Bilateral DCAs are being commissioned to achieve a number of objectives at a time when most information on defence and security issues is framed as political or budgetary activities related to one of the major formal military alliances that have prevailed since World War II. 1. The United States Government may assign to Spain military units and members of the force and civilian component necessary for the use and maintenance of IDA and the execution of activities authorized by this agreement, at the level of contingents defined in Schedule 2. Members of the armed forces and the civilian component may be accompanied by their loved ones. The force level should indicate: Are DCAs important? In the associated work, DCAs are analyzed as an independent variable. Footnote 20 Here I briefly predicted these results. Diplomatic correspondence shows that traditional military alliances are increasingly seen as insufficient for today`s global security environment. Shortly after the election of Nicolas Sarkozy in 2007, American diplomats reported that the new French government considered its alliances with African governments to be „manifestly absurd and obsolete“. Footnote 21 France has attempted to „radically transform the current system of defence agreements, most of which were traditional post-colonial defence pacts, focusing instead on „fighting trafficking and terrorist acts“, while promoting „defence and security cooperation that promotes the enhancement of African peacekeeping capabilities.“ Footnote 22 African leaders have supported these changes.
Comoros, for example, called for a „new military cooperation agreement with France“ that focused not on traditional issues of mutual defence, but on „training and exchange programmes“.“ Footnote 23 The logic of common benefits therefore does not explain why, despite mistrust and persistent distributional conflicts, States have been able to drastically increase their participation in CAD. I say that if governments create DCAs, they pass on information about their reliability and preferred institutional designs to third-party observers. This information then alleviates the problems of cooperation for others and creates favourable conditions for the new DCAs. In short, CAD involves the influence of networks — relationships between a couple of states influence relations between others. I consider two specific types of network influence: preferred liaison, where high-level states or „hubs“ in the network attract new endgen partners, and closure, where states that share DCA links with the same third parties or „friends of friends“ are more likely to cooperate directly. These network flows are empirically observable reflections on the underlying information value of other people`s links. Footnote 11 The exchange of information on equipment or documents relating to the implementation of this agreement is in accordance with the current agreement on the security of classified information. However, the common profits tell only part of the story. Even if the demand for cooperation is high, information asymmetries can limit the supply of cooperative institutions.
States often lack credible information on the reliability of the other or on the willingness to cooperate instead of exploiting the cooperation of others for unilateral purposes. Footnote 9 Given that DIACs deal with sensitive national security issues, including access to classified information, coordination of defence policies and the dissemination of advanced weapons technologies, these are inherently issues of trust.