Between a Rock and a Hard Place: How Clients Evade Patrons’ Costly Strategic Demands

How do U.S. security clients cope with U.S. strategic demands that conflict with their political or economic interests? Much of the literature on intra-alliance politics explains clients’ decisions to accept or reject demands. This article theorizes demand evasion as an option for a U.S. security client confronted with costly strategic requests from its patron. Demand evasion occurs when the client can avoid answering the security patron’s repeated demand on a strategic issue without provoking the patron’s punishment.