The Reliability of Alliances on Korean Peninsula in Post-Cold War Period: Democracies vs. Non-democracies

Alliance building has been an important feature of international relations in all the interna- tional systems. During Cold War in international system alliances were formed on ideological basis. Some of them came to an end in post-Cold War, while others exist even today. The US-ROK alliance and PRC- DPRK alliance can be taken as good examples of these alliances. Although these alliances were formed to balance each other, yet the commitments are dependent upon the form of government in each of the ally state, in the wake of post cold war. This article examines the alliance formation through theoretical prism and contributes to the role of democracies and non-democracies in strengthening or weakening the asymmet- ric alliances through examination of Democratic Peace Theory. This paper argues that the shared identities (democracy) strengthen the asymmetric alliance whereas the absence of shared identities (non-democracies) weakens asymmetric alliance. The paper deals with the US-ROK alliance and PRC-DPRK alliance in post cold war international system and concludes that mutual trust, strong institutions, cooperative bargain and aversion of conicts leads democracies to assure and maintain levels of commitment.