>> Welcome to the new books network. >> Hello, welcome to the new books network. I'm your host, Ellonara Matyachi. Today I'm here with Mark Hawes, author of the book, "Friend Emmys," when ideological enemies ally. The book was published in 2022 by Cornell University Press in their Cornell Studies and Security Affairs series. Welcome. >> Oh, thank you very much for having me. Tell us a bit about yourselves. >> I am a professor of political science at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh. >> And why did you decide to write this book? >> Well, most of my scholarship has focused on the importance of political ideologies, international relations, how they matter, when they matter, to what extent. And over the course of some previous research, an important empirical puzzle came to me. So I was looking at the alliance patterns before the first and second world wars. And what was interesting to me is that Britain and France before, in both periods, they confronted a similar security environment. Germany was on the rise. And Germany represented a massive power throughout their security. And this threat created incentives for an alliance with Russia before World War I and the Soviet Union before World War II, because it was the only country that had the power to help balance Germany and was also to Germany's east and created a two-front war. And leaders in both periods in the Western democracies recognized that power was pushing them to form the alliance. And yet, as we know, during the first, only during the-- before the First World War, did they do so? And what's interesting is in both periods, the other condition that was similar is that in both periods, Russia/Soviet Union was believed to be ideologically different, an ideological enemy, the autocracy of Tsarism and the totalitarianism of communism. So they always recognized-- in both periods, the Western leaders recognized that Russia was very different, ideologically. But before World War I, they held their nose and formed an alliance. And so power trumped ideology. But in the 1930s, ideology trumped power. So we saw this variation in what I call alliances among ideological enemies. They formed in one period, and they didn't another. And this example got me thinking. And I started seeing other examples where sometimes when power is pushing two ideological rivals together, sometimes they form the alliance, sometimes they don't. We can all think of examples when rivals form-- ideological enemies form alliance. The US had a lot of them during the Cold War with dictatorial regimes. But there's also a lot of examples when they don't. Islamist Iran, for example, refused ally with the Soviet Union against the United States. Fascist Italy didn't want to ally with Republican France against Nazi Germany. So this variation got me thinking, and I wanted to try to identify the conditions when ideological enemies do and do not ally when they confront a shared power threat. And so what's the argument in the book? Well, it's-- so I start with-- I stipulate that the existence of two ideological enemies are being pushed together by a common power threat. So that's kind of the initial position, the scope condition. Just to be clear, by ideological enemies, I'm referring to states that are led by people who profoundly disagree on the best way to order domestic politics. So that's how I define ideologies. They have very different visions for ordering society, and they frequently define themselves in opposition to the other. And so that scope condition of power pushing two ideological enemies together, I call these frenemy alliances because these states are both friends because power is pushing them together and enemies because ideology is pulling them apart. And my argument is that these type of coalitions, these cross ideological or frenemy coalitions, they're unlike other types of alliances when they're under similar conditions, when they face similar threats because they're perpetually torn by these contending forces. Power pushing them together, ideology pulling them apart. And my goal is to try to understand which set of forces wins under particular conditions. And so after stipulating that initial condition, I deduced two additional ideological variables that help us understand when power is likely to win or when ideological differences are likely to win. So I start with ideological enemies. And then in addition to that, I have two more ideological variables. The first one is what I call regime vulnerability. And by this, I'm referring to how susceptible leaders believe their country is to major ideological change. How susceptible leaders believe they are to ideological revolution. And this variable shapes the costs of frenemy alliances. When leaders, when regime vulnerability is high, meaning that they think that there's a good chance of succumbing to a revolution, they're going to be quite wary about aligning with an ideological enemy because they're likely to fear that legitimating or cooperating or giving support to ideological rival abroad will help increase the power of their domestic enemy at home, the co-idealogs at home. And so in other words, there's a tension between state security and regime security and that condition. The forming the alliance may help the state, but it may hurt the regime. And so when these costs go up, they're domestic costs, as costs go up, they're unlikely to commit to the alliance. Conversely, when regime vulnerability is low, when you're not worried about an alliance-- or excuse me, when you're not worried about your domestic interest in the threat of revolution, it's a lot easier