram/can-the-gaza-damage-to-turkish-israeli-relations-be-reversed/. 35. Quoted in “Turkey: Political Parties React to Premier’s Davos Walkout,” BBC Monitor­ ing Europe, January 31, 2009. 36. “Turkish Main Opposition Asks Government to Disclose Details Regarding Flotilla,” BBC Monitoring Europe, June 7, 2010; “‘Tel Aviv Advocate Is within AKP,’ Turkish Opposition Party Leader Says,” Hurriyet Daily News, June 7, 2010. 37. Quoted in “‘Tel Aviv Advocate Is within AKP’. 38. Translation into English provided by Sami Kohen, “The CHP’s Foreign Policy Stance,” Hurriyet Daily News, July 28, 2010. 39. Patrick Goodenough, “Turkey’s Opposition Troubled by Erdogan’s Stance on Iran and Israel,” CNSNews, June 11, 2010, https://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/turkey-s-opposi tion-troubled-erdogan-s-stance-iran-and-israel. 40. Quoted in “Opposition MP Says Turkey’s Friendship ‘Becoming Dangerous,’” BBC Monitoring Europe, September 24, 2012. 41. Shashank Joshi, The Permanent Crisis: Iran’s Nuclear Trajectory (Milton Park, UK: Whitehall Papers, 2012), 123. The document listed Iran as Turkey’s principal security threat primarily due to the development of Iran’s nuclear and missile programs. 42. Calculated from Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, “Military Expendi­ ture by Country, in Constant (2015) US$,” 2017, https://www.sipri.org/sites/default/files/ Milex-constant-2015-USD.pdf. 43. Turkey’s share of global power in the CINC from 2002 to 2011 increased from 0.014 to 0.015. Israel’s remained constant at 0.004. National Material Capabilities dataset v5.0, David J. Singer, “Reconstructing the Correlates of War Dataset on Material Capabilities of States, 1816–1985,” International Interactions 14, no. 2 (1987): 115–32, http://www.correlatesofwar.org/ data-sets/national-material-capabilities. 44. Alexander Wilner and Anthony H. Cordesman, Iran and the Gulf Military Balance (Wash­ ington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2011), 44. 45. Quoted in Henri J. Barkey, “Turkey’s Perspectives on Nuclear Weapons and Disarma­ ment,” in Unblocking the Road to Zero: Brazil, Japan, and Turkey, ed. Barry M. Blechman (Wash­ ington, DC: Stimson Center, 2009), 70. 46. On the preceding, see Aylin G. Gürzel and Eyüp Ersoy, “Turkey and Iran’s Nuclear Pro­ gram,” Middle East Policy 19, no. 1 (2012): 38–40, and Daphne McCurdy, “Turkish-Iranian Rela­ tions: When Opposites Attract,” Turkish Policy Quarterly 7, no. 2 (2008): 101. 47. Mark L. Haas, “Missed Ideological Opportunities and George W. Bush’s Middle Eastern Policies,” Security Studies 21, no. 3 (2012): 432–44. 48. Shahram Chubin, Iran’s Nuclear Ambitions (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2006), xviii–xx. Quotation from “UN Officials Concerned at Iran’s Re­ moval of Seals on Uranium Enrichment Sites,” UN News Centre, January 11, 2006. 49. McCurdy, “Turkish-Iranian Relations,” 100. 50. Quoted in “Turkey Tells Iran to Come Clean on Nuclear Program,” Turkish Daily News, November 16, 2005, cited in Banu Eligür, “Are Former Enemies Becoming Allies? Turkey’s Changing Relations with Syria, Iran, and Israel since the 2003 Iraqi War,” Middle East Brief, no. 9 (2006): 4. 51. Alexander Murinson, “The Strategic Depth Doctrine of Turkish Foreign Policy,” Middle Eastern Studies 42, no. 6 (2006): 960 (quotation); Mustafa Kibaroglu and Baris Caglar, “Implica­ tions of a Nuclear Iran for Turkey,” Middle East Policy 15, no. 4 (2008): 65 (quotation); Graham E. Fuller, The New Turkish Republic: Turkey as a Pivotal State in the Muslim World (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2008), 74. 52. On the preceding, see Steven A. Hildreth, “Iran’s Ballistic Missile Programs: An Over­ view,” Congressional Research Service Report for Congress, July 21, 2008; Iran Watch, “Iran Missile Milestones: 1985–2016,” http://www.iranwatch.org/our-publications/weapon-pro gram-background-report/iran-missile-milestones-1985-2016; and Farhad Rezaei, “Iran’s Ballistic Missile Program: A New Case for Engaging Iran?” Insight Turkey 18, no. 4 (2016): 187–90. 53. Wilner and Cordesman, Iran and the Gulf Military Balance, 70.

273

NOTES TO PAGES 174–178

54. Barkey, “Turkey’s Perspectives,” 68 (first half of quotation), 69, 76, 79 (second half of quotation); Gürzel and Ersoy, “Turkey and Iran’s Nuclear Program,” 44. 55. For details on the preceding, see Wilner and Cordesman, Iran and the Gulf Military Bal­ ance, 42–55, 57. 56. “Turkey and Iran United to Attack Kurdish Rebels,” New York Times, June 6, 2008. 57. Iran’s renewed support of the PKK in the early 2010s indicates the wisdom in this case of assessing threats by capabilities, not current policies. Damien McElroy, “Syria and Iran ‘Backing Kurdish Terrorist Group,’ Says Turkey,” The Telegraph, September 3, 2012, https:// www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/turkey/9518194/Syria-and-Iran-backing­ Kurdish-terrorist-group-says-Turkey.html. 58. Aaron Stein and Philipp C. Bleek, “Turkish-Iranian Relations: From ‘Friends with Bene­ fits’ to ‘It’s Complicated,’” Insight Turkey 14, no. 2 (2012): 142. 59. Fred H. Lawson, “Syria’s Relations with Iran: Managing the Dilemmas of an Alliance,” Middle East Journal 61, no. 1 (2007): 42; Şebnem Udum, “Turkey’s Foreign Policy on Iran’s Nu­ clear Programme,” in Turkey’s Foreign Policy towards the Middle East: Under the Shadow of the Arab Spring, ed. Idris Demir (Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2017), 139. 60. For details, see Özden Zeynep Oktav, “The Syrian Uprising and the Iran-Turkey-Syria Quasi Alliance: A View from Turkey,” in Hinnebusch and Tür, Turkey-Syria Relations, 195–96. 61. The renewal of the PKK insurgency in Turkey in the 2000s created another important reason for Turkey to preserve its alliance with Israel. Israel in the 2000s sold Turkey military equipment, most notably Heron unmanned aerial vehicles, that provided critical intelligence in the fight against the PKK. After Turkey ended the alliance, Israeli leaders canceled a $141 million contract to sell Turkey additional aerial surveillance equipment. Israel also frequently delayed or refused to service and repair Turkey’s existing drones, leaving Turkey without a full complement of working machines. The alliance with Israel also helped limit cooperation be­ tween Israel and Kurdish independence groups, possibly including the PKK. The end of the alliance weakened this restraint. For details on the preceding, see Özlem Demirtaş-Bagdonas, “Politics of National Honor in Turkish-Israeli Relations: An Alternative Account of the Recent Tensions,” Uluslararası İlişkiler10, no. 38 (2013): 119; “Egypt Turns Out to Be Key in TurkishIsraeli Rapprochement,” Today’s Zaman, January 4, 2016, http://icmu.nyc.gr/%20Egypt-turns­ out-to-be-key-in-Turkish-Israeli-rapprochement; Ofra Bengio, “Surprising Ties between Israel and the Kurds,” Middle East Quarterly 21, no. 3 (2014): 1–12, especially 10; and Barak Ravid, “Turkey FM Condemns Israeli ‘Plan’ to Support PKK,” Haaretz, September 11, 2011, https:// www.haaretz.com/1.5170443. 62. Gareth Jenkins, “Continuity and Change: Prospects for Civil-Military Relations in Tur­ key,” International Affairs 83, no. 2 (2007): 349–50; Philip Robins, “Confusion at Home, Confu­ sion Abroad: Turkey between Copenhagen and Iraq,” International Affairs 79, no. 3 (2003): 552. 63. “Turkey’s Charismatic Pro-Islamic Leader,” BBC News, November 4, 2002, http:// news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/2270642.stm. 64. On the preceding, see Bozdağlioğlu, Turkish Foreign Policy and Turkish Identity, 149, 153, 157; M. Hakan Yavuz, “Turkish-Israeli Relations through the Lens of the Turkish Identity De­ bate,” Journal of Palestine Studies 27, no. 1 (1997): 31–32; and Haas, Clash of Ideologies, 195–98. 65. Olson, Turkey’s Relations, 151. See also Murinson, Turkey’s Entente, 119, and Yavuz, “Turkish-Israeli Relations,” 27, 31. 66. Hüseyin Bağci and Bayram Sinkaya, “The Greater Middle East Initiative and Turkey: The AKP’s Perspective,” in The Importance of Being European: Turkey, the EU, and the Middle East, ed. Nimrod Goren and Amikam Nachmani (Jerusalem: Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2007), 168–71; Lerna K. Yanik, “The Metamorphosis of Metaphors of Vision: ‘Bridging’ Turkey’s Loca­ tion, Role and Identity after the End of the Cold War,” Geopolitics 14, no. 3 (2009): 543. 67. Philip Robins, “Turkish Foreign Policy since 2002: Between a ‘Post-Islamist’ Govern­ ment and a Kemalist State,” International Affairs 83, no. 1 (2007): 302. See also Meliha Benli Altunişik, “The Possibilities and Limits of Turkey’s Soft Power in the Middle East,” Insight Turkey 10, no. 2 (2008): 47, and Daniela Huber, Democracy Promotion and Foreign Policy: Iden­ tity and Interests in US, EU and Non-Western Democracies (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 152.

