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Russia from forming a tight alliance with France. Britain’s blithe unwillingness to work
seriously to prevent Turkey from allying with the Central Powers in 1914 had major
repercussions for the British war effort, not to mention the future of the Middle East. Many
critics of U.S. strategy during the early Cold War condemn it for failing to capitalize on latent
Sino-Soviet tensions, and thus prolonging the dangerous standoff. Today, some criticize the
tendency in the Bush Administration’s foreign policy to treat U.S. adversaries as a tightly
connected conspiracies (e.g., “Axis of Evil” and “Islamo-fascism”), and thus miss real
opportunities to disaggregate and diminish the threats they pose.
By their presence and absence then wedge strategies make a mark on past and
present world politics. But look for systematic research on wedge strategies and you will find
very little of it.
This in itself is a mystery, and unraveling it will help us move toward the
more important goal of building knowledge about wedge strategies and how they work..
This paper proceeds in five steps. First, we will explain why wedge strategies get
short-shrift in security studies. Second, we will outline the forms wedge strategies may take,
and the policy approaches used to further them. Third, we will discuss how wedge strategies
help to explain important “alignment anomalies” in international politics. Fourth, we will
examine a case in which a wedge strategy produced just such an alignment anomaly, with
great consequences for the conduct and outcome of the Second World War, and thus, our
world today. Fifth, by way of conclusion, we will draw out some of implications of wedge
strategies for balancing theory and security policy debates.
I. Why Do Wedge Strategies Get Slighted?
Compared to the attention IR gives to alliance formation, little has been done on the
business of wrecking them.
When wedge strategies do get noticed, they tend to be the
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E.g., Flynt Leverett, “Illusion and Reality,” American Prospect, September 12, 2006; Christopher Layne,
“America Cannot Rely on Power Alone,” Financial Times, August 23, 2006; Stephen Walt, “Taming American
Power,” Foreign Affairs (September/October, 2005), p. 110.
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I have yet to find a single scholarly book or article in the modern field of international relations which makes
wedge strategy in general a central concern. Two notable monographs dealing with wedge strategy in specific
historical contexts are Gregory Mitrovitch, Undermining the Kremlin: America’s Strategy to Subvert the Soviet
Bloc, 1947-1956 (New York: Cornell University Press, 2000); and David Mayers, Cracking the Monolith: U.S.
Policy against the Sino-Soviet Alliance, 1949-1955 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1986).
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George Modelski wrote these tantalizing lines: “A traditional field for the exercise of diplomatic skill is
altering the composition of rival external communities, winning and keeping allies, and destroying the alliances
of the opponent. It is never rational to concede the unity of the enemy camp. No alliance lasts forever, and no
member of the external community can be taken for granted. A policymaker’s constant preoccupation is to
neutralize hostile states and make friends among the neutrals.” A Theory of Foreign Policy (Praeger, 1962), p.
Convention