Abstract
The history of the Atlantic Alliance is one of recurrent "crises" among its members. Participants and observers alike have been prone to use the notion of an "Alliance crisis" as a form of political shorthand to indicate the presence of greater-than-normal tensions and strains. An excessive reliance on this kind of shorthand, however, can obscure far more than it reveals; it can also serve as an impediment rather than as an aid to theory construction. A better approach would be to develop a structural theory of alliance behavior-one that might provide insights into the nature of alliance relationships.
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