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The Athenian Alliance

Decent Essays

The value of maintaining an alliance allows for a nation to enhances its ability to compete against other states through the essence of networking. The presence of a defensive alliance contributes to the insurance of war not breaking out, however the fixation of alliance also allows for conflict to arise. Throughout this paper the relation of the United States and Athens, is going to be evaluated on how these two great power shared similar implications with their treatment of alliances. Even though both of these nations are from two different time lines, the study of Athens serves as a historical example and the United States is beginning to follow the same footsteps as Athens.
Before the Peloponnesian War broke out, the Athenians were known …show more content…

In the, The Unquiet Frontier, by Grygiel and Mitchell they explain how during the 21st century, the United States maintains a strategic alliance with frontier powers such as, Taiwan, Israel and Poland. Strategically, it is a strategic move for the United States to have alliances near powers like China, Iran and Russia because it prevents those states from probing and allows for the United States to maintain their presence. However, critics argue that by being allied with small insufficient states as noted by Grygiel and Mitchell, “Maintaining extensive, expensive and binding relationships with exposed and militarily weak states located near large rivals, we are told, will cause more problems than they are worth.” Even though it has always been the United States objective to intervene in small conflicts, especially with states that have democratic value to it the U.S will support it promising military aid. In addition, due to the United States relentless ability to engage in conflicted issue it has stopped the spreading of communism because the United States allied themselves with small states. Also, the United States established N.A.T.O, persevering the freedom and security of its members through political and militarily means. Furthermore, it’s through alliance like N.A.T.O that advocate for formal alliances in which challengers do not attempt to …show more content…

As a result, the U.S is beginning to decline its influence, especially with deprioritizing some of its longest allies. The United States is starting to afoot its decision by retrenching in frontier region, as Grygiel and Mitchell state, “U.S. retrenchment from these regions creates a permissive environment for rising or reassertive powers” this can potentially be a problem for smaller states because, once the U.S. decides to leave the area unattended, provisional powers like China will try to assert its influence and Grygiel and Mitchell talk about low-cost revision, in which rising powers try to have marginal gains by not moving in too aggressively than what their ability allows them for. Furthermore, once the United States leaves, there will not be a global power that restrains these emerging rising powers from attempting to allocated themselves as leading power. The reason why the U.S. influence is declining, is due to technology, budget cuts and geographic location which all have major play with the U.S. deprioritization of alliances. Consequently, the U.S. has reached a certain point in which it cannot have a smooth transition from departing away from its alliance, especially since it has kindred them for so long. Commitment to its alliances does

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