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U.S. Air Force Chief Master Sgt. Karla Pelayo, from the Air Force’s Language Enabled Airman Program, poses May 21, 2025, on Mariscal Zavala military base with Col. Victor Argueta Oscal of the Guatemalan army, who commanded the combined task force in CENTCAM Guardian 2025, and U.S. Army Maj. Brian Hotchkiss, an advisor from the 1st Security Forces Assistance Brigade, for whom she interpreted daily. CENTAM Guardian, an annual, multinational exercise, fosters strong partnerships by enabling combined forces to effectively address shared security challenges. The Air Force’s Language Enabled Airman Program, to which Pelayo belongs, includes more than 3,700 service members who bridge language and cultural barriers with allies and partners to create a more interoperable, lethal force. (U.S. Navy photo by Cmdr. Michael Cody)

Testing Reliability of Allies and Partners

Published April 21, 2026
AFWIC

TOPIC SPONSOR: AFWIC

How can the reliability of allies and partners be tested?

Fryer, Matthew V., "Show the Flag: Japan, the United States and the Incomplete Evolution of Collective Defense," SAASS thesis, 2025, 92 pgs.
- Fryer addresses this by proposing his "Conditionality Model," which provides a strategic framework for testing and predicting the reliability of a legally and normatively constrained ally's willingness to participate in collective defense. He asserts that an ally like Japan cannot simply rely on collective defense as a legal default due to its constitutional barriers, so its reliability must be tested against the convergence of four specific conditions: the presence of a clear external request, consolidated political will and elite consensus, legal and institutional readiness, and a domestic narrative that effectively manages public opinion. Fryer demonstrates that when the U.S. properly tests and satisfies this model—as seen when all four conditions successfully aligned during the Iraq War—Japan proves to be a highly reliable strategic actor capable of decisive, coordinated military engagement, meaning that allied reliability is manufactured through careful, preemptive political maneuvering rather than guaranteed by mere treaty existence.