Positions at a glance
Supporters
- Consultation requirements that force an ally to seek approval before escalation. - Conditional security guarantees that withhold support if the ally initiates conflict. - Integrated command structures or basing arrangements that give the patron physical leverage. - Side-payments and arms dependence that raise the cost of defection from agreed limits.
Opponents
In international relations theory, alliance restraint refers to the practice of states forming or maintaining alliances not only to balance against external threats but to control the behavior of their partners. The concept challenges the classical realist assumption, associated with Stephen Walt's The Origins of Alliances (1987), that alliances primarily aggregate power. Scholars such as Paul Schroeder (in his 1976 essay "Alliances, 1815–1945: Weapons of Power and Tools of Management") and later Patricia Weitsman and Jeremy Pressman argued that alliances frequently function as "pacta de contrahendo" — agreements designed to tie down a stronger or more reckless partner.
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During the 1995–1996 Taiwan Strait Crisis, the United States used its security relationship with Taipei both to deter Beijing and to discourage President Lee Teng-hui from pushing further toward formal independence.
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