America's allies have reacted differently to the uncertainty surrounding US global leadership and the return to hard power politics in the 2010s. Some allies have remained steadfast in their commitment to Washington, while others distanced themselves from the United States. Why is it so? This article develops an integrated argument that brings together different strands of the literature on alignment, to better make sense of cross-national and within-case variations in allies' strategic behavior. By examining three case studies from distinct regional contexts - Japan, Poland and Turkey - the paper shows that although these allies all shared concerns about the Obama and Trump administrations' security commitment, it was their differing perceptions of the threats posed by China and Russia's power that influenced their pursuit of either stronger alignment with the US security patron - through internal balancing for 'attractiveness' and internal hedging -, or increased strategic autonomy from Washington by pursuing hard hedging.

Given China and Russia’s increasingly aggressive behaviour, balance of threat theory posits that formal US allies should close ranks behind the United States. The literature on alliance politics reinforces this logic by showing that alliances deter aggression and reduce the occurrence of war. Recent developments, however, have somewhat undermined these claims, as the president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, and the president of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, publicly threatened to break ranks with Washington and to realign with China and Russia respectively. How can we make sense of such defiant behaviour? This article argues that populist blackmail elucidates this phenomenon and compares it to three alternative propositions: conventional bandwagoning, bandwagoning for profit, and hard hedging. Based on empirical evidence, the article reveals that the provocative statements of Duterte and Erdogan were not a genuine push for realignment with Beijing and Moscow, but rather political strategies designed to enhance their bargaining power with Washington in the hopes of securing certain concessions, while simultaneously galvanising domestic support to justify their raison d’être and to secure their hold on power. Furthermore, the article infers that two concomitant factors – political grievances and the perceived lack of security assurance – propelled both presidents to resort to blackmail.

This article investigates the relationship between partisan foreign policy positions on Israel and the voting behavior of religious minorities in Canada. It discusses Stephen Harper's strong pro-Israeli stance in foreign policy when the Conservatives were in power and focuses on two main explanations accounting for such politicization of Israel, namely moral obligations and political clientelism. These hypotheses are tested using the 1968–2015 Canadian Election Study (CES) surveys and the 2011–2015 Vox Pop Labs election data. The results suggest that the Israeli issue had an impact on the support for the Conservatives among voters from religious minorities. Considering the effect of this foreign policy positions, Jewish Canadians are shown to be more supportive of the Conservatives, while the opposite pattern is observed among Muslim Canadians. The implications of these findings are then discussed.

The study of multinational military interventions highlights the importance of four major factors to account for combat participation in US-led coalitions: threat perceptions, alliance considerations, domestic politics, and strategic culture. The latter, however, has been overlooked or uncorroborated by major cross-national accounts of coalition warfare. Building on the fourth generation of scholars working on strategic culture as well as legislative studies scholarship, we propose and put to empirical test a conceptualization of strategic culture that focuses on force conceptions, foreign policy roles, and domestic contestation of self-representations. Through a longitudinal and systematic qualitative content analysis of parliamentary debates that took place in the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia from August 2014 to December 2017, the article finds that force conception and domestic contestation are best associated with variation in allied participation in US-led combat operations. In contrast, foreign policy roles are not found to shed light on allied military participation. We conclude that more cross-national and within-case analyses of strategic culture hold the potential to contribute to our understanding of the peculiarities of coalition operations.

One of the most heated debates in international relations today is the relative decline of the United States in the face of China's rise. Dubbed "post-American," this system calls into question the international order supported by the United States for more than half a century. To better understand the challenge that such a power transition may pose for Canada, this article looks back to see how Canadian governments have perceived and adapted to systemic changes. The article examines perceptions of polarity and their threatening nature, as well as national roles and implementation strategies as stated in foreign and defence policy statements published between 1964 and 2017. Two main findings stand out. First, the Canadian perception of the international structure has emphasized multipolarity for more than 50 years. Second, the predominant national role in Canada has ranged from being a reliable ally of the United States to being a good citizen of the world. This suggests that a shift in Canada's national role is likely to occur even though Canada's internationalist strategies will remain constant despite the perception of a global power transition to the East.

While Stephen Harper's foreign policy sparked heated debates during his entire tenure as prime minister, these debates were mainly confined to Canadian foreign policy circles. Little attention was paid to allies' perceptions of these developments and, more specifically, to the perception of the United States, Canada's main economic and security partner. How did the Bush and Obama administrations perceive these changes? Were they seen as a break from Canada's past? Did Harper's handling of foreign policy alter White House calculations with respect to Canada? Based on a series of semi-structured interviews conducted in Washington DC with executive officials a few months prior to the end of the Harper era in 2015, this essay shows that despite a widespread perception in Washington that Canada's foreign policy approach had changed under Harper, partisanship was the main dividing line in terms of how this approach was perceived and assessed.

One of the most heated debates in international relations today is the relative decline of the United States in the face of China’s rise. Dubbed “post-American,” this system calls into question the international order supported by the United States for more than half a century. To better understand the challenge that such a power transition may pose for Canada, this article looks back to see how Canadian governments have perceived and adapted to systemic changes. The article examines perceptions of polarity and their threatening nature, as well as national roles and implementation strategies as stated in foreign and defence policy statements published between 1964 and 2017. Two main findings stand out. First, the Canadian perception of the international structure has emphasized multipolarity for more than 50 years. Second, the predominant national role in Canada has ranged from being a reliable ally of the United States to being a good citizen of the world. This suggests that a shift in Canada’s national role is likely to occur even though Canada’s internationalist strategies will remain constant despite the perception of a global power transition to the East.