Ententes and alliances

In 1976 Robert A. Kann, the well known authority on Habsburg history, wrote a Research Note in World Politics called ‘Alliances versus Ententes’. 1 This rescued a distinction which had not been entirely overlooked in the post-war literature of international Relations 2 but was certainly in danger of extinction at the hands of a broad, all-purpose concept of ‘alliance’. 3 An alliance, Kann claimed, is distinguished by its ‘airtight commitments’; by contrast an entente entails ‘no definite commitments’ and is altogether a looser and more flexible kind of association between states. The entente he alternatively described as a ‘consultation pact’ or ‘flexible agreement’. Kann, however, was not concerned only with conceptual explication. Indeed, his main purpose seems to have been (he was a little vague on this) to advance the argument that although ‘many examples of workable alliances and meaningless ententes can easily be adduced’, the entente is in principle a more efficient device for serving ‘the interests of peace’ than the alliance. This is an argument which can be challenged both on internal as well as historical grounds.