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Ententes and alliances

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 October 2009

G. R. Berridge
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Extract

In 1976 Robert A. Kann, the well known authority on Habsburg history, wrote a Research Note in World Politics called ‘Alliances versus Ententes’.1 This rescued a distinction which had not been entirely overlooked in the post-war literature of international Relations2 but was certainly in danger of extinction at the hands of a broad, all-purpose concept of ‘alliance’.3 An alliance, Kann claimed, is distinguished by its ‘airtight commitments’; by contrast an entente entails ‘no definite commitments’ and is altogether a looser and more flexible kind of association between states. The entente he alternatively described as a ‘consultation pact’ or ‘flexible agreement’. Kann, however, was not concerned only with conceptual explication. Indeed, his main purpose seems to have been (he was a little vague on this) to advance the argument that although ‘many examples of workable alliances and meaningless ententes can easily be adduced’, the entente is in principle a more efficient device for serving ‘the interests of peace’ than the alliance. This is an argument which can be challenged both on internal as well as historical grounds.

Type
Research Article
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 15 , Issue 3 , July 1989 , pp. 251 - 260
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 1989

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References

1. World Politics, xxviii (1976), pp. 611–621.Google Scholar

2. See, for example, Weinstein, Franklin B., ‘The Concept of a Commitment in International Relations’, The Journal of Conflict Resolution, xiii (1969), p. 43.Google Scholar

3. See, for example, Osgood, Robert E., Alliances and American Foreign Policy (Baltimore, 1969), p. 19;Google Scholar and Holsti, Ole R.et al., Unity and Disintegration in International Alliances (New York, 1973), pp. 3–4.Google Scholar

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8. On the British Commonwealth as an entente, see Holland, R. F., Britain and the Commonwealth Alliance [sic!] 1918–1939 (London, 1981);CrossRefGoogle ScholarCentral Organisation for Defence, Cmd. 6923 (London, 10 1946),Google Scholar para. 36; Mansergh, Nicholas, Survey of British Commonwealth Affairs: Problems of External Policy 1931–1939 (London, 1952), pp. 365–369;Google ScholarJohnson, F. A., Defence by Committee: The British Committee of Imperial Defence 1885–1959 (London, 1960), pp. 212–219 and 258–60;Google ScholarWalker, P. Gordon, The Commonwealth (London, 1962), p. 297;Google Scholar and Buchan, Alastair, ‘Commonwealth Military Relations’, in Hamilton, W. B., Robinson, Kenneth and Goodwin, C. D. W. (eds.), A Decade of the Commonwealth, 1955–1964 (Durham, NC, 1966).Google Scholar

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27. Morgenthau, Hans J., ‘Alliances in Theory and Practice’, in Wolfers, Arnold (ed.), Alliance Policy in the Cold War (Baltimore, 1959), p. 186.Google Scholar For a development of this argument in the context of US policy towards Vietnam, see Ball, George W., Diplomacy for a Crowded World (London, 1976), p. 60.Google Scholar

28. Quoted in Keiger, op. cit., p. 113.

29. Exchange of Letters on Defence Matters between the Governments of the United Kingdom and the Union of South Africa, June 1955, Cmd. 9520 (London, July 1955) [The Simonstown Agreements].

30. I have elaborated on this point in my Economic Power in Anglo–South African Diplomacy, op. cit., pp. 88–9.

31. PRO: minutes of Ramsden (25 June), Bromley, Schuckburgh and Kirkpatrick (27 June, 1955), FO 371/113482.

32. Berridge, , Economic Power in Anglo–South African Diplomacy, op. cit., p. 88.Google Scholar

33. PRO: Selwyn Lloyd to Anthony Eden, 1 July 1955, ADM 116/6049.

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39. Crosbie, op. cit., pp. 215–16.

40. Its model treaty, the Turco–Iraqi Pact of February 1955, contained no reference to an adversary and stipulated merely that the signatories would ‘cooperate for their security and defence’. Moreover, its most important member in practice, the United States, never signed this treaty. However, in 1959 the US signed bilateral anti-Soviet defence treaties with Iran and Turkey, as well as with Pakistan. On the reasons for US coyness towards the Baghdad Pact, see Reid, Brian Holden, ‘The “Northern Tier” and the Baghdad Pact’, in Young (ed.), The Foreign Policy of Churchill's Peacetime Administration 1951–1955, pp. 163–164.Google Scholar

41. Hadley, op. cit.

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43. Middlemas, K., Cabora Bassa: Engineering and Politics in Southern Africa (London, 1975), p. 27ff, p. 283, and pp. 286–90.Google Scholar