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The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics, by Peter J. Katzenstein, editor
10. Collective Identity in a Democratic Community: The Case of NATO
Thomas Risse-Kappen
Why was it that the United States, the undisputed superpower of the early post-1945 period, found itself entangled in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) with Western Europe only four years after the end of World War II? Why was it that a pattern of cooperation evolved in NATO that survived not only the ups and downs of the Cold War and various severe interallied conflicts--from the 1956 Suez crisis to the conflict over Euromissiles in the 1980s--but also the end of the Cold War? Why is it that NATO has emerged as the strongest among the post-Cold War security institutions--as compared to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (osce), the West European Union (weu), not even to mention the eu's Common Foreign and Security Policy (cfsp)?
Traditional (realist) alliance theory 1 at least has a simple answer to the first two questions: the Soviet threat. But what constituted the Soviet threat? Was it Soviet power, ideology, behavior, or all three combined? I argue in this essay that the notion of the "Soviet threat" needs to be unpacked and problematized if we want to understand what it contributed to the emergence and the endurance of NATO. I also claim that realism might provide first-cut answers to the questions above but that it is indeterminate with regard to explaining particular Western European and U.S. choices at critical junctures of the Cold War, not even to mention its aftermath. Moreover, sophisticated power-based arguments that try to account for these choices do so at the expense of parsimony. Why should they be privileged as providing the baseline story, while more elegant alternative explanations are used to add some local coloration? 2
I provide an account for the origins and the endurance of NATO different from the conventional wisdom. NATO and the transatlantic relationship can be better understood on the basis of republican liberalism linking domestic polities systematically to the foreign policy of states. 3 Liberal democracies are likely to form "pacific federations" (Immanuel Kant) or "pluralistic security communities" (Karl W. Deutsch). Liberalism in the Kantian sense, however, needs to be distinguished from the conventional use of the term, as in neoliberal institutionalism, denoting the "cooperation under anarchy" perspective of rationalist regime analysis. 4 I present a social constructivist interpretation of republican liberalism, emphasizing collec tive identities and norms of appropriate behavior. To illustrate my argument, I discuss the origins of NATO, the transatlantic interactions during two major Cold War "out-of-area" crises (the 1956 Suez crisis and the 1962 Cuban missile crisis), and the persistence of NATO after the end of the Cold War.
Theorizing About Alliances
Realism and NATO: The Indeterminacy of the Conventional Wisdom
Traditional alliance theory is firmly grounded in realist thinking. Realism, however, is indeterminate with regard to explaining the origins of, the interaction patterns in, and the endurance of NATO.
Realism and the Origins of NATO
Structural realism contains a straightforward alliance theory. 5 States balance rather than bandwagon; alliances form because weak states band together against great powers in order to survive in an anarchic international system. Alliance patterns change because the international distribution of power changes. This is particularly true under multipolarity; great powers do not need allies under bipolarity. The latter structure consists of only two great powers, which are self-sufficient in terms of their ability to survive. As a result, alliances become a matter of convenience rather than necessity.
It is hard to reconcile Waltzian realism with the history of NATO. The U.S. emerged from World War II as the undisputed superpower in the international system, enjoying a monopoly (and later superiority) with regard to the most advanced weapons systems, i.e., nuclear forces. Its gross domestic product (gdp) outweighed that of all Western European states combined, not even to mention the Soviet Union. If material capabilities are all that counts in world politics, one would have expected Western Europe to align with the Soviet Union rather than with the U.S. 6
But the Waltzian argument rests on some peculiar assumptions about bipolarity. While great powers may not need allies to ensure their survival, client states might become an asset in the competition between the two hegemonic rivals. After all, bipolarity means that the two great powers in the system have to cope primarily with each other. As "defensive positionalists," they are expected to be concerned about relative gains and losses vis-á-vis each other and to compete fiercely. 7 The more important relative gains are, however, the more significant the acquisition of client states should become. While the loss or defection of one small ally might not be important, superpowers might fear that even small losses might set in motion a chain reaction.
Thus, if we change our understanding of bipolarity only slightly, American Cold War policies of acquiring allies around the globe, including the Western Europeans, can be explained. In other words, structural realism can be made consistent with actual U.S. behavior during the Cold War, but the theory could also explain the opposite behavior.
What about Stephen Walt's more sophisticated realism emphasizing the "balance of threat" rather than the "balance of power"? 8 Does it reduce the indeterminacy of structural realism by adding more variables? Walt argues that states align against what they perceive as threats rather than against economic and military capabilities as such. States feel threatened when they face powers that combine superior capabilities with geostrategic proximity, offensive military power, and offensive ideology. One could then argue that the proximity of the Soviet landmass to Western Europe, Moscow's offensive military doctrine backed by superior conventional forces, and the aggressive communist ideology constituted the Soviet threat leading to the formation of NATO.
There is no question that Western decision makers perceived a significant Soviet threat during the late 1940s and that this threat perception was causally consequential for the formation of NATO. The issue is not the threat perception, but what constituted it: Soviet power, ideology, behavior, or a combination of the three? As to Soviet power, the geographic proximity of the Soviet landmass--Walt's first indicator--could explain the Western European threat perception and the British and French attempts to lure reluctant decision makers in Washington into a permanent alliance with Europe. 9 But it is still unclear why the U.S. valued Western Europe so much that it decided to join NATO. The argument that the U.S. wanted to prevent Soviet control over the Eurasian rimland 10 makes sense only if we also assume that decision makers in Washington saw themselves as defensive positionalists in a fierce hegemonic rivalry rather than more relaxed Waltzian realists (see above). In this case, sophisticated realism is as inconclusive as structural realism.
Moreover, the Soviet Union was not considered an offensive military threat to Western Europe during the late 1940s. Military estimates did increasingly point to Soviet military superiority in Europe, but that did not lead to the perception of an imminent attack. As John Lewis Gaddis put it, "Estimates of Moscow's intentions, whether from the Pentagon, the State Department, or the intelligence community, consistently discounted the possibility that the Russians might risk a direct military confrontation within the foreseeable future." 11
Rather, the U.S. threat perception at the time focused on potential Soviet ability to psychologically blackmail war-weakened Western Europe and to destabilize these countries politically and economically. This American view of a significant Soviet threat was concerned about actual Soviet behavior in Eastern Europe and the Soviet offensive political ideology--the third of Walt's indicators. If this is indeed what constituted the Soviet threat in Western eyes in the late 1940s, it can be better explained by liberal theories than by even sophisticated realism (see below). At least, the two accounts become indistinguishable at this point.
Realism and Cooperation Patterns in NATO
Realism's indeterminacy with regard to the origins of NATO also applies to interaction patterns within the Western Alliance. To begin with, structural realism of the Waltzian variety has a clear expectation regarding cooperation among allies. If great powers do not need allies under bipolarity, they also do not need to listen to them. As Waltz put it, the contributions of smaller states to alliances "are useful even in a bipolar world, but they are not indispensable. Because they are not, the policies and strategies of alliance leaders are ultimately made according to their own calculations and interests." 12
If this argument holds true, one would not expect much European influence on U.S. decisions during the Cold War--particularly not in cases, such as the Cuban missile crisis, when the U.S. perceived its supreme national interests at stake. I show later in this essay that this expectation proves to be wrong. Close cooperation among the allies was the rule rather than the exception throughout the history of NATO--with regard to European security, the U.S.-Soviet relationship, and "out-of-area" cases. The power asymmetry within NATO did not translate into American dominance. Rather, the European allies managed to influence U.S. foreign policy significantly even in cases when the latter considered its supreme national interests to be at stake. 13
More sophisticated realists, however, should not be too surprised by these findings. If we assume that decision makers in Washington needed allies to fight the Cold War, we would expect some degree of cooperation within the Western Alliance, including European influence on U.S. policies. Allies who need each other to balance against a perceived threat are expected to cooperate with each other. Unfortunately, this assumption is demonstrably wrong. Cooperation among allies is by no means assured. Allies are as likely to fight each other as they are to fight non-allies--except for democratic alliances. 14 Thus we need additional assumptions about the conditions under which nations in alliances are likely to cooperate. According to realist bargaining theory, for example, we would expect a higher degree of interallied cooperation,
At this point, sophisticated realism loses much of its parsimony. Evaluating these propositions against alternative claims requires detailed process-tracing of interallied bargaining. We cannot simply assume a realist bargaining process when we find outcomes consistent with one specific version of realist theory.
Realism and the Endurance of NATO After the Cold War
The indeterminacy of realism also applies when we start using the theory to predict the survivability of NATO after the Cold War. Structural realists in the Waltzian tradition should expect NATO to wither away with the end of the Cold War. If great powers do not need allies under bipolarity for their survival, this should be all the more true when the hegemonic rivalry ceases to dominate world politics. In Waltz's own words, "NATO is a disappearing thing. It is a question of how long it is going to remain as a significant institution even though its name may linger on." 16
In the absence of indicators of what "lingering on" means, it is hard to evaluate the proposition. I argue later in this essay that NATO is alive and well so far, at least as compared to other security institutions in Europe.
Sophisticated realism and "balance-of-threat" arguments are indeterminate with regard to the future of NATO. On the one hand, one could argue that the Western Alliance should gradually disintegrate as a result of the Soviet withdrawal from Eastern Europe and the drastically decreased military threat. On the other hand, the Russian landmass might still constitute a residual risk to Western Europe, thus necessitating a hedge against a potential reemergence of the threat. 17 In any case, the Western offer for a "partnership for peace" to Russia is difficult to account for even by sophisticated realism.
In sum, a closer look at realism as the dominant alliance theory reveals its indeterminacy with regard to the origins of, the interaction patterns in, and the endurance of NATO. In retrospect, almost every single choice of states can be accommodated somehow by realist thinking. As a Waltzian realist, the U.S. could have concluded that the direct confrontation with the ussr was all that mattered, while the fate of the Western Europeans would not alter the global balance of power. As a more sophisticated realist, the U.S. would have decided--as it actually did--that the fate of the Eurasian rim was geostrategically too significant to leave the Western Europeans alone. If decision makers in Washington listened to their allies during the Cuban missile crisis, we can invoke realist arguments about reputation and the need to preserve the alliance during crises. Had the U.S. not listened to the Western Europeans during the crisis, one could have argued that superpowers do not need to worry about their allies when they perceive that their immediate survival is at stake. If NATO survives the end of the Cold War, it is "lingering on" as a hedge; if it disappears, the threat has withered away. As others have noted before, realism is not especially helpful in explaining particular foreign policy choices. 18 I now look at a liberal account emphasizing a community among democracies, collective identity, and alliance norms.
Democratic Allies in a Pluralistic Security Community: A Liberal Constructivist Approach
The U.S. had quite some latitude as to how it defined its interests in Europe. Thus we need to "look more closely at this particular hegemon" in order to "determine why this particular . . . agenda was pursued." 19 Domestic politics and structures have to be considered, and the realm of liberal theories of international relations is to be entered.
To avoid confusion, particularly with what is sometimes called neoliberal institutionalism, I reserve the term liberal theories of international relations for approaches agreeing that 20
the fundamental agents in international politics are not states but individuals acting in a social context--whether governments, domestic society, or international institutions;
the interests and preferences of national governments have to be analyzed as a result of domestic structures and coalition-building processes responding to social demands as well as to external factors such as the (material and social) structure of the international system;
ideas--values, norms, and knowledge--are causally consequential in international relations, particularly with regard to state interests, preferences, and choices;
international institutions form the social structure of international politics presenting constraints and opportunities to actors.
Immanuel Kant's argument 21 that democratic institutions characterized by the rule of law, the respect for human rights, the nonviolent and compromise-oriented resolution of domestic conflicts, and participatory opportunities for the citizens are a necessary condition for peace has been empirically substantiated. Most scholars agree that liberal democracies rarely fight each other, even though they are not peaceful toward autocratic regimes. 22 The reasons for these two findings are less clear, since explanations focusing solely on democratic domestic structures miss the point that liberal states are not inherently peaceful. Rather, we need theoretical accounts that link the domestic level to interactions on the international level. 23
Two domestic-level explanations prevail in the literature. 24 The first emphasizes institutional constraints. Democracies are characterized by an elaborate set of checks and balances--between the executive and the legislature, between the political system and interest groups, public opinion, and so on. It is then argued that the complexity of the decision-making process makes it unlikely that leaders will readily use military force unless they are confident of gathering enough domestic support for a low-cost war. This explanation is theoretically unconvincing. Why is it that the complexity of democratic institutions seems to matter less when liberal states are faced with authoritarian adversaries?