274

NOTES TO PAGES 178–184

68. Quoted in “Turkish Foreign Minister: Islamic Countries Should Act with Fresh, New Vision,” BBC Monitoring Europe, May 28, 2003. 69. Quoted in Huber, Democracy Promotion and Foreign Policy, 176, 152, respectively. 70. Huber, Democracy Promotion and Foreign Policy, 177. 71. Robert Olson, Turkey-Iran Relations, 1979–2004: Revolution, Ideology, War, Coups, and Geo­ politics (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 2004), 178. 72. The ideological differences dividing Israel and other key Muslim-majority states, in­ cluding Iran, were obviously large, thereby satisfying the other condition for creating a con­ figuration of ideological equidistance from Turkey’s perspective. 73. Yanik, “Metamorphosis of Metaphors of Vision,” 534, 541–44; Meliha Altunisik and Esra Cuhadar, “Turkey’s Search for a Third Party Role in Arab-Israeli Conflicts: A Neutral Facilita­ tor or a Principal Power Mediator?,” Mediterranean Politics 15, no. 3 (2010): 371–92. 74. Altunisik and Cuhadar, “Turkey’s Search for a Third Party Role,” 376 (quotation), 380–81. 75. On the preceding points, see Ersel Aydinli, Nihat Ali Özcan, and Dogan Akyaz, “The Turkish Military’s March toward Europe,” Foreign Affairs 85, no. 1 (2006): 77–78, 84–85; Hale and Özbudun, Islamism, Democracy and Liberalism, 88; and Metin Heper, “The Justice and Development Party Government and the Military in Turkey,” Turkish Studies 6, no. 2 (2005): 225–28. 76. Former chief of the General Staff from 1998 to 2002 and retired general Hüseyin Kıvrıkoğlu referred to this shift from acquiescence to active opposition in an October 2006 statement: “The four-year silence [by Kemalists in the military in relation to the AKP] has come to an end at last.” Quoted in Banu Eligür, The Mobilization of Political Islam in Turkey (Cam­ bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 254. 77. Ergun Özbudun, “Turkey’s Search for a New Constitution,” Insight Turkey 14, no. 1 (2012): 44. 78. Ioannis N. Grigoriadis, “Islam and Democratization in Turkey: Secularism and Trust in a Divided Society,” Democratization 16, no. 6 (2009): 1204. 79. Abdullah Ural, “Results of the April 27, 2007 Turkish Military’s E-Memorandum,” Inter­ disciplinary Journal of Contemporary Research in Business 4, no. 8 (2012): 729, 733. 80. Quoted in Ural, “Results of E-Memorandum,” 729–30. 81. Filiz Başkan, “Religious versus Secular Groups in the Age of Globalization in Turkey,” Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions 11, no. 2 (2010): 177. 82. Members of the National Action Party did not boycott the election, which allowed for a quorum. 83. There is considerable evidence that much of the prosecutors’ case against the defen­ dants was fabricated. For details, see Gareth Jenkins, “Ergenekon, Sledgehammer, and the Politics of Turkish Justice: Conspiracies and Coincidences,” Middle East Review of International Affairs 15, no. 2 (2011): 1–9. 84. Yaprak Gürsoy, “Turkish Public Opinion on the Coup Allegations: Implications for De­ mocratization,” Political Science Quarterly 130, no. 1 (2015): 104. 85. Gürsoy, “Turkish Public Opinion,” 118–19. 86. Başkan, “Religious versus Secular Groups,” 177–78. 87. Quotations from Eligür, Mobilization of Political Islam, 264–65. 88. Başkan, “Religious versus Secular Groups,” 178. 89. Özbudun, “Turkey’s Search for a New Constitution,” 46; Levent Köker, “Turkey’s PoliticalConstitutional Crisis: An Assessment of the Role of the Constitutional Court,” Constellations 17, no. 2 (2010): 329–30. 90. Başkan, “Religious versus Secular Groups,” 178. 91. Ersin Kalaycioğlu, “Kulturkampf in Turkey: The Constitutional Referendum of 12 Sep­ tember 2010,” South European Society and Politics 17, no. 1 (2012): 3. 92. Eligür, Mobilization of Political Islam, 269. 93. On the relationship between threats to a particular identity and the increasing saliency of this identity to individuals’ perceptions and policies, see David L. Rousseau, Identifying Threats and Threatening Identities: The Social Construction of Realism and Liberalism (Stanford,

275

NOTES TO PAGES 185–188

CA: Stanford University Press, 2006), 69, 74; Alexander Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 231. 94. Eligür, Mobilization of Political Islam, 282. 95. Kalaycioğlu, “Kulturkampf in Turkey,” 6. 96. Feride Acar and Gülbanu Altunok, “The ‘Politics of Intimate’ at the Intersection of Neo-liberalism and Neo-conservatism in Contemporary Turkey,” Women’s Studies International Forum 41, no. 1 (2013): 14. 97. On the preceding, see Pinar İlkkaracan, “Democratization in Turkey from a Gender Per­ spective,” in Turkey’s Democratization Process, ed. Carmen Rodriguez, Antonio Avalos, Hakan Yilmaz, and Ana I. Planet (London: Routledge, 2014), 164, 166–67; Acar and Altunok, “‘Politics of Intimate,’” 16; and Melinda Negrón-Gonzales, “The Feminist Movement during the AKP Era in Turkey: Challenges and Opportunities,” Middle Eastern Studies 52, no. 2 (2016): 201. 98. Gamze Çavdar, “Islamist Moderation and the Resilience of Gender: Turkey’s Persistent Paradox,” Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions 11, nos. 3–4 (2010): 356. On the impor­ tance of gender issues to the AKP’s base, see 357. 99. On Turkish Islamists’ long-standing interest in the Palestinian issue, see Umut Uzer, “Turkey’s Islamist Movement and the Palestinian Cause: The 1980 ‘Liberation of Jerusalem’ Demonstration and the 1997 ‘Jerusalem Night’ as Case Studies,” Israel Affairs 23, no. 1 (2017): 22–39. 100. Lisel Hintz, “‘Take It Outside!’ National Identity Contestation in the Foreign Policy Arena,” European Journal of International Relations 22, no. 2 (2016): 351. The claim that the iden­ tity of Israel was central to AKP leaders’ intense condemnation of it after 2008 is demonstrated by comparing these leaders’ views of Sudan. In the same period that AKP leaders were accus­ ing Israel of state terrorism and crimes against humanity, Erdoğan in November 2009 asserted in reference to Sudanese leader Omar al-Bashir that “a Muslim cannot commit genocide.” This statement came despite the fact that over three hundred thousand people had died in the Suda­ nese mass killings, which was a number that was orders of magnitude higher than had died at the hands of Israeli forces. Svante E. Cornell, “What Drives Turkish Foreign Policy?,” Middle East Quarterly 19, no. 1 (2012), 16, 19 (quotation). 101. Quoted in Carol Migdalovitz, Turkey: Selected Foreign Policy Issues and U.S. Views, Congressional Research Service Report for Congress, November 28, 2010, 11. 102. Eligür, Mobilization of Political Islam, 273–74. See also Migdalovitz, Turkey, 11, and Em­ rullah Uslu, “Public Outrage against Israeli Policies in Gaza Could Turn into Anti-Semitic Sen­ timent,” Eurasia Daily Monitor 6, no. 3 (January 7, 2009). 103. Malike Bileydı Koç, “Reflections on the Davos Crisis in the Turkish Press and the Views of Opinion Leaders of the Turkish Jews on the Crisis,” Turkish Studies 12, no. 3 (2011): 383 (sec­ ond quotation), 393 (first quotation). 104. Kalaycioğlu, “Kulturkampf in Turkey,” 5. 105. Calculated from Banu Eligür, “Turkey’s March 2009 Local Elections,” Turkish Studies 10, no. 3 (2009): 470, and Banu Eligür, “The Changing Face of Turkish Politics: Turkey’s July 2007 Parliamentary Elections,” Middle East Brief, no. 22 (2007): 2. 106. Eligür, “Turkey’s March 2009 Local Elections,” 483; see also 471–72. 107. US Embassy in Ankara, “Turkey: Opposition Leaders Make Hay over Gaza,” January 9, 2009, http://wikileaks.wikimee.org/cable/2009/01/09ANKARA38.html. 108. Eligür, “Turkey’s March 2009 Local Elections,” 486. 109. US Embassy in Ankara, “Turkey: Opposition Leaders Make Hay.” 110. US Embassy in Ankara, “Turkey: Erdogan Returns to Rhetorical Form over Gaza Crisis,” January 7, 2009, https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/09ANKARA25_a.html. 111. Quoted in “Turkey: Political Parties React to Premier’s Davos Walkout,” BBC Monitor­ ing Europe, January 31, 2009. 112. US Embassy in Ankara, “Turkey: Opposition Leaders Make Hay.” 113. Quoted in Hurriyet, January 21, 2009, cited in Kosebalaban, “Crisis in Turkish-Israeli Relations,” 41. 114. Eligür, “Turkey’s March 2009 Local Elections,” 488. See also US Embassy in Ankara, “Turkey: Erdogan Returns to Rhetorical Form.”

276

NOTES TO PAGES 189–192

115. Goodenough, “Turkey’s Opposition Troubled.” 116. On the preceding, see Dan Bilefsky and Sebnem Arsu, “Sponsor of Flotilla Tied to Elite of Turkey,” New York Times, July 15, 2010; Selcan Hacaoglu, “Israelis Damned as Turks Bury Their Martyrs,” The Advertiser (Australia), June 5, 2010, https://www.pressreader.com/australia/ the-advertiser/20100604/284021893293347; and Yigal Schleifer, “Turkey-Israel Crisis: Why the Formerly Obscure IHH Is Playing a Key Role,” Christian Science Monitor, June 4, 2010, https:// www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2010/0604/Turkey-Israel-crisis-Why-the-for merly-obscure-IHH-is-playing-a-key-role. 117. “Turkey’s Premier Flays Israel as Ties Hang by Thread,” Daily Star (Lebanon), June 5, 2010, http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/2010/Jun-05/87573-turkeys-premier­ flays-israel-as-ties-hang-by-thread.ashx; Barkey, “Broken Triangle,” 97; “Turkey’s Erdogan Bears Responsibility in Flotilla Fiasco,” Washington Post, June 5, 2010. 118. Quoted in “Israel’s Friendship with Turkey Is Over—Gül,” Euronews, December 3, 2010, http://www.euronews.com/2010/12/03/israel-s-friendship-with-turkey-is-over-gul. 119. AKP leaders’ Islamic mobilization against the secular elite was highly successful. The party received nearly half the votes in the June 2011 parliamentary elections. In September 2011, a referendum that was championed by the party approved major changes in civilmilitary relations and the composition and power of the higher courts. These developments reduced significantly the power of secularists in both the military and the judiciary. 120. For examples of scholars who assert this position, see Yaprak Gürsoy, “Turkey’s Rela­ tions with the United States and Israel under the Justice and Development Party Government,” in Quandt, Troubled Triangle, 113–15, and Kosebalaban, “Crisis in Turkish-Israeli Relations,” 41–44. 121. Eligür expresses this point: “Erdoğan successfully utilized the Gaza issue prior to the March 2009 local elections in order to increase his party’s popularity among the conservative/ Islamic Turkish electorate by evoking their Islamist sentiments. . . . The AKP put up billboards in Istanbul with anti-Semitic slogans” while Erdoğan “continued to promote anti-Jewish senti­ ments among the Turkish public by quoting from the Old Testament in his speeches: ‘You shall not kill’” while also asserting that Israel “will be cursed” for its actions and that “Allah will punish those who violate the rights of the innocent.” Eligür, “Crisis in Turkish-Israeli Rela­ tions,” 437–38. Last quotation from Migdalovitz, Turkey, 11. 122. Saban Kardas, “Will the AKP’s Foreign and Economic Policies Help in Local Elec­ tions?,” Eurasia Daily Monitor 6, no. 21 (February 2, 2009). 123. Emre Erdoğan, “Politicalization of Foreign Policy: Turkish Public Opinion on the ‘Da­ vos Crisis’ and Its Effects,” Uluslararası İlişkiler 10, no. 37 (2013): 67. See also Koç, “Reflections on the Davos Crisis,” 383. 124. Ben Birnbaum, “Turkey’s Ruling Party Trailing in Poll ahead of Next Year’s Vote,” Washington Times, July 28, 2010. The polls were conducted by the same organization, Sonar Araştirma. 125. Eligür, “Turkey’s March 2009 Local Elections,” 490. 126. Although Davutoğlu, as the AKP’s chief foreign adviser from 2003 to 2009, had impor­ tant influence throughout these years, it was not until after May 2009 when he became foreign minister that his ideas clearly dominated policymaking. According to Behlül Ozkan, “Davuto­ glu’s 2002–09 position as an adviser to the prime minister did not provide him with enough influence to shape Turkish foreign policy in line with his pan-Islamist vision. Abdullah Gül, who was briefly prime minister before serving as minister of foreign affairs between 2003 and 2007, had began to successfully implement the [liberalizing] reforms required for Turkey’s EU candidacy.” Behlül Ozkan, “Turkey, Davutoglu and the Idea of Pan-Islamism,” Survival 56, no. 4 (2014): 132. 127. See Alessio Calabrò, “Neo-Pan-Islamism in Turkey: Foreign Policy Discourse of Tur­ key’s Islamist Thinkers and Parties (1970s–1990s)” (PhD diss., Libera Università Internazionale degli Studi Sociali, 2018). 128. Svante E. Cornell and  M. K. Kaya, “How the Iranian Revolution Inspired Turkish Islamism,” American Foreign Policy Council, July 16, 2020, https://www.afpc.org/publica tions/articles/how-the-iranian-revolution-inspired-turkish-islamism.

