Allies that count

In this well-written book, Olivier Schmitt aims to further our understanding of the contributions of junior partners to coalitions. Schmitt makes an important argument by challenging the conventional wisdom in this area. Anyone interested in coalition warfare or contemporary military operations should read this book, as the case-study analysis is brilliantly done. Schmitt argues that the utility of a junior partner to a coalition, both politically and militarily, is determined by six different factors. Two of these are political: standing and respect for international law. The other four are linked to military operations: integration, responsiveness, skill and quality. This is a useful and interesting framework, even though it relies on the author to make qualitative judgements about these factors—e.g. the skill or the quality of the junior coalition partner's military—instead of grounding them in empirical data. This approach limits the applicability of Schmitt's framework to other cases and increasing the transferability of these measures could be a fruitful direction for future research

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