How Animosity Drives International Relations
(https://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/27/opinion/27iht-eddobbins.4735925.html)
What do Napoleon, Hitler, and Saddam Hussein have in common? Simple, they were all brought down by a coalition of nations built with the single purpose of defeating a common enemy. Throughout human history, the greatest military conflicts were decided by alliances built on mutual animosity. Famously, Julius employed the strategy of using historic tribal rivalries to form unlikely alliances with gallic tribes to conquer other gallic tribes. This tactic of using existing animosity to build unlikely coalitions has been coined by the proverb, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” and has been used to describe the confusing pop up of ideologically opposed alliances.
The most commonly cited example of this proverb at work was the string of alliances during world war two which united the soviet east and democratic west against the fascist central powers (Germany, Italy, Japan). In the New York Times article, “My Enemy’s Enemy”, the author argues that the 20th century geopolitical environment was primarily shaped by this mentality to unite against a common enemy. Looking back again at world war 2, the unholy alliance between the west and Stalin was still very controversial and when forced to defend his countries relationship with the Soviet Union, Churchill stated, “if Hitler invaded hell, I would at least make positive reference to the devil in the House of Commons.” This quote encapsulates how the feeling of animosity towards a mutual enemy can cause even the most unlikely of friendships to form simply based upon shared hatred.
In the field of networks, the concept of positive and negative relationships and structural balance is key to understanding social dynamics and international relationships. In the New York Times article, we focused primarily looking at three-node networks where two negative relationships and one positive create a balanced network. However, there exists three more possible combinations of relationships for these networks, of which two are unbalanced and one is balanced as shown below. By understanding how these networks are affected by structural balance, we can better identify why relationships in networks create ‘unholy alliances,’ and whether the state of a network will survive into the future or the unbalanced nature of the network will force realignment of relationships.