The second explanation focuses on the norms governing democratic decision-making processes and establishing the nonviolent and compromise-oriented resolution of political conflicts, the equality of the citizens, majority rule, tolerance for dissent, and the rights of minorities. These norms are firmly embedded in the political culture of liberal states and shape the identity of political actors through processes of socialization, communication, and enactment. This norm- and identity-based account appears to offer a better understanding of why it is that democratic governments refrain from violence when dealing with fellow democracies. But its exclusive focus on the domestic level still does not show why such restraints disappear when liberal governments deal with autocratic regimes.
The norm- and identity-based explanation nevertheless can be easily amended and linked to the level of international interactions. Collectively held identities not only define who "we" are, but they also delineate the boundaries against "them," the "other." 25 Identities then prescribe norms of appropriate behavior toward those perceived as part of "us" as well as toward the "other." There is no reason that this argument should not equally apply to the domestic and the international realm. A sociological interpretation of a liberal theory of international relations then claims that actors' domestic identities are crucial for their perceptions of one another in the international realm. As Michael Doyle put it,
| Domestically just republics, which rest on consent, then presume foreign republics also to be consensual, just, and therefore deserving of accommodation. . . . At the same time, liberal states assume that non-liberal states, which do not rest on free consent, are not just. Because non-liberal governments are in a state of aggression with their own people, their foreign relations become for liberal governments deeply suspect. In short, fellow liberals benefit from a presumption of amity; nonliberals suffer from a presumption of enmity. 26 |
Threat perceptions do not emerge from a quasi-objective international power structure, but actors infer external behavior from the values and norms governing the domestic political processes that shape the identities of their partners in the international system. Thus, France and Britain did not perceive the superior American power at the end of World War II as threatening, because they considered the U.S. as part of "us"; Soviet power, however, became threatening precisely because Moscow's domestic order identified the Soviet Union as "the other." The collective identity of actors in democratic systems defines both the "in-group" of friends and the "out-group" of potential foes. Liberal theory posits that the realist world of anarchy reigns in relations between democratic and authoritarian systems, while "democratic peace" prevails among liberal systems.
But liberal theory does not suggest that democracies live in perpetual harmony with each other or do not face cooperation problems requiring institutional arrangements. Kant's "pacific federation" (foedus pacificum) does not fall from heaven, but has to be "formally instituted" (gestiftet). 27
Since the security dilemma 28 is almost absent among democracies, they face fewer obstacles to creating cooperative security institutions. Actors of democratic states "know" through the process of social identification described above that they are unlikely to fight each other in the future. They share liberal values pertaining to political life and are likely to form what Deutsch called a "pluralistic security community," leading to mutual responsiveness in terms of "mutual sympathy and loyalties; of 'we-feeling,' trust, and consideration; of at least partial identification in terms of self-images and interests; of the ability to predict each other's behavior and ability to act in accordance with that prediction." 29
While Deutsch's notion of pluralistic security communities is not confined to democracies, it is unlikely that a similar sense of mutual responsiveness could emerge among autocratic leaders. There is nothing in their values that would prescribe mutual sympathy, trust, and consideration. Rather, cooperation among nondemocracies is likely to emerge out of narrowly defined self-interests. It should remain fragile, and the "cooperation under anarchy" perspective to international relations should apply. 30
If democracies are likely to overcome obstacles against international cooperation and to enter institutional arrangements for specific purposes, what about the rules and decision-making procedures of these institutions? One would expect the regulative norms 31 of these institutions to reflect the constitutive norms that shape the collective identity of the security community. Democracies are then likely to form democratic international institutions whose rules and procedures are aimed toward consensual and compromise-oriented decision-making respecting the equality of the participants. The norms governing the domestic decision-making processes of liberal systems are expected to regulate their interactions in international institutions. Democracies externalize their internal norms when cooperating with each other. Power asymmetries will be mediated by norms of democratic decision-making among equals emphasizing persuasion, compromise, and the non-use of force or coercive power. Norms of regular consultation, of joint consensus-building, and of nonhierarchy legitimize and enable a habit of mutual influence on each other's preferences and behaviors. These norms serve as key obligations translating the domestic decision-making rules of democracies to the international arena. This is not to suggest that consultation norms exist only in alliances among democracies. But consultation means "codetermination" when democracies are involved.
But how are these regulative norms expected to affect interaction processes among democratic allies? First, decision makers either anticipate allied demands or directly consult their partners before preferences are formed and conclusions are reached. Actors then make a discernible effort to define their preferences in a way that is compatible with the allied views and to accommodate allied demands.
Second, norms serve as collective understandings of appropriate behavior, which can be invoked by the participants in a discourse to justify their arguments. Consultation norms affect the reasoning process by which decision makers identify their preferences and choices. Actors are expected to invoke the norms to back up their respective views and to give weight to their arguments.
Third, the cooperation rules and procedures are also expected to influence the bargaining processes among the allies. This is fairly obvious with regard to consultation. In addition, democratic decision-making procedures deemphasize the use of material power resources in intra-allied bargaining processes, thereby delegitimating to play out one's superior military or economic power in intra-alliance bargaining. Both the pluralistic security community and specific consultation norms work against the use of coercive power in bargaining processes among democracies.
But norms can be violated. Norms compliance in human interactions is to be expected only in a probabilistic sense. Instances in which actors violate specific rules and obligations are of particular interest to the analysis. If norms regulate the interaction but are breached, one would expect peculiar behavior by both the violator and the victim, such as excuses, justifications, or compensatory action. 32
Finally, the allied community of values does not exclude democracies' driving hard bargains when dealing with each other in conflictual situations. While using material power resources to strengthen one's bargaining position is considered illegitimate among democracies, references to domestic pressures and constraints are likely to occur frequently. After all, liberal systems have in common that their leaders are constrained by the complexities of democratic political institutions. Since these procedures form the core of the value community, it should be appropriate to play "two-level games" using domestic pressures--small domestic "win-sets," in Robert Putnam's terms--to increase one's bargaining leverage. 33 The argument presented above assumes that the values and norms embedded in the political culture of liberal democracies constitute the collective identity of a security community among democracies and that the regulative norms of the community institutions reflect these constitutive norms. This claim is subject to two objections: 34
Why is it that domestic orders, norms, and political cultures shape the identities of actors in the international realm? Why not economic orders, such as capitalism? Why not geographic concepts, such as "the West," the "North Atlantic area," and the like? Why not gender and race, such as "white males"?
Democratic identities appear to be constant and acontextual rather than historically contingent. Is there never any change as to what constitutes an identity as "liberal democrat"?
As to the first point, it is, of course, trivial that actors hold multiple identities. Which of these or which combination dominates their interests, perceptions, and behavior in a given area of social interaction needs to be examined through empirical analysis and cannot be decided beforehand. I submit, however, that values and norms pertaining to questions of governance are likely to shape identities in the realm of the political--be it domestic or international. Moreover, such notions as "the West" do not contradict the argument here but seem to represent a specific enculturation of a broader liberal worldview. The same holds true for identities as "capitalists," particularly if juxtaposed against "communist order." The notion of the "free world," which Western policy makers used frequently during the Cold War to refer to their collective identity and to demarcate the boundaries against "Communism," encompassed liberal values pertaining to both the political and the economic orders.
As to the second point, and unlike several versions of neoliberalism, a sociological interpretation of the liberal argument posits historical contingency and contextuality. The zone of the "democratic peace" in the Northern Hemisphere did not fall from heaven but was created through processes of social interaction and learning. 35 The emergence of NATO is part and parcel of that story. Moreover, the norms of the democratic peace can in principle be unlearned, since collective identities might change over time. But to argue that the social structure of international relations is somehow more malleable and subject to change than material structures represents a misunderstanding of social constructivism. 36
The argument then can be summarized as follows: Democracies rarely fight each other: they perceive each other as peaceful. They perceive each other as peaceful because of the democratic norms governing their domestic decision-making processes. For the same reason, they form pluralistic security communities of shared values. Because they perceive each other as peaceful and express a sense of community, they are likely to overcome obstacles against international cooperation and to form international institutions such as alliances. The norms regulating interactions in such institutions are expected to reflect the shared democratic values and to resemble the domestic decision-making norms.
In the following sections, I illustrate the argument with regard to the formation of NATO, two cases of inter-allied conflict during Cold War crises, and the future of the transatlantic relationship in the post-Cold War environment.
A Liberal Interpretation of the Transatlantic Security Community
The Origins of NATO
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization represents an institutionalization of the security community to respond to a specific threat. While the perceived Soviet threat strengthened the sense of common purpose among the allies, it did not create the community in the first place. 37 NATO was preceded by the wartime alliance of the U.S., Great Britain, and France, which also collaborated closely to create various postwar regimes in the economic area. Particularly the British worked hard to ensure that the U.S. did not withdraw from Europe, as it had after World War I, but remained permanently involved in European affairs. 38
While the European threat perceptions at the time might be explained on sophisticated realist grounds using Stephen Walt's "balance-of-threat" argument, U.S. behavior as the undisputed hegemon of the immediate post-World War II era is more difficult to understand. The U.S. faced several choices, each of which was represented in the administration as well as in the American public. President Roosevelt, for example, tried to preserve the wartime alliance with the Soviet Union until his death and to realize a collective security order guaranteed by the "four policemen" (the U.S., the ussr, Great Britain, and China), a concept that he had first proposed in 1941. His successor, President Truman, continued on this path during his first months in office. After Truman had changed his mind, Secretary of Commerce Henry Wallace still advocated a modus vivendi with the Soviet Union and the need to respect a Soviet sphere of influence in Europe until he was removed from office in September 1946. In the U.S. public, Walter Lippmann became the leading advocate of that argument when responding to George F. Kennan's containment strategy.
Early supporters of a tougher policy toward Moscow included the U.S. ambassador to Moscow, Averell Harriman, Kennan, and particularly Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal, while Secretary of State George Marshall steered a middle course until about 1948. How is it to be explained that this latter argument carried the day and that particularly President Truman became a firm advocate of a policy of containment? 39
An obvious answer pertains, of course, to Soviet behavior. Western leaders, including Roosevelt, would have accepted a Soviet sphere of influence in Europe and were prepared to accommodate its security concerns--see Churchill's famous trip to Moscow in October 1944 and the Soviet-British "percentages agreement" on Southeast Europe. 40 But when the Red Army moved into Eastern Europe in 1944, Moscow immediately started to suppress potential political opposition in Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, and, above all, Poland. Stalin broke what Roosevelt considered a Soviet commitment to free elections negotiated at Yalta, provoking the president to complain, "We can't do business with Stalin. He has broken every one of the promises he made at Yalta." 41
The Truman administration, which had supported friendly relations with the Soviet Union until December 1945, began to change its position in early 1946, in conjunction with the Soviet reluctance to carry out the Moscow agreements to include non-Communists in the governments of Romania and Bulgaria. 42 These early disputes focused on domestic order issues in Soviet-controlled Eastern Europe. Had Stalin "Finlandized" rather than "Sovietized" Eastern Europe, the Cold War could have been avoided. In the perception of U.S. decision makers, the Soviet threat emerged as a threat to the domestic order of Western Europe, whose economies were devastated by the war. As the cia concluded in mid-1947, "the greatest danger to the security of the United States is the possible economic collapse in Western Europe and the consequent accession to power of Communist elements." 43 U.S. administrations from Roosevelt to Truman considered Western Europe vital to American security interests, both for historical reasons (after all, two world wars had been fought over Western Europe) and because it was viewed as a cornerstone of the liberal--political and economic--world order that both Roosevelt and Truman envisaged. 44 But it was not Soviet power as such that constituted a threat to these interests; rather it was the Soviet domestic order, combined with Soviet behavior in Eastern Europe, indicating a willingness to expand Communism beyond the ussr. In other words, Soviet power became threatening as a tool to expand the Soviet domestic order. Moreover, the Soviet Union also refused to join the Bretton Woods institutions of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, thus ending hopes that it might participate in the postwar international economic order.
