US Alliance management in the shadow of sino-American competition

Abstract

ABSTRACT Authoritarian, revisionist, and revanchist powers are exerting pressure on the liberal international order and challenging the United States’ vital security interests across theaters. The United States will increasingly need to simultaneously tackle challenges in two critical theaters while also addressing global threats. To do so effectively, it will need to lean in and actively capitalize on its chief geostrategic advantage over its competitors and adversaries – its global network of alliances and strategic partnerships. However, alliance management faces both traditional and emerging challenges. These range from ensuring effective burden sharing, to providing alliance assurance and balancing interests and values along with allies’ contributions across theaters and domains. In addition, because the United States is operating in a world where all instruments of power, military and non-military, are increasingly utilized in an interconnected way, it will also need to look at defense and security alliance management through the lens of issues ranging from industrial policy to economic security. This essay sheds light on these “old” and “new” challenges, providing insights into critical issues of alliance management that the United States will face in the emerging security environment.