Do states align with or against the power they fear the most?
It is natural to expect that a state will seek to protect itself against a nearby rival—that is, against a power that has the intention and the capacity to extend its influence and control over its neighborhood. The geographic proximity makes the threat clear and present; there is no escaping behind the potential safety of vast oceans or expansive steppes and deserts. Most often, therefore, a state’s desire to protect itself will take the form of containing a rival by seeking allies that bolster its independence and security, and even by engaging in military actions to counter the influence of the menacing neighbor. The threatened state should try to deter, and if that fails, to fight against an aggressive neighbor nourishing imperial aspirations. In brief, balancing should be the more likely strategic path of the threatened state: balancing trumps bandwagoning. Or so, at least, we anticipate.
Today, the “balancing prevails” view is common in particular among those who want to see a small U.S. footprint abroad. If states will balance against a regional revisionist, then the United States is not required to instigate and support this indigenous and natural response. The might of the United States may be needed in extreme cases when expeditionary forces can shore up a weakening equilibrium, but the frontline states have inherent incentives to balance even without the United States. A large and consistent presence of U.S. forces in overseas bases to underpin strong security alliances is therefore not needed. Frontline states will sooner or later balance against their menacing neighbors. In fact, the argument goes, a long-term American presence near the expansionistic powers—Russia, China, and Iran—is counterproductive because it suppresses the frontline states’ natural proclivity to balance; it disrupts market forces, preventing them from reaching a regional equilibrium.
But reality is more complicated. Under certain conditions, the fear of a nearby aggressive power leads a state to hedge and to align itself with it, rather than against it. In particular, when the option is to cozy up to an aggressive neighbor or to rely on the uncertain commitment of a distant maritime power, the former may be a safer bet.
The case of 5th century BC Camarina in Sicily can illustrate this logic and the conditions that lead to it. Camarina was a town on the southern shores of Sicily, near powerful Syracuse, that faced a choice between following the neighboring city or trusting in the protection of the Athenians. Convinced by an ambitious Alcibiades, the Athenians were in Sicily, seeking to strengthen their position relative to their rival Sparta. And their strategy for this expedition was built on the expectation that local cities—the frontline states, so to speak—would follow them. The Athenians trusted in the belief that Sicilian cities, fearful of Syracuse’s hegemonic ambitions, would grab the chance to balance against it.
In 415 BC, in search of local allies in Sicily, the Athenians sent an envoy to Camarina, expecting support on the basis of a past treaty (6.75). Syracuse, fearing that a nearby city would supply manpower and especially cavalry to its enemy Athens, sent its own envoys. The two rivals presented their respective cases in front of the Camarinaeans through two speeches—one by Syracuse’s Hermocrates and the other by Athens’s Euphemus. These speeches—as is often the case in Thucydides’s History of the Peloponnesian War—present the author’s take on the likely reasoning of the opposing leaders.
On Syracuse’s side, Hermocrates gave several arguments why Camarina should not side with Athens. He suggested that states align themselves on the basis of fear. The question was then, as it is now, fear of whom? Hermocrates bluntly stated that whoever won the conflict between Syracuse and Athens would likely subjugate Camarina, were it to side with Athens. “If the Athenians reduce us [Syracuse], they will owe their victory to your decision, but in their own name will reap the honor, and will receive as the prize of their triumph the very men who enabled them to gain it. On the other hand, if we are the conquerors, you will have to pay for having been the cause of our danger.” (6.80.4) Were Camarina to side with Athens, its outlook was dark: Athens wins, Camarina will be under it; Syracuse wins, Camarina will be punished. Hermocrates presented the threat of Athens as the smaller one for Camarina: Athens would claim that their victory was due to their own forces and take their Sicilian ally as some sort of prize, as a tribute paying protectorate. But Athens was far away while Syracuse was nearby. A victorious Syracuse on the other hand would retaliate against those who, like the Camarinaeans, would have supported Athens. Syracuse’s “enmity is likely to be lasting,” he ominously threatened. (6.80.5). In brief, Camarina ought to fear Syracuse and therefore ally with it.