This is not to suggest that the Soviet Union was solely responsible for the origins of the Cold War. Rather, differing views of domestic and international order clashed after World War II. Moscow refused to join the American liberal project based upon an open international order and free trade, free-market economies, and liberal systems of governance. 45 Roosevelt and Truman tried to accommodate the Soviet view at first but then gradually abandoned that idea in favor of tougher policies. Stalin's behavior in Eastern Europe and elsewhere--irrespective of whether it was motivated by genuine security concerns or aggressive intentions--reinforced the emerging perceptions of threat, both in the public and in the administration. Over against those promoting a modus vivendi between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, Stalin helped another worldview to carry the day in Washington, one that interpreted the post-W consequent accesorld War II situation in terms of a long-lasting strategic rivalry between the U.S. and the ussr--the Cold War.
The emerging conflict was increasingly framed in Manichaean terms. As Anders Stephanson put it,
| [The Cold War] was launched in fiercely ideological terms as an invasion or delegitimation of the Other's social order, a demonology combined of course with a mythology of the everlasting virtues of one's own domain. This is not surprising, considering the universalism of the respective ideologies. 46 |
The liberal interpretation of Stalin's behavior transformed the Soviet Union from a wartime ally to an opponent, the "other":
| There isn't any difference in totalitarian states. . . . Nazi, Communist or Fascist, or Franco, or anything else--they are all alike. |
| The stronger the voice of a people in the formulation of national policies, the less the danger of aggression. When all governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, there will be enduring peace. 47 |
The various declarations of the Cold War--Kennan's "long telegram," Churchill's 1946 "iron curtain" speech in Fulton, Missouri, and the 1947 Truman doctrine--all made the same connection between a liberal interpretation of the Soviet threat stemming from its "totalitarian" domestic character, on the one hand, and a realist balance of power ("containment") strategy to counter it. Kennan's "long telegram" and his later "X" article connected two liberal interpretations of the Soviet threat to promote his preferred course of action. 48 He portrayed the Soviet Union as combining an ancient autocratic tradition that was deeply suspicious of its neighbors with a Communist ideology. Of course, cooperation was not an option with an opponent whose aggressiveness resulted from a historically derived sense of insecurity together with ideological aspirations that were ultimately caused by the fear of authoritarian rulers that they would be overthrown by their own people.
To what extent were these interpretations of the Soviet threat merely justifying rhetoric to gather public support for U.S. foreign policy rather than genuine concerns of decision makers? First, as argued above, there was nothing inevitable about the emergence of the Cold War, as far as U.S. decision makers were concerned. Soviet behavior, U.S. responses, the clash of worldviews, and mutual threat perceptions reinforced each other to create the East-West conflict. Second, the historical record appears to indicate that Harry Truman genuinely changed his mind about the extent to which one could cooperate with the Soviet Union during his first year in office. 49 Third, an exaggerated rhetoric constructing the Soviet Union as the "empire of the evil" (Reagan) created the Cold War consensus in the U.S., since public opinion and Congress at the time were reluctant to accept new commitments overseas shortly after World War II had been won. The Truman doctrine, for example, deliberately oversold the issue of granting financial aid to Greece and Turkey as a fight between "freedom" and "totalitarianism" to get the package through Congress. But this point only confirms the power of the liberal argument in creating winning domestic coalitions in the U.S.
Even after the perception of a Soviet threat had won out in Washington, the U.S. still faced choices. Joining NATO was only one of them. It could have fought the Soviet Union on its own in a bipolar confrontation. Another option was to negotiate bilateral security arrangements with selected Western European states, as the Soviet Union did with Eastern Europe between 1945 and 1948, and as British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin suggested in 1948. 50 Instead, the U.S. chose to entangle itself in a multilateral alliance based on the indivisibility of security, diffuse reciprocity, and democratic decision-making procedures. 51
Since it is impossible to present a detailed history of the North Atlantic Treaty in a few pages, some general remarks must suffice. 52 First, NATO came about against the background of the emerging sense of threat in both Western Europe and the U.S. Soviet behavior in Eastern Europe and in its German occupation zone might have been motivated by Moscow's own threat perceptions and by an attempt to prevent a Western anti-Soviet bloc. But Stalin's behavior once again proved counterproductive and served to fuel Western threat perception. The Prague Communist "coup," for example, occurred precisely when negotiations for the Brussels Treaty creating the West European Union were under way and led to their speedy conclusion. The events in Czechoslovakia, as well as Soviet pressure against Norway, convinced U.S. Secretary of State Marshall that a formal alliance between the U.S. and Western Europe was necessary. The Soviet blockade of Berlin's Western sectors in 1948 not only "created" Berlin as the symbol of freedom and democracy--i.e., the values for which the Cold War was fought--but also proved crucial to move the U.S. closer to a firm commitment to European security.
Second, major initiatives toward the formation of a North Atlantic Alliance originated in Europe, mainly in the British Foreign Office. 53 A close transgovernmental coalition of like-minded U.S., British, Canadian, and--later on--French senior officials worked hard to transform the growing sense of threat into a firm U.S. commitment toward European security. The negotiations leading to the North Atlantic Treaty resembled a "three-level" game involving U.S. domestic politics, transgovernmental consensus-building, and intergovernmental bargains across the Atlantic. As to the last, probably the most important deal concerned Germany: the French would support U.S. policies toward the creation of a West German state in exchange for an American security commitment to Europe in terms of "dual containment" (protection against the Soviet Union and Germany). 54
Third, a multilateral institution had advantages over alternative options, since it enhanced the legitimacy of American leadership by giving the Western Europeans a say in the decision-making process. In this context, it was self-evident and not controversial on either side of the Atlantic that an alliance of democratic states had to be based on democratic principles, norms, and decision-making rules. The two major bargains about the North Atlantic Treaty concerned, first, the nature of the assistance clause (article 5 of the treaty) and, second, the extent to which the consultation commitment (article 4) would include threats outside the NATO area. Neither the commitment to democratic values (preamble) nor the democratic decision-making procedures as outlined in articles 2, 3, and 8 were controversial in the treaty negotiations. Rather, the controversy between the U.S. Congress, on the one hand, and the administration together with the Western European governments, on the other, focused on the indivisibility of the mutual security assistance. 55
In sum, a liberal interpretation of NATO's origins holds that the Cold War came about when fundamental ideas--worldviews--about the domestic and the international order for the post-World War II era clashed. The Western democracies perceived a threat to their fundamental values resulting from the "Sovietization" of Eastern Europe. While the perceived Soviet threat certainly strengthened the sense of community among the Western democracies, it did not create the collective identity in the first place. In light of the liberal collective identity and its views of what constituted a "just" domestic and international order, Stalin's behavior and his refusal to join the liberal order confirmed that the Soviet Union could not be trusted. NATO then institutionalized the transatlantic security community to cope with the threat. The multilateral nature of the organization based on democratic principles and decision rules reflected the common values and the collective identity.
Regulatory norms of multilateralism and joint decision making were not just rhetoric covering up American hegemony, but shaped the interallied relationship. These norms were causally consequential for transatlantic security cooperation during the Cold War, since they allowed for disproportionate European influence on U.S. foreign policies. During the Korean war, for example, norms of consultation had an overall restraining effect on American decisions with regard to the localization of the war in Korea instead of its extension into China, the non-use of nuclear weapons, and the conclusion of the armistice negotiations. 56
Western Europeans also had quite an impact on the early stages of nuclear arms control, especially during the test ban negotiations when the British in particular pushed and pulled the U.S. toward an agreement. As to NATO decisions pertaining to European security, joint decision making quickly became the norm. This has been shown to be true in most crucial cases, such as decisions on nuclear strategy and deployments. 57 The evidence also suggests that the transatlantic relationship cannot be conceptualized as merely interstate relations; rather, the interaction patterns are significantly influenced by transnational and transgovernmental coalition-building processes. 58
I will briefly discuss here two cases of interallied dispute over policies during the Cold War. The first, the 1956 Suez crisis, probably constituted the most severe transatlantic crisis of the 1950s, leading to a temporary breakdown of the community. I argue, however, that reference to a conflict of interests alone does not explain the interallied confrontation, in particular not the United States' coercion of its allies. The transatlantic dispute can be better understood in the framework of norm-guided behavior, as a dispute over obligations and appropriate behavior in a security community. The second case, the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, was the most serious U.S.-Soviet confrontation during the Cold War. I argue that U.S. decisions during the crisis cannot be explained without reference to the normative framework of the transatlantic security community.
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A temporary breakdown of the allied community resulted from the 1956 Suez crisis when the U.S. coerced Britain, France, and Israel through economic pressure to give up their attempts to regain control of the Suez Canal. I suggest that the "realist" outcome of the crisis--the strong defeating the weak--needs to be explained by a "liberal" process. The American coercion of its allies resulted from a mutual sense of betrayal of the community leading to the violation of consultation norms and the temporary breakdown of the community itself.
The conflict of interests between the U.S. and its two allies was obvious to both sides from the beginning of the crisis. 59 The British and French governments knew that the U.S. profoundly disagreed with them on whether or not force should be used to restore control over the Suez Canal. The attitudes of the U.S. as compared with those of its allies were rooted in diverging assessments of the situation in the Middle East, of the larger political context, and of the particular actions by Egypt's Nasser. The U.S. made a major effort to restrain its allies from using military force by working for a negotiated settlement and the establishment of an international authority to take control of the Suez Canal. Both sides frequently exchanged their diverging viewpoints through the normal channels of interallied communication, which remained open throughout most of the crisis. The U.S. and its allies also knew that the British were economically dependent on American assistance for the pound sterling and for ensuring oil supplies to NATO Europe, should the crisis escalate into war. 60
Why, then, did the British and French who knew about their dependence and the American disagreement with them, nevertheless go ahead with their military plans and deceive Washington? How is their miscalculation of the U.S. reaction to be explained?
The British and French governments reluctantly agreed to U.S. attempts for a negotiated solution, first through an international conference in London in August 1956 and later through the proposal of a Suez Canal Users' Association (scua) in September. But the allies were not seriously interested in the success of these efforts, since their ultimate goal was not only to secure access to the Suez Canal but also to get rid of Nasser. They endorsed the American efforts to buy time and to create a favorable climate of opinion in the U.S. and the UN.
At the same time, the governments in London and Paris perceived American behavior during the crisis as at best ambiguous, if not deceiving. John Foster Dulles earned himself a reputation of "saying one thing and doing another," as Selwyn Lloyd, the British foreign minister, put it. 61 There are indeed indications that Dulles favored stronger action if Nasser rejected reasonable proposals by the London conference. In September, for example, Dulles discussed a proposal with the British prime minister to set up an Anglo-American working group that would consider means of weakening Nasser's regime. 62
The British sense of being betrayed by the Americans increased dramatically as a result of Dulles's handling of his own scua proposal. Prime Minister Anthony Eden viewed it as a means to corner Nasser further and to use his expected rejection as a pretext for military action. But in an attempt to dampen the British spin on the proposal and to make it more acceptable to the Egyptians, Dulles declared that "the United States did not intend itself to try to shoot its way through" the Suez Canal. As a result, Eden concluded on October 8 that "we have been misled so often by Dulles' ideas that we cannot afford to risk another misunderstanding. . . . Time is not on our side in this matter." 63 The British felt abandoned by the American government, which in their eyes had violated the community of purpose. London then chose to deliberately deceive Washington about the military plans in October 1956 without calculating the possible consequences. First, British officials thought, in a somewhat self-deluding manner, that the U.S. did not want to hear about the military preparations. Second, the British government was convinced in some strange way that the U.S. would ultimately back it and that allied action would somehow force Washington to support what persuasion did not accomplish. Eden and his foreign minister reckoned that the choice was clear for Washington if it had to take sides between Egypt and its European allies. What they perceived as Dulles's duplicity not only created a sense of betrayal leading to the deception in the first place, it also helped to reassure them that the Americans would ultimately support their action. In short, British decision makers firmly believed in the viability of the North Atlantic partnership. They convinced themselves that the U.S. was bound by the community and would ultimately value it. They relied on reassurances such as the one uttered by Dulles ten days before the invasion of the Suez Canal: "I do not comment on your observations on Anglo-American relations except to say that those relations, from our standpoint, rest on such a firm foundation that misunderstandings of this nature, if there are such, cannot disturb them." 64
But Eisenhower and Dulles, despite all ambiguous statements, never wavered in pursuing two goals: (a) to prevent the use of force and (b) to reach a negotiated settlement guaranteeing safe passage through the Suez Canal. The administration mediated between its allies and the Egyptians while at the same time trying to restrain the British and French from resorting to military action. But this does not mean that Washington had to use its overwhelming power to force its allies to give up their adventure in Egypt. While the U.S. opposition to the allied action was to be expected, the use of coercive power was not. The allies could have agreed to disagree, since no supreme American interests were at stake. 65 The U.S. could have confined its opposition to condemnatory action in the UN General Assembly. In other words, U.S. decision makers made choices as to how to react to the allied military action.
