Alliances may persist through habit and precaution after threats recede

Evidence

It is certainly reasonable that states might continue previously successful practices, but theory cannot tell us which ones. As former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher puts it, “You don’t cancel your home insurance policy just because there have been fewer burglaries on your street in the last 12 months!” — Robert B. McCalla, NATO’s persistence after the cold war, 61

Categorization

• XREF: The insurance-insurance analogy echoes the reader’s framing of NATO persisting after its founding enemy’s collapse, and connects to status-quo-bias and habit-persistence literatures in political psychology. — connects to: NATO’s dense institutionalization beyond mutual defense is what made it survive its founding threat. — Robert B. McCalla, NATO’s persistence after the cold war, 107; Threat-based alliance logic holds only for non-institutionalized arrangements. — Robert B. McCalla, NATO’s persistence after the cold war, 157; Groups internalize external threat as an oath to preserve cohesion after danger recedes — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 509 (+2 more)
• CANDY: Thatcher’s home-insurance quip is a memorable, tweetable summary of the precautionary logic behind alliance persistence.

Related

• Neorealism cannot explain alliance persistence once threats vanish. (similarity 0.87)
• Threat-based alliance logic holds only for non-institutionalized arrangements. (similarity 0.80)
• Alliance commitments generate durable domestic constituencies that resist their abandonment. (similarity 0.80)
• Alliance theory predicts collapse once threats vanish. (similarity 0.79)
• alliance persistence requires domestic political support that international relations theories overlook (similarity 0.78)
• Realism explains alliance behavior under threat but fails without one. (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Groups internalize external threat as an oath to preserve cohesion after danger recedes #corroborates (0.92) — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 509
• Cross-civilizational alliances persist from inertia and balance-of-power need #corroborates (0.88)