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Regional security cooperation against hegemonic threats: Theory and evidence from France and West Germany (1945–65)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2021

Joshua Byun Open the ORCID record for Joshua Byun [Opens in a new window]
Joshua Byun*
Affiliation:
The University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, United States
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*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

Why do some regional powers collectively threatened by a potential hegemon eagerly cooperate to ensure their security, while others appear reluctant to do so? I argue that robust security cooperation at the regional level is less likely when an unbalanced distribution of power exists between the prospective security partners. In such situations, regional security cooperation tends to be stunted by foot-dragging and obstructionism on the part of materially inferior states wary of facilitating the strategic expansion of neighbours with larger endowments of power resources, anticipating that much of the coalition's gains in military capabilities are likely to be achieved through an expansion of the materially superior neighbour's force levels and strategic flexibility. Evidence drawn from primary material and the latest historiography of France's postwar foreign policy towards West Germany provides considerable support for this argument. My findings offer important correctives to standard accounts of the origins of Western European security cooperation and suggest the need to rethink the difficulties the United States has encountered in promoting cooperation among local allies in key global regions.

Keywords

Regional Security CooperationHegemonic ThreatsBalance of PowerFranceWest Germany
Type
Research Article
Information
European Journal of International Security , Volume 7 , Issue 2 , May 2022 , pp. 143 - 163
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the British International Studies Association

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References

1 For a recent illustration, see Hyonhee Shin and Makiko Yamazaki, ‘South Korea, Japan in fresh spat over intelligence deal’, Reuters (25 November 2019), available at: {https://www.reuters.com/article/us-southkorea-japan/south-korea-japan-in-fresh-spat-over-intelligence-deal-idUSKBN1XZ09L} accessed 1 May 2020.

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5 Important book-length works include Irwin M. Wall, The United States and the Making of Postwar France, 1945–1954 (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1991); William I. Hitchcock, France Restored: Cold War Diplomacy and the Quest for Leadership in Europe, 1944–1954 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1998); Michael Creswell, A Question of Balance: How France and the United States Created Cold War Europe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006); Marc Trachtenberg, A Constructed Peace: The Making of the European Settlement, 1945–1963 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999); James McAllister, No Exit: America and the German Problem, 1943–1954 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002); David Clay Large, Germans to the Front: West German Rearmament in the Adenauer Era (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1996); Mark S. Sheetz, ‘Continental Drift: Franco-German Relations and the Shifting Premises of European Security’ (PhD dissertation, Columbia University, New York, NY, 2002); and David Mark Thompson, ‘Delusions of Grandeur: French Global Ambitions and the Problem of the Revival of Military Power, 1950–1954’ (PhD dissertation, University of Toronto, Canada, 2007).

6 In Christensen's words, ‘scholars of international relations are so accustomed to [thinking in terms of] balance-of-power politics that they rarely seem surprised when ideologically different [or previously conflictual] countries cooperate against common foes.' Thomas J. Christensen, Useful Adversaries: Grand Strategy, Domestic Mobilization, and Sino-American Conflict, 1947–1958 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), p. 3, bracketed content mine.

7 The key reference is Sebastian Rosato, Europe United: Power Politics and the Making of the European Community (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011). Rosato fully recognises that Western European cooperation in the military realm was limited compared to that in the economic realm, with particularly marked setbacks occurring prior to the mid-1950s. This article both extends and amends Rosato's basic interpretation of military cooperation in early Cold War Europe.

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14 Following Mearsheimer, I define a potential hegemon as ‘a great power with so much actual military capability and so much potential power that it stands a good chance of dominating and controlling all other’ states in its region. John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York, NY: W. W. Norton 2001), p. 45.

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32 I use the terms FRG, West Germany, and Germany interchangeably, although the Federal Republic did not officially come into existence as a sovereign state until May 1949.

33 Rosato, Europe United, pp. 43–6.

34 Quoted in John W. Young, France, the Cold War, and the Western Alliance, 1944–49: French Foreign Policy and Post-war Europe (New York, NY: St. Martin's Press, 1990), p. 180.

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38 Ibid., p. 3.

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56 French official quoted in ‘Calendar to No. 84’, DBPO (25 October 1950), vol. 3, p. 220.

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63 Quoted in Sheetz, ‘Continental Drift’, p. 181.

64 Quoted in Creswell, Question of Balance, p. 130.

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84 Quoted in Schwarz, Konrad Adenauer, p. 620.

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108 I elaborate the theoretical and empirical groundwork of this argument in a separate study, which focuses on the relationship between the grand strategic preferences of leading alliance powers and the military policy choices of their weaker allies. See Joshua Byun, ‘Unruly Friends: Grand Strategy and Strategic Incoherence in Military Alliances’ (PhD dissertation, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois), esp. ch. 3.

109 ‘United States Minutes of the Second Meeting between President Truman and Prime Minister Pleven’, 30 January 1951, FRUS 1951 (30 January 1951), vol. 4, pt. 1, pp. 318, 326.

110 Quoted in Trachtenberg, Constructed Peace, 112, fn. 56.

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118 Ji Young Kim, ‘Rethinking the role of identity factors: The history problem and the Japan-South Korea security relationship in the post-Cold War period’, International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, 15:3 (2015), p. 8.

119 GDP ratios are based on data from the World Bank, available at: {https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD}. On Japan's military might, see Lind, Jennifer M., ‘Pacifism or passing the buck? Testing theories of Japanese security policy’, International Security, 29:1 (2004), pp. 94–101CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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