Entangling Relations

This strategy of forming ad hoc coalitions and working within the prevailing international consensus of goals and foreign policy has become more established. On a more general scale, the text tackles the general theory of security relationships. The author arrays the variety of possible security relationships on a continuum from anarchy to hierarchy, and explains actual relations as a function of three key variables: the benefits from pooling security resources and efforts with others, the expected costs of opportunistic behaviour by partners, and governance costs. He applies this theory to each of the "defining moments" of twentieth-century American foreign policy and develops its broader implications for the study of international relations.