With or without you: how junior allies balance security and autonomy

Secondary states that engage in external balancing are willing to trade some autonomy for the increased security that comes with the protection offered by a great power patron. However, mitigating their dependence on that very patron remains an important concern for all balancing secondary states. In this article, we draw on network analysis to explain how secondary states balance security and autonomy in the context of (external) balancing. We transcend dyadic representations of patron-protégé relations and posit that (balancing) secondary states think strategically about how to leverage their multiple relationships in their pursuit of both security and autonomy. Concretely, we expect balancing secondary states to resort to vertical and horizontal binding, respectively, by (1) affirming their utility to and interdependence with a balancing network’s hub to improve their network centrality and (2) strengthening their ties with other secondary states or nodes so as to improve their betweenness centrality and lessen their dependence on the hub. To probe our theory’s plausibility, we examine how Japan and Poland have sought to reconcile security and autonomy in light of mounting Chinese and Russian revisionism.