Division of Defense Labor: Alliance Trust and Defense Portfolio Specialization

• In Event: Determinants of National Defense

Abstract

Some states specialize their military capabilities, like the United States omitting the development of minesweepers in their 600 ship navy of the 1980’s, while others opt against functionally differentiating their force and instead embrace a diversified military portfolio. A central puzzle is why some, but not all, states specialize their militaries - omitting some capabilities while seemingly over-producing others. This paper explains a state's decision about how to configure their military capabilities by looking to their relationships with allies. I argue that states engaged in security cooperation can undertake a division of labor in the production of military assets that can make both states better off. For the shared production of military capabilities to happen, that security cooperation must reduce the risk of opportunism and reduce coordination costs sufficient to make cooperation under anarchy preferable to the unilateral provision of security. These two problems can be overcome by closely aligned interests and the institutional design of the alignment relationship. When states are able to overcome these two problems and cooperate over security issues, that cooperation manifests itself in specialized and complementary military capabilities. I test these arguments by examining the military portfolios of NATO and Warsaw Pact states during the latter half of the Cold War. We find that differences in interest alignment and institutional design between the US and Soviet Union-led arrangements signify varying degrees of trust that translate into different cooperative security arrangements.

Author

• J Andres Gannon, University of California, San Diego