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This paper employs the concept of smart power to construct an analytical framework for assessing wartime alliance management. It makes two arguments. First, wartime sources of soft power differ from those obtaining during peacetime. Second, the coerciveness with which an alliance leader wields hard power towards actual or prospective allies should vary inversely with the amount of soft power it possesses. The smart power framework illuminates three types of alliance management failure. The paper’s key contentions are illustrated with examples furnished from the record of US alliance leadership since World War II.

Neorealist and liberal theories advance discrepant explanations for variations in wartime alliance cohesion. Neorealism claims that variations in cohesion are attributable to shifting international...

Ripsman and Levy’s argument merits attention for at least two related reasons. The arst is the renewal of interest in appeasement within the international relations and security studies aelds. Piqued by the repeated use (or misuse) of the appeasement analogy by the administration of George W. Bush, several scholars have recently turned their attention to the international politics of the 1930s to assess what lessons should be drawn from the events of the period for today’s decisionmakers. 2 More speciacally, they question whether appeasement is sometimes justiaed or is always misguided. The second reason is that many of these scholars embrace what might be called a “rational

Unanswered Threats: Political Constraints on the Balance of Power. By Randall L. Schweller. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006. 200p. $29.95. In this insightful and elegantly written book, Randall Schweller examines the phenomenon of underbalancing, which he defines as situations in which “threatened countries have failed to recognize a clear and present danger, or, more typically, have simply not reacted to it or, more typically still, have responded in paltry and imprudent ways” (p. 1). The study is motivated by the failure of many states throughout history to act in accordance with the cardinal prediction of structural realist theory that states will tend to balance against rising powers that threaten their survival, through the acquisition of arms and/or allies. Schweller argues that domestic political factors account for this discrepancy, enhancing or diminishing the ability and/or willingness of states to mobilize their national resources in response to systemic dangers.