277

NOTES TO PAGES 193–196

129. Calabrò, “Neo-Pan-Islamism in Turkey,” 221. 130. H. Akin Ünver, “How Turkey’s Islamists Fell out of Love with Iran,” Middle East Policy 19, no. 4 (2012), https://mepc.org/how-turkeys-islamists-fell-out-love-iran. 131. Erbakan advocated that Turkey pull out of the “Western” NATO. Fuller, New Turkish Republic, 42. 132. On the preceding, see Barkey, “Turkey’s Perspectives,” 71 (quotation); Robins, Suits and Uniforms, 146–47; and Haas, Clash of Ideologies, 184–86, 205. 133. Quoted in Emre Erşen, “Geopolitical Codes in Davutoğlu’s Views toward the Middle East,” Insight Turkey 16, no. 1 (2014): 91. The assertion of tight bonds among Middle Eastern states due to the effects of a common religion and political history was one of the core themes of Davutoğlu’s writings and speeches. Davutoğlu’s and Erdoğan’s views on these issues aligned. Not only did Erdoğan appoint Davutoğlu to be foreign minister in 2009, but also by this time “Davutoğlu’s writings and Erdoğan’s statements dovetail.” Cornell, “What Drives Turkish Foreign Policy?,” 21. 134. Matthew S. Cohen, “Ahmet Davutoğlu’s Academic and Professional Articles: Under­ standing the World View of Turkey’s Former Prime Minister,” Turkish Studies 17 (2016): 7–8, doi: 10.1080/14683849.2016.1220838. 135. Barkey, “Turkey’s Perspectives,” 73. 136. On the term “geo-cultural,” see Erşen, “Geopolitical Codes in Davutoğlu’s Views,” 91. 137. Quoted in Ozkan, “Turkey, Davutoglu and the Idea of Pan-Islamism,” 127–28; see also 119. 138. İlkkaracan, “Democratization in Turkey,” 163. 139. Calculated from Reporters Without Borders, “World Press Freedom Index” database, https://rsf.org/en/ranking_list/archive. 140. Meliha B. Altunişik and Lenore G. Martin, “Making Sense of Turkish Foreign Policy in the Middle East under AKP,” Turkish Studies 12, no. 4 (2011): 574. See also Huber, Democracy Promotion and Foreign Policy, 151, 155, 157, 159, 170. 141. The ideological community between Turkey and Iran would not last long, however. The two countries competed over which should lead the Islamic world in the wake of the Arab Spring mass uprisings that began in December 2010. Turkey at this time also renewed its inter­ est in democracy promotion on the Turkish model. This objective played a central role in re­ newing Turkey’s enmity with Iran and Syria. On these points, see Mark L. Haas, “Turkey and the Arab Spring: The Rise and Fall of Democracy Promotion in a Revolutionary Era,” in The Arab Spring: The Hope and Reality of the Uprisings, ed. Mark L. Haas and David W. Lesch (Boul­ der, CO: Westview, 2017), 204–9. This split is not surprising to my argument. As I discussed in chapter 1, communities based on hierarchical ideologies—in this case Pan-Islam—tend to be brittle as members battle over leadership of the transnational ideological group. TurkishIranian enmity, though, occurred after the breaking of the Israeli alliance. When the alliance was ending during 2009 and 2010, AKP leaders’ ideology-based affinity with Muslim-majority countries including Iran was high and their ideology-based disagreements low. 142. Cornell and Kaya, “How the Iranian Revolution Inspired Turkish Islamism.” See also Ünver, “How Turkey’s Islamists Fell out of Love with Iran.” 143. Quoted in Behsat Ekici, “Is Turkey Realigning? A Three Dimensional Investigation of Turkish-Iranian Security Rapprochement” (PhD diss., University of Pittsburgh, 2010), 133. The quotation is from a December 23, 2009, article in Milliyet. See also “Turkey Dismisses Missile Threat from Neighboring Iran” Today’s Zaman, December 23, 2009. 144. Quoted in Kibaroglu and Caglar, “Implications of a Nuclear Iran,” 65. 145. Interview with Prime Minister Erdoğan by Guardian Newspaper, October 3, 2009, cited in Ekici, “Is Turkey Realigning?,” 128–29. 146. Quoted in Marwan Kabalan, “Syrian-Turkish Relations: Geopolitical Explanations for the Move from Conflict to Cooperation,” in Hinnebusch and Tür, Turkey-Syria Relations, 32. 147. Quoted in Cornell and Kaya, “How the Iranian Revolution Inspired Turkish Islamism.” 148. Quoted in Eligür, “Crisis in Turkish-Israeli Relations,” 441. 149. Joshi, Permanent Crisis, 123. 150. Udum, “Turkey’s Foreign Policy on Iran’s Nuclear Programme,” 139.

278

NOTES TO PAGES 196–207

151. Kibaroglu and Caglar, “Implications of a Nuclear Iran,” 61–62. Prominent secularists continued to reject AKP leaders’ benign assessment of Iranian intentions and capabilities for reasons consistent with my argument. As Henri Barkey, writing in 2009, explains, “Turkish military officials have . . . been blunt about their concerns regarding the Iranian nuclear pro­ gram. The Turkish General Staff perceives Iran as an ideological enemy; a theocratic state bent on undermining the secular basis of Turkey and of the region. In a speech in Washing­ ton [in June 2008], given while he was deputy chief of staff . . . General Ilker Basbug, argued that Turkey, just as the United States, was following Iran’s nuclear activities with apprehen­ sion. In his departure speech [in August 2006], a former chief of staff, General Hilmi Özkök . . . warned that ‘unless the crisis over [Iranian] nuclear weapons is resolved diplomatically, [Turkey] would soon be faced with important strategic choices. Otherwise, we would be faced with the possibility of losing our strategic superiority in the region.’” Quoted in Barkey, “Turkey’s Perspectives,” 72. 152. Quotations from Eligür, “Crisis in Turkish-Israeli Relations,” 440, 442, 444. 153. Eligür, “Crisis in Turkish-Israeli Relations,” 440; see also 437.

Conclusion 1. Although the evidence presented in the case studies strongly supports the book’s argu­ ment, there are also some holes. Most important, the evidence did not provide an opportunity to examine the effects of the ideological configuration of ideological outsider. This configuration oc­ curs when the initiating state is being pushed for realist reasons to ally with one ideological enemy (the potential frenemy ally) against another (the material threat) and these latter states are dedi­ cated to similar ideological beliefs. This configuration facilitates the creation of frenemy alliances. 2. See, for example, Michael N. Barnett and Jack S. Levy, “Domestic Sources of Alliances and Alignments: The Case of Egypt, 1962–73,” International Organization 45, no. 3 (1991): 369–95; Steven R. David, Choosing Sides: Alignment and Realignment in the Third World (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991); and F. Gregory Gause III, “Balancing What? Threat Percep­ tion and Alliance Choice in the Gulf,” Security Studies 13, no. 2 (2003/4): 273–305. 3. On the tendency for the international relations of some periods to be highly ideological and others not, as well as a related explanation for the variation, see John M. Owen, The Clash of Ideas in World Politics: Transnational Networks, States, and Regime Change, 1510–2010 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010). 4. Quoted from the Global Trends homepage, https://www.dni.gov/index.php/global­ trends-home. 5. National Intelligence Council, Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds (Washington, DC, National Intelligence Council), preface, https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/Global Trends_2030.pdf. 6. John J. Mearsheimer, “Can China Rise Peacefully?,” National Interest, October 25, 2014, https://nationalinterest.org/commentary/can-china-rise-peacefully-10204?page=0%2C4. For similar analysis, see Stephen M. Walt, “US Grand Strategy after the Cold War: Can Realism Explain It? Should Realism Guide It?,” International Relations 32, no. 1 (2018): 15. 7. The book’s insights and predictions can, of course, be applied to other regions. Greg­ ory Gause, for example, used an early version of my argument to explain why a Saudi-TurkishIsraeli alliance against Iran has yet to form. F. Gregory Gause III, “Ideologies, Alignments, and Underbalancing in the New Middle East Cold War,” PS: Political Science and Politics 50, no. 3 (2017): 671–75; Mark L. Haas, “Ideological Polarity and Balancing in Great Power Politics,” Security Studies 23, no. 4 (2014): 715–53. 8. Max Fisher and Audrey Carlsen, “How China Is Challenging American Dominance in Asia,” New York Times, March 9, 2018. Russia is not included in the analysis even though it is a Pacific country. It is currently allied with China. 9. David Shambaugh, “U.S.-China Rivalry in Southeast Asia: Power Shift or Competitive Coexistence?,” International Security 42, no. 4 (2018): 100–103, quotation from 102.

