| Neack ’17 (Laura Neack, Professor and Editor of International Studies Perspectives @ the Miami University of Ohio, “National, International, and Human Security: A Comparative Introduction,” Rowman & Littlefield, 2017, Date Accessed: 7-17-2019, SB).
In a recent study, Beckley tests two competing perspectives on alliances: “entanglement theory”—which is loosely entrapment—and “freedom of action theory” which “maintains that great powers can avoid entanglement by inserting loopholes into alliance agreements, sidestepping costly commitments, maintaining a diversified alliance portfolio that generates offsetting demands from different allies, and using explicit alliance commitments to deter adversaries and dissuade allies from initiating or escalating conflicts.”24 Beckley asks whether the vast web of US military alliances “entangles the United States in wars that it would otherwise avoid.”25 To test the two theories, Beckley examined every militarized international dispute involving the United States from 1948 to 2010. His conclusion is that despite the many military alliances in which the United States is entangled, the “freedom of action theory” is most supported by the data. In the few times that the United States got entangled in a militarized international dispute, “U.S. actions were driven by an alignment of interests between the United States and its allies, not by alliance obligations. In fact, in many cases, U.S. policymakers were the main advocates of military action and cajoled reluctant allies to join the fight.”26 Beckley concludes that “the U.S. experience…suggests that great powers can dictate the terms of their security commitments.”27
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