to make a commitment to an ideological enemy abroad because you're just not worried about paying those domestic costs. And so this first variable, it's really important because domestic leaders want to protect their state, but they also want to protect their political interest and the regime they champion. And so in this variable, I helped explain that empirical puzzle that I talked about earlier. In the '19-- before World War I, lead up to World War I, British and French leaders, regime vulnerability was low compared to Russia. They just weren't worried about the spread of autocracy in France. We'll talk about-- we'll focus on France for now. They just weren't worried. So because regime vulnerability was low, the domestic costs of committing to an alliance with Russia were low. And so it was easier to act on the power incentives that were pushing those two very different states together. You flash forward to the 1930s, especially after 1935, the dominant leaders in France were very worried about communist revolution in France. And so they were convinced that if they formed an alliance with the Soviet Union, even though they recognized it would help balance the Nazis or the help balance Germany, they were worried that doing so would undermine their regime and would facilitate communist revolution. So it was the same situation, but before World War I, regime vulnerability low, meaning domestic costs are low, easy to ally, World War II, leading up to World War II, regime vulnerability in relation to the communist high, therefore the costs of lying with the Soviet Union were high. The other variable-- so that's one independent variable, the other independent variable. So it's a little more complicated. I call it configurations of ideological distance. So here's what I mean by that. So I imagine a system of three states. And I call them the initiating state, meaning the state is deciding whether or not to commit to a cross-ideological alliance, the potential frenemy ally, so the ideological enemy that is very useful in terms of state security, and then their shared power threat. So it's the initiating state, that state's potential, frenemy ally, and then their shared danger. And I vary the distances between them. Basically, from the initiating state's perspective, are those other countries greater, lesser, or equal ideological threats? I have lots of diagrams in the book. It makes it easier to see. And so based on that stipulation, there's five scenarios possible. I'm not going to get into them, but some of those configurations based on greater, lesser, or equal dangers help form cross-ideological alliances, and some of them add extra impediments to cross-ideological alliances. And so, as I said, regime vulnerability affects the costs, the perceived cost of an alliance, this other variable affects the perceived need to form an alliance. So let me give you an example, just, again, using the alliance patterns before the First World Wars. From France's perspective, leading up to World War I, they were looking at-- so France was deciding, do they commit to a frenemy alliance with Russia against Germany? So you look out, what's the relationship between Russia and Germany? Both were monarchies. So those two states were the other two states from France's perspective, the key states, were ideological allies. And because of that, they were convinced that Russia's commitment to an alliance would be tenuous. And so the idea-- part of the decision-making process in France was they felt they had to be extra solicitous, extra aggressive, to get to separate the Tsar from monarchical Germany. So because those other two states were ideologically similar, it incentivized extra incentives to form an alliance with an ideological enemy. It's kind of paradoxical, but it's definitely in the documents. Conversely, in the 1930s, it was Nazi Germany versus communist Russia, fierce ideological enemies. And so the Western leaders-- we'll stick with France again-- French leaders were convinced that Hitler would not make an alliance with the Soviet Union. And therefore, the need to separate those other two totalitarian powers was low. And they didn't have-- so the incentive was to say, we're just going to buck pass. We're not going to form an alliance, because those two are going to be enemies. They're never going to come together. So the basic point of my argument is that ideologies are likely to ally when the need is high and the costs are low. Conversely, they aren't likely to ally when the costs are high and the perceived need low. Even though power is always pushing them together, I'm talking about need and cost based on these other ideological variables. And so those are the conditions. So if there's this variation, sometimes ideological enemies do, some form an alliance, sometimes they don't, I think that these two variables help us understand when you're going to get which outcome. It's that time of the year. Your vacation is coming up. You can already hear the beach waves, feel the warm breeze, relax, and think about work. You really, really wanted all to work out while you're away. Monday.com gives you and the team that piece of mind. When all work is on one platform and everyone's in sync, things just flow wherever you are. Tap the banner to go to Monday.com. Thank you. It's a very rich theory. You explained it to us with great clarity. How's the book organized? So there's four main chat. There's an introduction and conclusion, but in between four main chapters. The theory chapter, which goes into obviously much more detail about my argument here and counter arguments and operational