279

NOTES TO PAGES 208–212

10. I judge which states are liberal and not based on Freedom House rankings. Freedom House in 2019 (which covers the time period analyzed in the previous two sources) assessed Australia, India, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan to be “free,” liberal democratic states. Free­ dom House judged all the other countries listed in the preceding paragraphs to be “not free” (Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Russia, and Vietnam) or “partly free” (Bangladesh, Bhutan, Indone­ sia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, the Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, and Thailand). Freedom House, Democracy in Retreat: Freedom in the World, 2019 (Washington, DC: Freedom House, 2019), 14, Feb2019_FH_FITW_2019_Report_ForWeb-compressed.pdf (freedomhouse. org). I deem both “not free” and “partly free” states to be illiberal. In 2021, Freedom House downgraded India to a “partly free” state and Myanmar to a “not free” one. “Countries and Territories,” “Global Freedom Scores,” Freedom House, https://freedomhouse.org/countries/ freedom-world/scores. 11. James Holmes, “Is the U.S.-Philippines Alliance Dying?,” National Interest, February 15, 2020, https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/us-philippines-alliance-dying-123841. 12. Richard Javad Heydarian, The Rise of Duterte: A Populist Revolt against Elite Democracy (Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 65–66, 82–83; Richard Javad Heydarian, “Tragedy of Small Power Politics: Duterte and the Shifting Sands of Philippine Foreign Policy,” Asian Secu­ rity 13, no. 3 (2017): 227 (quotation). 13. Heydarian, Rise of Duterte, 69. 14. Heydarian, “Tragedy of Small Power Politics,” 228. 15. Quotations from Heydarian, “Tragedy of Small Power Politics,” 220–21. 16. Heydarian, “Tragedy of Small Power Politics,” 233. 17. Jason Gutierrez, Thomas Gibbons-Neff, and Eric Schmitt, “Philippines Tells U.S. It Will End Military Cooperation Deal,” New York Times, February 11, 2020. 18. Lisandro E. Claudio and Patricio N. Abinales, “Dutertismo, Maoismo, Nasyonalismo,” in A Duterte Reader: Critical Essays on Rodrigo Duterte’s Early Presidency, ed. Nicole Curato (Ithaca, NY, New York: SEAP Publications, 2017): 95. 19. Heydarian, “Tragedy of Small Power Politics,” 221. 20. These views represent a major departure from Aquino’s, who repeatedly likened China to Nazi Germany. Heydarian, “Tragedy of Small Power Politics,” 221. 21. Ben Blanchard, “Duterte Aligns Philippines with China, Says U.S. Has Lost,” Reuters, October 20, 2016, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-philippines/duterte-aligns­ philippines-with-china-says-u-s-has-lost-idUSKCN12K0AS. 22. Quotations from Michael Magcamit, “The Duterte Method: A Neoclassical Realist Guide to Understanding a Small Power’s Foreign Policy and Strategic Behavior in the AsiaPacific,” Asian Journal of Comparative Politics (October 2019): 11, https://doi.org/10.1177/ 2057891119882769, and Dona Z. Pazzibugan, “PDP-Laban Out to Learn Ideology from Com­ munist Party of China,” Philippine Daily Inquirer, July 19, 2017, https://globalnation.inquirer. net/158865/pdp-laban-learn-ideology-communist-party-china. 23. Quoted in Prashanth Parameswaran, “Why the Philippines’ Rodrigo Duterte Hates America,” The Diplomat, November 1, 2016, https://thediplomat.com/2016/11/why-the-phil ippines-rodrigo-duterte-hates-america/. 24. Quoted in Adele Webb, “Hide the Looking Glass: Duterte and the Legacy of American Imperialism,” in Curato, Duterte Reader, 129. 25. Ronald A. Pernia, “Human Rights in a Time of Populism: Philippines under Rodrigo Duterte,” Asia-Pacific Social Science Review 19, no. 3 (2019): 62. 26. Quoted in Gutierrez, Gibbons-Neff, and Schmitt, “Philippines Tells U.S. It Will End Military Cooperation Deal.” 27. Heydarian, Rise of Duterte, 50–51, 80; Pazzibugan, “PDP-Laban Out to Learn Ideology.” 28. Quoted in Edcel John A. Ibarra, “The Philippines’ ‘Pivot’ to China: A Review of Perspec­ tives,” Center for International Relations and Strategic Studies 4, no. 9 (2017), https://www.think­ asia.org/handle/11540/6928. 29. Quoted in Richard Javad Heydarian, “How Duterte Turned the Philippines into China’s New Play Thing,” National Interest, February 23, 2020, https://nationalinterest.org/feature/ how-duterte-turned-philippines-chinas-new-play-thing-125946.

280

NOTES TO PAGES 213–219

30. Quoted in Kathy Quiano and Ben Westcott, “Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte Says He Needs China, ‘Loves’ Xi Jinping,” CNN, April 9, 2018, https://www.cnn.com/ 2018/04/09/asia/duterte-xi-jinping-boao-forum-intl/index.html. 31. Quoted in John Feng, “Philippines’ Duterte Says Court Ruling against China Is Trash to Be Thrown Away, Newsweek, May 6, 2021, https://www.newsweek.com/philippines-duterte­ says-court-ruling-against-china-trash-thrown-away-1589183. 32. Michael Magcamit, “The Duterte Doctrine: A Neoclassical Realist Guide to Under­ standing Rodrigo Duterte’s Foreign Policy and Strategic Behavior in the Asia-Pacific,” APPFI Research Paper RSA-2019-01 (Quezon City: Asia Pacific Pathways to Progress Foundation, 2019), 15. 33. For details on the Russian-Chinese alliance, see Stephen Blank, “China and Russia: A Burgeoning Alliance,” Proceedings: US Naval Institute (March 2020), https://www.usni.org/ magazines/proceedings/2020/march/china-and-russia-burgeoning-alliance. 34. John J. Mearsheimer, “Bound to Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Liberal International Order,” International Security 43, no. 4 (2019): 48. 35. Brian D. Taylor, The Code of Putinism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 22. 36. Quotations from “Putin: Russian President Says Liberalism ‘Obsolete,’” BBC, June 18, 2019, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-48795764. 37. Taylor, Code of Putinism, 32. 38. Allen C. Lynch, Vladimir Putin and Russian Statecraft (Dulles, VA: Potomac Books, 2011), xiv. 39. Lionel Barber and Henry Foy, “Vladimir Putin: Liberalism Has ‘Outlived Its Purpose,’” Financial Times, September 17, 2019, https://www.ft.com/content/2880c762-98c2-11e9-8cfb­ 30c211dcd229. 40. Quotations from Taylor, Code of Putinism, 11, 178–79. 41. Taylor, Code of Putinism, 6, 11, 15, 17–18, 20, 25, 27, 35, 171, 176, 182, 184–85, 188, 192; Timothy Snyder, The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America (New York: Duggan Books, 2018), 51–56, 83, 91, 136–37; Michael McFaul, “Putin, Putinism, and the Domestic Determinants of Russian Foreign Policy,” International Security 45, no. 2 (2020): 95–139. 42. Gilbert Rozman, “Asia for the Asians: Why Chinese-Russian Friendship Is Here to Stay,” Foreign Affairs, October 29, 2014, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/east-asia/ 2014-10-29/asia-asians. 43. Aaron L. Friedberg, “Bucking Beijing,” Foreign Affairs 91, no. 5 (2012): 49–50; Chris Buck­ ley, “China’s Communist Party Casts West as Subversive Threat,” New York Times, December 22, 2016. 44. Pavel K. Baev, “Russia’s Counter-Revolutionary Stance toward the Arab Spring,” Insight Turkey 13, no. 3 (2011): 11–19; Clifford J. Levy, “Russia’s Leaders See China as a Template for Ruling,” New York Times, October 18, 2009. 45. I argue elsewhere, for example, that the George W. Bush administration’s failure to take into account the major ideological differences separating the secular regime in Syria and the Islamist government in Iran resulted in missing an important opportunity to help weaken these states’ alliance. Because Bush placed Syria and Iran into the same ideological category (that of illiberal), he did not believe the countries’ major ideological differences would signifi­ cantly impact their alliance. See Mark L. Haas, “Missed Ideological Opportunities and George W. Bush’s Middle Eastern Policies,” Security Studies 21, no. 3 (2012): 440–49. 46. Other, nonideological wedging policies based on a combination of pressure and accom­ modation toward China’s allies may, however, be available to US policymakers. On this point, see Timothy W. Crawford, The Power to Divide: Wedge Strategies in Great Power Competition (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2021), ch. 11. 47. Cambodia and Malaysia, for example, are electoral autocracies, and Thailand and Bru­ nei are monarchies. 48. Leaders can also engage in ideological wedging policies by endeavoring to enhance fears of regime vulnerability in the target. Nazi elites in the 1930s adopted this tactic in relation to Britain and France by emphasizing the Soviet Union’s high subversive capacity. This tactic by US officials will have traction the more leaders in Asian countries are worried about the

281

NOTES TO PAGES 220–229

spread of Chinese ideology or the undermining of their ideological order due to China’s inter­ ference in their domestic affairs. 49. An analysis of why Soviet leaders’ policies of ideological bolstering toward France in the 1930s failed illustrate these dynamics. Soviet elites could not convince French conserva­ tives and Radicals to adhere to and deepen the pact of mutual assistance despite stating that the Comintern (which was the Soviet Union’s main instrument of ideological promotion) would no longer be dedicated to the destruction of capitalism and colonialism. Because of French communists’ political strength (a powerful ideological fifth column) and the Spanish Civil War (fear of successful revolutions abroad), Soviet efforts did little to reduce French con­ servatives’ and Radicals’ fears of regime vulnerability. 50. This last statement is likely to be particularly true for frenemy allies that operate in a situ­ ation of double threat. Members of all cross-ideological coalitions confront incentives not to push for ideological change in their partners to reduce allies’ fears of regime vulnerability. The advantages to be gained by ideological promotion will be particularly low when leaders are in a configuration of double threat, which occurs when frenemy allies share a greater ideological enemy. In this configuration, existing ideological relationships already help bolster the alliance, which reduces the benefits to be had by successful ideological exportation. To build on the ex­ ample referenced above, because Saudi leaders during the Cold War were intensely ideologi­ cally hostile to the Soviet Union even without a liberal regime change, the potential security benefits for the United States to be had by pushing for revolution in the kingdom were lowered. 51. David Adesnik and Michael McFaul, “Engaging Autocratic Allies to Promote Democ­ racy,” Washington Quarterly 29, no. 2 (2006): 7–26. 52. Freedom House in 2021 downgraded India to a “partly free” country, barely missing the cutoff for being labeled a “free” one. These trends indicate that the US-Indian security relation­ ship may be becoming a frenemy one. 53. On China’s interest and potential to weaken cooperation between India and the United States, see Crawford, Power to Divide, ch. 11. On efforts to wedge apart South Korea and the United States, see Bonnie S. Glaser and Lisa Collins, “China’s Rapprochement with South Ko­ rea: Who Won the THAAD Dispute?,” Foreign Affairs, November 7, 2017, https://www.for eignaffairs.com/articles/china/2017-11-07/chinas-rapprochement-south-korea. 54. Michael R. Pompeo, “Communist China and the Free World’s Future,” speech given July 23, 2020, https://www.state.gov/communist-china-and-the-free-worlds-future/. 55. “Remarks by President Biden in Press Conference,” March 25, 2021, White House, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2021/03/25/remarks-by­ president-biden-in-press-conference/.

Appendix A 1. Evan N. Resnick, Allies of Convenience: A Theory of Bargaining in U.S. Foreign Policy (New York: Columbia University Press, 2019), 22. 2. I searched the member-level dataset (atop4_01m), http://www.atopdata.org/data. html. Brett Ashley Leeds, Jeffrey M. Ritter, Sara McLaughlin Mitchell, and Andrew G. Long, “Alliance Obligation Treaty Obligations and Provisions, 1815–1944,” International Interactions 28, no. 3 (2002): 237–60. 3. Six is the lowest score for a democracy according to the Polity IV classification. Monty G. Marshall and Ted Robert Gurr, “Polity IV Individual Country Regime Trends, 1946–2013,” http://www.systemicpeace.org/polity/polity4x.htm. 4. I removed from my list updated US commitments with the Organization of American States (OAS), NATO, and the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) as well as two com­ mitments to Spain. 5. Stephen M. Walt, The Origins of Alliances (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1987), 154, 287–88. I removed three of the fourteen alliances Walt identifies due to “high” or “moderate/ high” ideological solidarity. I also excluded the Egyptian-US alliance that originated in 1975 be­ cause Walt labels that alliance from Egypt’s perspective a bandwagoning not a balancing one.

