An influential conventional wisdom holds that multilateralism is a favorable means of conflict resolution. Likewise, allies’ support in a crisis is usually considered desirable in terms of bringing victory, cost-sharing and legitimacy. This article examines the effect of unilateral defense on crisis escalation and shows that it serves as a tying-hand signal, which can be adopted by a targeted country regardless of its political institutions. To illuminate the mechanism, I provide a formal model of an international crisis where a targeted country chooses whether to unilaterally oppose a revisionist challenger or to acquiesce in short of its allies’ aids. The model demonstrates that unilateral defense enables the target to coerce the challenger to back down. The dishonored alliance ties the target’s hands of burden-sharing and hence signals the target’s strong will and capability of resisting the demand. This is because only a strongly resolved and capable target can accept the cost of future war when there is a positive probability that standing firm leads to the outbreak of war. Therefore, unilateral defense encourages the challenger to acquiesce and consequently prevents the crisis from escalating. Empirical analyses of militarized interstate disputes (MIDs) between 1946 and 2001 support this argument. Unilateral resistance of the target significantly decreases the likelihood of war by three percent, ceteris paribus. The findings are robust across different model specifications including Heckman probit models.

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本稿は，トランプ政権の通商政策を国際的側面と国内的側面の両面から検討した。トランプ政権は，国際的には中国と主要な同盟国との貿易戦争を同時に開始し，多国間主義の再建を求める同盟国とのコンセンサスを破壊した。国内的には大統領と共和党が共有していた自由化コンセンサスを破壊し，均衡貿易を重視するコンセンサスに置き換えようとしたが，却って政策プロセスを無秩序化して様々な混乱をもたらしている。

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Unilateralism has been widely considered a coordinate concept of multilateralism, mainly because an element of cooperation in multilateralism has been emphasized by John Ruggie who has influenced, to a great extent, the development of the study of multilateralism. However, the former represents an attitude or posture in conducting diplomacy and its coordinate concept is “cooperativism, ” while the latter express a number of players participating in a game of diplomacy and a framework for the game and its coordinate concept is bilateralism.
David M. Malone and Yuen Foong Khong, editors of “Unilateralism & U. S. Foreign Policy, ” insist that unilateralism refers to a tendency to opt out of a multilateral framework or to act alone in addressing a particular global or regional challenge, rather than choosing to participate in collective actions. That states do so because they do not wish to subject themselves to “generalized principles of conduct” (John Ruggie) being negotiated or enforced, or they may find such principles inimical to their national interests.
Therefore, when we attempt to analyze diplomatic approaches of a specific state, we have to take account of two dimensions: the dimension of diplomatic attitude (unilateralism/“cooperativism”) and the dimension of a number of diplomatic players (bilateralism/multilateralism).
If these two dimensions are taken together, we can make up a coordinate axis. Approaches of U. S. departed from isolationism, vigorously engaged in intervention policy (bilateral unilateralism) especially in the area of the Caribbean Sea and Central America. After responding to World War I with multilateral unilateralism, which can be thought equal to Wilsonianism labeled “internationalism of crisis” (Frank Ninkovich), the U. S. conducted foreign policies of multilateral unilateralism “cooperativism” among great powers. The U. S., which hesitated to adopt Wilsonianism as “internationalism of crisis” in response to the Manchurian Incident caused by Japan, carefully came to introduce Wilsonianism after the outbreak of the Sino-Japan War (July of 1937) and World War II.
The U. S. having led World War II by fully applying Wilsonianism made the utmost efforts to create a new world order on the basis of multilateralism cooperativism. he United Nations System and Bretton-Woods System symbolize the U. S. -led multilateralist cooperativism. But C. Hemmer and P. J. Katzenstein criticize the U. S. foreign policy of multilateralism (which naturally contains an element of cooperation according to Ruggie), saying that the U. S. applied these global principles differently in different regions, and projects its norms onto the global scene in a highly selective fashion that itself needs to be explained.

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The basic structure of nuclear arms control during and after the Cold War was shaped mainly by the structure of the international system and its balance of power. Particularly for the great powers, nuclear arms control was one of the key tools for maintaining the international order they led.

Since the U.S.-Russian New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty was signed in 2010, nuclear arms control has been at a standstill for a decade. This can be mainly seen as a consequence of power transition in the international system, which has affected the trend of nuclear weapons issues at the unit level as well. The narrowing of the power/nuclear disparity in the post post-Cold War era has brought about dual multipolarity of nuclear arms control among the great powers and between the great and other major countries, suggesting a possibility that the framework as well as regime of nuclear arms control would also be transformed considerably. Especially in multilateral nuclear arms control, difficulties of achieving agreements—through coordination of national and security interests and convergence of objectives among countries involved—increase exponentially.

