A considerable body of evidence on security cooperation illuminates the obstacles to burden sharing and strategies to elicit partner contributions. However, the implications for practice—how to integrate these insights into the design and implementation of security cooperation activities—remain underdeveloped. This disconnect between theory and practice is most evident in two areas. First, while practitioners now widely accept that it is essential to understand partners to influence their behavior, it remains unclear which characteristics they must account for, how to operationalize them, and the implications for tailoring security cooperation activities in response. Second, because numerous parts of the U.S. government control security cooperation decision-making, it is difficult for practitioners to coordinate and for partners to predict sustained engagement. How can practitioners design engagements to influence partners despite coordination challenges, and how can they align activities to achieve coherent outcomes?
- Fryer, Matthew V., "Show the Flag: Japan, the United States and the Incomplete Evolution of Collective Defense," SAASS thesis, 2025, 92 pgs.
- How can practitioners design engagements to influence partners despite coordination challenges, and how can they align activities to achieve coherent outcomes? Fryer answers this by contrasting the unsuccessful U.S. diplomatic engagements with Japan during the Vietnam and Gulf Wars with the highly successful strategy employed during the Iraq War, demonstrating how calculated alliance management can effectively elicit partner contributions. He notes that during the Vietnam War, vague U.S. requests allowed Japan to easily evade contribution, while during the Gulf War, public U.S. criticism and pressure contributed to Japanese political paralysis. To effectively influence partners and align activities, Fryer shows that practitioners must provide clear, specific demand signals—such as the Bush administration's explicit request for "boots on the ground" in Iraq—while simultaneously offering public diplomatic cover. By publicly praising Prime Minister Koizumi and expressing satisfaction with Japan's autonomous decision-making, the U.S. engaged Japan in a way that preempted resistance and allowed Japanese leaders the political space to maneuver domestic legal frameworks, frame the deployment as a humanitarian mission, and ultimately deploy the SDF.