Keith B. Payne
Introduction
The U.S. alliance system is critical to American security. It is a unique U.S. advantage; neither Russia nor China has anything remotely comparable. Allies provide political, operational and material support for American security goals. This has been true since then Lieutenant Colonel George Washington was a 22-year old soldier in the French and Indian Wars.
While there always is friction with allies, and some “entrapment” risks,[1] allies are a critical element of U.S. power vis-a-vis contemporary foes, including Russia, China, North Korea and Iran. Yet, U.S. alliances are under great pressure to adapt to unprecedented structural problems that could otherwise lead to their dissolution. One of these structural problems is the weakening of American military power in the context of hostile Russian and Chinese goals, a growing Sino-Russian entente, and their buildup of conventional and nuclear force capabilities.
One source of this particular structural problem is the U.S. arms control approach and norms. There are few, if any, open discussions of the manifest fact that Washington’s arms control agenda and norms have produced results that have fallen far short of their expressed goals,[2] and that the U.S. practice of arms control to advance that agenda and those norms has contributed to a weakening of American military power that now undermines the U.S. alliance system. This is an unintended consequence of U.S. arms control enthusiasms, but it is no less real. It is unfashionable to discuss this inconvenient truth because many in Washington deem arms control to be a good unto itself.
Nevertheless, Washington should care about this inconvenient truth because U.S. alliances are increasingly unsettled, and one of the sources of this development is the U.S. agenda for, and practice of, arms control. Allied governments often have endorsed U.S. arms control endeavors at the time. That point, however, is irrelevant to this discussion. Regardless of that support, the pernicious consequences of American arms control practice for extended deterrence, assurance, and alliances are increasingly apparent in a dramatically worsening threat context.
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