The Athenian envoy, Euphemus, did not deny that Syracuse was a serious threat to Camarina. In fact, he reminded his audience that Syracuse was the main threat, being a large and proximate power. “The Syracusans live close to you, not in a camp, but in a city greater than the force we have with us.” (6.86.3) He added that Camarina should not fear Athens, a maritime and distant power that could not and would not maintain a long-term presence in Sicily. “We are not able to stay here without you, and if we proved perfidious enough to bring you into subjection, we should be unable to keep you in bondage, owing to the length of the voyage and the difficulty of guarding large, and in a military sense mainland, cities.” Distance mitigates fear.
This last description of Athens was meant to be reassuring, assuaging Camarina’s fear of a potential Athenian domination of Sicily. In reality, it may have had the exact opposite effect. Underscoring that Athens was distant and unwilling to commit large forces to Sicily diminished Camarina’s fear of Athens, and so elevated the risks associated with a potential Syracusan victory. At a minimum, in fact, short of its complete annihilation, Syracuse would have remained nearby while the Athenians would sooner or later leave Sicily, firmly believing that a maritime power could maintain stability in distant regions through its naval power and occasional projections of power. The fear of Syracuse was lasting; the support of Athens (and even the threat of Athens) was not.
The choice in front of the Camarinaeans was to align themselves with the distant Athens in fear of Syracuse (Euphemus’s logic) or with nearby Syracuse, also in fear of Syracuse itself (Hermocrates’s logic). As Thucydides put it,
sympathizing with the Athenians, except in so far as they might be afraid of their subjugating Sicily, [the Camarinaeans] had always been at enmity with their neighbor Syracuse. From the very fact, however, that they were neighbors, they feared the Syracusans most of the two, and being apprehensive that the Syracusans might win even without their help, both sent them in the first instance the few horsemen, and for the future determined to support them most in fact, although as sparingly as possible. (6.88.1)
They appeared to side with neither, but de facto supported Syracuse, fearing that it would outlast the Athenians.
Fear of the nearby enemy did not lead to balancing but to a hedged bet, and ultimately to support for Syracuse. In fact, two years later, as the Athenians continued to fight against Syracuse, the Camarinaeans supplied Syracuse with a substantial number of forces. Almost all of Sicily “now ceased merely to watch events as it had previous been doing, and actively joined Syracuse against the Athenians.” (7.33.2)
The Athenian mistake was twofold.
First, the argument presented by the Athenian envoy, Euphemus, fundamentally misunderstood the strategic plight of a frontline state like Camarina. Euphemus thought that Camarina’s enmity with Syracuse would always translate in a posture of balancing, and a momentary support by Athens would only convince this city to steel its opposition to their nearby adversary. As he said, “instead of being always on the defensive against the Syracusans, unite with us [Athenians], and in your turn at last threaten them.” (6.87.5) But he did not understand that hostility toward a large neighbor did not automatically and always translate into a policy of balancing. On the contrary, without a credible and permanent support of a bigger power, the frontline polity like Camarina has to always consider the possibility of being left alone to face the aggressive neighbor. And Athens, the exemplar of an “offshore balancer,” was not offering anything more than a fleet and some land forces, but certainly no long-term commitment. As Euphemus told the Camarineans, “friendship or enmity is everywhere a matter of time and circumstance.” (6.85.1)
The second mistake is related to the first one, and it may even stem from it. The Athenians did not have sufficient land power to defeat Syracuse, nor did they have the will or capacity to engage in a long-term containment of it. Camarina therefore perceived the Athenians as lacking staying power. A large navy without an army is appealing to a maritime power (such as Athens then, and the United States now). It allows for distant projections of power, it bestows great flexibility, and it maintains control over the maritime commons. But a posture privileging naval assets (and now airpower) over the physical presence of large land forces must be underwritten by a belief that faraway states will maintain the regional balance against a rival, sustaining regional stability without the need for a consistent support. This belief proved to be mistaken for Athens in Sicily because naval power without a long-term continental presence does little to assure potential or existing allies facing the prospect of a land attack from a neighbor.
It is equally risky for a maritime great power, like the United States, to base its foreign policy on the expectation that states, located on the Eurasian frontlines, will naturally balance against their nearby adversaries. In the end, a lasting “continental commitment” of the maritime power is necessary.
