The Myth of Entangling Alliances
Reassessing the Security Risks of U.S. Defense Pacts
Michael Beckley
APPENDIX
Cases are drawn from the Correlates of War (COW) Militarized Interstate Dispute (MID) dataset 4.01.
Information presented in the columns labeled “DATES,” “COW #,” and “PARTICIPANTS” are taken from the COW dataset. “COW #” coincides with the dispute numbers listed in the COW dataset.
“ALLY” denotes the effect of alliances on U.S. involvement in each conflict and is coded according to the following scheme:
0= Alliances reduced the level of U.S. involvement
1= Alliances are unnecessary to explain the observed level of U.S. involvement and there is no evidence that they played a role in U.S. decisionmaking.
2= Alliances are unnecessary to explain the observed level of U.S. involvement but alliance concerns featured in U.S. decisionmaking.
3= Alliances are necessary to explain the observed level of U.S. involvement.
“INV” denotes the extent of U.S. military involvement in each conflict and is coded according to the following scheme:
0= U.S. forces were uninvolved.
1= U.S. forces were placed at a higher risk of attack but did not take actions of their own.
2= U.S. forces were involved in non-military operations (e.g. resupply operations, transport, preplanned exercises etc.).
3= U.S. forces were involved in military operations (e.g. shows of force, blockades, combat).
Note that the purpose of this coding effort is not to create a database suitable for statistical analysis, but rather to aid in identifying potential cases of entanglement for further process-tracing.
“DESCPRIPTION” provides a narrative for each case. General information for each case comes from Clodfelter (2008), Cohen (2013), Herring (2008), LaFeber (1994), Leffler and Westad (2010), government documents from the Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series, and news articles from Proquest’s Historical Newspapers database. For many cases, I consulted additional sources, which are cited in the text and listed at the end of this appendix.
1
NAME / DATES / COW # / PARITICPANTS / ALLY / INV / DESCRIPTIONBerlin Blockade / 21 Mar 1948 -
25 Jul 1949 / 26 / UKG, FRN, USR / 1 / 2 / The only alliance that the United States was a member of at the time of the Berlin crisis was the Organization of American States (OAS), which did not influence U.S. decisionmaking. Instead, U.S. actions were driven by relative power concerns. A sharp increase in Soviet relative power between 1946 and 1948 caused the United States to abandon a sphere-of-influence policy toward the Soviet Union in favor of containment (Avey 2012). Part of this strategy entailed rejecting Soviet proposals for establishing a unified Germany.
By January 1948, the United States and Britain were establishing governing bodies within their respective zones in Berlin and, in July, the United States announced plans for currency reform in the Western occupation zones, a step toward a West German state. In response, the Soviet occupation authorities blockaded Berlin. The Truman administration, wanting to deter future Soviet aggression and contain Soviet expansion without catalyzing a war, chose to pursue an “unprovocative” but “firm” response by airlifting supplies and food to the Western districts of Berlin (George Marshal quoted in Fish 1991, 204). For eleven months, U.S. planes flew 250 missions per day, moving an average of 2,500 tons of food, fuel, raw materials, and goods into Berlin. German anger at the Soviets undermined Soviet hopes of preventing the division of Germany. In the spring of 1949, Stalin backed down. The blockade added urgency to western European calls for a military alliance linking the United States to western Europe and led to formal talks in Washington in July 1948, which Folly (1988, 75) describes as "the crucible in which NATO was formed."
Korean War / 27 Jun 1950 -
27 Jul 1953 / 51 / NEW, PHI, NTH, GRC, BEL, COL,
THI, ETH, CAN, FRN, AUL, TUR,
UKG, CHN, ROK, PRK / 2 / 3 / South Korea was not an American ally in June 1950, and during the previous year the Truman administration had explicitly excluded South Korea from the U.S. “defensive perimeter” in Asia and withdrawn all U.S. forces from the peninsula, actions that we now know encouraged North Korea to attack (Christensen 2011, ch. 2). Nevertheless, entanglement dynamics may have featured in the U.S. decisionmaking process (McMahon 1991, 459-460). Specifically, declassified documents show that U.S. officials worried that inaction would “cause significant damage to U.S. prestige in Western Europe,” (quoted in “Intelligence Estimate Prepared by the Estimates Group,” June 25, 1950, FRUS, 1950, Vol. 7, 148-154) where the United States had recently signed the North Atlantic Treaty, and that losing the war would “handicap efforts to maintain U.S. alliances” (CIA report quoted in Matray 1979, 319).
