Contemporary Security Policy

By Gadi Heimann, Andreas Kruck, Deganit Paikowsky & Bernhard Zangl

Contemporary world politics is characterized by a growing great power rivalry, first of all between the United States (and its Western allies) and China (as well as Russia), which is sometimes even referred to as a “new Cold War”. However, these modern-day rivalries differ because the international system differs from the “original” Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union. Complex interdependencies and a dense web of institutions, from economic networks to international organizations, link today’s rivals in ways that create enhanced opportunities for both cooperation and conflict. At any rate, they imply that international ordering through cooptation is a key element of contemporary great power rivalries.

The special issue to which our article provides a theoretical framework explores why and how cooptation, an often-overlooked strategy in international orders, plays a central role in shaping the relationships among rivals and between rivals and their allies. The strategy of cooptation is mainly known in domestic politics. Still, we argue that today’s interdependence and global institutions have made cooptation a more common and necessary, although risky, strategy in managing great power rivalries.

How do you know ‘cooptation’ when you see it?

Cooptation is a specific type of cooperation. Its essence involves trading institutional privileges for institutional support. A state, or a coalition of states offers another (set of) state(s) institutional privileges in an existing or emerging international order in return for the coopted states’ material and/or ideational support of the respective order. This exchange of privileges for support can occur in various venues, from economic institutional networks to security alliances. In that sense, cooptation goes beyond mere partnership; it is about extending privileges that can elevate a state’s international standing. In exchange, the coopting state hopes to gain an ally against a rival – or turn the rival itself into a less antagonistic counterpart, if not a wholesale supporter of “its” order. This dynamic can take many forms, such as granting emerging powers partnerships in the leadership through voting rights in a global institution or ‘a seat at the table’ in exclusive international clubs. Through this process, the cooptor (i.e. the state offering privileges) seeks to change the behaviour, interests or even identity of the cooptee (i.e., the state offering support) in ways that bring them closer to its vision of international order(s).

But cooptation isn’t just about creating partnerships; it’s a nuanced process that can mitigate or exacerbate rivalries depending on how it is handled. Our article provides a conceptual framework to explore different types of cooptation in great power rivalry and their impact on intensifying or mitigating great power rivalries. We distinguish between four types of cooptation:

Taming Opposition: The cooptor offers privileges to rivals to reduce their resistance to the existing order.

Securing Partners: The cooptor offers privileges to (potential) allies to strengthen their order support against a common rival.

Wooing Leaders: Materially weaker states offer privileges of leadership roles to powerful rivals to align their interests with an existing institutional order(s).

Seeking Patronage: Weaker actors offer privileges to stronger ones in exchange for their protection in, and support of, a given order(s) against common rivals.

Building on these distinctions, the articles comprising this special issue demonstrate that cooptation is not only shaped by power rivalries but is also impacting them.

How cooptation plays out in great power rivalries

Under certain conditions, cooptation is an order-stabilizing force that mitigates power rivalries. Providing rivals with institutional privileges to integrate them into a shared order grants them some partnership in the leadership of that institutional order. This might reduce the incentives for rivals to pursue more aggressive alternatives. For example, in the aftermath of the Cold War, the US and its Western allies included Russia and China into Western-oriented international institutions like the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Russia was also invited to join the G7, making it the G8. The goal was to foster more significant political and economic alignment by giving them a voice within the liberal international order. Arguably, this served to at least temporarily stabilize the order and contain China’s and Russia’s revisionism.

However, integrating rivals into the leadership of institutions is a risky gamble for cooptors that does not guarantee success in the long run. Cooptors frequently hope that the offered privileges will gradually transform the cooptees’ identity and interests, bringing the cooptees closer to the cooptors’ identity and interests, thereby increasing the chance of them not only adapting to the existing order but adopting it in the long run. For example, the US had hoped that China’s integration into the WTO would encourage China to shift towards a market-based economy. Still, such a fundamental transformation did not take place. Our special issue suggests that the privileges offered by the cooptee must be substantial enough to make a real difference in the rival’s status and transform its interests (or even identity) to encourage its full alignment with the institution and order(s) it represents. To succeed in this, the cooptor must show genuine generosity toward the cooptee. But generosity also involves risks, especially when the cooptors provide the cooptees with a formal seat at the table. Even though China’s inclusion in the WTO did not transform the Chinese state and economy, the US could not deprive China of its formal membership. Conversely, when the awarded privileges are institutionally less rigid or less entrenched, it is easier to revoke them in case transformative expectations are not fulfilled. For example, the US and its allies recognized that Russia was not meeting their ambitious expectation that it would adopt Western liberal values and practices, so they deprived it of its informal seat at the G8/8 table in 2014.

Cooptation can also lead to rivalry escalation. Cooptation efforts to secure allies against a rival can increase competition among rivals, driving both sides to strengthen and expand their supporting “camps”, including through competing cooptation arrangements. For example, China’s decision to establish the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) as a competing alternative to the World Bank has aimed at coopting other countries into China’s economic sphere of influence. The U.S., seeing this as a challenge, intensified efforts to strengthen its own alliances in legacy economic institutions.

Policy Implications for managing great power rivalries with cooptation strategies

Our findings suggest several insights for policymakers. Here are three particularly important recommendations:

1. Act early on: Leading powers should act early to coopt potential rivals. When rivalries escalate and solidify, it is harder to establish confidence-building measures and secure partnership commitments.

2. Calculate your risk: Cooptation requires calculated risk. Generous offers are necessary to recruit support and encourage transformation, especially among rivals. Nevertheless, these offers must include safety mechanisms to manage potential pitfalls. Coopting newcomers into flexible institutions, such as informal or reversible arrangements, can provide a safety net, enabling more ambitious and generous offers.