The American decision to play hardball with the allies was triggered by a series of unilateral allied moves that violated norms of consultation and jeopardized the community of purpose in the eyes of American leaders. First, the British government decided at the end of August to get the North Atlantic Council involved in the crisis, against the explicit advice of the U.S. government. The allies apparently calculated that other Western Europeans would support their military preparations, while the administration thought that such a move would further complicate discussions at the London conference. 66
Second, the British government told the U.S. in late September of its plans to refer the matter to the UN Security Council in order to preempt a likely Soviet move. John Foster Dulles advised against it, since he thought that such action would hinder his attempts to get the scua off the ground. On September 23, the British and French referred the Suez issue to the Security Council anyway.
Third, immediately before the invasion, American decision makers complained that they were left in the dark about the British and French plans and that the interallied lines of communications had gradually broken down. The State Department asked the U.S. embassies in London and Paris to find out what the two governments were up to. It received reassuring messages, since the American embassies either were deliberately misled by their sources or just second-guessed the allied governments. Intelligence information gradually came in reporting Israeli plans to invade Egypt, with possible French and British involvement. 67 When the Israeli invasion started on October 29, the U.S. administration had sufficient information to suspect that France was involved in the action. But until the facts could no longer be denied, neither Eisenhower nor Dulles wanted to believe that the British government had deceived them. The sense of community led to wishful thinking by American decision makers. The U.S. then decided to bring the matter to the UN Security Council but was told by the allies that they would never support a UN move against Israel. Even then, Eisenhower did not believe what he saw. He sent an urgent message to Prime Minister Eden, expressing his confusion and demanding
| that the UK and the us quickly and clearly lay out their present views and intentions before each other, and that, come what may, we find some way of concerting our ideas and plans so that we may not, in any real crisis, be powerless to act in concert because of our misunderstanding of each other. 68 |
The extent of the Anglo-French-Israeli collusion became clear only a few hours later, when the British and French issued a joint ultimatum demanding that Israel and Egypt withdraw from the Suez Canal to allow for an Anglo-French occupation of the Canal zone. The plot was immediately apparent, since the Israeli forces had not yet reached the line to which they were supposed to retreat. Eisenhower now realized that he had been misled all along and expressed his dismay about the "unworthy and unreliable ally." Later that day, he declared that he was "inclined to think that those who began this operation should be left to work out their own oil problem--to boil in their own oil, so to speak."
The secretary of state summoned the French ambassador, telling him that "this was the blackest day which has occurred in many years in the relations between England and France and the United States. He asked how the former relationship of trust and confidence could possibly be restored in view of these developments." 69
Eisenhower and Dulles were not so much upset by the Anglo-French-Israeli use of force itself as by the fact that core allies had deliberately deceived them. The allies had not broken some minor consultation agreements; they had violated fundamental collective understandings that constituted the transatlantic community--"trust and confidence." Once the degree of allied deception became obvious, decision makers in Washington concluded that they were themselves no longer bound by alliance norms. They decided to retaliate in kind and coerced their allies through financial pressure. Now the U.S. abandoned the community, leaving its allies no choice but to back down. As the British ambassador in Washington put it, "We have now passed the point when we are talking to friends. . . . [W]e are on a hard bargaining basis and we are dealing with an Administration of business executives." 70
While the U.S. administration was coercing its allies to withdraw from the Suez Canal, it indicated at the same time that a major effort should be made to restore the community. As soon as November 7, the president called the whole affair a "family spat" in a telephone conversation with Prime Minister Eden. He later tried to find excuses for the British behavior: "Returning to the Suez crisis, the President said he now believes that the British had not been in on the Israeli-French planning until the very last stages when they had no choice but to come into the operation." 71
If the British had "no choice," they could not really be blamed for deceiving the U.S. The two governments now engaged in almost ritualistic reassurances that their "special relationship" would be restored quickly. President Eisenhower and Anthony Eden's successor Harold Macmillan worked hard to reestablish the community. The Bermuda summit in March 1957 documented the restoration of the "special relationship." In the long term, the crisis resulted in a major change in U.S. policies toward nuclear cooperation with the British. In 1958, Congress amended the Atomic Energy Act to allow for the sharing of nuclear information with Britain, which London had requested throughout the decade. The violation of alliance norms during the Suez crisis reinforced rather than reduced the transatlantic ties.
As for NATO in general, the crisis led to a reform of its consultation procedures. The "Report of the Committee of Three on Non-Military Cooperation in NATO" restated the need for timely consultation among the allies on foreign policy matters in general, not just those pertaining to European security. The North Atlantic Council adopted the report in December 1956. 72
But the French-American relationship never recovered. While French leaders had already been more sanguine about the interallied conflict than the British, the crisis set in motion a trend of gradually weakening the transatlantic ties between Paris and Washington. This deinstitutionalization culminated in President de Gaulle's 1966 decision to withdraw from the military integration of NATO. The French learned different lessons from the crisis than did the British, as far as the collective identity of the transatlantic community was concerned. The case shows that actors' interpretations of specific events may lead to changes in how they perceive their identity, which then results in changing their practices.
In sum, the confrontation between the U.S. and its allies developed because each side felt betrayed by the other in fundamental ways. The conflict of interests alone does not explain the confrontation. Such conflicts occurred before and afterward without leading to a breakdown of the transatlantic community, but they were usually resolved through cooperation and compromise--note, for example, the almost continuous interallied disputes over nuclear strategy and deployment options, which involved the survival interests of both sides. During the Suez crisis, however, U.S. decision makers perceived the allied deception as a violation of basic rules, norms, and procedures constituting the transatlantic community. No longer bound by the norms of appropriate behavior, the U.S. used its superior power and prevailed. Both sides knew that they had violated the rules of the "alliance game" and engaged in self-serving rhetoric to cover it up. More important, the U.S. and the British worked hard to restore the transatlantic community, suggest ing that they did not regard the sort of confrontations experienced during the Suez crisis as appropriate behavior among democratic allies.
I conclude, therefore, that the Suez crisis confirms liberal expectations about discourses and practices when fundamental norms governing the relationship are violated. Norm violation challenging the sense of community among the allies provides the key to understanding the interactions leading to the confrontation, the clash, and the restoration of the community.
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While the Suez crisis is a case of norm violation, the Cuban missile crisis shows the collective identity of the security community in action. It represents the most serious U.S.-Soviet confrontation of the Cold War. While we know today that neither side was prepared to risk nuclear war over the Soviet missiles in Cuba, President John F. Kennedy and General Secretary Nikita Krushchev were each afraid that the other would escalate the conflict in ways that might get out of control. 73 Decision makers in Washington were convinced that the supreme national interests of the United States were at stake. Why care about allies when national survival is endangered? Indeed, the conventional wisdom about the Cuban missile crisis holds that the allies were not sufficiently consulted, even though U.S. decisions directly affected their security. Even senior officials in the administration, such as Roger Hilsman, then director of intelligence in the State Department, thought that the U.S. had chosen not to consult the allies in order to preserve its freedom of action: "If you had the French Government and the British Government with all their hangups and De Gaulle's hangups we would never have done it, it's as simple as that." 74
I argue that--except for the first week of the crisis--there was far more interallied consultation than most scholars assume and that key allies, particularly the British and Turkish governments, knew about details of decision making in Washington. Moreover, the fate of the Western Alliance was the most important foreign policy concern for U.S. decision makers, except for the direct confrontation with Moscow and Cuba. Strategic arguments about reputation and the credibility of commitments explain these concerns only to a limited extent. First, as argued above, realism is indeterminate with regard to allied consultation when the alliance leader's survival is perceived to be at stake. Second, decision makers did not worry at all about their reputation in the Organization of American States (oas), for example, the other U.S.-led alliance, which was even more directly involved in the Cuban missile crisis. Rather, if we assume a security community of democracies, strategic concerns about reputation and credibility immediately make sense. At least, realism does not offer a better understanding of these concerns than liberal theory.
But the Cuban missile crisis also poses a puzzle for liberal propositions about the allied community of values and norms, since the U.S. violated these rules during the first week of the crisis. Whether or not to consult the allies was discussed during the very first meeting of the Executive Committee (ExComm) on October 16. Secretary of State Dean Rusk argued strongly in favor of consultation and maintained that unilateral U.S. action would put the allies at risk, particularly if the U.S. decided in favor of a quick air strike. The decision not to consult, however, did not free decision makers from concerns about the Europeans. Membership in the community of democracies formed part of the American identity, as a result of which decision makers continued to define U.S. preferences in terms of joint interests rather than unilaterally. There was unanimous consensus that U.S. inaction with regard to the Soviet missile deployment in Cuba would be disastrous for U.S. credibility vis-á-vis its allies. 75 The reputation of the U.S. government was perceived to be at stake, in both domestic and alliance politics. Decision makers in the ExComm did not distinguish between the two. As a result, the decision not to consult key allies during the first week strengthened the position of the "doves" in the ExComm, who argued that an air strike and military action against the Soviet installations in Cuba without prior consultation would wreck NATO.
During the second week of the crisis, the Europeans not only were regularly informed about the U.S. deliberations but had ample opportunities to influence American thinking through a variety of bilateral and multilateral channels. Among the key allies, only the British chose to take advantage of these opportunities, while France and West Germany strongly supported the U.S. courses of action. President Kennedy had almost daily telephone conversations with Prime Minister Macmillan--which even many of his staff members did not realize.
The British were the most "dovish" of the major allies. They made sure, for example, that U.S. forces in Europe were exempted from the general alert status of U.S. troops. When Macmillan was briefed about the crisis, he assured the president that Britain would support the U.S., but he mentioned that Europeans had lived under the threat of Soviet nuclear weapons for quite some time. Since the British had internally concluded that the naval blockade of Cuba violated international law, Macmillan demanded that the U.S. made a good legal case in favor of the quarantine. He then wondered about possible Soviet reactions against the blockade, including attempts at trading American bases in Europe or even West Berlin for the withdrawal of the missiles from Cuba. 76 Kennedy perceived Macmillan's message as the "best argument for taking no action."
The British prime minister was as concerned as President Kennedy that the crisis might get out of control, and he favored a cooperative solution. On October 24, he told David Ormsby-Gore, the British ambassador to the U.S.: "If I am right in assuming that the President's mind is moving in the direction of negotiations before the crisis worsens, I think that the most fruitful course for you to pursue at the present might be to try to elicit from him on what lines he may be contemplating a conference." 77
He suggested that the U.S. should raise the blockade if the Soviets refrained from putting more missiles into Cuba. When Macmillan phoned Kennedy later, he urged the president not to rush and asked whether "a deal" could be done. When the president asked for Macmillan's advice on a possible invasion of Cuba, the prime minister strongly recommended against it. 78
Whether the British proposals for de-escalation made a crucial difference in the U.S. decision-making process is unclear. It is safe to argue, however, that the close contact between Kennedy, Macmillan, and Ormsby-Gore during the second week of the crisis strengthened and reinforced the president's view. Given Kennedy's convictions about the importance of the Western Alliance, which he expressed time and again during the crisis, it was significant that a key ally whom he trusted fully endorsed his search for a "deal."
