Leiden University Student Repository

van Eijk, Bob Martin (2021)

Big Ambitions on Small Budgets: Why Small States Defect from Multilateral Military Coalitions

Master thesis | Crisis and Security Management (MSc)

This study addresses the lamentably under researched topic of small state coalition defection. Extant defection literature understands coalition defection to be mainly a political undertaking. Whereas small state scholarship argues that small states face myriad political incentives to become and remain involved in multilateral military coalitions but lack the military capacity to act upon their political ambitions. Upon three process-tracing case studies of the contributions to and defections from the US-led Global Coalition Against ISIL (GC) by three small states – i.e., Belgium, Denmark, and the Netherlands, this study concludes that small state coalition defection is indeed primarily the result of military capacity limitations. Although such defections did not constitute a wholesale exit from the GC by these small states. Instead, Belgium, Denmark, and the Netherlands remained involved in the GC in a lower capacity to guarantee their security and foreign policy, which prompted...Show moreThis study addresses the lamentably under researched topic of small state coalition defection. Extant defection literature understands coalition defection to be mainly a political undertaking. Whereas small state scholarship argues that small states face myriad political incentives to become and remain involved in multilateral military coalitions but lack the military capacity to act upon their political ambitions. Upon three process-tracing case studies of the contributions to and defections from the US-led Global Coalition Against ISIL (GC) by three small states – i.e., Belgium, Denmark, and the Netherlands, this study concludes that small state coalition defection is indeed primarily the result of military capacity limitations. Although such defections did not constitute a wholesale exit from the GC by these small states. Instead, Belgium, Denmark, and the Netherlands remained involved in the GC in a lower capacity to guarantee their security and foreign policy, which prompted their contribution to the GC in the first place.Show less

Small states

coalition defection

coalition warfare

multilateral military coalitions

Author

van Eijk, Bob Martin

Faculty

Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs

Supervisors

Popovic, M.

ECTS Credits

15

Language

en