Title: Why Alliances Entangle But Seldom Entrap States
Abstract: Abstract This paper explains one of the central roles of alliance contracts, the prevention of undesirable military entanglement. The existing literature on alliances argues that entrapment is a major concern for potential and actual alliance partners, but it is difficult to point out clear cases of entrapment. I provide two answers to this puzzle: First, entrapment is a narrower concept than others have realized, and it is rarer than the literature suggests. Second, leaders anticipate entrapment and carefully design alliance agreements before and after states form alliances. I examine the second argument through case studies of us alliance agreements with South Korea, Japan, and Spain. Acknowledgments TongFi Kim is a Research Fellow at the Griffith Asia Institute and Centre for Governance and Public Policy, Griffith University. The main focus of his research centers on international relations of East Asia and military alliances.For their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article, the author is grateful to Bear Braumoeller, Brett Ashley Leeds, Autumn Lockwood Payton, Jeremy Pressman, Jennifer Dabbs Sciubba, Randall Schweller, Alexander Thompson, Naoto Tsuzaki, the editors and anonymous reviewers at Security Studies, as well as participants of the International Relations Research Workshop at the University of Maryland, College Park, February 9, 2009.