Yet, alliance politics were neither necessary nor sufficient to explain U.S. actions. First, alliance ties were unnecessary to cause U.S. involvement in the Korean War. Instead, U.S. intervention was driven primarily by perceptions of relative decline and a pervasive sense of insecurity. Historians have characterized the U.S. decisionmaking environment in 1950 as a “crisis atmosphere,” (Kaufman 1986, viii) a “short fuse period,” (Gardner 1983, 58) and a “time of increasing alarm” (Stueck 1995, 41) set off by a “vortex” (Accinelli 1996, 57) of emerging security threats. In 1949, the Soviet Union tested a nuclear bomb and China fell to Communism, and in 1950 the two powers formed an alliance and supported communist insurgents throughout Asia. These developments fueled an already widespread belief in Washington that the United States was experiencing rapid relative decline (Avey 2012).
To reverse these trends, the Truman administration drew up NSC-68, a “blueprint for waging the Cold War,”(LaFeber 2008, 105) which entailed a massive military buildup and a firm commitment “to check and to roll back the Kremlin’s drive for world domination” (On NSC-68, see Trachtenberg 1988/89, 11-18. On containing the USSR in Asia, see NSC 48/2, “The Position of the United States with Respect to Asia,” December 30, 1949, FRUS, Vol. VII, 1215-1220). Although NSC-68 was not official policy in June 1950, it was at the very least a “policy in search of an opportunity” (LaFeber 2008, 105).
When that opportunity arrived on June 25, U.S. officials “barely hesitated before taking extensive military action” (Stueck 1981, 173). In a meeting that night, Truman and his top advisors agreed that the North Korean invasion was a Kremlin-orchestrated test of U.S. resolve and that the United States had to intervene militarily to deter further Soviet expansion in Eurasia (“The Ambassador in the Soviet Union to the Secretary of State,” June 25, 1950, FRUS, 1950, Vol. 7, 139-140; “Intelligence Estimate Prepared by the Estimates Group,” June 25, 1950, FRUS, 1950, Vol. 7, 148-154; “Memorandum of Conversation,” June 25, 1950, FRUS, 1950, Vol. 7, 157-161; Paige 1968). They also “had the lessons of Munich on their minds”(Leffler 1992, 361) and were determined to counter an attack that they characterized as Hitler-style aggression (May 1973, 52-86). Given these concerns, “large-scale military intervention was the logical and – in retrospect – the predictable [U.S.] response to North Korean action” (Stueck 1981, 1973).
Security concerns also explain the U.S. decision to cross the 38th parallel. Specifically, U.S. officials believed that conquering North Korea would deal a strategic and psychological blow to the Soviet Union, deter future Communist aggression, and reduce long-term U.S. security burdens in Asia (Matray 1979; Foot 1985, 70-74). They also believed that China would not intervene (Foot 1985, 74-87). Thus, when U.S. forces landed at Inchon in September 1950 and split North Korean forces half, the temptation to press on and destroy North Korea once and for all became “nearly irresistible” (Stueck 1981, 231).
In the absence of these security considerations, it is doubtful that alliance ties would have been sufficient to spur U.S. involvement in Korea. In June 1950, the United States had no treaty allies in Asia, and NATO was “in no sense a functioning organization” (Foot 1985, 40). NATO had little funding, no unified command structure or joint military planning, and “nothing automatic about the cooperation expected under the treaty” (Kaplan 2013, 151. See also, Kaufman 1986, 62; Stueck 1995, 349). Perhaps for this reason, U.S. officials did not explicitly discuss NATO or any other formal alliance commitments when they decided to intervene in Korea. Instead, policy discussions focused overwhelmingly on the need to maintain a reputation for resolve vis-à-vis the Soviet Union.
Far from entangling the United States, NATO allies actually sought to extricate the United States from the conflict and prevent it from escalating the war. From November 1950 until the end of the war, U.S. officials repeatedly considered striking the Chinese mainland with nuclear weapons. NATO allies, however, discouraged the Truman and Eisenhower administrations from acting on these impulses, arguing that escalation would, at best, bog the United States down in Asia and, at worst, start World War III by prompting a Soviet attack in Western Europe. By persistently opposing U.S. escalatory measures and dragging their feet on various UN resolutions that would have imposed punitive measures on China, “the allies were a major deterrent to an expanded war” (Foot 1985, 242. See also, Ibid., 99, 123-127, 136-137, 148, 152, 154 159, 215-219; Stueck 1995, 130-138, 142, 148-152, 172-175, 181-182, 283-303, 320-325, 331; Tierney 2010).
