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While intended to bolster the security of allied nations, US deployments to friendly countries have been accused of provoking a security dilemma and even encouraging a reduction in allied defence budgets. New opinion research has uncovered a link between the two.
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The concept of the security dilemma has come back into vogue over recent years.
Amid rising global hostility, defence and international relations thinkers have sought to unpack the complexities of defence provocation – particularly how the armament, ambition or alliance building of one nation has the tendency to exacerbate international insecurity as other nations increase their defence capabilities in response.
Robert Jervis, one of the concept’s pioneers, observed that a security paradox forms when the capability building of one state is perceived “as menacing”, leading to a “spiral of mutual hostility” and the worsening of security outcomes.
The concept has sparked spirited debate within the defence and international relations community since Russia’s clandestine invasion of Ukraine in 2014, with some thinkers including famed IR theorist John Mearsheimer suggesting that the invasion was a function of the spiral of hostility between two defensive realist states.
Penning an article in Foreign Affairs titled, Why the Ukraine Crisis is the West’s Fault, the thinker suggests that US efforts to supplant the Yanukovych Ukrainian government would have been perceived as a “coup” within the Kremlin and thus provoking a security response.
Throughout the same period, many in the United States bemoaned the tightening defence budgets of the nation’s NATO allies – forcing the US to continue shouldering much of the burden of the collective security organisation.
Though, this burden has prompted the ire of US policymakers for decades – with US declarations against defence opportunism spooking even Australia, prompting a new era of Australian defence policy following President Nixon’s Guam Doctrine (or Nixon Doctrine) in 1969.
It stated that: “In cases involving other types of aggression, we shall furnish military and economic assistance when requested in accordance with our treaty commitments. But we shall look to the nation directly threatened to assume the primary responsibility of providing the manpower for its defense.”
On a surface level, there doesn’t appear to be an immediate link between the two concepts. Indeed, the feeling of insecurity due to US presence would appear to simply be ameliorated by increased national defence budgets.
However, a recent article by Alexander Sorg, PhD researcher at the Hertie School’s Centre for International Security and Julian Wucherpfennig, professor of international affairs and security at the Hertie School, have used opinion research to determine a link between the two phenomena.
Namely, that the feeling of insecurity prompted by US military presence lowers appetite within society to invest in defence budgets.
“Instead of being assured, our survey finds that US deployments can also scare host-state populations. This is because some citizens fear being entrapped in a war caused by the provocative posture of an overly risk-friendly guardian,” the pair observe.
Simply – concerns about insecurity due to the presence of the US military can provoke fears of entrapment, reducing a willingness among voters to support defence enlargement.
Such opinion research appears to suggest that concerns about alliance entrapment have entered the decision-making processes of the average voters.
“This is because US military deployments are viewed by some as self-serving tools that will either provoke unnecessary conflict with an adversary, fuel an escalation spiral, or even worse, entrap their state in a war it otherwise would not have to fight,” the pair note.
“As a result, these citizens will also not support ambitious defence efforts, such as investments in the national military, which they see as being corrupted by the United States.”
A dangerous cycle – since the more a nation reduces their defence expenditure, the more reliant they are on the United States for defence. Just perhaps Europe has recently awoken from this spiral.
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