variables and that kind of thing. And then there's three empirical chapters. One is why Britain and France failed to form an alliance with the Soviets in the '30s. We've been talking about that one, obviously. And I call that an unrealized alliance. They just-- they never formed one until the outbreak of war. The second empirical chapter is why communist China in the 1970s, why it took so long for it to form an alliance with the United States against the Soviet Union. They really didn't form an alliance of any significance until 1979. I call this a tipping point alliance, a friend of my alliance, because it's powers pushing these states together and then they delay, delay, delay. And then they finally give in to the power-based incentives. But it takes a long time. There's a delay. And then the last empirical chapter, I look at why Turkey ended its alliance with Israel against Iran in 2009 and 2010. And I call this a breaking point alliance where power had pushed two states into a friend of my alliance. But at some point, even though power is still active, ideology comes to the surface and ruptures their cooperation. And I chose these. The key point of mine was to try to have variants in both independent variables and dependent variables, both across the cases and within the cases. And just to give them a couple of minutes on a little bit of time on the 1930s case to show you my thinking in terms of selection process. So the chief puzzle, of course, of the 1930s is why no alliance with the Soviet Union. Why didn't Britain and France form an alliance with the Soviets? But as I looked into this case a little bit more, there were two additional puzzles, which are quite interesting. And if my argument was correct, I had to be able to solve all of them. The second puzzle is that early in the decade, so relatively soon after Hitler came to power, the French right and middle actually formed an alliance with the Soviet or came close to it. They negotiated the Franco-Soviet Pact of mutual assistance, which committed both states to aid one another if they were attacked. And so it looked like if you just stop right there in time, you'd say, oh, well, this is realism 101. Germany's on the rise, Germany's rearming. And these two ideological enemies, they hated each other ideologically, but they came together. But of course, the decade didn't stop in 1935. So it's interesting, in 1935, the very parties that engineered the alliance, which is the right and center, by the time it was time to vote on the pact, they actually reversed course, and they voted against the very pact that they had engineered. And then for the rest of the decade, worked to sabotage it and prevent any further development of it in terms of military-military relations. So that's the second. That's the second. There's the main puzzle, why no alliance? Second puzzle is why this reversal halfway because it doesn't make sense because Germany's at its weakest point in the early 1930s, and then Germany's power continues to escalate, and yet the alliance falls apart when it should be-- or potential alliance falls apart when it should be intensified. And then the last puzzle is that there was intense partisan variation in both Britain and France in terms of alliance policies. The French right and center opposed-- the British right always opposed an alliance with the Soviet Union. The French right opposed an alliance with the Soviet Union after 1935. But the socialist, the left, and both Britain and France, they always strongly pushed for an alliance with the Soviet Union. So if I'm right, if my argument helps understand why frenemy alliances form, sometimes, and when they don't others, I have to be able to explain all these. And I believe I do. I'll just quickly. So why did the French right reverse itself? Because in 1935, you had the election of a popular front coalition. Meaning there was an alliance between the socialists and the communists, and they came to power, and you had this massive leap in the power of the communists in France from 10 seats in parliament. I can't remember the exact number, but I think the close to 100 or around 100, are not only significant leap in their representation, but they were part of the government. And so as soon as this happened, the French right believed that communist revolution was coming to France. And so there was this massive leap in regime vulnerability. And as soon as that happened, the French right believed that the security benefits of allying with the Soviet Union, which they recognized, were not as important as the regime costs of allying with the Soviet Union. So regime vulnerability trumped security interests based on German power, pushing them together. And then in terms of the partisan variation, again, it's some different parties. The values of my independent variables were different depending on which parties we're talking about. For French socialists and British and French socialists, they really weren't particularly worried about the subversive threat, the domestic threat posed by communists. So regime vulnerability was low. And they always looked-- they didn't like the Soviet dictatorial system, but they always thought it was better than the Nazism. So the Germans were not only the biggest-- to socialists, Germany was not only the biggest power threat, it was also the biggest ideological threat. And when one state is both the biggest power threat and the biggest ideological threat, the forces, the balance, are very, very strong. That's one of those ideological configurations that I was talking about, or conversely, the French right, the British and French