7th Fleet to Taiwan Strait / 27 Jun 1950 -
27 Jul 1953 / 633 / TAW, CHN / 2 / 3 / This MID was part of the Korean War. In response to North Korea’s invasion of South Korea, Truman ordered the 7th Fleet into the Taiwan Strait to prevent the Korean conflict from spreading into China. See the analysis on the Korean War above on the decisionmaking process.
U.S.-China Battles in Korea / 16 Feb 1951 -
16 Oct 1952 / 2052 / CHN, TAW / 0 / 3 / This MID was also a direct outcome of the Korean War. After U.S. forces crossed the 38th parallel and pushed on toward the Chinese border, China intervened, resulting in massive battles between U.S. and Chinese forces. America’s European allies played a major role in encouraging the United States not to escalate the war by attacking the Chinese mainland with nuclear weapons. See the analysis on the Korean War above on the decisionmaking process.
Yugoslav-Hungarian skirmishes / 16 Apr 1951 -
24 Nov 1951 / 1286 / USR, BUL, HUN, RUM, YUG / 1 / 3 / When border clashes erupted between Yugoslavia and Hungary in 1951, the United States provided limited economic and military aid to Yugoslavia. In November, a U.S. C-47 transport plane flew off course and was fired on by Hungarian forces and disappeared. Relative power concerns drove U.S. involvement. Specifically, after the outbreak of the Korean War, the Truman administration struck up a military relationship with Yugoslavia in order to create a schism within the Communist bloc and deny eastern Europe to the Soviet Union (Leffler 1992: 417-418).
First Taiwan Straits Crisis / 11 Feb 1953 -
19 Jan 1956 / 50 / CHN, TAW / 3 / 3 / See main text
Czech MIG incidents / 10 Mar 1953 -
31 Mar 1953 / 208 / USR, CZE, UKG / 1 / 3 / A Czech MIG-15 shot down a U.S. Air Force F-84 over Germany. The U.S. government claimed the plane was patrolling the U.S. zone of Germany when attacked. The State Department issued a formal protest to the Czech government, but the United States did not take additional action. Days earlier, another MIG-15 had shot down a British Royal Air Force bomber in the Berlin-Hamburg air corridor.
U.S. Downs Soviet Plane / 1 Aug 1953 -
2 Sep 1953 / 2035 / CHN, USR / 1 / 3 / U.S. fighters shot down a Russian transport plane flying over northern Chinese territory. The Soviet government issued a formal complaint, but the U.S. State Department replied by blaming the Soviet Union for allowing its plane to fly over a war zone.
Korean War cease-fire violations / 1 Feb 1954 – 10 Nov 1956 / 2244 / TAW, ROK, PRK / 2 / 3 / U.S. and South Korean planes and troops skirmished with North Korean forces several times between 1954 and 1956 over or in the newly established DMZ.
China Downs British Airliner / 23 Jul 1954 -
27 Jul 1954 / 2033 / CHN / 1 / 3 / Chinese patrol planes shot down a British airliner near Hainan island. In response, the United States, which by this point was intent on containing China and countering perceived Chinese aggression, sent two aircraft carriers to the South China Sea. The Chinese government later apologized, claiming the Chinese fighter pilots mistook the British plane for a Chinese Nationalist plane.
Nicaragua-Costa Rica Border Dispute / 1 Aug 1954 -
1 Aug 1954 / 1193 / NIC, COS / 2 / 2 / On August 1, 1954, Nicaraguan President Anastasio Somoza sent a force of several hundred troops made up of Costa Rican exiles toward the Nicaragua-Costa Rica border, where they allegedly engaged in skirmishes with Costa Rican forces. On January 11, 1955, this same group of exiles entered Costa Rica in an attempt to overthrow the government. The invasion stalled just beyond the border, and the conflict was referred to the OAS, which set up a security zone on both sides of the border and orchestrated a withdrawal of the exile forces. To help deter further attacks and thereby preserve stability in the Western Hemisphere, the United States sold Costa Rica several fighter planes but ruled out U.S. military intervention (Aydin 2012, 103).
Swiss Jet Incident / 4 Oct1954 -
4 Oct1954 / 3209 / SWZ / 1 / 3 / Swiss fighters pursued a U.S. F-80 jet that violated Swiss air space and chased it back across the border. The U.S. plane was patrolling the Western defense line against potential Soviet incursions.