Two alliance issues strongly influenced the president's thinking during the crisis. The first was the fate of Berlin. The American commitment to Berlin was one more reason to preclude inaction against the Soviet missiles in Cuba. As the president put it during the second ExComm meeting, if the Soviets put missiles in Cuba without an American response, Moscow would build more bases and then squeeze the West in Berlin. 79 Concerns about Berlin also served as another restraining factor on U.S. decisions. The city's exposure inside the Soviet bloc made it an easy target of retaliatory action against American moves in Cuba. Kennedy worried about Berlin almost constantly. Fear of Soviet action against the essentially defenseless city was one reason for his decision in favor of the blockade and against more forceful military action. 80 Kennedy's personal and emotional commitment to Berlin was again apparent during the crucial ExComm meeting on October 27, when he was faced with the choice between an air strike and a "missile swap":
| What we're going to be faced with is--because we wouldn't take the missiles out of Turkey, then maybe we'll have to invade or make a massive strike on Cuba which may lose Berlin. |
| We all know how quickly everybody's courage goes when the blood starts to flow, and that's what's going to happen in NATO . . . We start these things and they grab Berlin, and everybody's going to say, "Well that was a pretty good proposition." 81 |
The Berlin issue symbolized the role of the North Atlantic Alliance in the minds of U.S. decision makers throughout the crisis--precluding both inac tion and a rush to escalation. Concerns about the city and the fate of Europe in general were causally consequential not by determining specific choices but by constraining the range of options available to decision makers. President Kennedy and other ExComm members treated Berlin almost as if it were another American city, for which American soldiers were supposed to die in defense of their country. It did not seem to make a difference whether the fate of Berlin or that of New York was at stake. Berlin symbolized the allied community and the values for which the Cold War was fought. It was the city's very vulnerability to Soviet pressures that made it such a significant symbol for the U.S. commitment to the defense of Europe.
While Berlin was an important concern of U.S. decision makers during the crisis, it was peripheral to the solution to the crisis. The Jupiter medium-range ballistic missiles (MRBMs) deployed under NATO arrangements in Turkey and Italy became part and parcel of the crisis settlement. The Jupiter missiles had been deployed following a 1957 NATO decision, on U.S. request. In the meantime, the administration considered them dangerously vulnerable and militarily obsolete. Kennedy would have preferred their withdrawal long before, but the administration failed to persuade Turkey to give them up. By the time of the Cuban missile crisis, the Jupiter missiles had become a political symbol of alliance cohesion, of the U.S. commitment to NATO and to Turkey in particular, which had just returned to democratic rule.
Not surprisingly, the Jupiter MRBMs became immediately linked to the Soviet missile deployment in Cuba. Throughout the crisis, the administration was divided over a "missile swap." The split cut across divisions between departments and even led to differences of opinion within specific agencies such as the State Department and the Pentagon. The topic of the Turkish Jupiter bases also came up in various interallied discussions. A "missile swap" was discussed in the British government, but London remained opposed to an explicit "missile trade" throughout the crisis, despite its support for a "deal." At the same time, the Turkish government began to raise concerns, particularly when the Soviet ambassador in Ankara began to argue that Moscow regarded the Jupiter missiles as its "Cuba." While Dean Rusk publicly denied any connection between the Cuban missile crisis and any situation elsewhere in the world, he hinted that, in the long run, disarmament negotiations could deal with the location of weapons. 82
The administration also considered speeding up plans for the Multilateral Force (MLF), a sea-based nuclear force of American, British, and French systems under a joint NATO command, which had originally been proposed by the Eisenhower administration. The U.S. then set its diplomatic machinery in motion to anticipate how the allies would react to withdrawal of the Jupiter missiles in such a context. 83 The U.S. ambassador to NATO, John Finletter, responded along the lines already discussed in Washington. He argued that Turkey regarded the Jupiter missiles as a symbol of the alliance commitment to its defense and that no arrangement should be made without the approval of the Turkish government. Finletter strongly advised against any open deal, but then proposed a "small southern command multilateral seaborne force on a 'pilot basis'" using Polaris submarines and manned by mixed U.S., Turkish, and Italian crews. Such an arrangement could allow the U.S. to offer the withdrawal of the Jupiters to the Soviets. 84 While the U.S. ambassador to Turkey cabled a gloomy assessment from Ankara, he also concurred that a strictly secret deal with the Soviets was possible, together with some military compensation for Turkey. 85 These cables were discussed in the ExComm meetings on October 27 and influenced the president's decisions.
Various U.S. ambassadors to NATO allies apparently talked to their host governments about a secret "missile swap" despite an explicit directive by Rusk not to talk about it. The networks provided by the transatlantic institutions made it impossible to exclude allied officials from the deliberations. British officials discussed a "missile swap"; so did NATO's permanent representatives in Paris. Most important, the Turkish foreign ministry indicated to the American and the British ambassadors that it was not completely opposed to a removal of the Jupiters, to be discussed after a suitable lapse of time and in a general NATO context. 86 The president involved the British ambassador in his deliberations and also asked the British to approach their embassy in Ankara for a view on the matter. 87
When the crisis reached its climax on October 27, discussions that included the State Department, the Pentagon, U.S. diplomats in Europe, NATO representatives in Paris, and various allied governments--at least the British and the Turks--had been held, and a solution had emerged. The solution entailed a strictly secret deal between Washington and Moscow that included the removal of the Jupiter missiles from Turkey in exchange for military compensation, after the Soviets had withdrawn their missiles from Cuba.
On October 27, the ExComm devoted most of its meeting time to discussing the options of an air strike against Cuba versus a "missile swap." The sense of allied community among ExComm members served as a frame of reference in which the various courses of action were discussed. Both sides in the debate referred to the need to preserve NATO. Supporters of an air strike argued that a missile trade would lead to the denuclearization of NATO and indicate that the U.S. was prepared to tamper with the indivisibility of allied security for selfish reasons. As McGeorge Bundy put it, "In their [the Turkish] own terms it would already be clear that we were trying to sell our allies for our interests. That would be the view in all of NATO. It's irrational, and it's crazy, but it's a terribly powerful fact." 88 The president was primarily concerned that the Soviet public demand might provoke a public counterresponse by the Turkish government, which would jeopardize a secret solution to the crisis. He argued that the U.S. faced a dilemma. On the one hand, the U.S. commitment to its allies was at stake. On the other hand, many alliance members around the world might regard a missile trade as a reasonable deal and would not understand if the U.S. rejected it. 89
In the end, the proposal of a secret deal with the Soviets together with some military compensation for the allies carried the day with the president. It was agreed that the Jupiter missiles could not be removed without Turkish approval and that therefore the U.S. would have to persuade the government in Ankara. A small group of Kennedy's advisers assembled after the ExComm meeting and discussed an oral message to be transmit ted to ANATOly Dobrynin, the Soviet ambassador, by Attorney General Robert Kennedy. Dean Rusk proposed that Kennedy should simply tell Dobrynin that the U.S. was determined to get the Jupiter missiles out of Turkey as soon as the crisis was over. The group also agreed to keep absolute secrecy about this in order to preserve allied unity. 90
Shortly after the meeting of Kennedy's advisers, the president's brother met with Ambassador Dobrynin and told him in rather dramatic terms that the crisis was quickly escalating and that the U.S. might soon bomb the missile bases in Cuba, which could lead to war in Europe. He then told Dobrynin with surprising openness that the U.S. was prepared to remove the Jupiter missiles from Turkey but could do so only if the deal was kept secret, since alliance unity was at stake. 91 Khrushchev accepted the president's proposal, thereby solving the crisis.
In sum, U.S. membership in an alliance of democratic states shaped the process by which decision makers struggled over the definition of American interests and preferences during the Cuban missile crisis. One could argue, though, that the U.S. decisions were perfectly rational given the risks and opportunities at hand and that reference to the transatlantic relationship is, therefore, unnecessary to explain American behavior. The blockade, the noninvasion pledge, and the secret "missile swap" were indeed perfectly rational decisions. But a rational-choice account proves to be indeterminate unless alliance considerations are factored in. The opposite arguments in favor of escalating the crisis through an air strike or even an invasion were as rational as those in support of the blockade or the "missile deal." Supporters of an air strike correctly argued that the risks of escalation were minimal given the overwhelming superiority of the U.S., both locally in the region and on the global nuclear level. Only if Soviet retaliation against Europe was considered a problem could one make a rational argument against the air strike and other escalatory steps. Berlin was the American Achilles heel during the crisis, not New York City.
That U.S. decision makers did not distinguish between domestic and European concerns, that they worried as much about the fate of Berlin as about New York City, and that they regarded obsolete Jupiter missiles in Turkey as major obstacles to the solution of the crisis--these puzzles make sense if one assumes a security community of democratic nations, on behalf of which the Kennedy administration acted. Membership in the Western Alliance affected the identity of American actors in the sense that the "we" in whose name the president decided incorporated the European allies. Those who invoked potential allied concerns in the internal dis courses added weight to their arguments by referring to the collectively shared value of the community. The alliance community as part of the American identity explains the lack of distinction between domestic and alliance politics as well as the sense of commitment that U.S. decision makers felt with regard to their allies. Reputational concerns and the credibility of the U.S. commitment to NATO were at stake during the Cuban missile crisis. But I submit that these worries can be better understood within the framework of a security community based on collectively shared values than on the basis of traditional alliance theory.
The End of the Cold War and the Future of NATO
Since 1985, the European security environment has changed dramatically. The Cold War is over, the U.S.-Soviet rivalry gave way to a new partnership among former opponents, Germany is united, the Warsaw Pact and even the Soviet Union have ceased to exist. Fundamental parameters in the international environment of the transatlantic relationship have been profoundly altered. The world of the 1990s is very different from the world of the 1950s and 1960s. Can we extrapolate anything from the study of European-American relations during the height of the Cold War for the future of the transatlantic ties?
Contrary to Waltzian assumptions, NATO remains alive and well so far, adjusting to the new international environment:
In response to the end of the Cold War, NATO has started changing its force structure. Instead of heavily armored and mechanized divisions, member states are setting up intervention forces with increased mobility in accordance with the NATO decision to build an allied rapid reaction corps for "out-of-area" purposes. 92
The alliance has started playing a subsidiary role in un-sponsored international peacekeeping and peace-enforcement missions, such as in the former Yugoslavia. 94 It is remarkable in this context that the profound conflict of interest among the Western powers with regard to the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina has not at all affected NATO. Rather, the U.S., Britain, France, and Germany worked hard to ensure that their disagreements over Bosnia would not adversely influence the transatlantic alliance.
I have argued here that the Western Alliance represents an institutionalization of the transatlantic security community based on common values and a collective identity of liberal democracies. 95 The Soviet domestic structure and the values promoted by communism were regarded as alien to the community, resulting in a threat perception of the Soviet Union as the potential enemy. The democratization of the Soviet system initiated by Mikhail Gorbachev and continued by Boris Yeltsin then started ending the Cold War in Western eyes by altering the "Otherness" of the Soviet system. The Gorbachev revolution consisted primarily of embracing Western liberal values. 96 While "glasnost" introduced publicity into the Soviet political process, "perestroika" democratized it. In response, Western threat perception gradually decreased, even though at different rates and to different degrees. The Germans were the first to declare the Cold War over. They reacted not only to the democratization of the Soviet system but in particular to Gorbachev's foreign policy change toward "common security." Americans came last; Gorbachev needed to give up Eastern Europe and the Berlin Wall had to tumble down in order to convince them.
It should be noted, however, that this explanation has its limits. Liberal theory as such does not suggest that democracies should behave cooperatively toward democratizing states, as the West did toward the Soviet Union under Gorbachev. The arguments put forward in the Kantian tradition pertain to stable democracies. Since they relate to the social structure of international relations, they cannot explain the specifics as well as the differences among the Western responses to the Gorbachev revolution, i.e., agency. 97 But unlike realism, a liberal argument about the transatlantic security community correctly predicts that these threat perceptions would wither away at some point when former opponents democratize and thus begin entering the community of liberal states.
