McCalla's argument will be a starting point. According to his point of view, Nato remains an active organisation that is expanding both its scope and membership. His argument is based on this assumption. He is making use of both the neorealist and international institutionalist arguments; however, he clarifies himself by stating that as Nato has survived though the cold war ended, one can say that institutionalist hypotheses with respect to Nato, more clearly turned out to be true than the neorealist one. However, he verifies the neorealist argument in some aspects. According to the neorealist theory, alliances will form only when members believe benefits are more than its costs that when the threat disappears, members will cut military expenditures that costed high levels of spending before in order to balance the cost-benefit ratios. Another claim is that members will have more disputes over common alliance policy as they are now taking more independent decisions in their foreign and defence policies. The last significant argument neorealists is the one stating that members will move away from Nato to some other less costly international cooperation forms. McCalla verifies that nearly all of the predictions of the neorealists have been borned out. Nevertheless, there are also some aspects that Kreb did not agree with the neorealists. To give example, neorealist argument clearly states that there should be a power imbalance or threat in order for alliances to be formed. Moreover, these alliances will weaken when the threat or power imbalance disappears. McCall criticizes their point of view giving the reason that they are not clear enough how long it should be before an alliance forms or, oppositely, how long it should take it to weaken after a threat disappears. In these terms, he refutes the argument giving the example of how quickly Nato was formed when it faced with the Soviet threat and in contrast, how much time has passed after the disappearance of the threat. What is more, his argument also contains some elements that show he is in favor of the organizational theory. He claims that if the organizational development of an alliance is high, these organizational interests will work to prolong the life of the alliance because in this way, the alliances will benefit themselves. He also gives importance to a regime that the alliance is at the center of. He argues that attendant norms, procedures, and functions will respond more slowly to changes in threats than the one that has not developed these norms. He finishes his argument stating that Nato's original purposes were broad and have continued to grow because for him, its functions are not limited to military functions. It also has mechanisms for solving disputes, coordinating foreign and military policies and consulting mechanisms on political matters.
Secondly, Kreb's argument will be summarized. Like McCalla, he also provides the reader with a syntheis by combining both the realist and institutionalist perspectives and defines this approach 'Realist Institutionalism' approach. In his article, he puts most of the emphasis on the small powers and alliance relations. He is mostly in favor of realist assumptions than that of the institutionalist ones. One may see criticisms of the neoliberalist views in the article. Before explaining these criticisms, his view of the shift in foreign policy in terms of the entrance of small states into the alliance will be examined. His assumption is that small states join alliances because their success in achieving their aims depends less on their own capabilities than on the strength and credibility of their larger patrons (Krebs, p.350). He also talks about the importance of the participation of small states to the alliance stating that they add relatively little to the military effort and also they may contribute to the alliance's position. As mentioned earlier, Kreb is critical of some neoliberal insititutionalist views. Among those his view on the effects of membership in an institutionalized multilateral alliance is significant. In this aspect, he is in favor of the realist institutionalist view that as accession to the alliance brings a security guarantee to small states, this gives them chance to focus on their internal political issues that create problems. He is also critical of the alliances, like other institutions, providing states with the means for issue linkage and with greater transparency, claiming that such institutional functions will contribute to deterioration rather than cooperation. However, he does not fully deny that some features of alliance ease tensions and prevent the outbreak of war. He rather claims that alliance can deepen and intensify conflict among its members.
The last point I will make will be about the claims I found convincing in Kreb's article and why.Though he is in favor of the realist institutionalist dynamics in the Greco-Turkish conflict, he is being objective on the issue and does not claim that if these two countries were not a part of the alliance, there would be more disputes; rather, what he is saying is that their hostility towards each other comes from history, he argues that Nato bears a significant degree of responsibility for the tensions between them. Being encouraged by their membership in Nato, both Greece and Turkey considered a more active role in regional affairs. Also, the alliance's military assistance is another convincing example of his hypothesis stated earlier that alliance can deepen and intensify conflict among its members.
Another point I found convincing is the way he disagrees and supports with examples the neoliberal institutionalist claim that issue linkage and transparancy brings cooperation. When he says that issue linkage creates deterioration rather than cooperation, he supports his argument by saying that these two countries manipulated these linkages to their political and strategic advantage thus, broadening the conflict and levels of tension. As for the issue of transparency, he makes his argument more convincing by stating that instead of generating cooperation, matters turned on intensions on how one expected the other would use its armed forces.
One last point about the reasons why I found Kreb's argument more convincing is that he is besides being objective, provides us with the two sides of the realist institutionalist approach what furtherly means is that he does not deny that certain aspects of alliances help moderate the rivalries within. One example is that Nato ensured that Greek and Turkish leaders met regularly and the other example can be that their membership in the alliance provided the United States with a measure of influence over their behaviour.
