The Coalition Formation In U.S. Overseas Military Operations In The Perspective Of Threat Perception

Using the debate between the logic of appropriateness and consequences as a theoretical backdrop,I argue that neither is able to explain the United States’ choices of whether seeking a coalition in post-Cold War military interventions.The logic of appropriateness is practically flawed because most unilateral operations break with a post-Cold War trend of multilateralism.The logic of consequences has until now been insufficiently specified for the purposes of explaining military cooperation behavior based on costs-sharing and the interests-preserving.In this paper,I suggest that"consequences" are best specified according to threat perceptions,which creates tradeoffs between the long-term benefits of seeking a coalition and immediate payoffs of unilateral operations.I test this argument and the existing explanations against the case of Afghanistan.The operational phase of the Afghanistan war was primarily conducted through unilateral operations,while the peacekeeping phase was primarily conducted through coalition operations.This phenomenon can be explained in terms of both threat urgency and time horizons,with the U.S.tending to act unilaterally when the threat is more imminent and the time horizon is shorter.