The end of the Cold War, then, not only does not terminate the Western community of values, it extends that community into Eastern Europe and, potentially, into even the successor states of the Soviet Union, creating a "pacific federation" of liberal democracies from Vladivostok to Berlin, San Francisco, and Tokyo. 98 But liberal theory does not necessarily expect NATO to last into the next century. It only assumes that the security partnership among liberal democracies will persist in one institutionalized form or another. 99 If the democratization process in Russia gives way to authoritarian nationalism, however, liberal theorists do expect NATO to remain the dominant Western security institution and to regain its character as a defensive alliance. In this case, NATO would be expected quickly to extend its security guarantee to the new democracies in central Eastern Europe. But institutionalist arguments suggest that a transformed NATO will remain the overarching security community of the "pacific federation." It is easier to adjust an already existing organization, which encompasses an elaborate set of rules and decision-making procedures, to new conditions than it is to create new institutions of security cooperation among the liberal democracies in the Northern Hemisphere. The osce--not to mention the West European Union--would have to be strengthened much further until they reach a comparable degree of institutionalization.
NATO also provides a unique institutional framework for Europeans to affect American policies. Liberal democracies successfully influence each other in the framework of international institutions by using norms and joint decision-making procedures as well as transnational politics. Playing by the rules of these institutions, they do not just constrain their own freedom of action; they also gain access to the decision-making processes of their partners. Reducing the institutional ties might create the illusion of independence, but it actually decreases one's impact.
Conclusions: How Unique Is NATO?
I have argued in this essay that traditional alliance theories based on realist thinking provide insufficient explanations of the origins, the interaction patterns, and the persistence of NATO. The North Atlantic Alliance represents an institutionalized pluralistic security community of liberal democracies. Democracies not only do not fight each other, they are likely to develop a collective identity facilitating the emergence of cooperative institutions for specific purposes. These institutions are characterized by democratic norms and decision making rules that liberal states tend to externalize when dealing with each other. The enactment of these norms and rules strengthens the sense of community and the collective identity of the actors. Domestic features of liberal democracies enable the community in the first place. But the institutionalization of the community exerts independent effects on the interactions. In the final analysis, then, democratic domestic structures, international institutions, and the collective identity of state actors do the explaNATOry work together.
But do the findings pertaining to the North Atlantic Alliance hold up with regard to other alliances and cooperative institutions among democracies? Comparisons can be made along two dimensions: the degree of institutionalization of the community and the extent to which collective identities have developed among its members. The only international institution that appears to score higher than NATO on both dimensions is the European Union (EU). 100 While it is less integrated than NATO with regard to security and foreign policy making, the eu features unique supranational institutions such as the European Commission and the European Court of Justice. The eu member states also coordinate their economic and monetary policies to an unprecedented degree. 101 As far as collective identity is concerned, there is a well-documented sense of common Europeanness among the elites of the continental member states that partially extends into mass public opinion. Interaction patterns within the eu closely resemble the transnational and transgovernmental coalitions that have been found typical for decision making in NATO. 102
Compared with NATO and the eu, the U.S.-Japanese security relationship appears to represent an interesting anomaly, in the sense that it is highly institutionalized, but the collective identity component seems to be weaker. 103 Japanese security was more dependent on the U.S. during the Cold War than were Western Europe and even Germany. Strongly institutionalized transnational and transgovernmental ties developed among the military and the defense establishments of the two countries. Apart from the elite level of the governing party, however, the security relationship remained deeply contested in Japanese domestic politics during the Cold War. As a result, the U.S.-Japanese security cooperation certainly qualifies as a democratic alliance establishing norms of consultation and compromise-oriented decision making similar to those of NATO. But given the lack of collective identity, it is less clear whether this alliance constitutes a "pluralistic security community" in Deutsch's sense. The U.S.-Japanese example, then, shows that there is some variation with regard to both institutionalization and identity components in alliances among democracies.
In contrast, identity politics appears to be particularly strong in the U.S.-Israeli security relationship, as Michael Barnett argues in this volume. Again, the variation, compared with NATO and the U.S.-Japanese alliance, seems to pertain to the identity component, while the American alliance with Israel is as highly institutionalized as the other security relationships discussed so far. As Barnett points out, recent strains in the relationship can be better explained by challenges to the collective sense of democratic community resulting from Israeli policies than by changes in the international environment in which the two states operate.
So far, I have looked only at security communities among democracies. What about alliances involving nondemocracies? If the liberal argument presented here holds true, we should find quite different interaction patterns in such relationships, since the basic ingredients for the "democratic peace" are missing. A thorough analysis is beyond the scope of this essay. But various findings appear to suggest that, indeed, interaction patterns in nondemocratic alliances are different and conform more closely to realist expectations, particularly realist bargaining theory. As to the Middle East, for example, Stephen Walt has argued that common ideology played only a limited role in the formation of alliances among Arab states. While Michael Barnett disagrees, pointing to the significance of pan-Arabism, he also concurs that this collective identity has been weaker than the sense of community among democratic allies such as the U.S. and Israel. 104 A study comparing U.S. relations with Latin America and interaction patterns within the former Warsaw Pact concludes that these relations can well be analyzed within the framework of public choice and realist bargaining theories. 105
In sum, these comparisons suggest that NATO is not unique but exemplifies interaction patterns and collective identities that are quite common for security communities among democracies. At the same time, these features appear to distinguish democratic alliances from other security relationships. In this sense, alliances among democracies are indeed special, since they can build upon a strong sense of community pertaining to the domestic structures of liberal states. Nevertheless, the degree of institutionalization as well as the extent to which "pluralistic security communities" have emerged varies among democracies.
This essay summarizes, builds upon, and expands arguments developed in Thomas Risse-Kappen, Cooperation Among Democracies: The European Influence on U.S. Foreign Policy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995). Participation in the Social Science Research Council-sponsored project under the directorship of Peter Katzenstein has greatly inspired my thinking on the subject of norms, identity, and social constructivism. For comments on the draft of this essay, I am very grateful to the project participants, in particular Peter Katzenstein. I am also indebted to Mark Laffey, David Latham, Fred H. Lawson, Stephen Walt, Steve Weber, and several anonymous reviewers for their criticism and suggestions.
Note 1: See, for example, Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace, brief ed. (1948; reprint, New York: McGraw Hill, 1993); Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1979); George Liska, Nations in Alliance: The Limits of Interdependence (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1962); Arnold Wolfers, Discord and Collaboration (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1962). See also Ole R. Holsti et al., Unity and Disintegration in International Alliances (New York: Wiley, 1973). Back.
Note 2: On this point, see Ron Jepperson, Alexander Wendt, and Peter J. Katzenstein, "Norms, Identity, and Culture in National Security," essay 2 in this volume. Back.
Note 3: See, for example, Michael Doyle, "Liberalism and World Politics," American Political Science Review 80, no. 4 (1986): 1151-69; Robert Keohane, "International Liberalism Reconsidered," in John Dunn, ed., The Economic Limits to Modern Politics, pp. 165-94 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); Bruce Russett, Grasping the Democratic Peace: Principles for a Post-Cold War World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993). Back.
Note 4: On this use of the term, see, for example, Joseph M. Grieco, "Anarchy and the Limits of Cooperation: A Realist Critique of the Newest Liberal Institutionalism," International Organization 42, no. 3 (Summer 1988): 485-507; Robert O. Keohane, International Institutions and State Power: Essays in International Relations Theory (Boulder: Westview, 1989). See also the discussion of neoliberalism in Peter J. Katzenstein, "Introduction: Alternative Perspectives on National Security," essay 1 in this volume. Back.
Note 5: For the following, see Waltz, Theory of International Politics, ch. 6; and Glenn H. Snyder, "Alliance Theory: A Neorealist First Cut," Journal of International Affairs 44, no. 1 (Spring 1990): 103-23. Back.
Note 6: See Stephen M. Walt, The Origins of Alliances (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987), pp. 274-76. For thorough critiques of the Waltzian notion of bipolarity, see, for example, Richard Ned Lebow, "The Long Peace, the End of the Cold War, and the Failure of Realism," International Organization 48, no. 2 (Spring 1994): 249-77; R. Harrison Wagner, "What Was Bipolarity?" International Organization 47, no. 1 (Winter 1993): 77-106. Back.
Note 7: See Waltz, Theory of International Politics, pp. 106, 170-73. On "relative gains" in particular, see Grieco, "Anarchy and the Limits of Cooperation." For an argument that relative gains are particularly important under bipolarity, see Duncan Snidal, "International Cooperation Among Relative Gain Maximizers," International Studies Quarterly 35, no. 4 (December 1991): 387-402. Back.
Note 8: Walt, The Origins of . Back.
Note 9: On the origins of NATO, see, for example, Richard Best, "Cooperation with Like-Minded Peoples": British Influence on American Security Policy, 1945-1949 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1986); Don Cook, Forging the Alliance: NATO, 1945-1950 (New York: Arbor House/William Morrow, 1989); Sir Nicholas Henderson, The Birth of NATO (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1982); Timothy P. Ireland, Creating the Entangling Alliance: The Origins of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1981). Back.
Note 10: On this point, see Wagner, "What Was Bipolarity?" and Robert Jervis and Jack Snyder, eds., Dominoes and Bandwagons: Strategic Beliefs and Great Power Competition in the Eurasian Rimland (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991). Back.
Note 11: John Lewis Gaddis, The Long Peace (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), p. 41. See also Matthew Evangelista, "Stalin's Postwar Army Reappraised," International Security 7, no. 3 (Winter 1982/83): 110-68; James L. Gormly, From Potsdam to the Cold War (Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 1990), pp. 92-93; Melvyn P. Leffler, "National Security and U.S. Foreign Policy," in Melvyn P. Leffler and David S. Painter, eds., Origins of the Cold War, pp. 15-52, 25-27 (London: Routledge, 1994); Norbert Wiggershaus, "Nordatlantische Bedrohungsperzeptionen im 'Kalten Krieg,' 1948-1956," in Klaus A. Meier et al., eds., Das Nordatlantische BŸndnis, 1949-1956, pp. 17-54 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1993). Perceptions of a Soviet military threat increased only after the political confrontation was already in full swing. Back.
Note 12: Waltz, Theory of International Politics, pp. 169, 170. Glenn Snyder applies this thought to the transatlantic alliance: "It is abundantly clear that the European allies will not do the United States' bidding when it is not in their own interest, but it is also clear that they have little positive influence over U.S. policy--when the United States does not wish to be influenced. . . . The word that most accurately describes their behavior is not domination or even bargaining, but unilateralism" (Snyder, "Alliance Theory," p. 121). Back.
Note 13: Details in Risse-Kappen, Cooperation Among Democracies. See also Fred Chernoff, After Bipolarity (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994); Helga Haftendorn, Kernwaffen und die GlaubwŸrdigkeit der Allianz (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 1994); Elizabeth Sherwood, Allies in Crisis: Meeting Global Challenges to Western Security (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990). Back.
Note 14: For evidence, see Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, The War Trap (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981); Stuart A. Bremer, "Dangerous Dyads: Conditions Affecting the Likelihood of Interstate War, 1816-1965," Journal of Conflict Resolution 36, no. 2 (1992): 309-41. Back.
Note 15: On these propositions, see, for example, Michael Handel, Weak States in the International System (London: Frank Cass, 1981); Holsti, Unity and Disintegration in International Alliances; Glenn Snyder, "The Security Dilemma in Alliance Politics," World Politics 36, no. 4 (July 1984): 461-96; Jan F. Triska, ed., Dominant Powers and Subordinate States (Durham: Duke University Press, 1986). Back.
Note 16: At a U.S. Senate hearing in November 1990. Quoted from Gunther Hellmann and Reinhard Wolf, "Neorealism, Neoliberal Institutionalism, and the Future of NATO," Security Studies 3, no. 1 (Autumn 1993): 3-43, 17. See also John J. Mearsheimer, "Back to the Future: Instability in Europe After the Cold War," International Security 15, no. 1 (1990): 5-56. Back.
Note 17: See Charles Glaser, "Why NATO Is Still Best: Future Security Arrangements for Europe," International Security 18, no. 1 (Summer 1993): 5-50. Back.
