Description
Peacetime intra-alliance crises, divergences, ruptures and other occasions of voiced disagreement over the purpose, organizational values and directions of the common action are prevalent, yet undertheorized, social events among the members of formal security alliances. Time-wise, intra-alliance crises can either be temporary or protracted while the merit of disagreement among allies determines if the crises are organizational-procedural or programmatic-directional. The paper proposes a new way of typologizing these response-inducing situations into affirmation, impasse, modification and disintegration intra-alliance crises. Empirically concentrating on an elaboration of the intra-alliance crises among the U.S. and its principal allies in Asia-Pacific (Australia, Japan and Republic of Korea) in the post-Cold War period, the paper aims to explore the dynamics of allies’ responses and analyze the effects of crises on social coherence of alliances. The paper introduces a concept of vitality of alliance authority of the senior security partner and defines it as the continual social potency to set the parameters of interaction and define the scope of purpose for an alliance. The paper advances an argument that vitality of alliance authority of the U.S. depends on its performative competence and social instructiveness during the periods of creative resolution of intra-alliance crises.