282

NOTES TO PAGE 229

6. Although the appendixes list forty-one total alliances, three are listed twice. The United States’ alliances with Pakistan and Spain in appendix D and with Saudi Arabia in appendix F are duplicates from appendix C. I do not double-count them. (All three support my argument.) One alliance, Pakistan’s alliance with the United States in appendix D, exhibits two ideological configurations that varies with the shared threat (either India or the Soviet Union). The num­ ber of ideological configurations thus exceeds by one the number of frenemy alliances. Al­ though outcomes for both configurations in the Pakistani case support my argument, I count this alliance as a single confirming case.

283

Index

Page numbers in italics refer to figures and tables. abandonment, 247n21 Abinales, Patricio, 211 Acar, Feride, 185 Adamthwaite, Anthony, 79, 91, 101 Afghanistan, 30, 34, 135–36, 156, 175, 251n77 aggressiveness, 5, 18, 20, 71, 74, 112 Ahmadinejad, Mahmoud, 173, 196 Akbarzadeh, Shahram, 35 AKP. See Justice and Development Party alliance: defined, 13, 63–65, 246n2, 253n115; formal, 13, 63–64, 73–74, 81, 228–29, 237–39, 253n115, 253n117; informal, 13, 63, 66, 134, 228–29, 264n5 alliance failure, 1–14, 67–68; alternative explanations of (see realist balancing theories); predicting likelihood of, 2–4, 10–12, 20–24, 39, 49–53, 50, 198–99, 205–6, 222, 245n26. See also case studies; frenemy alliances; ideological variables alliance literature, 8–10, 203 Alphand, Charles, 87 Altunişik, Meliha, 179, 194 Altunok, Gülbanu, 185 Anatolian Eagle military exercises, 164, 167–68, 196 Anglo-French-Russian coalition, 1–2, 7–8, 50, 107, 245n26 Anglo-German Naval Agreement, 74 anticipated costs of alliance, 6–8, 14, 21–24, 36, 49–53, 50, 179, 252n99; for Britain

and France, 70, 84–95; for China, 123–25, 152; for Turkey, 189. See also regime vulnerability Anti-Comintern Pact, 41, 260n141 anticommunism, 3, 7, 43–44, 46–47, 60–61, 70, 75, 95, 99, 102–5, 112. See also communism Aquino, Benigno, III, 210, 213, 219, 280n20 Arab Spring, 33, 215, 278n141 argumentation, 42, 96, 250n74 Arınç, Bülent, 166, 189, 192 Asian alliances, 12, 206–9, 208, 221–22. See also China; Sino-American alliance; United States Atatürk, Mustafa Kemal, 160 Attlee, Clement, 110 Australia, 207, 221, 280n10 Austria, 25, 73–74, 96, 108 Austria-Hungary, 51 authoritarian regimes, 11, 32, 126, 161, 178–79, 212, 214, 216, 221 Bachman, David, 129 Bacon, Tricia, 265n34 Bahçeli, Devlet, 188 Baker, Donald, 114 balance-of-power theory, 19–20, 68, 209 balance-of-threat theory, 19–21, 39, 45, 55–56, 123, 155, 209, 248n30; Germany and, 69, 71, 74; Turkish-Israeli alliance and, 172. See also realist balancing theories

285

INDEX

balancing policies, 12, 44; divide and balance, 48; elite consensus and, 55–56; offense-defense balance and differentia­ tion, 57. See also frenemy alliances; realist balancing theories; underbalancing Baldwin, Stanley, 75 Balkans, 43 Baltic states, 77, 83 bandwagoning, 8, 22, 38, 40, 205; defined, 244n18 Bangladesh, 207, 218, 280n10 Barber, Lionel, 215 Barkey, Henri, 173, 193, 279n151 Barthou, Louis, 7, 86, 116 Bashir, Omar al-, 276n100 Basij Resistance Force, 174 Beer Hall Putsch, 59 Bevin, Ernest, 111–12 Bhutan, 207–8, 280n10 Biden, Joe, 221 Bir, Çevik, 164–65 Bismarck, Otto von, 43, 51–52 Blum, Léon, 3, 53, 79, 88, 91, 104, 106–13, 118, 255nn36–37, 261n161, 262n189 Bölükbaşi, Deniz, 188 Bonnet, Georges, 80, 82–83, 102, 257n88 Bouisson, Fernand, 255n36 Brezhnev Doctrine, 128 Britain: anticommunism, 3, 95, 99, 102–5; military power, 73–75; politics in (see British conservatives; British socialists; Labour Party); preservation of empire, 92–94; regime vulnerability, 70, 91–95; Soviet alliance (1941), 243n6. See also Anglo-French-Russian coalition; British-French alliance with Soviet Union (unrealized) British Communist Party, 92 British conservatives, 36, 41, 43, 50, 61–63, 70–72, 75–78, 84, 91–100, 103, 105, 109–12, 118, 120, 199, 200, 201, 218, 224–25, 233nC, 258n111, 262n205 British-French alliance with Soviet Union (unrealized), 69–121; anticipated costs of alliance, 70–71, 72, 84, 89, 91, 106, 199, 200, 202; British outreach to Soviet Union, 75–78; buck-passing, 115–17; divided threats, 41–44, 70, 84, 95–102, 111, 121, 199–201; double threat, 71, 106, 110–12, 119, 121, 202, 204; French outreach to Soviet Union, 78–83; hedging policies, 71; ideological wedging policies, 84, 95–96, 111, 218; military power and, 72–75; overview of, 1–4, 69–72; perceived need for alliance, 70, 84, 98, 100, 103, 121; predictions, 72; realist arguments on, 80–81, 83, 88, 115–20; regime vulnerability, 70–71, 84–95, 106,

286

112–14, 120–21, 204; security dilemma and, 118–19; socialists’ pro-Soviet policies, 105–14; summary of findings, 199–201, 200. See also Britain; France; Germany, Nazi-era; Soviet Union British socialists, 70–71, 75, 105–6, 109–14 Bronson, Rachel, 47 Brown, Harold, 135 Brumberg, Daniel, 30 Brunei, 207, 218, 280n10, 281n47 buck-passing, 8, 22, 38, 179, 205; Britain and, 115–17; China and, 124, 146–48, 155, 266n35; configurations of ideological distances and, 53–55; defined, 244n18; divided threats and, 42, 54, 205; France and, 44, 48, 54, 115–17; ideological equidistance and, 44–45, 54, 205; realist arguments on, 53–55, 66, 155 Buffotot, Patrice, 90, 256n56 Bullitt, William, 82, 260n139 Bush, George W., 30, 245n26, 281n45 Caglar, Baris, 196 Calabrò, Alessio, 193 Calvinist states, 16, 24, 44–45 Cambodia, 135, 156, 207, 218, 280n10, 281n47 Cambon, Paul, 2 capitalism: authoritarian capitalist regimes, 11; China and, 11, 27, 62, 123, 126, 128, 137–43, 150–54, 214, 267n71; Soviet Union and, 3, 18, 36, 52–53, 69, 97, 105, 111, 252n91, 282n49 Carley, Michael, 82, 99, 256n56, 257n71 Carter, Jimmy, 134–36, 157 case studies, 9–10, 65–68, 198–99; summary of findings, 199–203, 200. See also British-French alliance with Soviet Union (unrealized); Sino-American alliance; Turkish-Israeli alliance Catholic states, 16, 24, 44–45 CCP. See Chinese Communist Party Central Asia, 33–35, 127 Chamberlain, Neville, 3, 75–78, 96–97, 99, 109, 117 Chautemps, Camille, 79–80, 82, 255n37 Chechnya, 216 Chilston, Lord, 36, 93, 258n105 China: class struggle, 138–40, 151–52; ideological hostility toward Soviet Union and US, 27, 61, 137, 144–46, 267n71; military power, 129, 132–33; moderniza­ tion, 37–38, 124, 151–54, 202, 270n141; power rise in twenty-first century, 206–14; reradicalization, 140–43, 152, 201; Russia and, 214, 216–17; security cooperation with US, 129–37, 141–43, 155, 157–58; self-reliance, 150–51; Two Whatevers

INDEX

doctrine, 150–51; US-led balancing coalition against, 12, 206–9, 220–21; war scare, 128, 155–56. See also Sino-American alliance Chinese Communist Party (CCP), 63, 122, 126, 129, 137–43, 145, 147, 151–52, 211, 221 CHP. See Republican People’s Party Christensen, Thomas, 134, 266n51 Churchill, Winston, 82 Ciano, Galeazzo, 103 Claudio, Lisandro, 211 Cold War, 46–47, 123, 219, 282n50 Collier, Laurence, 76 color revolutions, 33, 215 Colton, Joel, 107 Comintern, 36, 79, 89–90, 93, 282n49 communicative action, 42, 47, 217–19 communism, 24, 42, 67, 211–12; ideological exportation of, 77–78, 89–90, 92–94, 117. See also anticommunism; Chinese Communist Party; Comintern; French Communist Party Concert of Europe, 25 configurations of ideological distances, 6–11, 14, 21, 22, 38–49, 198, 203, 222; decrease in perceived need for alliance, 38, 39, 39–45, 50; increase in perceived need for alliance, 38, 39, 45–49, 50; operationalization of variables, 59–63; summary of, 39, 223–30. See also divided threats; double threat; ideological betrayal; ideological equidistance; ideological outsider conflicts of interest, 5, 18, 20, 40, 69, 74, 109, 175, 228, 248n30 Connelly, Aaron, 207 constructivist theories, 17, 247n9 Cooper, Duff, 98 Cordesman, Anthony, 172, 174 Cornell, Svante, 195 costs. See anticipated costs of alliance; opportunity costs Cot, Pierre, 108, 261n165 Coulondre, Robert, 82, 89, 91, 257n88 coups, 25–26 Crawford, Timothy W., 250n74 Crimean War, 3 Cuhadar, Esra, 179 Cultural Revolution, 138–41, 143, 151, 153, 268n88 Czechoslovakia: Nazi Germany and, 74, 76, 96–97, 101, 108–9, 116; Soviet invasion of, 128, 144, 148 Daladier, Édouard, 79, 82–83, 90, 101–2, 108, 255n37, 260n139 Dallas, George, 110

