Robert B. McCalla — NATO’s persistence after the cold war

70 published claims from this book.

• A peace plan succeeds only when it matches the local balance of power.
• A regime’s benefits outlast its founding purpose, so states retain it.
• A theory must explain overall outcomes, the standard neorealism fails.
• Adaptability is a key asset that makes regimes easier to modify than replace
• All realists hold that external threats are necessary for alliances to form and persist
• Alliance cohesion rises and falls with the external threat it balances
• Alliance cohesion theories predict NATO should have dissolved after the Soviet threat vanished
• Alliance commitments generate durable domestic constituencies that resist their abandonment.
• alliance persistence requires domestic political support that international relations theories overlook
• Alliance scholarship has neglected how alliances adapt to shifting strategic conditions.
• Alliance theory has neglected why alliances persist and what happens when they become obsolete
• Alliance theory predicts collapse once threats vanish.
• Alliances can persist and expand purposes after their founding enemy disappears
• Alliances may persist through habit and precaution after threats recede
• Alliances with developed organizations survive threats long after they vanish
• An alliance persists when its founding enemy vanishes.
• An institutionalist view holds alliances survive only while states value their benefits.
• Analysts expected NATO to die once its Soviet enemy vanished.
• Both realism and institutionalism ignore the domestic prerequisites of alliance costs
• Combined Joint Task Forces permitted non-NATO partners to act and members to abstain.
• Costly alliances should dissolve when the threat justifying their costs disappears.
• Deeply institutionalized alliances outlast ad hoc ones against realist expectations
• Domestic actors acquire personal stakes that perpetuate a regime.
• Domestic political costs constrain alliance participation once the founding threat recedes
• Endangered organizations widen memberships but never cede control of their domains.
• Established regimes persist because compliance incentives and vested interests accrue over time
• Even after the Soviet threat vanished, allies fought hardest over who commands whose troops.
• Existing institutions get redirected toward new problems because sunk costs make replacement costly.
• Explaining alliance persistence requires nonrealist unit-level theory.
• High institutionalization distinguishes NATO from traditional alliances.
• Institutions persist past their founding purpose because maintaining them costs less than replacing them.
• International organizations adapt their functions to their members’ ongoing preferences.
• Mature institutions survive their founding purpose because members prefer sunk costs over new formation
• NATO accepted nuclear downsizing without organizational resistance
• NATO adapts tasks to persist, as organizational resources enable institutional survival.
• NATO formed fast after Nazi surrender but stayed long after its Soviet enemy vanished.
• NATO functions as a dense elite-network security regime, not merely a treaty.
• NATO has expanded rather than dissolved after the Soviet threat ended.
• NATO officials reconceived the Soviet threat to justify continuing the alliance after its collapse
• NATO positioned itself among rival security organizations to prove its continued relevance
• NATO publicly reframed post-Soviet risk as unforeseeable instability, not invasion.
• NATO redefined the post-Soviet threat as indirect but real to justify persisting.
• NATO reoriented itself after the Cold War and stayed valuable without a compelling threat
• NATO stayed cohesive despite neorealist predictions of its collapse
• NATO survived the cold war’s end due to institutionalization, not merely threats
• NATO’s bureaucracy is weak despite its organizational appearance.
• NATO’s bureaucracy policed member defense cuts to protect its own force-level standards
• NATO’s consultative machinery proved valuable even in a Gulf conflict outside its traditional area.
• NATO’s dense institutionalization beyond mutual defense is what made it survive its founding threat.
• NATO’s expanded ties to outside organizations fit institutionalist expectations better than organizational ones.
• NATO’s institutionalization beyond mutual defense explains its persistence after its founding threat vanished.
• NATO’s post-cold-war peacekeeping let members act indirectly on concerns without leading.
• NATO’s Secretary-General pushed roles beyond its founding mission against member reluctance
• NATO’s survival hinges on member states continuing to benefit from it
• Neither neorealism nor institutionalism explains domestic support, an unwarranted omission.
• Neorealism cannot explain alliance persistence once threats vanish.
• Neorealist theories predict alliances collapse once their external threat fades.
• No realist theory explains why states perceive some powers but not others as threats
• Organizations deny environmental change to protect their established roles and resources.
• Organizations pursue survival through resistance, self-affirmation, and adaptation
• Organizations replace accomplished core missions with new tasks to survive.
• Organizations survive by abandoning goals that threaten their existence
• Realism explains alliance behavior under threat but fails without one.
• Regime norms embed themselves in officials’ belief systems, creating internal momentum to perpetuate them.
• The US-China anti-Soviet alliance dissolved as Soviet threat perception eased
• Theoretical frameworks beyond realism are needed to explain NATO’s survival.
• Theories predicting alliance demise need testable time frames for their claims.
• Theories should be judged by explaining outcomes and causal mechanisms, which neorealism fails at
• Threat-based alliance logic holds only for non-institutionalized arrangements.
• Western intelligence reframed Soviet intentions before capabilities changed