Note 18: As Kenneth Waltz himself put it, "With the aid of a rationality assumption one still cannot, from national interest alone, predict what the policy of a country might be" (Waltz, "Reflections on Theory of International Politics: A Response to My Critics," in Robert O. Keohane, ed., Neorealism and Its Critics, pp. 322-45 [New York: Columbia University Press, 1986], p. 331). On the indeterminate nature of realism, see also Robert O. Keohane, "Realism, Neorealism, and the Study of World Politics," ibid., pp. 1-26; Stephen Haggard, "Structuralism and Its Critics: Recent Progress in International Relations Theory," in Emanuel Adler and Beverly Crawford, eds., Progress in Postwar International Relations, pp. 403-37 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991). Back.
Note 19: John G. Ruggie, "Multilateralism: The ANATOmy of an Institution," International Organization 46, no. 3 (Summer 1992): 561-98, 592. Back.
Note 20: For efforts at systematizing a liberal theory of international relations, see Ernst-Otto Czempiel, Friedensstrategien (Paderborn: Schšningh, 1986), pp. 110-67; Doyle, "Liberalism and World Politics"; Keohane, "International Liberalism Reconsidered"; Andrew Moravcsik, Liberalism and International Relations Theory, 2d ed., Working Paper Series (Cambridge: Center for International Affairs, Harvard University, 1993); Russett, Grasping the Democratic Peace. My point of departure is, thus, what Jepperson, Wendt, and Katzenstein call "neoliberalism" in "Norms, Identity, and Culture in National Security," essay 2 in this volume. But drawing on insights from social constructivism, I argue that a liberal theory of international relations properly understood should be located in the upper-right--"sociological"--corner of figure 1 in the Jepperson, Wendt, and Katzenstein essay. Back.
Note 21: See Immanuel Kant, "Zum ewigen Frieden: Ein philosophischer Entwurf" (1795), in Wilhelm Weischedel, ed., Immanuel Kant: Werke in sechs BŠnden (Frankfurt am Main: Insel-Verlag, 1964), 6:193-251. Back.
Note 22: For the state of the art, see Russett, Grasping the Democratic Peace. Two recent criticisms of the "democratic peace" finding seem to be empirically flawed. See Christopher Layne, "Kant or Cant: The Myth of the Democratic Peace," International Security 19, no. 2 (Fall 1994): 5-49; David E. Spiro, "The Insignificance of the Liberal Peace," International Security 19, no. 2 (Fall 1994): 50-86. For the rebuttals, see John M. Owen, "How Liberalism Produces Democratic Peace," International Security 19, no. 2 (Fall 1994): 87-125; Bruce M. Russett, "The Democratic Peace: And Yet It Moves," International Security 19, no. 4 (Spring 1995): 164-75. Back.
Note 23: See Owen, "How Liberalism Promotes Peace"; Thomas Risse-Kappen, "Democratic Peace--Warlike Democracies? A Social Constructivist Interpretation of the Liberal Argument," European Journal of International Relations 1, no. 4 (1995): 489-515. Back.
Note 24: See the discussion in Russett, Grasping the Democratic Peace, ch. 2. Back.
Note 25: See Alexander Wendt, "Collective Identity Formation and the International State," American Political Science Review 88, no. 2 (Summer 1994): 384-96. Back.
Note 26: Doyle, "Liberalism and World Politics," p. 1161. Back.
Note 27: Kant, "Zum ewigen Frieden," p. 203. Back.
Note 28: See John Herz, Political Realism and Political Idealism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951); Robert Jervis, "Cooperation Under the Security Dilemma," World Politics 30, no. 2 (1978): 167-214. Back.
Note 29: Karl W. Deutsch et al., Political Community and the North Atlantic Area (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957), p. 129. Back.
Note 30: See, for example, Kenneth A. Oye, ed., Cooperation Under Anarchy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986). The "democratic peace" argument does not suggest that authoritarian states are constantly in a state of war among themselves. Rather, liberal theory posits that the causes of peace among autocracies are different from the causes for the "democratic peace" and that cooperation among authoritarian regimes is likely to remain fragile. Back.
Note 31: Norms are "collective expectations of proper behavior for a given identity." In the following, I mainly use the term in the sense of regulative norms that prescribe or proscribe behavior for already constituted identities. The constitutive norms of these identities are the values and rules of democratic decision making in the domestic realm. For these distinctions, see Jepperson, Wendt, and Katzenstein, "Norms, Identity, and Culture in National Security." Back.
Note 32: See Friedrich Kratochwil, Rules, Norms, and Decisions: On the Conditions of Practical and Legal Reasoning in International Relations and Domestic Affairs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 63. Back.
Note 33: See Robert Putnam, "Diplomacy and Domestic Politics: The Logic of Two-Level Games," International Organization 42 (1988): 427-60; Peter B. Evans, Harold K. Jacobson, and Robert S. Putnam, eds., Double-Edged Diplomacy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). Back.
Note 34: I thank Mark Laffey, Steve Weber, and an anonymous reviewer for alerting me to the following points. Back.
Note 35: This even shows up in quantitative studies. Instances of militarized disputes among democracies have declined over time. Moreover, most disputed cases of alleged war among democracies occurred during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. For data, see Russett, Grasping the Democratic Peace, ch. 4. Back.
Note 36: John Mearsheimer's discussion of social constructivism--which he mislabels "critical theory," thereby lumping together a variety of different approaches--suffers from the misunderstanding that ideational factors in world politics are somehow more subject to change than material ones. Collective identities cannot be changed like clothes. See John J. Mearsheimer, "The False Promise of International Institutions," International Security 19, no. 3 (Winter 1994/95): 5-49. Back.
Note 37: As Alfred Grosser put it, 1945 was "no year zero"; see Grosser, The Western Alliance: European-American Relations Since 1945 (New York: Vintage Books, 1982), pp. 3-33. See also Robert Latham, "Liberalism's Order/Liberalism's Other: A Genealogy of Threat," Alternatives 20, no. 1 (1995): 111-46, on this point. Back.
Note 38: See, for example, John Baylis, "Britain and the Formation of NATO" (International Politics Research Paper no. 7, Department of International Politics, University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, 1989); Best, "Cooperation with Like-Minded Peoples"; Henry B. Ryan, The Vision of Anglo-America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). Back.
Note 39: On the origins of the containment strategy, see, for example, John L. Gaddis, Strategies of Containment (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982); Gaddis, The Long Peace, pp. 20-47; Deborah Larson, Origins of Containment: A Psychological Explanation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985); David Mayers, George Kennan and the Dilemmas of U.S. Foreign Policy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988). Back.
Note 40: Overview in David Dimbleby and David Reynolds, An Ocean Apart: The Relationship Between Britain and America in the Twentieth Century (New York: Vintage Books, 1989), pp. 170-72. Back.
Note 41: Quoted from Gaddis, The Long Peace, p. 30. Back.
Note 42: See Gormly, From Potsdam to the Cold War, pp. 94-111. Back.
Note 43: Quoted from Leffler, "National Security and U.S. Foreign Policy," p. 29. Back.
Note 44: For conflicting interpretations of U.S. strategic interests after World War II, see Gaddis, The Long Peace; Melvyn P. Leffler, The Preponderance of Power (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992); Leffler, "National Security and U.S. Foreign Policy," pp. 23-26; Thomas J. McCormick, America's Half-Century: United States Foreign Policy in the Cold War (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989). For an excellent overview on U.S. historiography on the origins of the Cold War, see Anders Stephanson, "The United States," in David Reynolds, ed., The Origins of the Cold War in Europe: International Perspectives (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), pp. 23-52. Back.
Note 45: See Latham, "Liberalism's Order/Liberalism's Other," on this point. Back.
Note 46: Stephanson, "The United States," p. 50. Back.
Note 47: Quotes from Truman's speeches in March 1947, contained in Gaddis, The Long Peace, p. 36. Back.
Note 48: See Kennan's "long telegram," in U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1946 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office), 6:696-709; 'X,' "The Sources of Soviet Conduct," Foreign Affairs 25, no. 4 (July 1947). Back.
Note 49: See, for example, Robert Donovan, Tumultuous Years: The Presidency of Harry S. Truman (New York: Norton, 1982); Gaddis, Strategies of Containment, pp. 14-20; Gormley, From Potsdam to the . Back.
Note 50: On these alternatives, see Steve Weber, "Shaping the Postwar Balance of Power: Multilateralism in NATO," International Organization 46, no. 3 (Summer 1992): 633-80, 635-38. See ibid. for the following. Back.
Note 51: The first two notions are based on Ruggie's definition of multilateralism. See Ruggie, "Multilateralism." Back.
Note 52: See, for example, Cook, Forging the Alliance; Henderson, The Birth of NATO; Ireland, Creating the Entangling Alliance; Lawrence S. Kaplan, The United States and NATO: The Formative Years (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1984); Ennio Di Nolfo, ed., The Atlantic Pact: Forty Years Later (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1991); Meier et al., Das Nordatlantische BŸndnis; Norbert Wiggershaus and Roland G. Foerster, eds., Die westliche Sicherheitsgemeinschaft, 1948-1950 (Boppard: Harald Boldt Verlag, 1988). Back.
Note 53: See Best, "Cooperation with Like-Minded Peoples."
Note 54: On the French position, see Bruna BagNATO, "France and the Origins of the Atlantic Pact," in Di Nolfo, The Atlantic Pact, pp. 79-110; Norbert Wiggershaus, "The Other 'German Question': The Foundation of the Atlantic Pact and the Problem of Security against Germany," in ibid., pp. 111-26; Pierre Guillen, "Frankreich und die Frage der Verteidigung Westeuropas," in Wiggershaus and Foerster, Die westliche Sicherheitsgemeinschaft, pp. 103-23. Back.
Note 55: For details on the treaty negotiations, see Cook, Forging the Alliance; Henderson, The Birth of NATO; Ireland, Creating the Entangling Alliance; Sherwood, Allies in Crisis, pp. 5-29. Back.
Note 56: For details, see Risse-Kappen, Cooperation Among Democracies, ch. 3. For the following, see ibid., ch. 5. Back.
Note 57: See, for example, Haftendorn, Kernwaffen und die GlaubwŸrdigkeit der Allianz; Thomas Risse-Kappen, The Zero Option: INF, West Germany, and Arms Control (Boulder: Westview, 1988). See also Chernoff, After Bipolarity.
Note 58: Transgovernmental relations are defined as interactions among subunits of national governments in the absence of central decisions. See Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye, Jr., "Transgovernmental Relations and International Organizations," World Politics 27 (1974): 39-62. Back.
Note 59: I essentially agree with Richard Neustadt's earlier analysis of the crisis. See his Alliance Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970). For a similar argument, see Sherwood, Allies in Crisis, pp. 58-94. The major studies on the Suez crisis are David Carlton, Britain and the Suez Crisis (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988); Steven Z. Freiberger, Dawn over Suez (Chicago: Iven R. Dee, 1992); Keith Kyle, Suez (New York: St. Martin's, 1991); Diane B. Kunz, The Economic Diplomacy of the Suez Crisis (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991); Wm. Roger Louis and Roger Owen, eds., Suez 1956 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989). Back.
Note 60: See Diane B. Kunz, "The Importance of Having Money: The Economic Diplomacy of the Suez Crisis," in Louis and Owen, Suez 1956, pp. 215-32, 218-19; Kunz, The Economic Diplomacy of the Suez Crisis.
Note 61: Selwyn Lloyd, Suez 1956: A Personal Account (London: Jonathan Cape, 1978), p. 38. Back.
Note 62: See "Memorandum of Conversation at British Foreign Office," September 21, 1956, in U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1955-1957 [hereafter FRUS 1955-1957] (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1990), 16:548-50. Back.
Note 63: "Eden to Selwyn Lloyd," October 8, quoted in Wm. Roger Louis, "Dulles, Suez, and the British," in Richard Immermann, ed., John Foster Dulles and the Diplomacy of the Cold War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), pp. 133-58, 151. For the Dulles quotes, cf. ibid., pp. 149, 150; Robert Bowie, "Eisenhower, Dulles, and the Suez Crisis," in Louis and Owen, Suez 1956, pp. 189-214, 204-5. Back.