Dalton, Hugh, 110, 259n116 David, Steven, 27 Davutoğlu, Ahmet, 168, 192–93, 195, 277n126, 278n133 Debû-Bridel, Jacques, 102 defense pacts, 253n117 defensive realists, 57 de Kérillis, Henri, 80, 87–88, 101, 257n77 Delbos, Yvon, 79–81, 89–90, 108, 257n88 democracies, 11, 160–61, 166, 178–79, 194, 211, 221; illiberal, 11, 219, 232, 241. See also specific democratic states Democratic Alliance Party, 78, 88 Democratic Society Party (DTP), 170, 187–88 demonstration effects, 32–35, 84, 89–91, 258n111 Deng Xiaoping, 37–38, 134–36, 142–43, 145, 147, 151–54, 158, 202, 268n100, 270n148 divided threats, 22, 39, 41–44, 61, 66–67, 95, 203, 208; Britain and France in 1930s, 41–44, 70, 84, 95–102, 111, 121, 199–201; buck-passing and, 42, 54, 205; perceived need for alliance and, 199; Philippines and, 211–13; summary of, 224–25 divisive (hierarchical) ideologies, 15–16, 62 domestic interests, 21, 24–28, 36, 204; when interconnected across states, 37, 112–14, 152–53. See also anticipated costs of alliance; regime vulnerability; revolution double rebels, 28, 30–32, 59 double threat, 39, 45–47, 201–4; Britain and France in 1930s, 71, 106, 110–12, 119, 121, 202, 204; ideological bolstering and, 219; ideological exportation and, 282n50; increased likelihood of alliance and, 66; Sino-American alliance, 124–25, 150, 152–54, 202; summary of, 226–27 Douglas-Home, Alec, 97 Doumenc, Joseph, 83 Doumergue, Gaston, 255n37 Dreifort, John, 90, 256n56 DTP. See Democratic Society Party Duelfer, Charles, 16 Duroselle, Jean-Baptiste, 73 Duterte, Rodrigo, 210–13, 218 Dyson, Stephen, 16 East Asia, 11, 127, 135, 155. See also Asian alliances Eastern Europe, 33, 76–77, 83, 116, 119–20, 127, 215–16 Eden, Anthony, 93–94, 254n11, 258n105 Eisenhower, Dwight, 18 ElBaradei, Mohamed, 173 Eligür, Banu, 185–88, 192, 197, 277n121 elite consensus, 55–56, 263n205

287

INDEX

elites: core political beliefs, 17; perceptions of, 59–63, 246n3; process tracing methods, 65. See also domestic interests Elkatmış, Mehmet, 167 entrapment, 247n21 Erbakan, Necmettin, 177, 188, 193 Erdoğan, Emre, 191 Erdoğan, Recep Tayyip, 166–71, 173, 177–78, 182, 185–86, 188–92, 194–95, 276n100, 277n121, 278n133 Ergenekon investigation, 183 Europe: ideological divisions in, 11; revolutions in, 33, 215 (see also Spanish Civil War); wars of religion, 16, 24, 44–45. See also Eastern Europe; specific countries European Union, 166, 184 fascism, 24, 42, 52–53, 67, 75, 86, 110–12, 250n58 Felicity Party (SP), 170, 187–88 fifth columns, ideological, 28–30, 34–35, 37, 59; in Britain, 84, 92–95; in China, 137–43, 152; in France, 84–91, 257n77; in Iran, 30; in Russia, 215; in Turkey, 178–80, 182, 189 Flandin, Pierre-Étienne, 80, 255n37 Ford, Gerald, 122–23, 130, 143–44, 158 Foy, Henry, 215 France: anticommunism, 3, 95, 102–5; buck-passing, 44, 48, 54; ideological outsider and, 47–48, 52–53; labor strikes, 88–89; military power, 73–75, 91, 115–17; political instability in 1930s, 56, 78–83, 86–88 (see also French Communist Party; French Right and Center; French socialists); regime vulnerability, 70–71, 84–91, 204, 282n49. See also Anglo-FrenchRussian coalition; British-French alliance with Soviet Union (unrealized) Franco, Francisco, 90–91 François-Poncet, André, 104 Franco-Russian alliance, 43, 48–49 Franco-Soviet Treaty of Mutual Assistance, 76, 80–82, 85–88, 90, 100, 106–9, 243n6, 256n46, 256n56, 256n65, 257nn77–78, 257n88, 282n49 Freedom House, 218, 280n10, 282n52 Freedom of Navigation operations, 210–11 French Communist Party, 56, 78–79, 85–91, 100, 256n65, 257n71, 257nn77–78, 257n82, 257n88. See also Popular Front French conservatives, 41, 43, 50, 56, 60, 62–63, 78, 80–81, 85–88, 101–2, 104, 113, 233nC, 257n77, 259n127. See also Democratic Alliance Party; French Right and Center; Republican Federation Party

288

French Right and Center, 7, 41, 56, 60–61, 67, 70–71, 78–91, 95, 100–102, 105, 111, 117, 199, 200, 201, 204, 218, 224–25, 256n65, 257n71, 263n216, 282n49. See also French conservatives; Radical-Socialist Party French socialists, 56, 63, 67, 70–71, 78–83, 85–91, 105–14, 118–19, 204, 255n36. See also Popular Front; Workers’ International Party frenemy alliances, 1–5, 13–19; argument in brief, 6–8; counterhypothesis, 20–21; defined, 4, 13, 67, 244n9; ideological conditions affecting probability of, 21–49, 23, 37, 39, 232–33 (see also configurations of ideological distances; regime vulner­ ability); policymaking implications, 10–12, 205–22. See also alliance failure; anticipated costs of alliance; BritishFrench alliance with Soviet Union (unrealized); case studies; perceived need for alliance; Sino-American alliance; Turkish-Israeli alliance Gamelin, Maurice, 80, 102, 116 Garthoff, Raymond, 134, 266n51 Gauche, Maurice, 101 Gause, Gregory, 245n21, 249n41, 279n7 Gaza War, 195–96, 277n121; Turkish flotilla incident, 167–71, 189–91. See also Palestinian conflicts gender equality, 185, 194 Geng Biao, 135 George, David Lloyd, 2 George VI, King, 99 German-Russian relations, 43, 48–49, 51–52 German-Soviet relations: alliance, 10, 99–100; hostile, 18; pact of nonaggression, 78, 83, 259n126 Germany, Nazi-era: anticommunism, 60–61, 70, 102–5, 112; appeasement of, 99, 104, 259n116, 263n205; hedging policies and, 51–52; ideological wedging policies, 70, 84, 102–5, 112, 218, 260n146, 281n48; as material threat to Britain and France, 1–4, 7–8, 41–42, 69–75, 83, 91, 95–102, 110–12, 120, 199, 254n11; Spanish Civil War and, 90–91. See also British-French alliance with Soviet Union (unrealized) Gewirtz, Julian, 151 Giraud, Henri, 82 Glaser, Bonnie S., 207 Glaser, Charles, 57 Goh, Evelyn, 132 Gordon, Michael R., 114 Göring, Hermann, 104

INDEX

Greece, 76 Greene, Nathanael, 108, 112, 261n161 Grey, Edward, 1 Grigoriadis, Ioannis, 182 Gül, Abdullah, 166, 173, 178–79, 182–83, 189, 194, 277n126 Gu Mu, 152 Haig, Alexander, 133, 266n43 Halifax, Edward, 77, 94–95, 99–100, 118, 258n105 Hamas, 188–89 Hankey, Maurice, 99 Hapsburg family, 45 Harding, Harry, 138 Harvey, Oliver, 97 Hayne, M. B., 2 hedging policies, 51–52, 213 Herriot, Édouard, 1, 80, 89 Heydarian, Richard, 211 Hezbollah, 167, 174–75 Hintz, Lisel, 186 Hitler, Adolf, 40, 60, 97, 106, 109, 116, 166–67, 250n58 Hoare, Samuel, 94 Holmes, James, 209 Hua Guofeng, 140, 150–51 Huber, Daniela, 179 Hungary, 11 Hussein, Saddam, 30, 175, 245n26 ideological betrayal, 22, 39, 40–41, 43, 48, 66–67, 203, 208; bandwagoning and, 205; Italy and, 40–41; perceived need for alliance and, 199; summary of, 223–24; trust and, 194; Turkey and, 61, 162, 181, 191–97, 201 ideological bolstering policies, 23, 39, 46–47, 217, 219–22, 251n84, 270n141, 282nn49–50 ideological distance: defined, 6, 22; effects on intentions assessments, 16–18, 24–25, 28, 39, 57, 96–97, 117, 119, 144, 146, 195–96, 207, 247n21, 248n30, 279n151. See also configurations of ideological distances ideological enemies: alliances between (see frenemy alliances); defined, 1; as out-group, 17, 60; overview of, 14–19 ideological enmity: among co-ideologies, 269n105; sources of, 15–19. See also frenemy alliances ideological equidistance, 22, 39, 44–45, 61, 66–67, 203, 208; buck-passing and, 44–45, 54, 205; perceived need for alliance and, 199; Sino-American alliance, 124, 143–50, 201; summary of, 225–26; Turkish-Israeli

alliance, 161–62, 178–79, 191–92, 194, 202, 275n72 ideological exportation, 25, 28, 35–38, 58, 194, 215–16, 220; of communism, 77–78, 89–90, 92–94, 117; double threat and, 282n50; and US efforts to balance China, 219–21 ideological heterogeneity, 11, 203 ideological mobilization policies, 23, 26, 28, 31, 37, 253n109; as part of AKP leaders’ efforts to defeat Kemalists, 161, 181, 184–91, 197, 201, 277n199; as part of Mao’s reradicalization efforts, 124, 137, 140–43, 201 ideological outsider, 39, 47–49, 52–53, 203–4, 227–28, 252n91, 279n1 ideological polarity, 244n16 ideological polarization, 34, 183–84, 190, 192 ideological rivalry, 5, 15, 33–34, 60, 217 ideological similarities: between AKP and Iran, 192–93, 196–97; between AKP and Israel, 166–67; between British and French Right and Center and Germany, 97–100, 102–5; between British and French socialists and the Soviet Union, 111–12, 262n129; between China and the United States at end of 1970s, 37, 152–54; defined, 59–60; importance to ideological bolstering, 46–47, 221; importance to US efforts to balance China, 207–8, 221–22; importance to wedging policies, 23, 43, 48, 103–5, 196–97, 204, 218; international effects of, 8, 32, 144, 220, 251n85; between Kemalists and Israel, 160, 162, 163, 165; and problem of spuriousness, 60–62; and reduced incentives to buck pass, 44, 54–55; relationship with regime vulner­ ability, 33; role in divided threats, 41, 224; role in double threat, 46–47, 202, 227; role in ideological betrayal, 39, 40–41, 201, 223; role in ideological outsider, 39, 47–49, 204, 227, 252n91; between Russia and China, 216–17; as a source of ideological enmity, 15–16, 245n21, 269n105; as a source of trust, 16–17, 57 ideological subversion, 25–26, 30, 36, 37, 84, 90–94, 139, 145, 260n141. See also regime vulnerability ideological variables, 6–9, 14, 21–24, 23, 203–5, 251n86; controlling for spurious­ ness, 61–63; covariation between, 65; dependent variable, 63; operationaliza­ tion of, 58–65; public source material, 253n109. See also configurations of ideological distances; ideological distance; regime vulnerability

289

INDEX

ideological wedging policies, 42–44, 95–96,

195, 222, 250n72, 250n74, 251n77, 281n48;

