Despite the multidimensional threat posed to European security by China, NATO allies have not yet crafted a coordinated strategy for the Alliance to address this threat. NATO’s current Strategic...Show moreDespite the multidimensional threat posed to European security by China, NATO allies have not yet crafted a coordinated strategy for the Alliance to address this threat. NATO’s current Strategic Concept was published in 2010 and does not mention China once. This alarming observation warrants research that may shed light on the Alliance’s inability to formulate a coherent policy to face the Chinese threat. The extant literature that has examined the post-formation strategies states enact has predominantly drawn on Snyder’s (1984) alliance security dilemma framework and has chiefly considered bilateral alliances in the East Asian context, with minimal scholarly attention paid to NATO. This research thus aims to fill the lacuna by clarifying the link between allies’ strategies and the determinant factors underpinning them in a multilateral, European context. This paper constitutes a comparative case study of the United Kingdom and France’s respective alliance security dilemmas and strategies. To conduct this analysis, it draws on Press-Barnathan’s (2006) refined framework and adopts the interpretivist method based on scientific realism. This research finds that, in the absence of the dilemma, the UK enacts cooperative strategies with the United States while France, under a more intense dilemma, enacts autonomous strategies. These discordant strategies underpin two NATO stances oriented around confrontation and engagement, which are ultimately incongruent with reaching strategic consensus.Show less
