Preventing Enemy Coalitions
How Wedge Strategies Shape Power Politics
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 11261802 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Timothy W Crawford (0009-0007-8258-735X, Timothy W. Crawford is Associate Professor of Political Science at Boston College., corresponding author) |
| Year | 2011 |
| Volume | 35 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 155-189 |
| Publication date | 2011-04-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | International Security (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0162-2889 • E-ISSN: 1531-4804 |
| Publisher | MIT Press - Journals (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1162/isec_a_00036 |
| OpenAlex | W2144882540 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 59 |
| References cited | 77 |
States use wedge strategies to prevent hostile alliances from forming or to disperse those that have formed. These strategies can cause power alignments that are otherwise unlikely to occur, and thus have significant consequences for international politics. How do such strategies work and what conditions promote their success? The wedge strategies that are likely to have significant effects use selective accommodation—concessions, compensations, and other inducements—to detach and neutralize potential adversaries. These kinds of strategies play important roles in the statecraft of both defensive and offensive powers. Defenders use selective accommodation to balance against a primary threat by neutralizing lesser ones that might ally with it. Expansionists use selective accommodation to prevent or break up blocking coalitions, which isolates opposing states by inducing potential balancers to buck-pass, bandwagon, or hide. Two cases—Great Britain's defensive attempts to accommodate Italy in the late 1930s and Germany's offensive efforts to accommodate the Soviet Union in 1939—help to demonstrate these arguments. By paying attention to these dynamics, international relations scholars can better understand how balancing works in specific cases, how it manifests more broadly in international politics, and why it sometimes fails in situations where it ought to work well
Accommodation · Adversary · Bandwagon effect · Computer security · Economics · Law and economics · Offensive · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Computer Science · Global Peace and Security Dynamics · International Relations and Foreign Policy · Law · Political Conflict and Governance · Psychology
Network Theory and Grand Strategy
The Courteous Power
Diplomats in Camouflage
The Making of Balance-of-Power—Power Asymmetry, Domestic Politics, and the Making of Balancing Practices
The Ruling Group Survival
The Dynamics of Global Power Politics
Diverging China Strategies in the West
China’s partners or US allies
Shadowboxing
Alliance Management and Binding Strategy
Washington should pursue trilateral arms control
Demystifying the transparency initiative in the West Philippine Sea amid China’s influence operations against the Marcos Jr. Administration
Keep your friends close, and your foes closer
China’s Friendly Offensive Toward Japan in the 1950s
Network Connections and the Emergence of the Hub-and-Spokes Alliance System in East Asia
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Is Japan Back? Measuring Nationalism and Military Assertiveness in Asia's Other Great Power
Nato’s strategic concept
Rethinking strategic alignment
I Will Follow
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The Losing Battle of Goliath
Major Power Rivalry and Wedge Strategy of Concessions
Revisiting the Bandwagoning Hypothesis
Dark corners of alliance politics
Israel's Periphery Doctrine 2.0
Levels of division
US allies’ foreign policy alignment in an era of great power competition
Unpacking the target state response to wedging and binding strategies
Takeover by Stealth
The carrot and the stick
How China attempts to drive a wedge in the U.S.-Australia alliance
The laughing third man in a fight”
To tolerate or to pressure
Wedge strategies in Russia-Japan relations
Lessened allied dependence, policy tradeoffs, and undermining autonomy
The politics of non-membership
The three images of EU strategic autonomy
The EU’s strategic autonomy in foreign policy
Understanding Chinese influence in Europe
European strategic autonomy as a double-edged sword? US perspectives in an Era of Sino-American competition
Wedging, binding and Europe in the US-China competition
Player and playground
Divided we stand? Examining the European Union’s ability to withstand external wedging
Revising order or challenging the balance of military power? An alternative typology of revisionist and status-quo states
Contentious colonies
Hard Balancing in the Age of American Unipolarity
Coercion by military assistance
Regional Fracture and Its Intractability in World Politics
Police Union Political Communications in Canada
Great competition
Alliance Treaty as Wedge Strategy
Promises under Pressure
Do Birds of a Feather Flock Together? Rebel Constituencies and Civil War Alliances
Exiting the Coalition
Binding Strategies in Alliance Politics
A Granular Theory of Balancing
System Effectsrevisited
Forceful persuasion
How nations negotiate
The sources of military doctrine
Britain, Soviet Russia and the Collapse of the Versailles Order, 1919–1939
System Effects
Bridging the gap
Deadly imbalances
Política entre las naciones
Conflict Among Nations
The Soviet Union and the Origins of the Second World War
International Security
The Balance of Power in World History
The Origins of Alliances
The Soviet Union and the Struggle for Collective Security in Europe, 1933–39
Neoclassical Realism, the State, and Foreign Policy
Behind the Central Asian Curtain
Stalin and the Inevitable War, 1936-1941
The Sino-Soviet Split
The Logic of Collective Action
War and State Formation in Ancient China and Early Modern Europe
From Peace to War
Japanese-German Peace Negotiations during World War I
Japanese-German Peace Negotiations during World War I
Deutsche Mark Diplomacy
The second face of security
The Fall of Litvinov
To Balance or To Bandwagon?” Alignment Decisions in 1930s Europe
The Spirit of Ulysses? Ideology and British Appeasement in the 1930s
America’s Middle East grand strategy after Iraq
Deterrence and Perception
When Right Makes Might
Debating British Decisionmaking toward Nazi Germany in the 1930s
Historical Reality vs. Neo-Realist Theory
Soft Balancing in the Age of U.S. Primacy
Posing Problems Without Catching Up
Waiting for Balancing
Soft Balancing against the United States
Hard Times for Soft Balancing
Linkage Diplomacy
The Unipolar Illusion Revisited
Wishful Thinking or Buying Time? The Logic of British Appeasement in the 1930s
Who “Won” Libya? The Force-Diplomacy Debate and Its Implications for Theory and Policy
Conflict and Cooperation among Nations
Italian-Austro-Hungarian Negotiations 1914-1915
Sir Robert Vansittart's Search for Italian cooperation against Hitler, 1933—36
The British Decision for Alliance with Russia, May 1939
Sino-American Relations, 1945-1955
Pivotal Deterrence
The Conservation of Enemies
The Fascist Challenge and the Policy of Appeasement
Appeasement in International Politics
The Illusion of Limited War
Perceptions and alliances in Europe, 1865–1940
Power Analysis and World Politics
International Relations Theory, Foreign Policy Substitutability, and “Nice” Laws
The Balance of Power in the Balance
The Costs of Reneging
Balancing, Stability, and War
More Flies with Honey
Rational Appeasement
Rationalist explanations for war
Arms versus allies
Chain gangs and passed bucks
Alliances
Success and Failure in Foreign Policy
Intimate enemies
The Preventive War that Never Happened
Wedge Strategy, Balancing, and the Deviant Case of Spain, 1940–41
Hypotheses on Reputation
The trouble with carrots
Kennedy, Khrushchev and the Test Ban
Extending Offensive Realism
Soviet-German Relations and the Origins of the Second World War
| Unique citing works | 59 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 4,21 |
| Citation span | 2012 - 2026 (15) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 59 |