Dissolution of a Global Alliance
Résumé
This work investigates the effect of the dissolution of a global alliance in a collective of individual countries where the alliance, together with its antagonist counterpart, has previously generated stable coalitions. The model rests on the global alliance model of coalition forming inspired from Statistical Physics. Instabilities are a consequence of primary bond based interactions among rational actors and the stabilization is due to new interactions produced by the opposing global alliances. The stability consequences of the dissolution of one of them keeping the other one active are formally investigated with- in the confines of the model. Two landmark historical cases—the collapse of the Soviet Union and recent Syrian internal conflict—are reviewed. The results shed a new light on the understanding of the complex phenomenon of fragmentation, which may follow the dissolution of a stabilizing alliance.