right and center, they didn't like Nazism, but they thought it was better than communism. And so to them, Germany was the Paris power threat, but the Soviets were the biggest ideological threat. And so there was a lot of confusion. Who was the worst? Was it the power, meaning Germany? Or was it the ideology? Was it meaning the Soviet Union? And so there was just this lot of hemming and hawing and not willing to commit either way. And so the point is between these groups, everything was the same. Power was this-- every international variable is the same-- geography, power distributions, offense, defense, balance. All the realist factors were the same for British, French, French socialists, conservatives, and centrists. But they had this massive variation in terms of support of the alliance because the values of the independent variables of my argument were different. And so it works out well. I don't want to go into a great deal till on the other cases, but it's just in terms-- so the tipping point alliance for Communist China-- Mao refused to ally with China. It wasn't until 1979 in Deng Xiaoping. There was a change in my independent variables that helps explain it. And the same thing, for the rupture in the Turkish alliance with Israel, there's a massive increase in regime vulnerability for the Turkish leaders, where all of us breaking the alliance with Israel was very useful domestically. So I try to have these variants and all the variables and then see if change lines up. If they're changing their alliance policies, was there change on my independent variables that can help explain it? So you told us about the argument of the book and the kind of evidence and how the book is organized. What conclusions do you reach in the book? Well, most obviously, the book contributes to the alliance literature. The alliance literature is very, very big, but no one, to my knowledge, had ever really systematically looked at the probability of alliances among ideological enemies. And I think this is an important issue. The world is ideologically heterogeneous. So the possibility of lots of cross-ideological alliances is high, and so we should have a framework for understanding it. And so the temptation, I think, is to say, adopt the realest framework. The enemy of my enemy is my friend and say, power's enough to bring us together. But my argument, power isn't enough. You have to understand these other additional variables. You have to know the cost and the need to form an alliance. So I added the alliance literature. The other thing that I think is really important is in terms of regime security. I add to this literature showing domestic interests are matter. Leaders have two big interests. They want to protect their state, and they want to protect their regime. And if they're working together, that's great. But when they work in different directions, then we have to understand which one leaders are going to privilege. And so working with this subject, I witnessed in the documents a new security dilemma, where the traditional security dilemma, of course, is it's hard to make one's state feel safe without making others less safe. But in this case, there's a security dilemma between state interest and regime interest, where a group of leaders may make their state more safe by forming these cross ideological alliances, but by doing so, it makes the regime less safe. And I saw in the documents, I see leaders wrestling with this dilemma, and frequently domestic interest trumped international interests. So if we really want to understand these outcomes, that has to be front and center. I think this idea of regime security and regime interests. Those are important contributions. In the book, you rely on a rich array of sources. You triangulate between primary and secondary sources, and you use primary sources from different countries-- France, Great Britain, the US. Then you use process tracing to figure out how it all hangs together. Could you tell us a bit more about the process and the method you used to choose and put together these sources? In other words, if we were sitting next to you while you were doing this, what would we have witnessed? That's a great question. So as I'm reading through these things, I'm just trying to get an understanding of how leaders understood the variables in which I am interested. The first cut that I always want to find was how strong were the power-based or material incentives for an alliance? So in the 1930s, how scared were Western leaders of Germany? And the answer is very scared. How scared were the Chinese leaders of the Soviet Union in the early 1970s? Again, very scared. There was an intense war scare. Turkish leaders, same thing of Iran with the potential development of nuclear weapons. So I wanted to get beyond just looking at military expenditures or what weaponry states had. I wanted to get inside their heads. How scared were people for the physical security of their state? And this gives me a sense of how strong the incentives for a friend of an alliance were. And so once I'm starting there-- so if I say, oh, wow, leaders really were scared, and they recognized the value of forming an alliance with an ideological enemy. So I established those initial conditions. And then my next goal is to try to figure out, based on leader statements and internal documents, what were leaders' understandings of the values of my independent variables? Were they worried about revolution? If so, why? What were they pointing to? Were they pointing to Stalin championing the common turn? Were they pointing to what I call ideological fifth columns, meaning