German, 70, 84, 102–5, 111–12, 218,

260n146, 281n48; Iranian, 195–97, 218;

policy prescriptions on, 217–19

ideologies: defined, 14–16; prestige and

legitimacy, 33–34; transnational nature

of, 33

ideologies and international relations

literature, 9, 16, 203

ideology-based arguments, 5, 251n80 illiberalism, 11–12, 90–91, 161, 178–79,

207–8, 214–15, 218–19, 221

India, 92–94, 130–31, 207, 221, 251n77,

280n10, 282n52

indirect aggression, doctrine of, 77–78, 83,

94–95

Indochina, 131

Indonesia, 207, 218, 280n10

International Atomic Energy Agency, 173

international relations theory, 66, 198,

203–5

international security, 10–12, 206, 222

Iran: Arab Spring and, 278n141; ideological fifth column in, 30; ideological wedging strategies, 195–97; Islamist ideology, 162; mass protests, 59; as material threat to Turkey and Israel, 61, 160–61, 163–64, 168, 172–76, 195–97, 201, 273n41, 279n151; military power, 172–76; Soviet Union and, 245n26; Syria and, 281n45. See also Turkish-Israeli alliance; US-Iranian relations Iranian Revolution, 38, 162, 192

Iraq, 30, 38, 163, 175, 245n26

Irvine, William, 87, 102

Islamic Common Market, 193

Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, 30, 174

Islamists, political, 29, 38, 61–63, 67, 161–62,

165–66, 170, 177, 181–97. See also Muslim-

majority countries; Pan-Islamism; specific

political parties

Israel: arms sales to Turkey, 164, 272n18,

272n30, 274n61; global power share,

273n43; policies toward Muslims, 161,

166–71, 174; Saudi alliance, 3. See also

Gaza War; Palestinian conflicts; Turkish-

Israeli alliance

Italy: alliances, 41, 51–53, 56, 74, 103,

260n141; ideological betrayal and, 40–41;

ideological outsider and, 52–53; Spanish

Civil War and, 90–91

Jackson, Julian, 106

Jackson, Peter, 72

Jacoby, Wade, 29

Japan, 131, 134, 207, 221, 260n141, 280n10

Jiang Qing, 139, 142

290

Jones, Bill, 114

Jones, Thomas, 103–4 Jordan, Nicole, 89–90, 113

Justice and Development Party (AKP), 160–63, 165–73, 176–97, 201–3, 272n18, 276n100, 277n119, 277n121, 277n126, 278n141, 279n151 Kalaycioğlu, Ersin, 184–85 Karadayı, İsmail Hakkı, 164

Karimov, Islam, 34–35 Katzenstein, Peter, 59

Kaya, M. K., 195

Keith, Ronald, 146

Kemalists, 63, 160–63, 165, 170–71, 176–85,

187, 189, 196–97, 202–3, 275n76

Kennedy, Paul, 52

Khamenei, Ali, 18

Khatami, Mohammed, 173

Khmer Rouge, 135, 156

Khomeini, Ruhollah, 31, 59

Kibaroglu, Mustafa, 196

Kissinger, Henry, 122, 131–33, 141–43, 146,

149, 158, 265n34, 266n41, 268n100,

270n148

Kılıçdaroğlu, Kemal, 171

Kıvrıkoğlu, Hüseyin, 275n76 Koç, Malike Bileydi, 186

Kozyrev, Yitaly, 10

Kuik, Cheng-Chwee, 51

Kuneralp, Zeki, 271n8 Kurdish secessionist movements, 174–75, 187, 274n61 Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), 163–64, 175, 274n57, 274n61 Kyrgyzstan, 35

Labour Party, 75, 109–11, 114, 118, 262n189

Laird, Melvin, 131

Laos, 207, 218, 280n10

Larmour, Peter J., 100

Lascelles, D. W., 97

Laval, Pierre, 80, 87, 104, 255n37

Lawrence, Susan, 262n189 Lawson, Fred, 175

leaders. See elites; individual leaders Lebanon, 161, 167–70, 174–75, 178

Léger, Alexis, 80, 83, 116

legitimation policies, 60

Lenin, Vladimir, 18

Levy, David, 87

Levy, Jack, 72

Li, Gong, 136

liberal-illiberal ideological divide, 208,

221–22

liberalism, 11–12, 24, 67, 165–66, 178, 192,

194, 207–8, 214–15, 221, 277n126

Li Jie, 152

INDEX

Lind, Jennifer, 207

Liska, George, 245n21

Litvinov, Maxim, 82, 89, 107, 257n88

Loizeau, Lucien, 116, 263n210

Lutheran states, 16, 24, 44–45

Lüthi, Lorenz, 138

Lynch, Allen, 215

MacFarquhar, Roderick, 141–42, 149

Madan, Tanvi, 207

Maidan Revolution, 215

Maisky, Ivan, 82

Malaysia, 207, 218, 280n10, 281n47

Manzer, Habib, 92

Mao Zedong, 61–63, 67, 122, 124–28, 132–35,

137–46, 149–54, 156, 158, 201, 214, 217,

265n34, 266n35, 266n41, 267n71, 268n88,

270n148; “Theory of the Three Worlds,”

61, 145, 147, 266n35

Marin, Louis, 80

Martin, Lenore G., 194

material incentives: anticipated costs and,

36; balance-of-power theory and, 19;

balance-of-threat theory and, 19–21; buck

passing and, 53–55; configurations of

ideological distances and, 38–49; high,

64–68; ideological variables and, 6–14,

16–22, 23, 25–26, 39, 45, 50, 198, 204–5;

perceived need for alliance and, 38; realist

arguments on, 19–21, 61–62; shared

material threat, 4–6, 11, 13, 248n30

(see also Germany; Iran; Soviet Union)

material variables, 4–6, 11–12, 14, 19–20, 36,

46, 51, 53, 55, 61, 63, 248n31

Mavi Marmara incident, 167–71, 188, 190–91

Mearsheimer, John, 19–20, 54, 206, 214

Meerut Conspiracy Case, 92–93

methods, research, 65–68

MHP. See National Action Party

Micaud, Charles A., 104

Michon, Georges, 7, 43

Middle East, 193, 278n133; democratization,

178–79; frenemy alliances involving superpowers (1955–79), 241–42; ideologi­ cal divisions in, 11; Turkey and, 166. See also Iran; Iraq; Saudi Arabia; Syria; Turkish-Israeli alliance military power, 19–20. See also material incentives; nuclear weapons; specific countries mistrust. See trust and mistrust

moderate alliances, 64

Molotov, Vyacheslav, 82

Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of nonaggression,

78, 83, 259n126

monarchies/monarchism, 2–3, 7–8, 11, 15,

25, 32, 43, 46, 48, 75, 227, 232–33, 235–36,

241–42, 246n4, 247n12, 281n47

Monger, George, 1

Mossadegh, Mohammad, 245n26 multipolar systems, 53, 115

Munich Conference, 76, 85, 98–99, 109; crisis

resulting from, 82, 101, 108–9, 254n10,

259n116

Murray, Williamson, 69

Muslim-majority countries, 61, 161–62, 176,

178–79, 181, 191–94, 201, 275n72, 278n141.

See also Islamists, political

Mussolini, Benito, 40–41 Myanmar, 207, 218, 280n10

Napoleon III, 3

National Action Party (MHP), 170, 187–88, 275n82 National Order Party, 177

National Salvation Party, 177

NATO, 174, 216, 266n43

Naylor, John, 109

Nazi Germany. See Germany, Nazi-era negotiation, 42–43, 96

Neilson, Keith, 94, 120, 259n126

neoclassical realism, 55–56 Nepal, 207, 218, 280n10

Nixon, Richard, 27, 122–23, 130–31, 133, 144,

149, 266n43, 270n148

North Africa, 91

North Korea, 207, 218

nuclear weapons: China and Soviet Union,

127, 129, 132–34, 148, 156; Iran, 163,

172–74, 195–96, 273n41, 279n151; Israel,

195

Öcalan, Abdullah, 164

offense-defense balance and differentia­ tion, 57

Olson, Robert, 177

opportunity costs, 26, 141, 189, 201;

domestic interests and, 26, 36; elite

consensus and, 55–56; fifth columns and,

34–35; high levels of, 199, 201

Ottoman Empire, 192–93 Owen, John, 34, 100, 247n12

Özbudun, Ergun, 181

Ozkan, Behlül, 193, 277n126 Özyürek, Mustafa, 171

Pact of Steel, 41

Pakistan, 130–31, 207, 218, 251n77,

280n10

Palestinian conflicts, 161, 178, 185,

190; Second Intifada, 166–70. See also

Gaza War

Pan-Islamism, 162, 192–94, 196–97, 278n141 People’s Liberation Army, 128

People’s Republic of China. See China; Sino-American alliance

291

INDEX

perceived need for alliance, 6–8, 14, 38–39, 49–53, 50; Britain and France with Soviet Union, 70, 84, 98, 100, 103, 121; China with US, 123–25; configurations of ideological distances and, 21–24, 38–42, 44, 46, 48–53, 50, 199; decrease in, 39, 39–45, 50; increase in, 39, 45–49, 50; material incentives and, 38; Turkey with Israel, 191–92 Peres, Shimon, 168 Pétain, Philippe, 80 Philippine Democratic Party–People’s Power (PDP-Laban), 211–12 Philippines, 280n10; China and, 218–19, 221. See also US-Philippine alliance Phipps, Eric, 99, 101 PKK. See Kurdistan Workers’ Party Poland, 74, 76–77, 83, 116 policy prescriptions, 205–22; on ideological bolstering for supportive frenemy alliances, 219–22; on ideological wedging policies, 217–19; on material and ideological variables, 206–17 Pollack, Jonathan D., 136, 148 Pompeo, Mike, 221 Popular Front, 86–91, 102, 113, 199, 204, 257n78, 260n127 Posen, Barry, 115 Potemkin, Vladimir, 87 power-enhancing policies, 56–57 PRC. See China predictions of the argument, 49–53, 72, 125, 163, 223–28 process tracing, 65 protests, mass, 59; in France, 86, 90, 257n82, 257n88. See also Arab Spring; revolution psychological theories, 17 public diplomacy, 42–43, 47, 96 Putin, Vladimir, 211, 214–16 Qiao Guanhua, 143 qualitative studies, 9 Quds Force, 174 Radchenko, Sergey, 154 Radical-Socialist Party, 70, 78–91, 100–102, 108, 111, 117, 199, 204, 259n127, 261n165 Rapp-Hooper, Mira, 207 Reagan, Ronald, 18, 47, 136, 221 realist balancing theories, 2, 4–6, 9, 53–58, 61–62, 66–68, 198, 204, 244n12, 248n29; British-French alliance with Soviet Union (unrealized), 80–81, 83, 88, 115–20; buck-passing and, 53–55, 66, 155; Sino-American alliance and, 122–23, 154–58. See also balance-of-power theory; balance-of-threat theory realpolitik, 2, 27, 36, 43, 66, 120, 123, 219

