Dark corners of alliance politics: alliance theory concepts and great power competition

Much about the alignment competition in today's great power politics does not revolve around the making of formal military alliances or states' compliance with or defections from them. To help us make sense of this activity, this paper introduces three conceptual devices: (1) alignments as patterns of expectations; (2) negative alignment goals; and (3) the pursuit of strategic side effects. These cover some "dark corners" in alliance politics-areas that are thinly theorized and which involve expectations, objectives, and strategic behavior that are not easy to uncover with advanced social science methods. Moving our focus to them thus invites deeper theoretical and qualitative inquiry in alliance politics studies and generates insights into the alliance power politics that are now in play. The first part of the paper introduces the conceptual devices and illustrates how they cut into alliance politics. The second connects the concepts to issues in contemporary alignment competition.