groups inside their state who are ideologically loyal to somebody to a foreign power? Or they worried about those? How did they understand ideological relationships? Who was a greater, who was a lesser, who was an equal enemy? So things like in the 1930s, defining slogan of the French right was better Hitler than Stalin. Well, that tells me that they thought Hitler as bad as he was was they had greater affinity for Nazism than for communism. And were they saying that not just publicly but privately? So that was my approach. And one of the most satisfying and important findings of my research, I would say, is that leaders in private documents consistently attribute their decisions, especially when we're talking about breaking or not align, they attribute their decisions to the effects of the ideologies that I talk about. So it's a nice window in people's heads and see how they're thinking and frequently lined up with my predictions, which was very satisfying, gratifying. That's great. I want to go back to something you mentioned before, and that is very present in the case studies and the appendix. So you mentioned and you show in the book how frequent in history frenemy relations have been. And yet you also tell us that we really have not had tools to make sense of them for a long time in the field of international relations. Can you explain to us why this has been the case? Well, it's surprising, as you say. It's surprising that people, when I started down this, that analysts really haven't dedicated a lot of time to trying to understand cross ideological alliances. Because one of the things that came across when I was looking days is leaders and analysts at the time they frequently have trouble predicting when an ideological enemy is and is not likely to form an alliance. Sometimes they think it is. They are. Sometimes they think these alliances won't happen. And often, it leads to really bad results. So in the 1930s, British and French intelligence believed that a Nazi Soviet pact was basically out of the question because of ideology, because of the enmity between Naziism and communism. So the Nazi Soviet pact is an intelligent surprise, intelligence failure that really left them quite vulnerable. More recently, George W. Bush believed an alliance between secular Iraq under Saddam Hussein and Islamist al-Qaeda was either likely or already happened. And this belief in the alliance was one of the reasons led to the Iraq war. And actually, some analysts in the Bush administration said, well, if the Nazis and Soviets can ally, then al-Qaeda and Iraq can ally, too. So again, people who recognize this, they recognize that half the time that sometimes power wins or sometimes ideology wins, but you have to know the conditions under which it's likely. And they frequently miss it. And it's really at least a bad outcome. So you have incentives to get it right. So it's surprising. So I would say there's two biases at work here that have mitigated against full analyzing this issue or creating a better framework for prediction. One is, I would say, the power of realism, the slogan, I believe I mentioned earlier, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. That is a powerful slogan, and it captures a lot of truth because sometimes ideological enemies do come together. The enemy of my life is my friend. And so I argue, of course, that only captures part of it. And even within that, there's some subtleties that are missed. One of the reasons why it's so easy sometimes to form cross ideological alliances is when regime vulnerability is low. So the Americans form a lot of cross ideological alliances because they're not particularly worried about revolution to whatever illiberal ideology. And so realists, they miss the ideological foundations of this famous sentiment. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. But I think that's how a lot of people think. It's so obvious or it's so compelling that they think that's dominant. And the other thing, I think there's a selection bias at work. We can all think of lots of examples when ideological enemies came together. It's easy to come up with one. But what I call the unrealized alliances, they're a lot harder to identify because they rest on a counterfactual. So it's cases that should have had an alliance that made sense to have an alliance, but it never did. And so then you have to go digging into this and saying, OK, not only are there a lot of cross ideological alliances, but there's also a lot of cases where there should have been or there was a good case to have one, but there wasn't. And so I think the failure is part of an undercount of cross ideological alliances. Makes sense. Thank you so much. What surprised you the most over the course of your research for this book? For example, was there a moment when you thought you would find something, but you said you find something completely different, or tell us more? So I would say the biggest surprise that I had was in the Sino-American case, looking at the delay in the alliance between China and the United States against their common power enemy, the Soviet Union. And we all have read about Nixon going to China and Nixon and Kissinger, these archery lists, putting aside their ideological differences and reaching out to China. I thought that based on this movement towards China-- I mean, that was a big deal. This approach while moving towards China was a big change. But I thought when I looked close right at there would be more military cooperation, not just proclamations of common world view, common enmity, but actual behind the scenes, real cooperation. And