Book Description

This thesis explores the issue of the utility of junior partners in coalition warfare in the post-Cold War era. It begins with the observation that the International Relations and strategic studies literatures are surprisingly under-developed on the issue of coalition warfare, in particular when it comes to exploring the relations between the coalition leader and the junior partners. This thesis challenges the conventional wisdom about coalition-building in the post-Cold War era. It argues that there are two distinct, albeit mutually reinforcing, causal paths to utility: the first is the standing of a state participating to the intervention, the second is the combination of integration and quality of its armed forces. In order establish this result, the thesis adopts a mixed-method approach, combining a crisp-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (csQCA) conducted on 204 cases with detailed case studies of twelve states participating in four multinational military interventions after the Cold War. This core finding has two major consequences. First, in coalition warfare, the more is not necessarily the merrier. There is no linear relation between a junior partner's,participation to an intervention, and an increase of the legitimacy and/or military effectiveness of the said intervention. For the utility of a junior partner to be established, the conditions of standing and/or the combination of integration and quality must be met. Second, it is very rare to have a clear trade-off between military and political utility. In most cases, the two causal mechanisms leading to utility are simultaneous. These findings have important consequences for both research on alliances and policy-making.