Note 64: "Dulles to Selwyn Lloyd," October 19, FRUS 1955-1957, 16:760. Back.
Note 65: U.S. anticolonialism, for example, does not explain American behavior. During the Falklands/ Malvinas war in 1982, for example, the Reagan administration tacitly backed the British effort to regain the islands even though it remained officially neutral in light of its alliance obligations to both Argentina (oas) and Britain. Back.
Note 66: See "Memorandum for Secretary of State," August 28, FRUS 1955-1957, 16:309; "Secretary of State to U.S. Embassy UK," August 30, ibid., pp. 339-40; "Dept. of State to certain diplomatic missions," August 31, ibid., pp. 344-45. Back.
Note 67: See "Dept. of State to U.S. Embassy UK," October 26, FRUS 1955-1957, 16:790; "U.S. Embassy Israel to Dept. of State," October 26, ibid., p. 785; "Dept. of State to U.S. Embassy France," October 29, ibid., pp. 815-16. For the following, see "Memorandum of Conversation at Dept. of State," October 28, ibid., pp. 803-4; "U.S. Embassy UK to Dept. of State," October 29, ibid., pp. 817-20. Back.
Note 68: "Eisenhower to Eden," October 30, FRUS 1955-1957, 16:848-50. See also "Memorandum of Conversation at the White House," October 29, ibid., pp. 833-39; editorial note, ibid., pp. 840-42; Bowie, "Eisenhower, Dulles, and the Suez Crisis," pp. 208-9. Back.
Note 69: "Memorandum of Conversation at the Dept. of State," October 30, FRUS 1955-1957, 16:867-68. For the Eisenhower quotes, see "Memorandum of Conference with the President," October 30, ibid., p. 873; "Message from Eisenhower to Eden," October 30, ibid., p. 866; "Memorandum of Conversation with the President," October 30, ibid., pp. 851-55. Back.
Note 70: "Lord Caccia [uk ambassador in Washington] to Foreign Office," November 28, 1956, quoted from Louis, "Dulles, Suez, and the British," pp. 155-56. Back.
Note 71: "Memorandum of Conversation between the President and Dulles," (my emphasis!), November 12, FRUS 1955-1957, 16:1112-14. For the preceding quote, see "Memorandum of Telephone Conversation between the President and Sir Eden," November 7, ibid., p. 1040.Collective Identity in a Back.
Note 72: See Sherwood, Allies in Crisis, pp. 88-94. Back.
Note 73: For details, see Richard N. Lebow and Janice G. Stein, We All Lost the Cold War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), pp. 19-145. See also Michael Beschloss, The Crisis Years (New York: Edward Burlingame Books, 1991), pp. 431-575; James Blight, The Shattered Crystal Ball (Savage, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1990); James Blight and David Welch, On the Brink (New York: Hill and Wang, 1989); McGeorge Bundy, Danger and Survival (New York: Random House, 1988), ch. 9; Laurence Chang and Peter Kornbluh, eds., The Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962 (New York: New Press, 1992); Raymond Garthoff, Reflections on the Cuban Missile Crisis, rev. ed. (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1989). Back.
Note 74: "Interview with David Nunnerly," in National Security Archive, The Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962 [hereafter NSA:CMC], microfiche collection (Washington, D.C.: Chadwyck-Healey, 1990), Doc. 03251. On the alleged lack of consultation, see Richard Rosecrance, Defense of the Realm (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), p. 13; Sherwood, Allies in Crisis, p. 122; I. F. Stone, "What Price Prestige?" in Robert A. Divine, ed., The Cuban Missile Crisis, pp. 155-65 (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1971). Back.
Note 75: As Robert McNamara put it later, "For all kinds of reasons, especially to preserve unity in the alliance, we had to indicate to the Soviets that we weren't going to accept the presence of offensive missiles in Cuba" (quoted from Blight and Welch, On the Brink, p. 188). See also "ExComm Transcripts," October 16, 1962, NSA:CMC, Doc. 00622. Back.
Note 76: See Harold Macmillan, At the End of the Day, 1961-1963 (London: Macmillan, 1973), pp. 184-90. For the following quote see "507th NSC Meeting," October 22, NSA:CMC, Doc. 00840. Back.
Note 77: "Foreign Office to Embassy Washington," October 24, in Public Records Office, London, Diplomatic Correspondence Files [hereafter PRO:FO] 371/162378. Back.
Note 78: See Macmillan, At the End of the Day, pp. 198-203, 202-4. See also Lebow and Stein, We All Lost the Cold War, p. 121. Back.
Note 79: "White House Tapes and Minutes of the Cuban Missile Crisis," International Security 10, no. 1 (Summer 1985): 164-203, 185. Back.
Note 80: See, for example, the telephone conversation Macmillan-Kennedy, October 26, in Macmillan, At the End of the Day, pp. 209-11. Back.
Note 81: "October 27, 1962: Transcripts of the Meetings of the ExComm," International Security 12, no. 3 (Winter 1987/88): 30-92, 55, 58. Back.
Note 82: For details, see "Ambassador Hare, Ankara, to State Dept.," October 23, NSA:CMC, Doc. 01080; "Hare to State Dept.," October 24, ibid., Doc. 01260; "Rusk, Circular Cable," October 24, ibid., Doc. 01140; "Rusk to US Embassies, West Europe," October 25, ibid., Doc. 01294; "Rusk to US Embassy, Ankara," October 25, ibid., Doc. 01298. Back.
Note 83: "Dean Rusk to US Embassies to NATO and to Turkey," October 24, NSA:CMC, Doc. 01138. Back.
Note 84: "Finletter to State Dept.," October 25, NSA:CMC, Doc. 01328. Back.
Note 85: "Hare to State Dept." (Section 1), October 26, NSA:CMC, Doc. 01470; "Hare to State Dept." (Sections 2 and 3), October 26, NSA, Nuclear History Documents.
Note 86: See "Embassy Ankara to Foreign Office," October 28, PRO:FO 371/162382; "Embassy Ankara to Foreign Office," October 28, ibid. 371/162381. On discussions at NATO's headquarters see "Finletter to State Dept.," October 28, NSA:CMC, Doc. 01602. Back.
Note 87: According to "Embassy Washington to Foreign Office," October 27, PRO:FO 371/162382. Back.
Note 88: "October 27, 1962: Transcripts," p. 39. Back.
Note 89: Bromley Smith, "Summary Record of ExComm Meeting," October 27, NSA:CMC, Doc. 01541. For the following see "October 27, 1962: Transcripts." Back.
Note 90: See Bundy, Danger and Survival, pp. 432-34;. Back.
Note 91: See Dobrynin's cable to Moscow, October 27, in Lebow and Stein, We All Lost the Cold War, pp. 524-26. Back.
Note 92: If the alliance was disintegrating, one would expect the members to concentrate on the defense of their national territories rather than building light and mobile forces. See Hellmann and Wolf, "Neorealism, Neoliberal Institutionalism, and the Future of NATO," p. 22. Back.
Note 93: For details, see "North Atlantic Cooperation Council Statement," NATO Press Service, December 20, 1991; Stephen Flanagan, "NATO and Central and Eastern Europe," Washington Quarterly 15, no. 2 (Spring 1992): 141-51; " 'Partnerschaft fŸr den Frieden' mit Osteuropa. Aber keine konkreten Zusagen fŸr Mitgliedschaft," SŸddeutsche Zeitung, January 11, 1994; "NATO Chiefs Hail New Era, But War Still Casts Clouds," International Herald Tribune [hereafter IHT], January 12, 1994; "Clinton Hints NATO Would Defend East from Attack," IHT, January 13, 1994. Back.
Note 94: See, for example, "Report by Ad-hoc Group of the North Atlantic Cooperation Council on Cooperation for Peacekeeping," NATO Press Service, June 11, 1993; Hellmann and Wolf, "Neorealism, Neoliberal Institutionalism, and the Future of NATO," p. 25. Back.
Note 95: See also Steve Weber, "Does NATO Have a Future?," in Beverly Crawford, ed., The Future of European Security (Berkeley: University of California at Berkeley, Center for German and European Studies, 1992), pp. 360-95. Emanuel Adler, "Europe's New Security Order," in ibid., pp. 287-326, shares the assessment but comes to different conclusions regarding the desirability of NATO. Back.
Note 96: On this point, see Daniel Deudney and G. John Ikenberry, "The International Sources of Soviet Change," International Security 16 (Winter 1991/92): 74-118; Henry Nau, "Rethinking Economics, Politics, and Security in Europe," in Richard N. Perle, ed., Reshaping Western Security, pp. 11-46 (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute Press, 1991). Back.
Note 97: See Thomas Risse-Kappen, "Ideas Do Not Float Freely: Transnational Coalitions, Domestic Structures, and the End of the Cold War," International Organization 48, no. 2 (Spring 1994): 185-214. Back.
Note 98: On liberal and institutionalist visions of the future of European security, see Adler, "Europe's New Security Order"; Ernst-Otto Czempiel, Weltpolitik im Umbruch (Munich: Beck, 1991); James M. Goldgeier and Michael McFaul, "A Tale of Two Worlds: Core and Periphery in the Post-Cold War Era," International Organization 46, no. 3 (Spring 1992): 467-91; Charles Kupchan and Clifford Kupchan, "Concerts, Collective Security, and the Future of Europe," International Security 16, no. 1 (Summer 1991): 114-61; Dieter Senghaas, Friedensprojekt Europa (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1991); Stephen Van Evera, "Primed for Peace: Europe After the Cold War," International Security 15 (Winter 1990/91): 7-57. Back.
Note 99: I thank Andrew Moravcsik for clarifying this point to me. Back.
Note 100: Cooperation patterns among the Nordic states come to mind, too. Note that Scandinavian cooperation was the main example in Deutsch's original study on "pluralistic security communities." See Deutsch et al., Political Community and the North Atlantic Area.
Note 101: See, for example, Anne-Marie Burley and Walter Mattli, "Europe Before the Court: A Political Theory of Legal Integration," International Organization 47, no. 1 (Winter 1993): 41-76; Stanley Hoffmann and Robert Keohane, eds., The New European Community (Boulder: Westview, 1991); Alberta Sbragia, ed., Euro-Politics (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1992). Back.
Note 102: For details, see Richard MŸnch, Das Projekt Europa: Zwischen Nationalstaat, regionaler Autonomie und Weltgesellschaft (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1993); Anthony Smith, "National Identity and the Idea of European Unity," International Affairs 68, no. 1 (1992): 55-76; Ole Waever et al., "The Struggle for 'Europe': French and German Concepts of State, Nation, and European Union" (unpublished manuscript, 1993). On transnational and transgovernmental relations within the eu see, for example, David Cameron, "Transnational Relations and the Development of the European Economic and Monetary Union," in Thomas Risse-Kappen, ed., Bringing Transnational Relations Back In: State Actors, Domestic Structures, and International Institutions, pp. 37-78 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). Back.
Note 103: See Reinhard Drifte, Japan's Foreign Policy (London: Routledge, 1990); Peter Katzenstein and Yutuka Tsujinaka, " 'Bullying,' 'Buying,' and 'Binding': U.S.-Japanese Transnational Relations and Domestic Structures," in Risse-Kappen, Bringing Transnational Relations Back In, pp. 79-111; Peter Katzenstein and Nobuo Okawara, Japan's National Security: Structures, Norms, and Policy Responses in a Changing World (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993). See also Thomas Berger's contribution to this volume. Back.
Note 104: See Walt, The Origins of Alliances; Michael Barnett, "Institutions, Roles, and Disorder: The Case of the Arab States System," International Studies Quarterly 37, no. 3 (September 1993): 271-96; see also Barnett's contribution to this volume. Back.
Note 105: See Triska, Dominant Powers and .For their critical reading and helpful suggestions, I would like to thank the members of the project, the participants in the workshops at Stanford and Minnesota, Emanuel Adler, Peter Katzenstein, David Laitin, Martin Sampson, Stephen Walt, and the anonymous reviewers at Columbia University Press. Back.
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