there just wasn't. There wasn't until 1979. And so that was surprising because the-- and when I coupled that with the fact that Kissinger offered Mao considerable military aid that would have been private, Chinese citizens wouldn't have known about it if they were worried about a nationalist reaction. So Kissinger offered-- and there were no strings attached. Reciprocity wasn't demanded by Kissinger. He was just trying to help balance the Soviets by propping up the Chinese. And Mao turned it down. He said, it would be very dangerous for us to accept your aid. We don't want to be allies with you. Those are his words, paraphrase, but those are basically his words. So that surprised me that China was very vulnerable. They had fought a number of skirmishes with the Soviets. They didn't have a secure nuclear deterrent until the mid '70s. And the Americans were trying to help, and they refused to. They refused to help. And so I thought there would have been more. And so some scholars have actually called it an illusion of military cooperation for the decade. And I think that's right. People-- maybe the Soviets thought there was, and they did. But it wasn't based on reality. It was a facade. That's surprising indeed. And speaking about China, that's the perfect segue to my next question. How does the concept of frenemy alliances affect predictions about security cooperation among ideological enemies today? People thinking about China or Russia? Great question. So I'll use realists as a foil. Realists predict that with the rise of China and the geographical proximity of China to a lot of countries in the Indo-Pacific and East Asia, that most countries will flock to the United States side in order to balance China, much like most of Europe and Asia, flock to the United States side to balance the Soviet Union. And some real scholars have said it's going to be a new NATO, an Asian NATO similar, or various states of all ideologies will balance China by moving towards the United States. I think that's right for liberals. Liberals are definitely, I would say, are going to gravitate towards the United States, groups with shared ideological visions. But it's going to be a lot trickier for illiberal countries in Asia. And so the United States doesn't have a big advantage that it had during the Cold War. During the Cold War, just about every country-- and perhaps every country, I'll have to think-- that formed a formal alliance with the United States, a treaty-based alliance with the United States was either liberal or fiercely anti-communists. So liberal or the illiberal formal allies were also anti-communists. They didn't like the United States ideologically, but they liked the United States much better than they liked the Soviet Union. So there was this-- back to those configurations, ideological distance. They were closer. The United States was a lesser ideological threat. So that was a big help. Anti-communism was a big help to the United States during the Cold War. I don't see an analog to that today in East Asia. So liberals will flock to America. But these illiberal states, the variance is going to be a lot higher. It's going to depend on these two variables I talked about. Is regime vulnerability going to be higher low? And are they going to view themselves as closer or farther apart to the United States than China ideologically? There's a saying this popular among Vietnamese leaders that if they ally with China, they lose the country. If they ally with America, they lose the party. And so that speaks to regime vulnerability, if-- so which one is going to be more important? If they're worried about the cooperation with the US, they're going to lose the party. The regime is going to be overthrown. And the alliance is much less likely. And so the point is, the front of me alliances are not going to be as easy or as likely today as they were in the Cold War because an analog to anti-communism doesn't exist. So it's going to depend on how vulnerable they feel domestically and how do they view themselves as closer or farther apart to which of the two powers, China or the US. And I think a similar thing is going to happen in Europe, which some leaders are going to view. Putin is an ideological ally or similar. They have similar ideological objectives based on Putin's conservatism and traditionalism. And they're going to be less likely to want to balance him. And so it's not going to be as-- realist say, just look at the power, just look at the power in geography. I'm saying you have to look at power in geography. That's part of the equation. But ideology goes a long way. These other ideological variables go a long way when we're going to get these frenemy alliances and when we won't. These are exciting times. We've taken enough of your time. I'll ask you one final question. What are you working on right now? So I'm happy to say I just finished a book. It's at the copy at its stage with Oxford University Press. And it looks at population aging, the effects of global population aging on the probability of war and peace. And for this one, I'm more of an optimist than I am and other things. I believe the population aging is likely to be a powerful force for peace. So that's good news. That is good news indeed. That is good news indeed. Thank you so much for talking to us today. My guest has been Mark Hawz, author of the book "Frenemies," when ideological enemies ally. The book was published in 2022 by Cornell University Press in their Cornell Studies and Security Affairs series. I'm your host, Ellonara Matyachi. Until next time. 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