M i l i t a r y H i s t o r y

A HOOVER INSTITUTION ESS AY ON THE UNRAVELING OF THE EU AND N A TO

A Future for NATO and the European Union

PAUL A. RAHE

Military alliances are apt to dissolve when the circumstances that gave rise to them cease to pertain. Such alliances come in three ﬂavors. Some are involuntary. They are produced by conquest and intimidation. They are held together by fear of the hegemon, and they tend to fall apart when that fear wanes. Some are voluntary. They are rooted in fear of a common enemy or in a common sense of pur pose. They are held tog ether by that fear or by that purpose, and they tend to fall apart when the members no longer feel threatened or the mission is either accomplished or abandoned. Many , if not most, al liances occ upy a murky middle ground. They are held together by both species of fear or by a sense of common purpose reinforced by a salutary awareness that the hegemon is not likely to tolera te betrayal, and they come apart when these circ umstances no longer apply . I am using ideal types here. There are alliances that are purely involuntary: in international affairs, conquest and intimidation are commonplace. But there are very few alliances that are purely voluntary. Where the rule of law pertains, human beings are sheltered at least to some degree from necessity , and they are free to make connections and break them more or less as they see ﬁt. In the international arena

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law professors to the contrary notwithstanding

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there is no rule of law. Foreign affairs are in a sphere of necessity. Within that sphere, choices are nearly always constrained to one degree or another, and commitments made in circumstances where constraints play little or no role generally lack stability. The Hellenic League, formed against Persia in 481 BC, is a case in point. Its membership included Athens, Plataea , Chalcis, Aegina, Sparta w ith her Peloponnesian League, and some smaller communities. Spar ta’ s league fell into the murky middle ground. Lacedaemonian conquest and intimidation played a role in its formation, as did the fear

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shared by the members of the oligarchical r uling orders instal led in power in its member cities by the Spartans

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of populist ty ranny and democracy. If it endured, it was because Lacedaemon remained formidable and because populism was a lways a threat. Membership in the Hellenic League was, by way of contrast, almost purely voluntary, and it was considerably less stable . Th is allia nce was founded for one reason and one reason only

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to fend off the Medes; and, though the Spar tans and the Athenians had been at odds before its formation and would be so again after its collapse, it held together as long as it seemed plausibl e to suppose that the Persians might retur n. There were, to be su re, Spartans who resented Athens’s seizure of the hegemony at sea in 478

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