A Normative Model of Alliance Management

Abstract

What should the general norms of managing military alliances be? What form might a normative approach to the widely studied topic of alliance management take? These questions hold not only significant scholarly interest, given that all previous studies of alliance management have been purely descriptive or explanatory in nature, but also practical significance in a world featuring a rejuvenated but still dispute-riddled NATO, and an aggressed Ukraine that desperately seeks to join the alliance in the wake of Russia’s 2022 invasion. The main aim of this thesis is to answer these questions. The thesis does so by putting forth a normative ‘model’ of alliance management. The model comprises a set of four normative principles whose purpose is to govern intra-alliance relations among the members of contemporary alliances. These principles, which are explained, defended, and empirically illustrated throughout the thesis’s chapters, address a host of pressing real-world topics, complexities, and challenges in contemporary alliance management. These include, most notably: how decisions within the alliance should be made; how alliance burdens should be conceptualised and shared among members; what types of states should be permitted to gain admission to the alliance; and how the allies should, individually and collectively, respond to an armed attack upon one of them. Taken as a whole, the thesis offers a comprehensive account of the ethics of alliance management.

Date of Award	1 Aug 2025
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	The University of Manchester
Supervisor	James Pattison (Supervisor) & Miriam Ronzoni (Supervisor)