My latest article, 'What Allies Want: Reconsidering Loyalty, Reliability and Alliance Interdependence', has been published in International Security @Journal_IS It is free to download here: https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/full/10.1162/isec_a_00375 1/

I draw from the reputation and alliance politics literatures to argue that, contrary to the “common sense” wisdom, states don't always want to see their ally behave in a loyal manner. Instead, they will sometimes urge their ally to be disloyal to one of its other allies. 2/

This is a bit counter-intuitive. U.S. leaders have often believed—and premised U.S. policy on the belief—that a public instance of disloyalty will damage Washington's alliance reputation. But is indiscriminate loyalty what allies want? No. 3/

What states want to see is evidence that their interests are convergent with those of their ally. If this occurs, then the alliance is reliable. But if interests diverge, then the ally will be unreliable because it poses risks of abandonment and/or entrapment. 4/

I test my theory using the First Taiwan Strait Crisis (1954-1955) case study. In this crisis, U.S. leaders worried about the reputation consequences of being 'disloyal' to Taiwan, even though most U.S. allies feared escalation and entrapment. 5/

Most allies actively encouraged the U.S. to be "disloyal" to Taiwan, because this would better suit their own national interests. It took months of allied lobbying for this message to break through in Washington, and it ultimately influenced U.S. policy and decision-making. 6/

The article closes with some thoughts on what this means for U.S. policy towards China today. I argue that the U.S. should carefully survey and consider allied opinion, and should be wary of assuming allied support in any future crisis over Taiwan. 7/

It is in the acknowledgements, but a very sincere thank you goes to the three anonymous reviewers. All provided great feedback—both critical and constructive—which improved the article. It was a great peer review process. 8/

Thanks too to the @journal_IS team, especially Diane for her very vigilant copy-editing! And finally, thank you to @ANU_SDSC for paying the open access fee, so that the article can be freely read by anyone who is interested! 9/9