3. Prefer inclusive arrangements: Cooptation strategies to secure allies can easily escalate rivalries, especially if they are too exclusive. Inclusive arrangements help avoid further escalation and competition.

Conclusion

Through the lens of cooptation, we offer a novel perspective on how international ordering may contribute to great power rivalry escalation or moderation. These insights help us understand contemporary security challenges resulting from the intensification of great power rivalry in various (security but also economic) realms.

In the modern world of international relations, characterized by interdependence and a dense web of institutions, it is no longer enough for great powers to simply “balance” or “counterbalance” rivals. Instead, they need to delicately engage with their allies and rivals in and through institutional orders. Shrewd cooptation strategies targeting adversaries and allies alike can contribute to a stabilized international order that contains intense power competition. But successful cooptation requires bold decisions based on a deep understanding of the complex relationships between cooptation and great power rivalry dynamics.

Ensuring fair burden sharing among members has been a persistent challenge for NATO. This issue has recently been thrust back into the spotlight by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and Donald Trump’s comments that he would encourage an attack against NATO allies that failed to meet their financial obligations. Furthermore, Russia’s attempts to disrupt Ukrainian grain exports and recent Houthi attacks in the Red Sea highlight another critical issue for NATO: securing freedom of navigation and protecting global maritime trade. Bridging these two strands of research, in this new article, Nizan Feldman and Mark Shipton argue that the United States’ steadfast commitment to safeguarding international maritime commerce and freedom of navigation has inadvertently allowed other NATO members to underinvest in their own naval capabilities.

 

The tendency to underinvest in naval capabilities was amplified as NATO members moved closer to fulfilling the Defence Investment Pledge established at the 2014 Wales Summit. This pledge commits them to spending at least 2% of GDP on defense and allocating 20% of that to equipment modernization. However, analyzing the impact of the Wales Pledge, the authors find a significant decline in non-US NATO naval capabilities since its adoption.

The findings mirror a broader trend of allies reallocating defense resources away from capabilities that are more likely to be provided by the alliance’s leading power, known as the ‘patron’. Previous studies have shown that a patron’s ability to credibly signal its intention to abandon alliance members significantly influences burden sharing within alliances. However, the risk of abandonment is not always a binary choice. A patron may indicate its willingness to protect allies against specific threats while signaling its reluctance to counter others.

The U.S. commitment to and interests in global freedom of navigation reduce its ability to credibly signal an intention to abandon NATO members that face substantial disruption to their wartime maritime trade or other major maritime-related threats. Therefore, when NATO members increased their defense spending to comply with the Wales Pledge, they deferred the highly costly investments needed to commission expensive naval platforms.

To test this hypothesis, the authors created several proxies to measure the naval capabilities of each ally, using data from the annual editions of Jane’s Fighting Ships, published by Janes Information Group. They then conducted various estimations, including a set of control variables that typically influence a country’s propensity to develop naval power or engage in burden shifting. The primary explanatory variable is a dummy that assigns a value of 0 for years before and 1 for years after the implementation of the Wales Pledge. In accordance with the main hypothesis, the coefficient of this variable is negative and highly significant in all of the models we ran.

One might argue that the reduction in naval power resulted from a more coordinated division of labor within NATO. Prompted by Russia’s 2014 invasion of Crimea and the subsequent Defence Investment Pledge, allies may have been motivated to revisit the Cold War dynamics where the United States and traditional European naval powers primarily secured Sea Lines of Communication (SLOCs), while other European allies focused on coastal defense and developed specialized skills in areas such as anti-submarine warfare (ASW) and minesweeping. If true, the findings would represent not burden shifting but a more cooperative, efficient, and equitable sharing of responsibilities. However, there is scant evidence of a comprehensive, mutually agreed transformation in the division of labor that would allow each ally to capitalize on its military comparative advantage. Despite some advancements in process design aimed at harmonizing capabilities, the post-Wales Summit period has not been marked by the political conditions necessary to foster a deliberate and coordinated shift in the division of labor.

This is not to suggest that the burden shifting through a reduction in naval power observed in the post-Wales period is a definitive trend that will necessarily characterize NATO dynamics in the coming years. Nor is it a given that a future coordinated division of labor in the maritime domain is unattainable. Growing concerns among NATO members over China’s geopolitical rise, along with the significant impact of the September 2022 Nord Stream explosions—which highlighted the vulnerability of critical maritime infrastructure—and other geostrategic shifts, have emphasized the importance of maintaining robust maritime capabilities. Thus, despite NATO navies’ reliance on the U.S. commitment to ensure freedom of navigation and secure maritime trade, other factors may drive future development. It would be in the alliance’s interest if such a resurgence in maritime investments were to be coordinated.

That said, it is important to note that even if NATO allies increase future naval investments, scholars and policymakers would benefit from keeping in mind the core trend demonstrated in the article. While the analysis focuses on the maritime domain, the argument and empirical findings may capture a broader pattern of allies’ tendency to shift defense resources away from capabilities that are more likely to be provided by the patron. When allies must increase “guns” at the expense of “butter,” either due to alliance commitments or because of a more threatening security environment, they will reallocate their budgetary resources to make investments that best generate private economic, domestic, or strategic benefits. One way to do so is to reduce funds to platforms the patron is more likely to provide, redirecting those resources toward goals that potentially yield private domestic or strategic benefits.

Therefore, adopting the proposed disaggregation approach allows scholars to better assess the effectiveness of specific policies designed to foster fairer burden sharing among alliance members, such as the Wales Pledge. Recent efforts to move beyond using a simple military spending indicator for evaluating burden sharing should not only adopt a more detailed examination of capabilities but also distinguish between the threats the patron is more or less likely to address.