292

Red Guards, 139 regime type, 9 regime vulnerability, 6–11, 14, 198, 222, 248n34; defined, 6; high levels of, 7, 25–28, 37, 49–53, 50, 84–95, 124, 137–43, 179, 199, 201–4, 208, 214–16; ideological bolstering and, 219; ideology of domestic threat and, 248n37, 249n41, 250n65; low levels of, 7, 27, 49, 50, 112–14, 124, 152–54, 201–3, 211, 213; political interests and, 24; sources of, 25–38; wedging policies and, 43–44. See also anticipated costs of alliance; double rebels; fifth columns, ideological; revolution Reinsurance Treaty, 51–52 Reliant Mermaid military exercises, 164, 167–68 Republican Federation Party, 78, 80, 88, 102 Republican People’s Party (CHP), 160, 165, 170–71, 182–83, 187, 189–91 Republican Socialist Party, 255n36 Resnick, Evan, 9, 246n1 revolution: color revolutions, 33, 215; fears of, 33, 85–91, 118, 260n139; powerful domestic revolutionary groups, 25–26, 28–32, 58–59, 220; probability of, 22, 24–28; successful revolutions in other countries, 25, 32–35, 58, 84, 215, 258n111; war-revolution nexus, 57–58. See also demonstration effects; double rebels; fifth columns, ideological; Spanish Civil War Reynaud, Paul, 104 Ribbentrop, Joachim von, 103 Risse-Kappen, Thomas, 17 Robins, Philip, 165, 178 Romania, 76, 116 Rome-Berlin Axis, 41 Ross, Robert, 123, 129, 133, 136, 142, 150, 155 Rozman, Gilbert, 216 Runciman, Walter, 99 Russia, 3, 11, 208, 214–18, 280n10. See also Anglo-French-Russian coalition; Franco-Russian alliance; German-Russian relations; US-Russian alliance, potential Şahin, Mehmet Ali, 168 Sarraut, Albert, 79, 255n37 Saudi Arabia, 3, 38, 59. See also US-Saudi alliance Scarborough Shoal, 209 Schoenhals, Michael, 141–42 Schweisguth, Victor-Henri, 81, 100–101 Schweller, Randall L., 55–56, 245n21, 252n96, 252n99, 262n205 scope conditions, 5, 15, 19–21, 64, 66, 220 Scott, William Evans, 86–87, 256n65 Second Mediterranean Agreement, 51–52 secrecy, 252n92

INDEX

secularism, 11, 29, 63, 67, 160–61, 165, 170,

177, 181–87, 190–92, 201–2, 245n26,

277n119, 279n151, 281n45

security dilemma, 56–57, 118–19, 204, 247n21 security interests, 24. See also domestic inter­ ests; international security; material incentives; regime vulnerability Seeds, William, 82

selective accommodation, 250n74 Sezer, Ahmet Necdet, 182

SFIO. See Workers’ International Party Shambaugh, David, 136, 207

Shanghai Communiqué, 122, 130, 149, 157,

265n24

Sharon, Ariel, 166

Shaw, Louise Grace, 76, 78, 96

Shirazi, Makarem, 196

Shorter, Edward, 86

Singapore, 207–8, 221, 280n10 Sino-American alliance, 10–11, 27, 122–59;

alliance formation (1979), 133–37;

anticipated costs of alliance, 124, 125, 141,

143, 149, 152, 200, 201–2; buck-passing

incentives for China, 124, 146–48, 155,

266n35; China’s security relations with

US, 129–37; double threat, 124–25, 150,

152–54, 202; horizontal line and, 131–32,

266n35; ideological changes in China,

37–38, 149–54; ideological equidistance,

124, 143–50, 201; ideological fifth

columns, 137–43, 152; ideology-based

barriers to creation of alliance, 137–48;

intensity of, 266n51; parallelism, 132;

perceived need for alliance, 123–25;

predictions, 125; rapprochement

(1972–78), 123, 129–33; realist arguments

on, 122–23, 154–58; regime vulnerability,

high levels of, 124, 137–43; regime

vulnerability, low levels of, 124, 152–54;

Soviet threat to China, 122–23, 126–29,

155–56; summary of findings, 200, 201; as

tacit alliance, 122, 131–32, 264n5, 265n34;

Taiwan and, 156–58. See also China; Soviet

Union; United States

Snyder, Glenn, 245n21 social identity theory, 17

socialism, 211–12 South Korea, 131, 207, 221, 280n10

Soviet Union: British alliance (1941), 243n6; British and French mistrust of, 94, 96–97, 100–101, 117, 120; doctrine of indirect aggression, 77–78, 83, 94–95; economy, 126–27; export of communist ideology, 77–78, 89–90, 92–94, 117; formal frenemy allies (1947–89), 239; ideological bolstering toward France, 282n49; ideological outsider and, 52–53, 252n91; land-based power, 264n10; as material

threat, 37, 61–62, 122–23, 127–29, 155–56;

military power in 1930s, 69–70, 75,

119–20; military power in 1970s, 127;

nonaggression pact with Germany, 78, 83,

259n126; Spanish Civil War and, 90–91.

See also Anglo-French-Russian coalition;

British-French alliance with Soviet Union

(unrealized); Franco-Soviet Treaty of

Mutual Assistance; German-Soviet

relations; US-Soviet rivalry

SP. See Felicity Party Spanish Civil War, 84, 90–91, 103–4, 107,

258n111, 261n161, 282n49

spiral model of conflict, 56–57 Sri Lanka, 207, 218, 280n10

Stalin, Joseph, 36, 60, 82, 119, 245n26

Stanhope, Lord, 94

Steiner, Zara, 42, 83, 98

strategic framing, 42–43, 47, 96, 217–19,

250n74

strong alliances, 64–65 structural realism, 53–55, 252n96 Sudan, 276n100 Sudetenland, 74, 99

Sun, Warren, 140, 142–43 Sunni Islamist groups, 31

Sunni-Shia divide, 193

Syria, 160, 163–64, 175, 245n26, 281n45 Tabaar, Mohammad Ayatollahi, 31

Tahirogˇ lu, Merve, 244n9 Taiwan, 135–36, 156–58, 207, 221, 280n10

Taleblu, Behnam Ben, 244n9 Taliban, 30, 175, 251n77

Tardieu, André, 80

Taylor, Brian, 214

Teiwes, Frederick, 140, 142–43 terrorism, 34, 160, 163–68, 172, 245n26,

276n100

Thailand, 207, 218, 280n10, 281n47

theocracies, 11

Thompson, William, 72

Tiananmen Square, 29

Tibet, 216

Tilly, Charles, 86

treaties, 63–64 Triple Entente. See Anglo-French-Russian coalition Trump, Donald J., 221

trust and mistrust, 2, 5, 13, 16–18, 27–28, 36,

37, 40, 45–46, 162, 194, 246n6, 247n21; of

China, 207, 212–13; of Germany, 98,

110–12; of Iran, 162, 195–96, 279n51; of

Soviet Union, 3, 77, 93–94, 96–97, 100–101,

108–9, 112, 117, 119–20, 129; of United

States, 144–46, 207, 215–16. See also

configurations of ideological distances;

ideological distance

293

INDEX

Tucker, William, 109–11, 118

Turkey: anti-Israeli rhetoric, 185–91, 197,

201, 277n121; democracy promotion, 194,

278n141; gender equality, 185, 194; global

power share, 273n43; illiberalism, 11, 185,

194; Islamic mobilization, 181–92, 197,

201, 277n119, 277n121; Kemalists’ efforts

to oust AKP, 181–84; liberalism, 165–66,

178, 277n126; military power, 164, 172;

nationalism, 190–91; National Security

Policy Document (2005), 172, 175, 196.

See also Turkish-Israeli alliance

Turkish Armed Forces, 182

Turkish-Israeli alliance, 3, 160–97; antici­ pated costs of alliance, 161–62, 163, 176,

179–81, 189, 200, 201–3; configurations of

ideological distances, 178–79; ideological

betrayal, 61, 162, 181, 191–97, 201;

ideological equidistance, 161–62, 178–79,

191–92, 194, 202, 275n72; ideological fifth

column, 178–80, 182, 189; ideological

wedging strategies, 195–97, 218; material

incentives to preserve alliance, 171–76;

nonideological explanations for end of

alliance, 167–71; origins of alliance, 163–65;

perceived need for alliance, 191–92;

predictions, 163; preservation of alliance,

176–80; regime vulnerability for AKP,

161–62, 176–84, 189, 197, 201–2; rise of

AKP, 165–67; security cooperation, 160–61,

164–65, 169, 272n34; summary of findings,

200, 201. See also Iran; Israel; Syria; Turkey

Ukraine, 215

Uldricks, Teddy, 252n91 underbalancing, 55–56, 66, 245n21, 252n99, 262n205 unifying (nonhierarchical) ideologies, 15–16, 62, 246n4, 247n11 United Nations, 135, 143, 145, 147; Security

Council, 173, 195–96

United States: balancing coalition against China, 12, 206–9, 220–21; Emancipation Proclamation, 251n77; formal frenemy allies (1947–89), 237–38; frenemy allies of (1946–90), 235–36; ideological exportation by, 215–16; Soviet threat to (see US-Soviet rivalry); Turkey and, 174. See also Sino-American alliance Ünver, Akin, 193

US-Iranian relations, 3, 18, 24, 30–32

US-Philippine alliance, 207, 209–14, 222

US-Russian alliance, potential, 209, 214–17, 222

294

US-Saudi alliance, 46–47, 219–20, 251n84, 282n50 US-Soviet rivalry, 18, 122–23, 130, 144–49,

201

Uzbekistan, 34–35 Vahidi, Ahmad, 196

Vansittart, Robert, 76, 105, 259n116

Vietnam, 135, 156, 207–8, 221, 280n10

Vietnam War, 131, 265n24

Virtue Party, 29, 165

Vogel, Ezra, 270n148

Vuillemin, Joseph, 73, 254n10

Waddington, Lorna, 103

Walder, Andrew, 138

Walt, Stephen, 13, 15, 19–20, 63–64, 245n21,

248n30, 249n38

Waltz, Kenneth, 248n29 Wark, Wesley, 74

war-revolution nexus, 57–58. See also revolution weak alliances, 64–65 wedge strategies, 42. See also ideological wedging policies Welfare Party, 29, 165, 177, 180, 193, 271n7

Weygand, Maxime, 116

Whealey, Robert, 40

Williams, Andrew, 262n189 Wilner, Alexander, 172, 174

Wood, Edward, 10

Workers’ International Party (SFIO), 78–79,

86, 88, 113

workers’ rights, 75, 79, 88, 111

Xia, Yafeng, 142

Xi Jinping, 213, 216

Xinjiang, 127, 134, 216

Yalçınkaya, Abdurrahman, 183

Yang, Kuisong, 142

Yarhi-Milo, Keren, 73

Yasay, Perfecto, 212

Yavuz, M. Hakan, 165

Ye Jianying, 131

Young, Robert, 56, 101

Yugoslavia, 116

Zhang, Xiaoming, 134–35 Zhou Enlai, 130–33, 141–43, 145–47, 158,

270n148

Zubok, Vladislav, 154

Zyromski, Jean, 104–7, 111, 113–14, 118–19, 261n161