Autonomy Preserved: A Manual for U.S. Alliance Management in the Shadow of U.S.-China Competition

Abstract

When and how can a senior alliance partner manage and strengthen its alliances amidst its peacetime competition with a third-party rival? To flip the question, when and how can a third-party competitor weaken and paralyze an opposing alliance in peacetime? This dissertation addresses these questions by examining how U.S. alliance management efforts have competed with Chinese attempts to weaken U.S. alliances and shape U.S. allies’ alignment choices. I introduce a theory of procedural autonomy preservation to argue that the degree to which the United States or China demonstrates respect to a U.S. ally’s procedural autonomy—the freedom a state exercises in reaching and presenting a particular choice—alters the junior ally’s domestic political dynamics and critically shapes the ally’s alignment choices. Drawing from archival research and a number of semi-structured interviews with policymakers in multiple countries, I conduct detailed process tracing of the following case studies: 1) Japan’s alliance commitment toward the defense of Taiwan from 1969 to 1972, 2) Japan’s decisions to revise defense guidelines and develop the Theater Missile Defense system from 1994 to 1999, 3) South Korea’s position toward U.S. Forces Korea’s “strategic flexibility” from 2003 to 2006, and 4) South Korea’s choice to deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system from 2014 to 2017.