As Close as Lips and Teeth

Abstract

Why do communist party-states decide to enter or to exit a military alliance? What explains the existences of the Cold War-era China-North Korea and Vietnam-Laos alliances in a post-Cold War world? I argue that a communist party-state only enters an alliance if it shares security interests and ideological values with its military partner. In other words, the two variables are individually necessary, jointly sufficient. This is due to the party-state having to defend both the survival of the state and of the ruling communist party. Allying with a security compatible but ideologically hostile state poses threats to the communist party, while allying with an ideologically friendly but security incompatible state can endanger the interests of the state. A communist party-state exits an alliance if it no longer shares either security interests or ideological values with its ally. I evaluate the theory against three other alternative theories of alliance formation and deformation: balancing, bargaining, and bonding. I use the qualitative methods of structured-focused comparison and within-case process-tracing across seven cases of alliances involving a communist party-state. Those cases are Vietnam-Soviet Union, Vietnam-Laos, Vietnam-China, Vietnam-North Korea, North Korea-Soviet Union, North Korea-China, China-Soviet Union. I also test the theory against two cases of non-alliances involving military cooperation between a communist party-state and a non-communist state. They are China-United States and Vietnam-United States. I show that in all the cases, the communist party-state under investigation only joined or exited an alliance as the theory expects. My dissertation contributes to the contemporary scholarly and policy debates in the United States on the nature of contemporary military cooperation between China and Russia, Russia and North Korea, as well as Vietnam and the United States.