In addition, the implications for nuclear arms control of the modernization of nuclear forces, and the technological development and proliferation of both nuclear and conventional forces have also being becoming apparent. On the one hand, the development of highly capable conventional forces which could compliment nuclear forces could reduce the role of nuclear weapons. On the other hand, a country facing a threat of its adversary’s advanced conventional weapons would increase its reliance on nuclear weapons in order to offset its inferiority, and thus increase its reluctance to engage in nuclear arms control by which its nuclear activities are bound. Besides that, since conventional weapons do not have equivalent psychological and strategic impact as nuclear weapons, the incentives for promoting conventional arms control are not as high as those for nuclear arms control, which would also impede a progress of nuclear arms control.

The possible transformation of nuclear arms control is complicated due to the dual multiporality of countries involved and diversification of nuclear and conventional forces, making it difficult to predict the future of nuclear arms control. Furthermore, as great power/geopolitical competitions have intensified, countries involved are re-emphasizing the importance of nuclear deterrents in their security policies. However, this is also the moment when nuclear arms control is most needed. It is necessary to renovate framework and discourse on nuclear arms control that takes into account the complexities surrounding nuclear weapons issues.

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It is often mentioned that democracies do not, or are very unlikely to, make war against other democracies. This “democratic peace” theory has become a commonplace not only in international political thought but also in the mindsets of American presidents and diplomats. Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, for example, have referred to this international ethical cycle: promoting democracy would make world peace. The idea of democratic peace was advocated by Kant. Kant thought that a majority of the people would never vote to go to war under the republican (democratic) governments because they were cautious of war.
However, the road to democracy may involve war. Democratic peace increasingly seems to be linked to war. It is obvious that democracies are peaceful towards each other but in general they are as war-prone as any other regime type. The theory of democratic peace, therefore, remains fragmentary as long as it fails to account for the practice of war on the part of democracies. At the dark side of democratic peace, “democratic war” occurs. According to Harald Müller, “democratic war” means the resort to the use of force by democracies in order to promote democracy for peace.
In the history of international political thought, some thinkers acknowledge that democracies tend to be war-prone. Alexis de Tocqueville, for example, pointed out that democracy in America was likely to go to war. It is true that America foreign policy contains this Tocqueville's legacy. Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has justified wars and military interventions to export democracy to non-democratic states. Moreover, in order to prevent transnational terrorism, American foreign policy supports. “war against terrorism” under the just war tradition. For American foreign policy, “war against terrorism” is a just war. Promoting democracy is strongly related to combating against terrorism. Moral justification of war is one of the most important things for American foreign policy after the Cold War.
There was same logic behind the justification of the United States' invasion of Iraq in 2003. Moreover, the United States' invasion of Iraq was justified in part as a preventive war for making democratic peace. American “democratic wars” are developed by the universalistic (Kantian-Wilsonian) principles of democratic peace. However, attempts to make democratic peace by using external force would have failed eventually. Without regard to humanitarian purpose or not, it is obvious that democracy in America is more war-prone rather than the reverse.

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Since the end of the Cold War, the US allies in Asia such as Japan and Australia have enhanced their bilateral and trilateral security cooperation including the United States. Does it mean that, as some suggest, the US-led “hub and spokes” system—a bilateral alliance network centered on the US “hub” and regional allies as “spokes”—has transformed to a more “networked” alliance structure based on horizontal relations between the United States and regional allies?

To answer this question, the paper first focuses on the asymmetric nature of the “hub and spokes” alliance system. Previous studies suggest that an asymmetric structure of the US alliance system in Asia—in a sense that regional allies do not assume defense obligations or burden which are equivalent to those of the United States—has prevented the emergence of the collective defense mechanism such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in Europe. In particular, the US regional allies did not wish to establish a collective defense mechanism in Asia, so long as the United States continuously committed to regional allies’ defense bilaterally.

This in turn suggests that, should the US security commitment become less credible, regional allies have greater incentives to enhance their mutual defense cooperation in order to prepare for the loss of security provided by the United States. Indeed, Japan and Australia began to enhance their security cooperation immediately after the Cold War, out of fear that the US military presence in the region would become weaken. In order to maintain the strong US military presence in the region, these two allies began to assume greater burden-sharing with the United States.

Such cooperation continued after the 2000s, at which the rise of China became more prominent. In order to maintain the US strategic primacy in Asia, Japan and Australia actively contributed to the US-led global “war on terror”. Both countries also increased their roles in regional peacekeeping and humanitarian assistance and disaster reliefs activities. As a result, the trilateral security cooperation became institutionalized in the late 2000s. As such, trilateral security cooperation between Japan, the US and Australia have enhanced as Japan and Australia assumed greater burden and responsibilities in both regional and global security.

This ostensibly suggests the transformation of the US alliance network from an asymmetrical “hub and spokes” system to a more symmetrical alliance network. In reality, however, these regional allies enhanced their security cooperation in order to maintain the US strategic primacy, so that they can continuously enjoy the US security commitment to them through bilateral alliance relations. This means that, quite ironically, the so-called “spokes to spokes” cooperation could help to endure, rather than transform, the existing hub and spokes system by maintaining its asymmetric alliance structure.

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